Kristina Brandeus Kirkkopelto Artist Talk at the OAG

Join us at the Ottawa Art Gallery – Galerie d’art d’Ottawa in (The Studio) for Kristina Brandeus Kirkkopelto’s Artist Talk where she will be discussing her work and her time here as an Artist in Residence at the Ottawa School of Art

About Kristina Brandeus Kirkkopelto:

I am interested in portraying emotional discomfort and love. Especially feelings of disappointment and helplessness but in such a way it feels humouristic. I believe there is something funny to be discovered in “hitting rock-bottom”.

I work with a set of returning characters: the swan, the ice-cream and the bearfruit. For me they represent different emotional fields I want to express; The swan is about beauty or perhaps an inner beauty yet to be found, the ice-cream about a childlike naivitivity/longing and the bearfruit speaks about more sexual feelings. I want my characters to interact with each other and when doing a project I see them as a series of the same topic to be explored, uniting through titles (to become one story).

To enhance the story my characters are playing I like to use an functional aspect (making it a fountain). I believe this makes for an further dimension in the object if made in a delicate way; where the function is playing a part in the story.

I take great pleasure in planing and making exhibitions; I love building matching plinths to my objects, design invitation cards, curate and everything else around the event. By fully paying attention for details I believe the body of work will light up even more.

In the end my pieces are mirroring images of myself, secret self-portraits. A documentation about resent events in my life. My BFA project was for instance about a heart break. My other big project Happy Harwest was just a further discovery into what I started during my examination project, but this time mirroring the satisfaction of harvesting the fruit of hard labour.

As an emerging artist I am still discovering the technical aspect of my medium and how to master my craft more fully. And as much as I still have to learn about the technical part -I probably have even more to discover as I refine my artistic language. I am humble about this, and by given the chance to work an intense period as an Artist in Residence I hope to develop my artistical practice further. //Kristina Brandeus Kirkkopelto