That’s just a nun with a bag of oranges
It was the image above that set the tone for this Wunderwall. The title derives from my first ever visit to Turku, Finland’s oldest city, in the summer of 2012. On a walk through the city I asked Peter McLean — a printmaker who I had just undertaken a residency with in nearby Fiskars Village — a question about a mural we had walked past on the exterior walls of the Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova museum. The answer was of course ‘That’s just a nun with a bag of oranges’.
I pounced on the phrase for its accuracy and absurdity. The statement seemed to sum-up how I was feeling about life in general, and the search for meaning as I meandered through it. A sort of off-the-cuff remark that meant nothing and yet revealed much.
This site-specific work was extracted from my digital archive, then in excess of 270,000 images, and with a focus on recent work created in Finland and the Netherlands. It is peppered with references, some potent, others inane and some to be taken with a grain of salt. It’s as personal as it is impersonal. Some photos speak volumes and others barely whisper, yet when combined as a whole they pop like candy.
The focus is on the barely registered: wan Band-aids, filmy oil splotches, slumped mattresses, discarded televisions, limp plastic bags, lost underwear, and more. Scattered throughout these tawdry typologies are moments of fleeting beauty, poignant messages via graffiti, and a sense that waste reigns supreme. There is a strong environmental undertone, tainted as it is with futility. What will it take for us to clean up our act? To care not just for ourselves and our transient trends but for the planet at large, the world, and its wildlife that we are spoiling and poisoning.
Details
That’s just a nun with a bag of oranges, 2014
1,296 images, each 15 x 20 cm
2.9 x 15.2 metres (height x width)
Exhibition
Peri Photographic Centre
Turku, Finland
8-30 August 2014
Press
I had a great conversation on opening night with Iina Antinluomo of the Turun Sanomat about That’s just a nun with a bag of oranges. She picked up on the environmental aspect of the work calling her piece ‘Seas of the world are a photographer’s concern’. It was really nice to see it.
