I am a photographic artist based in Galway, originally from Northern Finland. My practice is informed by the tradition of subjective documentary photography and my background in philosophy. I work on long-term projects in which a specific place or motif serves as a pretext to explore concepts or emotions. My previous work has dealt with topics such as attachment to landscape, the wilderness as an allegory, and the sensual experience of nature. My Creative Practice MA project REPOSE explores the idea of pastoral repose in the context of the urban landscape. Derived from classical poetry, pastoral repose refers to an imagined place of rest and respite situated far from the anxieties of urban life. The project explores what happens when repose is separated from the pastoral world and relocated to the contemporary urban setting. While interrogating the pastoral narrative, the project also explores the question of displacement: the expulsion of people and disintegration of objects. Pieces that do not fit into a puzzle. In this regard, it mirrors the intentions of the early pastoral poets, who used repose as a vehicle to reflect the preoccupations of their own time, namely dispossession and exile – a life exposed to the elements.
