Dmitry Skurikhin, Плакаты на внешних стенах / Posters on exterior walls

this picture and the next one from Facebook

Viewing the picture above, one might assume it represents an art environment of someone from the newest generation of self-taught Russian artists.

And indeed, Alexander Emelyanov in a recent article on the Russian website Sygma  presents above photo next to photos of facteur Cheval's Ideal Palace and of his own creation Aquaduct Tashkent and -establishing a corresponding creative signature between the three creations- he classifies the decorated building as an art environment.

Actually, the decorated building is one of the three supermarkets owned by entrepreneur Dmitry Skurikhin, who in the ever-changing handmade posters gives his opinion on political developments in Russia.

So this site can be considered as an art environment with political messages.

picture from website Charter97

the text reads: "Dimon got run over. Let’s go after Vovan"

("Dimon" refers to prime minister Dmitry Medvedev and

"Vovan" is a humorous reference to Vladimir Putin)

  

Life and works

Dmitry Shurikin was born on december 1, 1974 in Russko-Vysotskoye, a community in the Leningrad oblast, some 45 km south-west of St Petersburg. He studied engineering at the Baltic State Technical University "Voenmeh" and graduated in 1997.

However, instead of choosing a technical career, Skurikhin became a businessman when in the late 1990s he bought an abandoned building where he established a supermarket. Currently in and around Russko-Vysotskoye he owns three shops.

The shop with the decorated walls is located in the village of Ropsha. Shurikhin lives with his family in another village in the region. 

picture from Facebook

Skurikhin at home, making a poster 

In 1996 Skurikhin began to manifest himself as someone with political ambitions, clearly expressing his views and not hesitating to criticize those in power. To a van he used to cross the region visiting his shops, he added stickers with political statements, which sometimes involved a confrontation with the police.

Participating in the 2009 Russko-Vysotskoye local elections, Skurikhin was elected and became a municipal district council member until 2014, a position he held together with nine members from United Russia.

picture from website Charter97
the text reads: "Congratulations to the 61th anniversary of
the death of the Dragon. The dragon died, but his cause lives"

The poster project

In the spring of 2014 Skurikhin began working with posters. At a bus shelter he had improvised in front of his store in Ropsha, he hung a couple of posters dealing with Crimea and one about Stalin as in above picture. That construction was kind of a birthday present for his wife, who works with him as an accountant in the company that manages the three shops owned by the family.

The authorities were not amused and ordered the demolishment of the bus shelter. Skurikhin did this and then went to attach the posters to the exterior wall of the store. He has continued his creative and political activity of decorating the shop to the present day (April 2018). 

 

The local authorities try to obstruct this activity as much as possible. In any case the police will make pictures of the posters. A sea container located near the shop, decorated with posters and graffiti texts by Skurikhin, was removed by the police.

The "pyramids" in front of the shop are anti-tank obstacles, installed by Skurikhin to prevent intrusion of the shop by the police.

picture from Facebook

the text reads "The main thieves down" 

 

The artistic potential of the posters

Apart from the political content of the posters, which is not taken into account in this weblog, it can be established that the posters in a creative sense have a strong appearance.

This appearance is mainly based on a sober calligraphy with the use of just capitals and the colors red and black, while illustrations are added only very rarely.

The attractive thing about the posters is that it is clear they were made by a non-professional.

All together Skurikhin's work might be seen as a a contemporary combination of folk art and art of propaganda.

picture from news magazine The Village

the text reads "Peace to Ukraine, stop Putin's policies against it"

In the field of art environments in Europe just a few sites are known with posters or poster-like inscriptions at the exterior, but then always in combination with other visual decorations, such as the inscription on the exterior wall of Isravele' site in Palermo, Italy, the movie posters on the exterior wall of Guy Brunet, France, the posters from Ensio Tuppurainen from Finland or the exterior posters in Joe McKinley's site in Northern Ireland.

So an art environment with just posters on an exterior wall as in Skurikhin's site, might be unique in the field of European art environments.

Skurikhin and Russia's war with Ukraine 

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Skurikhin protested with a poster. He was then arrested, but released after some time. 

Because he did not stop protesting, he was arrested again, after which in August 2023 a judge sentenced him to 1.5 years in prison for discrediting the Russian army. 

The video below (YouTube, 11'18") shows the plea he made in court, pointing to Russia's constitutional right of free speech.

On July 24, 2024, Shurikhin was a free man again.

Documentation

* Skurikhin's Facebook page

* article by Elizaveta Maternaya (December 2017) on website Charta'97

* article Maria Bashmakova (February 2018) on website Novaya Gazeta

* article Skurikhin art (March 2018) by Alexander Emelyanov on website Syg.ma

Dmitry Skurikhin

Posters on an exterior wall

Ropsha, Leningrad region, Russia
can be seen from the street

Joe McKinley, Moscow Joe's outsider art environment

facade of the house (2000), picture by Peter Haining
(item not available anymore on the internet)

Above pictured decorated house, one of the few art environments in Northern Ireland, doesn't exist anymore.

Life and works

Joe McKinley (1931-2003) from Carnlough, Northern Ireland, bought the house  in 1964. He lived there with his wife and the couple would have three children.

He earned his money by running a company which delivered milk from a milk factory to households in the area.

Friends and people around would not see him as an easy going personality, he had his peculiarities, maybe because of a personality disorder. He was active in the creative field, making paintings in a naive style and decorating the garden with arches and mosaics from pebbles and shells.

But Mrs McKinley, who liked a tidy household, was not very happy with her husbands probably somewhat messy creative pastimes. 

The year 1990 was a turning point: Mrs McKinley left the house, the milk delivering company had to be sold to a former partner who had started his own business. Eventually McKinley was on himself, no company to run, no family around.

picture by Peter Haining

In the following years McKinley began abundantly decorating his house. Inside he had his paintings and he covered the walls with lots of collages. At the outside he filled the garden with a variety of junk articles. He composed texts in a very personal style on posters he displayed around the site

picture by John Matthews, Blackflash
(item on internet not available anymore)

The site got some fame. Local TV came along and students and experts with an interest in outsider art visited and interviewed him.

Peter Haining, an artist who made a trip by bike to make an inventory of outsider art in Ireland, was one of them. He first met McKinley in 2000. In an essay that was available on the internet, he not only related McKinley's life history, but he also described the rather messy and filthy interior of the house.

picture from website rte.ie

McKinley liked to call himself  Moscow Joe McKinley. 

He made some three trips to Moscow indeed and used to wear a baseball cap with all kinds of Russian badges.

His walking stick also was covered with badges.

picture from the website Catalyst Arts

This walking stick is one of the few items that has been left after McKinley died in may 2003.

The site has been demolished

After McKinley's death the family decided to remove all decorations and to demolish the building. It was replaced by a decent two storey house.

"There's not much of Moscow Joe's stuff left in Carnlough. 
 This sign is almost obscured by ivy and is quite close to where his house used to be" .

Picture and comment courtesy of Zoe Bowyer, march 2008 (item on Flickr not available anymore)

So most of the creations have disappeared. A number of his paintings are in private collections, three of them on the walls of the Londonderry Arms Hotel in Carnlough, amidst works of other local artists, and one in a medical practice in Glenarm.

Documentation

* Essay by Peter Haining (not available anymore) 

* Entry on website Culture Northern Ireland (not available anymore)
* Referral to programme on Irish radio in 2001

Video
* Video (3'35", YouTube) by Jimzvidz 1, shot around 2000, published in 2019, especially showing the posters in front of the house

Joe McKinley

Moscow Joe's outsider art environment

Carnlough, Northern Ireland

site doesn't exist anymore

Ensio Tuppurainen, Paradise

picture from the website elisanet (not available anymore)

Life and works

Born in the community of Hirvensalmi, Finland, Ensio Tuppurainen (1924-2014) initially worked in a shop, but in 1955 he unexpectedly quit that job and went to live with wife and children in a remote place near a forest. Over the years, the couple had seven children.

Here he got a job as a forest worker until he was declared incapacitated by an illness at the age of 52.

With his wife and the three children still living at home, Tuppurainen moved to another house, the now vacant shop where he used to work in earlier years, which he had bought, 

The former store of some 300 m² was located along the road to the Vekaranjärvi-garrison, a large military base near the community of Valkealan, in the south of Finland.

this picture courtesy of Minna Haveri

Here Tuppurainen began to decorate the large interior of the former shop with paintings of landscapes, people and other scenes.

He was also active in making sculptures, such as elks, horses and other animals, which he displayed around the former shop, where he also had his studio and gallery. 

Tuppurainen used to refer to his site as Paradise, but in Finland it is also referred to as Jätkän Onnela (something like a guy's utopia)

this picture and the next two (2016) by Raija Kallioinen

He became known by the expressive statements he wrote down in a colorful way on posters he displayed at the outside of his house.

In these texts Tuppurainen commented on what he saw as social and political abuses, varying from EU-politics, the banking system and old age pensions, to environmental policy and the treatment of refugees.

Tuppurainen died October 3, 2014. 

Actual situation
 

In September 2021, it was reported on Facebook that over a weekend a group of volunteers had refurbished the site that was in danger of falling into disrepair.

Documentation

* In 2022 friends of Tuppurainen's art environment published the website Jätkän Onnela, which has the story of life and works of Tuppurainen as already reported by Veli Granö in 2013 and an inventory of Tuppurainen's creations
* Entry about  Ensio Tuppurainen on the website ITE-taide

* Series of photos by Sophie Lepetit on her weblog 

* Tuppurainen's work was represented in the 2005 exposition In Another World in the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki.

Video
* In 2012 Finnish photographer and author Erkki Pirtola made a video (YouTube, 19'29", uploaded December 2012) of then 88 year old Ensio Tuppurainen who talked about and showed his site. This Finnish spoken video gives a good impression of the variety of creations made by Tuppurainen, both all kinds of installations from recycled material and sculptures and pamphlets with social and political manifestations.

first published November 2009, last revised September 2022

Ensio Tuppurainen
Paradise

Vekarantie 952
Kääpälä village, Southern Finland, Finland
courtyard may be visited