School Recess and Urban Organism Collection

Erika Adamsson’s School Recess portrays the break between lessons in the yard of the school on Ratakatu. The view in the painting is framed by the fourth-floor windows, and in the yard children are playing freely, forming smaller, either stationary or constantly changing groups.

The artwork references Verner Thomé’s painting Children Playing on the Beach (1912), which is on the second floor of the Ratakatu school building. Through these works, depictions of children from different centuries engage in dialogue across the building, which is also itself over 100 years old. 

The work has been painted with oil paints on marine aluminium, and the partially bare surface is brought to life by reflections that change with the light and time of day.

The series of paintings Urban Organism Collection is based on workshops where pupils drew the species they noticed on their way to and from school. The paintings, created based on the pupils’ fieldnotes, emphasise urban biodiversity and the importance of observation.

When working on the series, the artist was thinking about the View-Master picture reels of her childhood and their rounded edge frames that direct the gaze of the viewer. The motif repeats in Adamsson’s paintings, and references focusing the gaze: “My job is to watch, observe, and to fix in on interesting things,” explains Adamsson.

Erika Adamsson (b. 1973) is a visual artist from Turku, whose works bring together figurative and expressive elements. Her works are featured in the collections of the Finnish State, HAM, and the Saastamoinen Foundation. In 2018, she was awarded the William Thuring Prize by the Finnish Art Society. 

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