2022, multimedia installation

dimensions variable

Image courtesy of the artist

The title, Where the Ocean is the Sky, is a wordplay representing two homes of mine; Finland and Australia – on opposite sides of the globe, one’s ocean is the other’s sky. The artwork is inspired by my personal experience of being an outsider, which was enforced by months of solo isolation during Melbourne’s multiple Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020. The juxtaposition of alienation and wanting to belong is repeated in the work’s stochastic and rational patterns while the use of the Finnish language is intended to replicate my experience of alienation for the non-Finnish-speaking viewer. The work seeks to be a tribute to the ubiquity, irrationality, and unpredictability of life.

Soile Paloheimo’s print-informed art combines traditional print techniques with a contemporary subject matter. A native of Finland, Paloheimo earned a Bachelor’s degree in Culture and Arts from the Espoo-Vantaa Technical University of Applied Sciences, Finland, in 2006 and graduated with BA in Fine arts at RMIT University, Melbourne in 2022. Her practice for the last decade has been in graphic design. However, after moving to Melbourne, she translated her artistic vision into the medium of printmaking, continuing to transform it into an exploration of print and installation.