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Annu Vertanen: An Expedition to the Worlds, 2023. Photo: HAM / Sonja Hyytiäinen.

An Expedition to the Worlds

Artist Annu Vertanen

Sinivuokonpolku 9, 00930 Helsinki

Indoor Sculpture

Limited access: the work is available to view for the users of the premises only.

Annu Vertanen’s An Expedition to the Worlds combines various scales and takes space and the universe as its topic. Enamel-coated steel circles are arranged in clusters across the walls of Daycare Vaapukka’s gym. Some of the circles include photographs, as well as motifs from Vertanen’s woodcuts. Additionally, the body of work includes two prints in the staff rooms.

Vertanen has wanted to create space for wandering in and wondering at nature and natural sciences. The work’s imagery combines plant and cell structures, the moon and space, and colours and geometric formulas from old science books. It makes visible the geometric regularity found in cells, moss growth, and planetary orbits. The circular forms that repeat in the work are echoed in the gym floor’s lines, the lamps in the ceiling, and the day-care centre’s other halls. A-Konsultit Architects designed the new day-care centre building in Vartiokylä. The work was financed in accordance with Helsinki’s Percent for Art principle.

Professor and visual artist Annu Vertanen (b. 1960) is recognised as an important and versatile contributor to the development and expansion of the expression of printmaking. She was awarded the State Prize for Visual Arts in 2014. Vertanen has had a long career in teaching, and she’s taught at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm, the University of Virginia and the University of Wyoming in the United States, and the Aalto University in Helsinki. She currently teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.

The work belongs to the City of Helsinki’s art collection, which is managed and curated by HAM.

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