Gallery Vaal, Tallinn, Estonia
May 9 – May 31, 2014
“Castle” was one of Põld’s first exhibitions contemplating on the meaning of known and unknown place. Two personally significant neighbourhoods for Laura Põld – Penzing with the nearby Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna and the former premises of Haljava Manor in Harjumaa county, Estonia – were combined into one poetical and architectural space. “Castle” was based on a model of the simplified ground plan of Haljava manor. Põld was thinking about the use of taking walks in order to make strange places feel like home more swiftly; also about the clichés associated with homey landscape.
The viewers could enter the installation and stand faced with a mountain of old cupboards covered in collages that marked a living room groaning under memorabilia. A wall built from plexiglass windows pinpointed the area for rabbits in the left wing of the historical Haljava manor. A staircase led to the first floor where seven views opened onto the surrounding landscape (series of oil paintings titled “Seven Walks in Schönbrunn”).
Photos by Anu Vahtra
