Duncan Butt Juvonen is fascinated by the behaviour of humans towards animals. Although we humans belong to the animal kingdom biologically, most of our philosophy of life is based on the notion of a clear difference between animals and the human race. Soothed by the sense of belonging to our environment we can get complacent and blind to it and to familiar objects around us. The feeling of displacement forces us to look at the world with fresh eyes and from a different perspective.

Biological and political boundaries feature in Duncan Butt Juvonen’s latest work, which examines the migration of birds. The artist sees a parallel between the life of migratory birds and his own life – he too has flown between two countries. The work interrogates our preconceptions of what we see and hear. Pleasant birdsong can on closer examination prove to be something else entirely.

Duncan Butt Juvonen was born in 1972 in Fleet, England. He graduated from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in 2009, and has lived in Helsinki since 2005. He spends his summers in Uurainen, his wife’s home region in Central Finland. Butt Juvonen creates conceptual art, choosing the technique and materials to fit the work at hand.