C108 Review

Lapland: The Snow Show

Arata Isozaki and Yoko Ono: Penal colony, 2004, ice; photo Camille Moussette

Tadao Ando and Tatsuo Miyajima: Iced time tunnel, 2004, ice and seventy LED 'counter gadgets'; photo Jeffrey Debauney

After four years in the making, February saw the opening of The Snow Show in Finnish Lapland, hosted by the remote cities of Kemi and Rovaniemi. Despite temperatures reaching - 28°C and one metre of snowfall, the extraordinary art-and-architecture biennale invited fifteen artists, such as Yoko Ono, Lawrence Weiner, Cio Qui-Giang and Carsten Höller, to pair up with architects including Zaha Hadid, Arata Isozaki, Diller + Scofidio and LOT-ek.

Acclaimed architect Tadao Ando and artist Tatsuo Miyajima stole the show with their large-scale, awe-inspiring, installation sited on the river bank overlooking Rovaniemi, the renowned Alvar Aalto city. "I had no experience of the materiality of ice so it was a very difficult proposal," comments Miyajima. The parabolic, arched ice-tunnel, designed using traditional building techniques, combined simplicity with seventy LED digits, each representing individual human beings. Within Miyajima's abstract numerology, 1 to 9 equals different stages of life (zero omitted as it signifies death). "Tadao gave me a sketch idea for the building," explains Miyajima, "and I had to find a way out - an Ice-time tunnel."

Enrique Norten and Lawrence Weiner: Obscured horizons, 2004, coloured ice; photo / courtesy the author;

Yoko Ono and architect Arata Isozaki collaborated on Penal colony, a monumental ice room housing an imprisoning maze of frozen walls. Sited six kilometres north of Rovaniemi, its isolated location was crucial to the artist's concept. "The work is on the Arctic Circle and rings the top of the world," says John Hendrix, Yoko's personal curator. With a design brief to build a structure no larger than one hundred square metres, no higher than nine metres, and consisting of no less than 80% snow or ice, the ice jail was haunting under the psychedelic aurora borealis (northern lights).

Colour too became intrinsic to certain projects. As seen in Lawrence Weiner with Enrique Norten's Obscured horizons, an arrangement of large slabs of minty-fresh-tinted ice. "New colour technology had to be developed to stop the pigments sinking during the reversed freezing process, from the bottom up instead of the top down," said Seppo Makinen, chief builder.

Constructed from compacted snow itself, Rachel Whiteread and Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa created a beautiful soft architectural folly. "The form is based upon a simple stairwell space that has been turned by ninety degrees," explains the artist. "I hope that it will disorientate the viewer and make them think of other places." Unlike Whiteread's previous work, where found elements are cast to form a sculptural object, here the piece showed the influence of the architect. Pallasmaa's typical awareness for phenomenology was poetically evident in the intimate 'snow-hole' interior.

Yet does the true experience of an Arctic climate overpower the works themselves? In the words of participant Kiki Smith, "When it snows, all the works will disappear back into the landscape."

Neil Robert Wenman is art-and-architecture co-ordinator at Lisson Gallery, London; he

travelled courtesy of the Finnish Tourist Board.

The Snow Show, Kemi and Rovaniemi, February / March 2004 (the show will also be at the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics; see thesnowshow.net)

Juhani Pallasmaa and Rachel Whiteread: Untitled (inside), 2004, ice / snow; photo / courtesy the author