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September 21, 2022 – January 8, 2023

Eyes as Big as Plates

Karoline Hjorth and Riitta lkonen

Norway, Finland

Eyes as Big as Plates

Photo courtesy of the artist

This event is a Nordic Spotlight, part of Nordic Bridges.

Overview

The exhibition is a selection of recent photographs by the duo Riitta Ikonen (Finland) and Karoline Hjorth (Norway) presented in a non-traditional gallery space: the 245 Queens Quay West warehouse.  

The second component is three largescale billboards on our 235 parking pavilion that will be the product of their fieldwork in Nova Scotia in mid-September 2022.     

The series collaborates with retired farmers, fishermen, zoologists, plumbers, opera singers, homemakers, artists, academics and ninety-year-old parachutists. Since 2011, the artist duo has portrayed seniors in Norway, Finland, France, the US, the UK, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Sweden, South Korea, the Czech Republic, Japan, Senegal, and the Outer Hebrides, Tasmania and Greenland. 

Each image in the series presents a solitary figure in a landscape, dressed in elements from surroundings that indicate neither time nor place. Here nature acts as both content and context: characters inhabit the landscape wearing sculptures they create in collaboration with the artists.  

As active participants in contemporary society, these seniors encourage the rediscovery of a demographic group too often labeled as marginalized or as a stereotypical cliché. In this light, the project aims to generate new perspectives on who we are and where we belong. 

The ongoing photography series Eyes as Big as Plates began in 2011 to study personifications in nature and folkloric explanations of natural phenomena. A decade later, it has evolved into a continual search for modern human belonging in nature, taking the Norwegian-Finnish artist duo Karoline Hjorth and Riitta Ikonen to sixteen countries on a quest to understand our relationship with our surroundings. As part of Hjorth & Ikonen’s participation in Nordic Bridges, the duo will collaborate with the Miꞌkmaq community in Nova Scotia to create a series of new works that will be presented as part of their exhibition at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto. 

Venue

Ontario Square Billboards

Panels for large-scale photography exhibitions mounted on the 235 Queens Quay W parking pavillion, Ontario Square.

Wheelchair Accessible

Accessible 24/7

Keywords Public Art