Mike Kelley: Day Is Done & Grace Ndiritu: Grief: A Love Letter

In summer 2024 Pori Art Museum was visiting in the premises of local art school. A carnivalesque video epic Day Is Done by Mike Kelley was screened at the old gymnasium and drawing room while Grace Ndiritu’s billboard poster Grief: A Love Letter was on display in the inner courtyard of the school building.

The full title of Kelley’s work is Day Is Done: Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstructions #2-#32 and it is descriptive of the work and opens the theme and the structure of the work. The movie consists of 31 separate scenes that all are based on images from high school yearbooks that Kelley has compiled over the years. The images depict activities that have taken place on the school’s facilities, like fancy dress parties, theatrical plays, religious festivities and other social gatherings. Day Is Done consists of narrative scenes built around these images where cultural and institutional rituals warp through song, dance and surrealistic humor.

The work by Grace Ndiritu Grief: A Love Letter is a billboard that has as its central motif a sentence: “Wherever you are I hope you have found peace.” that Ndiritu has dedicated to her mother that has passed away as well as to Mike Kelley who died in 2012. 

As a Tibetan Buddhist, as well as practicing shaman, spirituality is a central aspect of Ndiritu’s work. It functions as an enabler of transformation, connectivity and creativity. In Mike Kelley’s works different materials, objects, words and images produce or bring forth their own ritualistic characters. The numerous cultural ritual practices embedded in culture function both as an area of hegemonic power as well as possibilities for reinterpretation and transgression. Both artists in their work dismantle the ritual practices of exhibiting art and at the same time take advantage of its ritualistic strength. 

Mike Kelley (1954–2012) was one of the most impactful American artists of our time who has influenced widely various contemporary artists and directions of art making since 1970s. Currently a retrospective exhibition of his work is touring Europe organized by Tate Modern in London together with the Pinault Collection in Paris as well as K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf and Moderna Museet in Stockholm. 

Grace Ndiritu is a British-Kenyan contemporary artist whose practice involves performance, installation, textiles and moving image. Her work has been presented lately in Kate MacGarrie gallery and Wellcome Collection in London, S.M.A.K.–Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst museum in Ghent, Fotomuseum in Antwerpen as well as Kunsthall Ghent. Ndiritu is also known for her practice dealing with the museum institution also as texts and publications, like Healing the Museum (2023), published in conjunction with the exhibition at S.M.A.K and Being Together: A Manual For Living (2021).

Mike Kelley’s Day Is Done is presented by courtesy of Electronic Arts Intermix, New York and Mike Kelley Foundation, Los Angeles.   

Grace Ndiritu’s Grief: A Love Letter is originally commissioned by BUILDHOLLYWOOD in 2023.

Duration of the work Day Is Done is 169 minutes, approximately 3 hours. The work starts at 11:00 am when the exhibition opens as well as approximately at 1:50pm and 4:40pm.

Opening hours were:
24.–30.6. Monday–Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
1.–14.7. Wednesday–Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
15.–21.7. Monday–Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
And there was free admission.

Finnish Heritage Agency has supported this exhibition.

Finnish Heritage Agency

Please note that access to the exhibition Mike Kelley: Day is Done is not fully accessible. There is a possibility to access the building with a folded ramp that is on the premises, but one needs to have assistance. Grace Ndiritu: Grief: A Love Letter is on display in the courtyard of the art school and fully accessible.