Looking for ITE and outsider art experiencers for your summer? Welcome to a culture trip to Uusimaa! Read below for OAF’s recommendations for a summer art trip.
A brand new Middle of Nowhere art park has just opened in Hyvinkää. Specialising in ITE art, the new art park is located in the small village of Kaukas, near Hyvinkää, in the “middle of nowhere”. The park and its summer café are open until the first of September. The exhibition also includes Jussi Ruusulampi, who is part of this year’s OAF visual arts programme, and Greger Grönholm, who was part of the 2021 OAF festival.
“It was Teijo Monni’s and Pertti Riikonen’s crazy idea to create an ITE art park. Pertti and Teijo are creative people who are making a huge contribution to the project. I really appreciate their achievement”, Ruusulampi says of the exhibition. He has also built a new piece for the park. “I have a sculpture made of scrap metal called Opening. The piece was a kind of image of the time. A strange creature tears itself apart in a carnivalesque atmosphere.”
If your trip takes place in August, you should of course include the Outsider Art Festival OAF! This year, the award-winning multi-arts festival OAF will take over both Helsinki and Espoo’s city spaces and cultural houses from 15-25 August 2024.
From OAF’s broad selection of events and exhibitions we recommend the Inside Outside Finland exhibition at the WeeGee Exhibition Centre in Espoo. The exhibition offers a virtual journey to many of Finland’s most important ITE art sites, located in different parts of the country that might be otherwise difficult to reach. The guide is artist Jani Leinonen, who takes the visitor on a virtual village tour to Enni Id’s artists’ home in Padasjoki, Veijo Rönkkönen’s statue park in Parikkala, and to the Autismisäätiö studio and Kalevi Helvetti’s live performance in Helsinki.
For accommodation, we recommend the GLO Hotel Art in Helsinki, which is OAF’s official accommodation partner. During the festival, OAF artists and guests will stay at the hotel and as a festival visitor you are entitled to a 20% discount!
If you are looking for more art stops on your trip, we recommend the ITE art pages of the Association for Rural Culture and Education, where you can also search for ITE destinations by location. You can find the ITE art destination search here.
Read more: Middle of Nowhere art park, Jussi Ruusulampi, Inside Outside Finland exhibition, GLO Hotel Art
