Image: Lönnström Art Museum, TAIDEMUSEO
Lönnström Art Museum has announced a free sauna-led art tour in Rauma on 19 August that will bring together discussion of sauna culture and Raimo Saarinen’s environmental artwork 'Kelluva saari'. The one-hour event takes place at Merikylpylän sauna and includes sauna time, refreshments and conversation about art. According to the museum’s event listing, the program runs from 18:00 to 19:00, with the gathering held at Suvitie 4.
The museum says the special guided session is designed around 'Kelluva saari', Saarinen’s large-scale environmental artwork anchored in Otanlahti off the Fåfänga headland in Rauma. The project page describes the work as a sculpture placed in the sea, with an area of about 25 square metres. Its rocky-looking outer shell is made from hand-worked, through-coloured concrete, and its planting beds contain a range of species including wind-shaped pines, juniper, balsam fir and mountain hemlock, alongside succulents, meadow flowers, carnations, kalmia and marjoram.
The museum’s material presents the floating island as both an artwork and a site of reflection on human ideas of nature. It notes that the artificial island, set in a marine landscape, invites questions about what is considered part of nature in Western thought and how viewers understand a man-made imitation within that landscape. The text also frames the work as part of a wider inquiry into the relationship between built and natural environments in a world where human traces are everywhere.
'Lönnström’s' announcement says the sauna guide will include a swim together to see the island more closely, discussion of the artwork, and time in the sauna. The newsletter also identifies Laura Seesmeri, a sauna researcher and university lecturer in cultural heritage, as the speaker on sauna culture, and Elina Tiainen, a public-programmes staff member, as the person leading the group to view the island. The event page itself does not add further detail beyond the overall format and timing, but it confirms that the guided session is intended to combine sauna, conversation and an encounter with the work.
'Kelluva saari' is listed by the museum as a Lönnström project dated 2019–2022. The project page states that Saarinen, born in 1984, has long worked with living plants as material in his practice, balancing the fragility of living organisms against the concreteness and permanence of sculptural materials. The museum also notes that 'Kelluva saari' is his first large public artwork.
The work has been anchored in Rauma since June 2022, when it was towed into place in Otanlahti. The museum describes it as visible from several shores around the bay, while noting that it can be seen more closely from the shoreline between the Fåfänga pavilion and Merikylpylän sauna. The project page adds that the piece is exposed to the weather conditions and seasonal changes of Finland’s west coast, and that it lives and changes with them.
The sauna tour is free of charge, as are the sauna and refreshments, and the museum says the special guided event has room for ten participants. Registration is required for the August 19 session at Merikylpylän sauna in Rauma.
