City Breaks
Simo Brotherus, Nov 2004

I decided to produce a new piece for the launch event that we held in Whitechapel Project Space although we had decided that showing an old piece would do for the sake of presenting the artists. I hadn’t made any art works for two years so this was a good way for me to get going again. This piece consists of two cardboards used as stencils, spray cans and a bunch of unused cardboards and texts on paper proposing cut-outs to be. The idea was to make big, clumsy stencils for lengthy writings contrasting the angry and/or witty, politically charged ‘would see sprayed on a city wall. I also enjoyed using a voice closer to my own after many years of making use of fictional narrators.

The Stencil Writings

For the show in Helsinki I’m thinking of writing new texts and cutting them out on bigger boards so to make them truly inconvenient. But I’m also thinking of city fountains and the sculptures associated, like the pissing boy in Brussels. The piece could include a study for a complex sculpture (studio photos and drawings of several models in a joint pose, different angles and details) and of a proposal in clay for a fountain.