Flo Kasearu’s Residency at Dorich House Museum Culminates in Two Exhibitions

 

The Estonian Contemporary Art Development Center (ECADC) and Dorich House Museum have launched a new residency program. Dorich House is the former studio home of the sculptor Dora Gordine. Following Gordine’s death in 1991, the house was acquired and renovated by Kingston University and is now open to the public as a fully-accredited museum.

 

Dora Gordine (1895-1991) was a sculptor mostly known for her portraits and classical figures. Born into a Jewish family in Latvia, Gordine’s family moved to Estonia when she was 17 years old. Gordine presented her first works in Tallinn, soon relocating to Paris, Berlin, and the London, where she eventually settled. Despite the art world still being mostly dominated by men at the beginning of the 20th century, Gordine was able to pursue a successful career and remained a major presence in European sculpture until the late 1960’s. In the spirit Gordine’s exemplary life and career, the Museum operates as an international center to promote and support women as creative practitioners.

 

The first Estonian resident at Dorich House Museum was artist Flo Kasearu. The residency culminated in two exhibitions – Parasites, a duo exhibition with Elīna Vītola at Dorich House Museum and Host, a solo show at Stanley Picker Gallery.

 

Parasites is an intervention responding to the permanent exhibitions of Dorich House. The artist’s interventions in the museum include unassumingly tiny objects which encapsulate immense power and potential. The miniature monuments are bronze casts of ticks, thorns, deer droppings, and seeds, among others, which act as parasites on Gordine’s sculptures, connecting the museum and the neighboring Richmond Park.

 

For Flo Kasearu’s first UK solo show Host, because visitors in London aren’t able to see her major piece the Flo Kasearu House Museum in Tallinn firsthand, she has instead produced soap replicas of her 113-year-old family house. This will not only provide a lifetime supply of soap for Flo’s home sauna, but will also help divert her fear of running out of soap to other worrisome dangers, such as her wooden house catching fire, the gap in her garden fence, and her public space being ‘parasited’ by order.

 

The exhibitions are on view from October 7 to December 22, 2023.

 

Flo Kasearu (b. 1985) lives and works in Tallinn, Estonia. Over the past 10 years Flo has been living, working, and hosting visitors in the Flo Kasearu House Museum in Tallinn, Estonia. She parasites in private and public spaces, living off various social processes, using irony as her characteristic artistic tool. She is represented by Temnikova & Kasela Gallery.

 

Elīna Vītola (b. 1986) lives and works in Riga, Latvia. Her work varies from paintings to complex communal installations involving several other artists and creative practitioners. She has been a host in Artists Crisis Center, Monumental Café and Low Gallery in Riga. She is represented by Kogo Gallery.

 

The residency programme and exhibitions are supported by Kingston University, Arts Council England, the Estonian Ministry of Culture, Estonian Embassy in London, Estonian Contemporary Art Development Center, Latvian State Culture Capital Foundation, Temnikova & Kasela Gallery and Kogo Gallery