Sense of Place

These three young women from Northern Europe, who are slightly over thirty, have participated in many residency programmes and travelled in various places around the world, can definitely be called space travellers. Their approaches to the places they have been encompass each of their lives and art schools, their ability to observe and the acuteness of their cognition depending on their individuality: Johna reconciles the functionality of architecture with the rationality and customs of human behaviour; Katrine illuminates even the smallest landscape into a panoramic view; and Laura grows the most two-dimensional surface into a poetic space.

Laura, Johna and Katrine, have brought lots of impressions to Tallinn from their travel experiences in Japan, Iceland and Spain to measure the foreign and the familiar, stage and build. They are manually skilled (“my hands are just as present as my senses,” says Johna, “…speaking simultaneously about things that fill volumes, like cultural affiliation, dreams and beliefs,” says Katrine). They create tactile objects that bear the mark of being touchable, even when they are photos or paintings. These objects are ephemeral, short-term and consigned to disappear like a nomad’s wanderings, but as long as the wanderer has the strength, they will restart in a new place.

Katrine Gram Sloth (b. 1983 in Aalborg) is a Danish artist who lives and works in Copenhagen and Bergen. Katrine obtained her MA from Konstfack in Stockholm and her work combines her background in film and scenography with contemporary art practices. She has appeared at prestigious exhibitions at home and abroad, including the One Thousand Books Art Book Festival Carlsberg in Copenhagen, the NAU Gallery in Stockholm and the Alibaba International Photo Festival in Spain. She has also collaborated as an artist and writer in various European publications and worked at the Danish Film Institute in colour processing. Katrine Gram Sloth is represented by Arrivals, a Stockholm onlinegallery. www.katrinesloth.com

Laura Põld (b. 1984 in Tallinn) is an Estonian artist, who lives in Vienna and Tallinn. Laura received her MA from the Department of Painting at the University of Tartu and previously studied ceramics at the Estonian Academy of Arts. She has participated in exhibitions in Vienna, Tallinn, Moscow, Berlin, Carcassonne, Bayreuth and elsewhere. Her latest solo exhibitions include Road to Silver Mine at the Chemin du Bonheur Gallery in Japan and a walk, a wall, some mountains (with Titania Seidl) at Galerie Ulrike Hrobsky’s Showroom for Young Art in Vienna. Laura Põld’s comprehensive solo exhibition just ended at Tartmus, which was accompanied by an extensive catalogue. She is also one of the candidates for the 2016 Köler Prize. www.laurapold.com

Johna Hansen (b. 1982 in Linköping) is a Swedish artist living and working in Copenhagen. Johna graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts with a degree in architecture. She has appeared in many international group shows and solo exhibitions in Yamanashi and Copenhagen. She has also participated in visiting artist programmes (Andrea Zittel’s Institute for Investigative Living, Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation’s artist residency programme in Arizona) as well as the ZK/U residency programme in Berlin. www.johnahansen.dk

Special Thanks: Danish Art Workshops /Statens Værksteder for Kunst, NordicBaltic Mobility Programme, Danish Arts Foundation, Cultural Endowment of Estonia, The Estonian Artists’ Association