Design Finland

NowHere Finland – a national exhibition is currently held in Taidehalli, Seinäjoki between 16.1. – 14.2.2010, organised by Pohjanmaan taidetoimikunta.

The exhibition’s purpose is to give designers outside of the capital area opportunities to showcase their designs and network with each other. Therefore, the co-operation partners include many provincial’s art committees, whose main responsibilities are to inform designers in their local areas of the event and to promote networking as well as to enhance public’s understanding on design.

Personally I think it is a good initiative. Indeed the design activities have been mostly intensive mainly in the Finnish capital – Helsinki area, while designers living in other parts of Finland have much less opportunities to participate into design events.

The name of exhibition is also interesting. Last year when I got to know about the exhibition, I thought it to be “NoWhere Finland”. Well, it does make some sense: a national exhibition held in a relatively small city as Seinajoki (about 50000 people), so it almost is literally ”(in the middle of) NoWhere” in Finland. Well, I know, it is not that small in Finnish standard though. Anyway, NoWhere, and NowHere, nice one!

According to the press release, there are about 400 applications from all over Finland, among which 43 works are chosen and exhibited.

Some of the exhibition works are pretty interesting. I like for example this one, a table runner made of old phone book:

“Snow” textile installation, which brings new fresh idea with old textile skills, really lovely:

“Valse Triste” – silver jewelry series, quite elegant and organic. I wasn’t able to take photos nicely through glass though:

“MÅNS – totally unfunctional adorable piece of rag”, to me those are indeed quite adorable, maybe what I like most is its name after all:

More design works from the exhibition can be found from my Flickr set – Now Here Finland, or check the slideshow below. Without a proper camera with me, I could only take some snapshots with my iPhone.