Rocks and Mortar
4 December 2005 - 29 January 2006
Redland Art Gallery, Cleveland, Gallery 2, 3, 4
Tarja Ahokas
Artist Statement
My parent’s house sits virtually hidden on a hill overlooking the Logan River. It was built with one bag of cement every pay day and a collection of found rocks from surrounding bushland. The house sits firmly on the outskirts of the Redlands embedded with the history of a family establishing a home in a new country. This now desolate house and its surrounding property are central to my current body of work as the ‘set’ within which I have investigated memories and associations. Above all, this exhibition questions the significance of how a person’s psyche is entrenched in a specific dwelling.
Through my photography I explore moments in time which in some way correspond to my feelings of the house. My deep love for the place and family harmonies and disharmonies are embedded in the concrete, rocks, trees and water – a theme that I keep revisiting. Many of the emotions and memories have surfaced as videos, often as fairy-like transformations of family tales from the past. The house has formed part of my family’s history, entwined with roots originating from Finland.
Tarja Ahokas was born in Finland in 1949 and migrated to Australia in 1961. Her art studies include one year of Applied Art, and a three year Associate Diploma in Fine Arts from the Queensland College of Art. To date Tarja has been involved in nine solo exhibitions and over 60 group exhibitions.
Despite having rarely exhibited photography in group exhibitions, it is a medium through which Tarja has always explored. Over the last few years photography has surfaced very strongly in Tarja’s works, with Rocks & Mortar being her first solo photography and video exhibition. Tarja embraces the freedom of transforming the ordinary into the extraordinary by using special effects and altering colours through moving image.
Although painting has always been the basis of Tarja’s art practice she uses a wide variety of media in her works: acrylics, water colour, oil, graphite, pastels, glue, found objects, nails, wood, canvas, rocks and camera to make artworks which vary from paintings, drawings, mixed media, photographs, video art, installation and sculpture.
Image: Tarja Ahokas, The Window Series (detail). Courtesy of the artist.
Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF): A Queensland Government initiative in partnership with Redland City Council.