MALMITALO GALLERY | Tiina Herttua and Erika Kusumoto: Natural colours 9 February – 4 March, 2023

Malmitalo gallery presents the exhibition Natural colours by Tiina Herttua and Erika Kusumoto 9 February – 4 March, 2023! 

Welcome to the exhibition opening on Wednesday, 8th February 5–7 pm!

Image (from left to right): Tiina Herttua and Erika Kusumoto 

Tiina Herttua and Erika Kusumoto: Natural colours  /  しぜんのいろ – Natural pigment works   

 Tiina Herttua (Finland) and Erika Kusumoto (Japan) are having their fourth duo exhibition on display at the Malmitalo gallery in February. In their works, the artists deal with the landscape and human's relationship with nature. They both look the issue from their own cultural starting points. All the works in the exhibition are made with dyes obtained from nature, without the use of factory-made colours.    

 Erika Kusumoto uses the traditional Japanese painting Nihonga in her work. Mineral pigments obtained from the soil and plant based pigments are used with adhesives made from natural substances on washi paper.     

Tiina Herttua´s works are made using traditional textile cooking dyeing methods. In the dyeing process, plants from the artist's own environment have been used and have often been collected from fallen branches or wilting plants. In a few works, the dye is fruit and vegetable peels, which usually end up as biowaste.    The works present nature and landscape, abstracting, as well as describing more of the feelings and being in the landscape evoked by the landscape.     

There is in the exhibition a Noren, a traditional Japanese fabric divider made by Erika Kusumoto. Noren have been used in Japan since the Heian period (794-1185). Still today they are used at the doors of shops and in homes, dividing spaces, telling the name of the store or as a divider between the interior and exterior.     

Erika Kusumoto is a Master of Arts from Kyoto Seika University in Japan, where she focused on studying traditional Japanese painting. She is currently the director of Umenoki Art Studio in Shiga and has also worked as a part-time professor at the Department of Art at the Seika University.    

Tiina Herttua is a visual artist who graduated from the Lahti Institute of Design. She lives and works in Finland and Sicily. Her works have been exhibited in several solo and group exhibitions in European countries, also in Australia, Japan and United States. She also works as a community artist.  Tiina Herttua's work has been supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland.    

Malmitalo gallery Ala-Malmin tori 1, 00700 Helsinki Mon–Thu 8am–8pm, Fri 8am–6pm, Sat 10am–4pm