2 – 5 May 2024
MUU Helsinki Contemporary Art Centre
Cable Factory, Tallberginkatu 1 C, 00180 Helsinki, Finland

Opening of the exhibition on Tuesday 30 April 2024 at 17:00-19:00. Welcome!

Never Been in a Riot consists of wearable or moveable artworks created from “soft materials”. An important dimension of the works is their relation to fashion, public protests, demonstrations, riots and carnivals.

The title of the exhibition, Never Been in a Riot, refers to a 1978 song of the same name by the band The Mekons. In his book “No Machos or Pop Stars: When Leeds Art Experiment Went Punk” (2022), visual cultures scholar and professor Gavin Butt writes about the transformation of art education in Britain at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, when free education enabled experimentation between art and popular culture. At the same time, art and pop music in the form of punk and new wave responded to the rise of aggressive neoliberal politics. Similarly, fashion design in Europe broke away from the rigid forms of the time, through the radical visions of fashion designers such as Martin Margiela and Walter van Beirendonck, making room for new forms of counter- and subcultures.

The works in the exhibition are the result of a joint course between the Academy of Fine Arts’ Sculpture and the Theatre Academy’s LAPS master’s programmes. The course has focused on public interventions through material culture, performance art, carnivals, parades or riots. The course was taught by Andy Best, Freja Bäckman, Tero Nauha and Jere Vainio.

The exhibition is part of an ongoing collaboration between the LAPS Master’s programme and MUU Helsinki Contemporary Art Centre, which includes collaborative workshops, discussions and presentations of LAPS Master’s theses, performances and exhibitions.

The LAPS Master’s programme provides artists with a research-based context for working with performance art and contemporary performance through individual and collective practices.

The “Never Been in a Riot” exhibition is open to the public from 2-5 May 2024 Thu-Fri 12-17, Sat-Sun 12-16.
On May 1, the artists and their works will participate in the May Day event, when the exhibition will be closed.

The guided Helsinki Art Walk tour starts on Sunday 5.5.2024 at 13:30. The artists of the exhibition will be present at the exhibition. Jane Hughes will be the guide for the English-language tour.

Inquiries:
Timo Soppela, director (at) muu.fi
Tero Nauha, tero.nauha (at) uniarts.fi