More and more we find ourselves asking if it truly is a new week, a new Monday, a new Friday, a recent Sunday. Days are filled with all kinds of information and the constant pressure to monitor bits of information. But is there time to take for yourself, when is the moment to switch off from everything and really appreciate the current? We searched for answers tothese questions during the residency we spent in May at the creative house of the Okapi Gallery in Saaremaa. We appreciated the beauty of life-giving light in its natural habitat and observed the endless cycle of life. We delved into the essence of one time-consuming technique – cyanotype – and it’s prerequisite – light.
Walking in the fresh nature in springtime offers plenty of opportunities to notice the budding of new life around you – the crackling of buds in the increasingly dense forest bursting with greenery, eggshells on the roadside, and in a landscape half filled with new small plants, half with last year’s litter, lots of birds singing, all kinds of colorful birds and springtime animals, who gallop along the forest road. In the midst of all this flourishing life, however, there lurks
some evidence of death and decay – various bones of birds and animals; white, brown and colorful, large, and small feathers and carcasses stand out brightly from the general landscape.
And, of course, some eggshells dripping with yolk, where it is evident that someone has finished the beginning of life harshly and abruptly. The longer you surrender yourself to this, the more you can feel how such a rhythm of life – juxtaposed with waking up filled with thirst for life to the sad but inevitable decay and death – offers peace and comfort and allows you to take a breath to reflect on your everyday life. And this was the initial impulse for the exhibition. However, spring budding has now given way to autumnal decay, the calming of
nature. Instead of days getting longer, we see less and less light. Instead of nature springing up, leaves fall, there’s decay and trees rot. The creative process, which lasted for a long time, has come from the spaciousness of the awakening of ideas in the spring to the tense rationalization in the autumn.
The exhibition “Everyday Little Life” is an attempt to highlight the course of life, primarily with photographs and photograms made using the cyanotype technique on paper, ceramic plates, glass, and fabric. The material choices reflect the everyday life spent in the artists’ residency – as there were decaying walls covered with ceramic tiles, old window panes (some broken, some intact) and photograms made on paper.
This display offers an opportunity to delve into the everyday life of a person. There is planning, expectations, freshness, and wavering at the peak of one’s abilities, but also unexpectedness, worry, and fatigue. Here lies both feeling joy for close people and worrying about them. The birth of will, wishes, and expectations and the death of strength and ability to deepen ideas.
Ave Palm is a multimedia visual artist who draws inspiration from the more or less abstract and obscure phenomena of nature, the peculiarities of everyday life, and the poetry in ruins. In the autumn of 2022, her photo art was published in the magazine Värske Rõhk. The two of them completed a residency in the INSPIRA creative house of the Okapi Gallery in Saaremaa.
In the fall of 2023, their dealings with the cyanotype technique were covered in the cultural show OP, and at the beginning of 2024, there will be a cyanotype exhibition with Helle Ly in the Telliskivi outdoor gallery.
Helle Ly Tomberg has studied contemporary art at the Estonian Academy of Arts. She has also studied Estonian literature and art history. In her work, she is interested in the poetry and chaos of everyday life. In her works, she explores the creation of a personal narrative with the help of photos, video, and text, the connection of nature and technology, and the creation of the new from the old, whether it is based on materials, ideas, or media. In recent years, she has
participated in several exhibitions all over Estonia and has mainly been engaged in writing and photography. Since 2022, there has been an increased interest in the cyanotype technique, which has been shown in exhibitions.
