Seppo Hautaniemi is my favorite kind of artist. He works away, uinconcerned with the machinations of the art world, for the love it, the love of studio and materials. Emerging from ‘underneath his rock’, with works created over the last ten years, Hautaniemi challenges us with distinctive and varying responses to the world around us.
While the exhibition comprises, by Hautaniemi’s own admission, three series of work, each addressing a different concern, there is a clear through-line running amid the work. Landscape is the inescapable grounding for each of the three series, and appears to be a rich vein of artistic variations for the artist to mine.
Hautaniemi summarizes these three series succinctly…
The first series of about eight paintings is themed around the metamorphosis of Castle Hill to a phallic symbol. The second series is a study of colour and shapes to an unknown situation or place. The third and final series is installations of women’s struggle and position in modern society where electronics have given her greater freedom than ever.
Three such varied concerns may at first appear irreconcilable, but upon reflection, they are actually three facets of the same long-term investigation of form, which connects all of Hautaniemi’s works. To consider the contemporary world in terms of masculinity or femininity, exclusive of each other, seems a strange proposition, and Hautaniemi explores these subjects with acuity, without preaching or didactic condescension; this is a discussion, not a screed.
One would be forgiven for finding a certain level of humour in certain works, a result of the juxtaposition of landscape, a tradition with a long and often po-faced history in art practice, usually executed in straight up observational mode, with the bulbous and awkward forms suggestive of sexual anatomy. Egg-like forms drip and distend. Geometric forms melt and warp amongst forced perspective and luminescent oblongs. These works are fun, surreal, and take full advantage of the uncanny wonders of the natural world. Here, exploration and experimentation take precedence, with varying visual results, which is to be expected after a sustained period of work. What is unexpected is how many visual possibilities the artist has found; Hautaniemi has opened at least four visual cans of worms. I, for one, look forward to seeing which direction they wriggle and writhe.
- Jonathan McBurnie, January 2018
1. Castle Hill 1 2007
Watercolour on paper 50 x 60 cm
$550
2. Castle Hill 2 2007
Watercolour on paper 60 x 50 cm
$550
3. Australia Day 2007
Watercolour on paper 60 x 50 cm
$550
4. Castle Hill 4 2007
Watercolour on paper 50 x 60 cm $550
5. Castle Hill 5 2007
Watercolour on paper 60 x 50 cm
$550
6. Castle Hill 6 2007
Watercolour on paper 50 x 60 cm $550
7. Castle Hill 7 2007 Watercolour on paper 50 x 60 cm
$550
8. Castle Hill 8 2007
on paper 36 x 31 cm
9. Shoe 2007
