SHIA CONLON & IONA ROISIN: GAG

GAG evokes the atmosphere of being a depressed teenager in early 2000s small-town England and Ireland. The exhibition is enclosed in dark purple, creating an intimate, bedroom-like space in which teen mythology takes centre stage. Rather than addressing gender directly, GAG approaches it obliquely. The artists seek to shift focus away from the body, instead exploring the feelings that surround it: dissociation, boredom, apathy, jealousy and sometimes hope.  

The photographic works are drawn from the artists’ teenage archives, captured with digital cameras, point-and-shoots, and lomography cameras typical of the time. Dust, hair, chemical errors and fingerprints are preserved in the reprints of the images, repeated until they become symbols, chanted as if in a spell. In revisiting these attempts at documenting their lives through art, the artists acknowledge this era as fundamental to their abilities to imagine a self.  

A handmade xeroxed zine accompanies the exhibition, containing fragments of text, images and materials taken from the artists’ private chat, a space where the world of the show was formed over several years.  At its centre is a commissioned text by Mia Wennerstrand, expanding on the exhibition’s themes and her personal connection to the Satakunta region. GAG will culminate in a Finissage screening of iconic small town trans angst film I Saw the TV Glow (2024) at Finnkino in Pori.  
 
The title of the show is inspired by Jenny Hval’s book Girls Against God which explores the writer’s experience of music, religion and girlhood in small town Norway. 

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Conlon and Roisin are long-time friends, partners and collaborators. They work on Almanac Press and Trans Library Helsinki together. This is their first duo exhibition.  

Shia Rowan Conlon (b.1990) is an Irish artist based in Helsinki. His practice spans photography, writing, publishing, sculpture and video to explore questions of time, memory and language. 

Iona Carmine Roisin (b.1989) is a British artist based in Helsinki. Their practice is rooted in the written word, making moving image, text-objects and poetry that are usually occupied with the conditions of their own making, or ‘art about art’. 

[Image Credit: Iona Roisin, detail from A Kind of Continuance -series, 2022.]

The exhibition is supported by Finnish Heritage Agency