Featured Artists

Kerrie

Kerrie Gottliebsen is a Seaholme artist creating vintage inspired posters that celebrate iconic landmarks around Melbourne’s west and beyond.One of Kerrie’s earliest designs was the famous Finnish Hall in Pier Street, Altona. 

The design features the original signage and a pop of retro colour. The Finnish Club that eventually became the Finnish Society of Melbourne was founded in May 1958. The building, originally the Red Robin Hosiery factory, was purchased in 1971. It was renovated in countless working bees by tireless club members to make it a home for all Finns in Melbourne. Kerrie’s ancestry includes Swedish, Danish and Norway roots but not Finland!She was happy to donate her Finnish Hall artwork to help promote the Finnish Festival and to celebrate the wonderful community that made Altona their home.Kerrie is currently exhibiting 11 large scale artworks in Paine Reserve Newport. The artworks light up at dusk, including the Finnish Hall print. The exhibition will run throughout April and May. You can visit Kerrie’s website at www.kerriegottliebsen.com or on social media @kerriegottliebsenart

Helvi Apted

Helvi Apted (she/her) is a Finnish-Australian artist, who lives in Thornbury, Melbourne/Naarm. Helvi works across sculpture, installation, print and video, with textiles located at the centre of her practice. Helvi’s work examines way of relating, the politics of care, absurdity and expressions of identity. Her current project is about the idea of the ‘Coat of Arms’ as a way to explore nostalgia and interactions between national and personal identities.

In some of her works, the artist has overlaid patterns from Finnish confectionary wrappers onto the Finnish coat of arms, screen-printed them onto fabric and applied them to the exterior of the costumes. The costumes are hand sewn, but pins remain, suggesting a national identity that is not fixed or stable. The psychological aspects of the work are further explored through a video of the artist as a solo figure who dances (or fights) in the absence of a partner (or adversary).

Helvi Apted has exhibited in Melbourne artist run spaces including Blindside, Trocadero, Brunswick Art Space, commercial gallery space e.g.etal, and the George Paton Gallery. Helvi has created street interventions in Glimpse Gallery, and other public spaces, and her work has been included in community art shows. Helvi is currently undertaking a Masters of Contemporary Art at the Victorian College of the Arts.

Artist website with pages on coat of arm works
https://helviapted.squarespace.com/