Jan-Erik Andersson, Eero Merimaa, Jani Rättyä, Ann Sundholm, Oona Tikkaoja: Papu. Children Playground sculpture in Kupittaa park, Turku, 2015
The project is a collaboration between the five artists, who decided to collaborate instead of competing. They were all invited to a competition arranged by the City of Turku to make a new sculpture on the same place as the old playground sculpture in Kupittaa park, which was destroyed by the city. The explanation was concerns about safety (Andersson has made a video “Destruction of Memories” documenting the demolition of the sculpture: https://youtu.be/pOXvZtJYJ0Q ). For the new sculpture Turku has made a decision to follow EU standards and a security expert was appointed to the artist, who would win the competition.
The artists, though, made an interesting and unusual decision to make the work together instead, which meant the layers of the city had to work hard to solve the legal part of the decision. All was eventually worked out and the artists started the creative process by making workshops with groups of school children. From the artworks the children made, the artists chose interesting ideas, which they merged into a scale model representing some kind of lizzard, with two wings and a head made out of a command bridge from a real fishing boat. The sculpture was inaugurated on the New Year’s Eve 2015-16.
