Studio visit: Montana Torrey’s residency at HIAP Augusta Gallery
In Empirica, different creative practices from the realm of art, craft and design are used as a catalyst for thinking and making research. Artist and doctoral researcher Montana Torrey led the research group on a tour of her studio during her winter project residency at HIAP Studios on Suomenlinna Island, where she shared her process and experiments for her ongoing research.
During the month of February, Montana worked in HIAP’s Augusta Gallery developing material studies for her doctoral research which explores how expanded painting and printmaking can be used as tools to investigate the geological imaginary via overlapping temporal and spatial scales. Drawing from previous field research, she focused on two case studies: a printmaking project that examines the glacier palimpsests or striations of the Fennoscandia Shield in the Helsinki region through collagraphs, and a painting project entitled, What Color is the Cambrian Sky? This research investigates the temporal distance and deep time of blue Cambrian clay and its material transformations, from clay to pigment to surface.
HIAP, the Helsinki International Artist Program, offers artists the opportunity to engage in creative work and conduct research. The studio space becomes essential, not only as a place to create but also as a tool for thinking through visual possibilities, processing ideas, and testing materials. This environment allows for experimentation and hands-on exploration, enabling artists to deepen their understanding in a practical, embodied way. Creative practice requires dedicated time and space for careful reflection, which is why the studio serves as an invaluable resource for both the intellectual and the artistic development of research.
Read more news
Samu Taulu develops next-generation brain imaging methods
Associate Professor of neurostimulation and neuroimaging Samu Taulu develops more precise methods for understanding the brain
EAA Best Paper and Presentation Award for Young Researchers for postdoctoral researcher Thomas Deppisch
The awarded work shows how speech can be made clearer in noisy environments while still preserving directional cues
Professor Hanna Maylett: “Without time spent together, a shared vision cannot emerge”
According to Hanna Maylett, associate professor of film directing, a director doesn’t need to know all the answers; rather, their role is to create a process through which those answers can be discovered together.