The Riihimäki Art Museum continues to showcase pattern design and the seams of art. After Marimekko and Maija Isola, the museum’s walls were filled with patterns by Hanna-Riikka Heikkilä and Papu Design.
The Riihimäki Art Museum is looking for its own niche in the museum scene.
The new spring exhibition will feature the clothes of Papu Design oy, a company that makes accessories for children and women.
Is this the birth of a new line for the museum?
You have to think about your own line, because there is an art museum that invests in contemporary art in Hyvinkää, next door to Riihimäki. The Hämeenlinna Art Museum, on the other hand, is a regionally responsible museum with significant contemporary art collections. There is a brand new Malva visual arts museum in Lahti.
Riihimäki Art Museum had 13,500 visitors last year, of which almost 10,000 were paying visitors. The name of Maija Isola and Marimekko can be thanked for the success after Corona.
Who would be the Maija Isola of today?
*–* After Isola’s exhibition, we wondered who could be today’s Maija Isola and pattern designer, once curator of Papu meets art exhibition, amanuens Katja Vuorinen-Parm.
However, when planning the exhibition, Vuorinen-Parm had to make sure that the viewer does not get the impression of a sales exhibition.
The curator hopes that those who visited Maija Isola’s exhibition will come again to see how successful the new exhibition has been. The museum’s customers mostly come from the capital region and big cities.
– In many of Hanna-Riika’s patterns, the artist’s handprint has been transferred almost directly to the fabrics. In them you can see references to abstract art, abstract expressionism, sculptural art and pop art, Vuorinen-Parm lists.
The exhibition inspired the artist to pick up a brush again
Hanna-Riikka Heikkilä has an education in visual arts. Already at Art Industry, he was told that handprints are the kind that would suit fabric patterns.
Which one does he see himself as, a visual artist or a pattern designer?
– I am so greedy for life that I want to do everything and spread my handprint as widely as possible. I am a visual artist at my core, but I can be everything at the same time or alternately.
Making the boards has been offside lately, and Heikkilä has invested in Papuu.
Information about the exhibition at the Riihimäki Art Museum made him take up the brush again. In the museum you can see Heikkilä’s fresh paintings, sculptures and paintings from the collections of the Riihimäki Art Museum.
The purpose is to show the seams between pattern design and art.
Fashion and art have always gone hand in hand. Large international brands have been borrowing works of art in their campaigns for years.
Pispala Clothing, on the other hand, has made a collection of art clothes for Kiam, the museum of contemporary art, in the museum store.
The connection between art and fashion seems to be a trend in the museum world.
An exhibition at the museum gives credibility to the clothing brand
Hanna-Riikka Heikkilä says that she knows how to read even from small hints what people’s next need might be and which color is quietly growing in popularity.
In the traditional Finnish way, he seeks inspiration from nature, but also from people’s behavior and the choices they make.
Papu started 10 years ago with children’s clothes, but at the beginning of winter the company announced that it would give up its own collection. It had become an unprofitable business. The museum still has children’s bodysuits on display.
– The demand for children’s clothing has clearly decreased in recent years, and the popularity of our women’s clothing collection has increased accordingly. Last year, about 15 percent of the turnover came from children, explains Kurkela.
Papu has retailers all over the world, but growth is expected especially from the German clothing market.
Getting to the art museum contributes to Papu Design’s faith in its own line.
– The exhibition gives us credibility in the art field, says Anna Kurkela.
*You can discuss the topic until Sunday 19 March 2023 at 11 pm.*