2025
🌀For Everlasting Soup show at Sinne I collaborated with Katie Lenanton on this iteration of Bar Tender, as well as gifted the bar a bottle of homemade black walnut liqueur. Along with a collection of soft furnishings, my ongoing research into foraging, natural dyeing, and weather reports takes the form of Small Talk #14: Tender Blender—presented here as a group of hanging cocoons and a colour chart.
🌀The three ryijy cushions are mostly made from secondhand yarn, or from a small Slovak spin mill and woolen yarn producers. They are filled with heather from Kainuu, and hay and salvia from one wild garden. Dyed with: red-blooded webcap, onion, beetroot soup, borsch soup, nettles, porcini mushroom, walnut, turmeric, golden margueret, heather, red cabbage, st. John’s wort.
This mobile pop-up art bar draws parallels between the labour and social dynamics of a curator and a bartender. Katie’s project Bar Tender is both a mobile pop-up art bar, and a long-term relational artistic and curatorial project. It draws parallels between the labour and social dynamics of a curator and a bartender—both listen patiently to the ideas, challenges, and hopes of artist-patrons. Guests were served conceptual cocktails from foraged ingredients, and non-alcoholic options were available.
Along with my cushions, cocoons and color chart the Bar Tender was accommodated with commissioned artworks; homemade black walnut liqueur; and thrifted or gifted textiles, objects, and vessels.
More about Everlasting Soup exhibition here.
Photos: Elis Hannikainen