TMW Tallinn Thursday Gallery Night on September 30th

The Estonian Contemporary Art Development Center (ECADC) hosts the Tallinn Thursday gallery night with extended opening hours on Thursday, September 30th as part of the festival Tallinn Music Week. The participating galleries are Vaal Gallery, Tallinn Art Hall Gallery, Okapi Gallery, Draakoni Gallery, Hobusepea Gallery, Haus Gallery, Gallery Positiiv, EKA Gallery, Kai Art Center and Temnikova & Kasela Gallery. The programme includes exhibitions introducing new works by both Estonian and foreign artists, as well as meetups with the gallerists and artists.

 

A dedicated bus makes moving from gallery to gallery easier during the gallery evening. Entry to the bus at every stop is based on a first-come-first-served policy.

 

The exhibitions are open until the end of the festival.

 

16:00 Vaal Gallery (Tartu mnt 82, rear entry of the Fahle building)
International group exhibition ‘Tierras malas’
The exhibition ‘Tierras malas’ examines the representation of landscape in photography, emphasizing two aspects related to the landscape. First of all, the exhibition focuses on landscape as a way of seeing, examining how landscapes are constructed through the gaze and looking. The exhibited works point out how some parts of the surrounding environment are seen in aesthetic terms, while others are seen as useless. Second, the exhibition looks into the traces of cultural memory hidden in the landscape, focusing on what is not visible or what is left out of the frame. ‘Tierras malas’ refers to a type of landscape characterized by a lack of vegetation and the erosion caused by water and wind; it is considered poor, useless or dull. The exhibition takes a look at how such “useless landscapes” are defined in different contexts and how they are represented in photography. The title also refers to invisible traces of gloomy past events that the landscape might conceal. On Tallinn Thursday, curator Annika Toots will introduce the exhibition.

 

16:45 Tallinn Art Hall Gallery (Vabaduse väljak 6)
‘Wearing a Hundred Shirts’ curated by Sten Ojavee and Siim Preiman
‘Wearing a Hundred Shirts’ looks at the T-shirt as an object of material culture in Estonia. Items borrowed from memory institutions, private collections and directly from manufacturers include works of design and art, shirts with a political message, curiosities and ordinary utilitarian shirts, which are used to outline the important issues and developments in the recent past. The exhibition displays shirts by very different authors: Reet Aus, Kertu Ehala and Ave Teeääre, Marco Laimre, Laivi, Peeter Sepp, Saima Priks, Juku-Kalle Raid, and Johannes Säre among others. On Tallinn Thursday, curator Sten Ojavee will introduce the exhibition.

 

17:15 Okapi Gallery (Niguliste 2)
Erik Alalooga ‘Random Light Orchestra’
Erik Alalooga’s experimental music installation ‘Random Light Orchestra’ creates a sound performance with self-made mechanical machines, moved by slow motors run by alternating current. The performance is composed as a synthesis of the analog random-generator and the improvisation of the author. On Tallinn Thursday, visitors can see and hear the artist’s peculiar sound machines and see the performance.

 

17:40 Draakon Gallery (Pikk 18)
Sigrid Viir ‘False Vacationers Workcation Travels’
Sigrid Viir’s solo exhibition ‘False Vacationers Workcation Travels’ is a continuance of the solo exhibit ‘False Vacationer’ at the Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia (EKKM), which looked at the blurring lines between work and leisure in the contemporary world. The line between work and time off seems to be slipping out of hand, as is evidenced by the apparition of new words such as ‘workation’, ‘bleisure’ or ‘bizcation’. As the authors of ‘Metaphors We Live By’ wrote, the metaphors about work and time resources veil our understanding of free time, making it seem much like work in the end. If work is everywhere and all the time, then when is it not work? Galerist Anna Mari Liivrand introduces the exhibition on Tallinn Thursday.

 

18:00 Hobusepea Gallery (Hobusepea 2)
Katrin Koskaru ‘Engine Noise from the Sun’
Katrin Koskaru’s solo exhibition ‘Engine Noise from the Sun’ is an observation, mediated by a military observer, who hears a sound, but hasn’t seen its origin yet. The exhibition is a meeting of battle-ready ground, Helen of Troy, the sky above Annelinn, muted soundwaves, painscapes and the Sun. The theme of the exhibition is displayed at the gallery in the form of an installation that includes paintings, drawings and photos. Galerist Anna Mari Liivrand introduces the exhibition on Tallinn Thursday.

 

18:30 Haus Gallery (Uus 17)
Haus Gallery 2021: preparing for the autumn auction
Visitors to Haus Gallery will have the opportunity to take an inside look at the preparation processes before high level art auctions. The gallery is in the process of curating the fall auction, set to take place at the beginning of November. The halls of Haus Gallery are in a state of a wonderfully creative mess, with some paintings on walls while others still wait their turn on the ground. The pieces are selections from the past century’s Estonian art classics, with works including famous artists from the Pallas School, as well as our modern classics. On Tallinn Thursday, gallery owner and curator Piia Ausman will talk about how auctions are organised and talk about the pieces included in the exhibition.

 

19:15 Gallery Positiiv (Roo 21a)
Antty Sinitsyn ‘Ambient Portraits’

Antti Sinitsyn’s architectural photographs exhibited at the exhibition ‘Ambient Portraits’ can be viewed as photographic documentation of the suburbs or a philosophical reflection on the connections between people and buildings and the effect of time, seasons and the human factor on the interaction of these connections. These are not grand and modern buildings whose flawless facades and glass-panelled walls reflect the message of success and prosperity. The characters in Sinitsyn’s portrait collection are dignified and give off a slightly worn impression where the traces of time and human activity have shaped a unique character on the facades of buildings. On Tallinn Thursday, the artist Antti Sinitsyn and gallerist Kristel Schwede will introduce the exhibition.

 

19:45 EKA Gallery (Põhja puiestee 7)
Sten Eltermaa in collaboration with Maria Lee Liivak and Maria Muuk ‘Glass Struggle’
Sten Eltermaa’s ‘Glass Struggle’ shows ongoing artistic research on glass as a material, paradoxically fragile and extremely resilient at the same time. The main theme of the exhibition is privacy and issues related to transparency. One of the aims of ‘Glass Struggle’ is to examine possible theoretical solutions for the immoral and illegal structures of digital giants; the other – to scrutinize the relationship of the aforementioned with the expanding crypto-world and changing economic and geopolitical cards – for example “dedollarisation”, Facebook’s Diem, etc. ‘Glass Struggle’ is also visible online accompanied by texts by dramaturg-poet Maria Lee Liivak. The author of the online version of the exhibition is Maria Muuk. On Tallinn Thursday, gallerist Pire Sova will introduce the exhibition.

 

20:15 Kai Art Center (Peetri 12)
Gabriele Beveridge and Marge Monko ‘Great Pretender’
Sharing a fascination with consumer images and objects from the world of 20th century advertising and display, the artists Gabriele Beveridge and Marge Monko exhibit together for the first time, showing new work at the exhibition ‘Great Pretender’. Gabriele Beveridge will present sculptural works constructed on the basis of shop-fittings, hand-blown glass, photographic chemicals and mannequin parts. Marge Monko will exhibit a series of photos of window displays and a new video exploring the connections between stockings and female emancipation. Both Beveridge and Monko employ visual strategies that work less to dismantle conventions of the beautiful than to exaggerate them, initiating a fluctuation between the attractive and the unfamiliar.  The ordered allure of the shop window or beauty display is thus rendered sublime and contemplative through its own excess. On Tallinn Thursday, Kai Art Center’s program coordinator Triin Metsla will introduce the exhibition.

 

20:30 Temnikova & Kasela Gallery (Peetri 12)
Exhibition ‘Guided randomness. Early Ink Drawings by Tõnis Vint’

The exhibition shows early ink drawings by Tõnis Vint that reflect his period of creative and philosophical formation. Influenced by Ülo Sooster, Vint took up ink drawing and ended up considerably enriching the vocabulary of the fine arts, because he brought together an automatistic way of expression with borrowed figures from other visual systems (scientific illustration). Later Vint developed compositions from random ink blotches that included references to Eastern calligraphy or figurative scenes in conditional space. This multidimensional nature and synthesising systems became an important characteristic of his creative path. Vint’s early ink drawings, a real explosion of ideas revealing his rich inner world, are valuable testimony about the period of seeking and experimenting that this influential artist and thinker experienced. The exhibition is curated by Eva Vint and it will be opened on Tallinn Thursday.

 

 

TMW Tallinn Thursday 2020. Photo by Diana Pashkovich (Tallinn Music Week)