19/3/04

Snow Jobs

Not many art enthusiasts will have been able to visit the exhibition 'The Snow Show', on at Kemi and Rovaniemi in Northern Finland, until 31 March 2004. Kemi is on the Northern edge of the Gulf of Bothnia, an hour or so south of the Arctic Circle. Strange things happen there. When you drive north of Kemi for that hour or so you do suddenly encounter a kind of wall of thick snow falling. Then you know you have penetrated the Arctic Circle. A strong list of international artists has been solicited to participate by making works. Rachel Whiteread, working with architectural theorist Juhani Pallasmaa, created an enigmatic 'Untitled'. The New York-based creator and curator of the project, Lance Fung, stipulated an area of 100 square metres for each work, 80% made of snow or ice, and limited to a height of nine metres. Artists found themselves allocated to collaborations by Fung, with individuals they may never have met.

Ando made a parabolic enclosure to accommodate a purely digital installation by Tatsuo Miyajima. Zaha was linked up with Cai Guo Qiang's diminutive canyon. Design was facilitated by an intrepid squad of Finnish builders and their supervising engineers. The temperature dropped to minus 25 degrees and Anish Kapoor, working with Future Systems, attempted - not entirely successfully - to establish a kind of bulge, perforated with red pigment, But, snow being snow, now the melting has begun - would-be visitors should get in quick.