Coastline Sculpture Project is a new artist-led project focusing on contemporary site-specific sculpture. The first event is organised in Hanko in July 2021 in cooperation with mobile application Harha. Harha guides the audience to the site-specific sculptures and expands the experience with sounds, stories, process descriptions and digital shadow works.
As a medium sculpture is tightly connected with physical reality and therefore it has been interesting to extend the space into a digital area. The artists involved have challenged their own perceptions of sculpture, their relationship with the environment and the audience.
The event was inspired by a visit to Täktom beach, just a stone’s throw away from Hanko. There are over 60 wood sculptures made by a local artist Knutte Sundberg sprinkled among the high grass and small boat sheds. Some of the Coastline Sculpture Project artists visited the site in the winter of 2019 and decided to generate ideas for their own event. The focus is on the creative process. The project provides a possibility to experiment in making, showing and experiencing art. The events, organised during summer time, invite people to be included in the process.
The project is supported by Art Promotion Centre Finland and the City of Hanko.
coastlinesculptureproject@gmail.com
”In Hanko, those stubborn pine trees, bent by sea wind left an imprint on my mind. I modelled my works to intertwine with the tree trunks. Earlier I have made only a few artworks to be placed in the nature, now I took the sea coast nature and its inhabitants, the birds as my inspiration. Wood as a material seemed like a natural choice, so that the works would interact with the surrounding nature. They only add an extra layer to the existing rich habitat.”
As a year-round resident in Hanko, I’ve seen the city in different shapes and many previously undiscovered nooks have already been discovered. Hanko is the place where my imagination wanders with me and in some places it pulls me a little bit extra. I love the expansive harbor and how the light goes out on a summer day when you step into the darkness of a bunker. Coastline Sculpture Project has given me the opportunity to get to know the city via a new forum, and the security that came from being right here at home, made me dare a little further out than usual.”
”The secluded beaches, the surroundings of the old Hanko Biscuit factory and the details of the city made my thoughts flow. My sculpture was formed layer by layer of everything collected and experienced during our project weeks in Hanko last and this summer. I saw a tree growing on the shoreline. I wanted to make a sculpture for it – a sculpture made specifically for the proportions of this particular tree.”
”To make a collective, gradually evolving work is something we have been wanting to do a long time. That “This place” happened now and in this way, we have roughly three factors to thank for: the corona pandemic that changed how we view and encounter art, the collaboration with the Harha team that gave us an incentive to try new technics and of course Hanko, whose varied landscapes of beaches, rocks, sea views and historical remnants has been an inspiration throughout the process.”
© Coastline Sculpture Project