Anu Tuominen – DEPARTMENT STORE
20.9.2024–19.1.2025
Award winning visual artist Anu Tuominen’s DEPARTMENT STORE offers an abundant selection for the ordinary and celebratory. It includes departments dedicated to Paint and Hardware, Pen and Paper, Exercise and Sports and Fruit & Veg among others, and there is also a Parking Garage and of course a Café. The exhibition takes over the art museum’s galleries, inviting viewers to discover and see familiar items with new eyes.
Tuominen’s artworks are composed of everyday objects, yarns and natural materials. The artist modifies, combines and organises them, playing with shapes, materials and colours. The artworks and their titles often play with words and form new associations.
The artist has obtained the objects through flea market purchases, some have been found or acquired by chance. Tuominen has been accumulating material for decades, adding to it when she happens upon the right object. She emphasises this very act of gathering in her process.
“A gatherer enjoys more freedom than a collector. A collector knows in advance what they’re hunting for. Gathering is a simple form of accumulation, while collecting fills gaps in a preconceived plan. Collecting is a diminutive form of gathering: you choose one thing here, another there, but selectively, in small volumes.”
The exhibition also includes a little flea market where the visitors can buy items from the artist’s collection of found objects.
Anu Tuominen
One of the most notable names in Finnish conceptual art, Anu Tuominen (born in 1961, Lemi, Finland) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1995. She also completed a degree at the University of Art and Design in 1992. Tuominen was awarded Finland’s most prestigious fine arts award, the Ars Fennica, in 2003 and won the Grand Prize from the Mänttä Art Festival in 1995. Tuominen has held numerous exhibitions in Finland and internationally. Her artwork is held in Finland’s most significant art collections.
This exhibition is supported by the Finnish Heritage Agency.

Anu Tuominen, Perfect Fit and Good Colour, 2023 (2012), shoehorns
Exhibition at Jyväskylä Art Museum 20.9.2024–19.1.2025.
Museum is open Tue–Sun, 11am to 6pm, exceptions to opening hours.
Opening Day
On Opening day Friday 20th the museo is open from 11am to 6pm, free entrance.
Artist Meetings
Friday, September 20th, at 1pm, free entrance.
Thursday, October 10th, at 4pm, for the price of admission.
Thursday, November 14th, at 4pm, for the price of admission.