northeast

TALLINN 25 November – 14 December Hobusepea Gallery Enter Britta Benno’s solo exhibition Ruinenlust: Lasnamägi at Hobusepea Gallery, and in a sense, you enter a different world. This exhibition follows on from Benno’s show at the Art Hall Gallery called Dystopian Tallinn, where she presented images of Tallinn in some distant post-apocalyptic future. The city, largely under water, has been reclaimed by the natural world using what the human species, now departed, had left behi

RIGA – LONG READ Michael Holland shares his experience of a haven in the coastal forests of south-west Estonia. Sometime in the dreamworld, a time just before the Brexit vote, a time when people still partied all night and danced together in a room with no fear, no masks. A foreign time, well it seems foreign to me right now as I look back. There was a moment, a long weekend actually, when many things were realised all at once. These things are somehow still being realised al

TALLINN 26 September 2020 – 28 February 2021 Kadriorg Art Museum Always by Our Side: Cats and Dogs in 16th‒19th-Century Art Is it any wonder, in the world of social media and click bait, that this exhibition should find its way onto Northeast? As I got off the tram and walked the gravel path up to Kadriorg Palace, and as the promised rain started to fall, I was wondering what I was doing coming out on a dreary Sunday to see an exhibition about cats and dogs. Am I really so d

RIGA - A new art museum in the city of new art museums For quite a while now there have been heated discussions about the need for a contemporary art museum in Riga city. While the COVID-19 crisis shifted our attention to other problems, a new contemporary art space – ZUZEUM Art Centre –appeared in Riga. The former cork factory of 1,100 square metres has been transformed into a lively art centre incorporating exhibition space, sculpture garden, workshop area, cafe, art shop a

RIGA – LONG READ Summer in south-east Estonia Editor: This is the first of our ‘long reads’ on Northeast, which will tend to be more about exploring a topic than sharing an event. In what follows you can read a travelogue by Riga-based Michael Holland as he escapes the limitations imposed by the COVID-19 crisis this summer. Journeying through northern Latvia and south-eastern Estonia, Michael chances upon some unexpected treasure, while also understanding how we can even mana

HELSINKI In memoriam Mika Vainio 20.8.2020 – 10.1.2021 Kiasma Photo credit: Annar Bjørgli / Nasjonalmuseet for kunst, arkitektur og design “My favourite frequency is 50 Hz – the frequency of the electric grid = ground noise.” Mika Vainio (b. 1963 Helsinki, Finland – d. 2017 Trouville-sur-Mer, France) I first became a fan of Mika Vainio after hearing his 1996 remix of the Björk song Headphones. Hypnotic, visceral, and stripped-back in the extreme, his interpretation pulled off

TALLINN Interview with editor Annika Toots Autumn 2020 The latest issue of Estonian Art magazine was launched this month. I caught up with editor Annika Toots to talk about the launch and what people can expect from this issue. What is Estonian Art? Estonian Art is a biannual magazine that is dedicated to art, architecture and design. It has been published by the Estonian Institute since 1997. How long have you been editor? Since 2019, I have been the editor of three i