Art in a Toilet

Sometimes it’s great fun to do some totally different. The culture office of Porvoo asked me, if I could come up with anything to their summer #URBCULT ‑project.
They basically gave me a one square-meter “outdoor toilet” (in Finnish “huussi” or “hyyssikkä”) — and free hands to do “art”.

And yes: without the actual seat-and-the-bucket .

It just happened that the whole was c. 4x2 meters, so I came up with this idea of putting a 360°x 180° print of that exact size on the wall so that when you are standing in the middle you’d see a conti­nuous image.

I chose an image I shot couple of years ago in Klovharun, inside the cabin of late Tove Jansson — as the place is essential to the cultural heritage of Porvoo and yet very hard to get to as it is a rather remote place; only a few hundred people visit the island annually.

For the ceiling I made a c. 100 cm X 100 cm print of the whole island — but in so called little planet projection. You can actually see our sailboat and my kids in that image.

The images are mounted on polycar­bonate (to minimaze the effects of humidity and tempe­rature) — and big thanks goes to Canon for doing the print job.

Yes, I know the projection of the image covering the walls is wrong — it should be recti­linear instead of equirectangular.

But if you happen to be in Porvoo during the summer, go check it out. You can find it outside the Taide­tehdas (ArtFactory).

As I said: fun to do something totally different.