News from Elements Art Gallery 131A Waratah Avenue, Dalkeith.
For immediate release.

Elements Art Gallery is pleased to present

IKEA My House

by

Felís Stella

Opens Saturday 6th March at 6.30pm

Artist Talk Saturday 13th March at 2pm (ALL WELCOME!)

KLIPPAN, Inkjet print, archival, matted and framed

An exhibition featuring a range of IKEA merchandise playfully focuses on IKEA’s
unique product naming convention in March at Elements Art Gallery.

Felís Stella is an interdisciplinary artist who turns the mundane and the profane into
the sublime with great humor. Born in the former Soviet Union and having been
honoured by the City of Los Angeles for her artistic contribution to the community,
IKEA My House Part III, a series of twelve digitally manipulated photographs is Stella's
most recent work.

Heimdal anyone?

IKEA My House: Part III is a series serving as playful interpretations of IKEA's unique
product naming convention. As loyal IKEA shoppers, people love the idea of owning
something that has an exotic foreign name, such as Poang, or Heimdal or Gutvik. It
imbues each object with a seductive mystique and an air of importance and value. But
what do these words really mean?

Stella’s photographs are actually depicting IKEA products and this project is a visual
translation of the etymology of IKEA product titles; specifically, titles of furnishings
that have been integrated into the artist's own home decor. A HEIMDAL table is shown
at a Heimdal train station in Norway, a POÄNG chaise rests atop Yaki Point peak at
Grand Canyon (poäng means point of view in Swedish); a DOCENT bookcase is found
in a museum gallery, surrounded by a crowd during a docent tour, etc. These
mundane objects, normally part of people’s everyday interior landscape, become
displaced namesake portraits of unexpected locales, ideas and actions. It is Stella’s
hope that these images will inspire viewers to question the obvious and to see IKEA
from a different poäng.

Also featured in the exhibition is 4 embroidered towels from Felis’ IKEA My House I.

IKEA My House I is a 2008 series of an interactive installation of video content,

IKEA furnishings, and hand embroidered IKEA towels created using IKEA products.

These towel pieces are all in the context of recognizing Ikea’s significant social

impact and cultural status.

Stella grew up in the former USSR in poverty, censorship and mediocrity, all the while
striving to be able to express herself freely and to depict the world the way she saw it,
not as she was told to see it. Immigration to the US played a dramatic part in shaping
her as an artist. As a result, she strives to create work that is investigative and
observational in nature, exploring aspects of the human condition that are shared
cross-culturally. Stella is a UCLA art alumnus who's shown and performed both
nationally and internationally, some of the noted venues including The Getty Center in
Los Angeles, New Life Shop Gallery in Berlin, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions
(LACE), Artists Space and ISE Cultural Foundation in New York, Gallery Califia in the
Czech Republic, and many more.

IKEA My House will run from 6 – 19th of March, 2010

COMMISSIONED WORKS WELCOME!

DESIGN AND QUALITY: IKEA OF SWEDEN, PANEL 4, Hand embroidery on IKEA bath towel

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For further information please contact the gallery on:
PH : 9386 2000

E: mail@elementsartgallery.com.au