Kiasma Gallery Helsinki

Sateri Tuori: Forest

Sometimes you don't notice anything's wrong until you see the same thing done differently.

We just visited an exhibition called "it's a set up" at the Kiasma gallery in Helsinki. It puts together a range of work - installation, video, sculpture and painting - that explores the character of an event: What happened when? Why did it happen? What will happen after? It seemed to be about the way we turn discrete events into stories. And, in turn, how we would turn each of the exhibits into stories in order to explain them to others.

The most notable quality though, was not the concept - elegant as it was - it was the quite distinct feeling that ran through all of the works. They were soft and suggestive rather than shouty. About our better selves rather than base instincts. And they seemed to aim for timelessness rather than needing to be bang up to date.

It all felt quite different from exhibitions I've seen in London recently. I'm sure this is a huge generalisation but it can feel that London art [Tate Modern Art] is about BIG ideas, not soft thoughtful ones. Artists want to shock, upend assumptions, leaving audiences un-moored and, ideally, a little insecure. It's often aggressive and streetwise. And, just as with Warhol, it's hard to tell what's art, what's consumerism, and whether that lack of the difference isn't actually the point.

I remembered a conversation with a friend in which she said that she felt art in Britain is over branded and that something is being lost.

At the time, I wasn't sure I understood what she meant. Walking round Kiasma, I felt we were seeing a tradition that had evolved quite seperately from the Tate. A tradition that showed that London art is just one option of many. And that if London art Tate Modern Art] is all you see, then, just as my friend said, something is being lost.