“I seek out visual forms for memories that were never placed in a photo album, but instead have continued to transform and evolve in seeming blindness. Ever since the memories' emergence, they have become entwined with stories and inklings, grown into surreal webs of what could have been, or what should have been forgotten.”
CHANGELING CREEPS INTO THE GARDEN & OTHER MEMORIES
2010 – 2014, a photographic series
“I tear down, cut up and assemble temporary arrangements out of old and new photographs, animal picture cards, wire and yarn, and abandoned pieces of decaying wallpaper. The reconstructed memoryscapes are eventually captured as two-dimensional photographs. While working through the materiality of the photograph, I attempt to bring out various layers, mergers, holes and meaningful imprecisions; the odd structures of recollection that tend to be missing from photo albums.”
The series marks the beginning for Laura Konttinen’s characteristic artistic method, style and themes. Konttinen first started to develop her crafts-based method in 2006 while studying for her bachelor’s in Fine Art. After various experiments with combining collage, miniature models and photography, she focused on the strange relationship relationship between memory and photography. This has become an essential theme throughout Konttinen’s photographic work.
The series “Changeling Creeps into the Garden” has been exhibited in various edits in Finland, South Korea, United States, Spain, and the Netherlands among others.
Exhibitions
Memories have been featured in several group shows as well as solo exhibitions at Hippolyte Studio, Helsinki in 2014, Galerie Pleiku, Berlin in 2012 and Kummigalleria, Northern Photographic Centre, Oulu in 2012.
