Home: Familiar/Unfamiliar

Visual artists Maisa Talvikki Tenhunen and Charmaine Evans explore the construction of the home and how it is affected by personal experiences as well as the collective unconscious. Drawing from personal memories and socio-political history the artists look into the familiar/unfamiliar elements of the home, highlighting how the domestic environment is shaped by psychological and physical experiences.

What is familiar about the home often gets interchanged with the unfamiliar when subjective memories and histories interact. Through re-location and re-configuring of the familiar and the unfamiliar the artists contemplate the changes that occur when the home is fragmented and displaced. Images become abstracted by the artists’ curiosity of what defines the home whilst being influenced by memories and dreams. With this series of paintings the artists attempt to preserve the essence of the psychological experience.

Different viewpoints of the home are explored within the work. Both artists regularly use photography archives for inspiration. Maisa’s work approaches the theme from the perspective of emotional connections to home interiors, visible in memories and dreams. While Charmaine’s work explores the same ideas, it also explores dislocation and physical fragmentation of the home.

CHARMAINE EVANS

Charmaine Evans’ work draws on social and political issues working intuitively to create artworks permeated in an anonymous dramatic narrative clouded in mystery. Predominantly the artworks are reliant on existing elements, personal and compelling, to create a narrative acquiring multiple interpretations. Working intuitively and instinctively with an intentional meeting of the mind and body to create work in a physiological space filled with tension.

Using imagination to express vulnerable moments consumed by desires, violence or issues marked by social injustice to ultimately engage in a world accompanied by all its diversities.

MAISA TALVIKKI TENHUNEN

Maisa Talvikki Tenhunen is a London based artist originally from Finland. Maisa explores the experience of alienation and presence/absence at the home with paintings of domestic rooms and interiors. Motifs familiar to the home re-occur in her work, contemplating the relationship between ‘real’ space and ‘inner’ space. Drawing inspiration from personal and family photographs and memories as well as dreams, the artist questions the impact of intergenerational histories on the subjective experience of the home.

With a background in multimedia arts and photography, Maisa has earned two Visual Art diplomas in Finland and is currently completing a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art at The Art Academy London. Maisa has exhibited in group shows both in Finland and the UK.