Report by Antonio Altarriba
Nelli Tanner, jewellery artist, was born in Helsinki, Finland in 1976. She studied jewellery and stonework design at South Carelia Polytechnic, Lappeenranta, and later at Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, graduating from both institutions with a Bachelor of Arts 2000 and 2003 respectively. She also has studied artistic pedagogy at the Institute of Design, Lahti, Finland 2005. Tanner has exhibited widely in Europe at galleries, museums and other spaces sometimes in group shows and sometimes solo o duo. Tanner has settled in Imatra at the beginning of this summer with her husband Ville Huhtanen who is a painter.
Nelli Tanner experiments and explores ways of involving materials into a contemporary jewellery art context. Her work is a continuous searching process transforming forms into a new visual language to capture the gaze to unveil things, like the poet that explores words to give them meanings despite the weight of time. Tanner works on the boundaries of material and thought and let’s the viewer the chance to read the work in its own way. Jewellery has a millenary tradition and sometimes for any artist is heavy to carry it, however, Tanner reads history looking on the future, because today’s work is tomorrow’s history.
For several years Nelli Tanner has been working with joint projects with another jewellery artist, Anna Rikkinen, they have explored the relationship between space, body and jewellery in several exhibitions. For this interview I met Nelli Tanner at my home in Lappeenranta, city next to cultural city of Imatra.
Why did you decide to settle in Imatra?
My husband, Ville Huhtanen, wanted to come back to his home town Imatra. Now I’m very happy here we have more space to live and work than in Helsinki. These are advantages of towns outside big metropolis. As artists we need a lot of space to work and rents are quite high in Helsinki. And here in Imatra there is also a lot of peace and tranquillity. I do not even turn on the radio in my workroom. I want to feel all this silence. In Helsinki the radio was always on, why I ask now?
How easy is to share artistic and private life and how do you organise your time?
Our artistic and private life is overlapping. We enjoy the rhythm of working together. I start my work early and he likes to start a bit later. Each of us does its own work in separate spaces, but we discuss approaches and things generally. I’m sure all this helps my creative process, but anyway our life is not only art, we have also friends, family and we are not talking all the time about art and exhibitions. I have learned to organize my time very well. Today being an artist is far from old days and we have to do some office work every day like emailing.
Could you Nelli define your approach to artwork?
I explore materials around us, their nature and the impact of time on them. I like to use mixed techniques, silver, wood or anything. It takes a long process, before I have made an object. I could say that for me the time that I spend in the process is as valuable as the final work. I experienced the whole process from point A to point B.
Who has caused great influence in you?
Well, now it comes to my mind three artists. First I recalled my visit to Helena Lehtinen’s studio. It was my first year at jewellery school and I did not know much yet how artists lived. The light and the space of that studio impressed me very much. The aesthetics of everything. Also so full of beautiful flowers in the middle of winter. Later already in Amsterdam I was much impressed by the work of Lisa Walker. How she managed to collect things from any place and to give new life to them and finally an artist that has had much influence on me were the works of Ellert Haitjema. I’m sure, that there are many others, who have striked me, like Fiona Tan, Luc Tuymans, Elina Brotherus, Erwin Wurm
, Michaël Borremans
(just to mention few). And of course from jewellery field Iris Eichenberg, Lin Cheung, Karen Pontoppidan.. …
