Projects of co-workers
Petra Varl and art group KOLEKTIVA
at Pavelhaus: Women CIRCUS
Museum_Phase 03
Festival of a social cultural network ACRYL

July 7 August 18, 2012
Pavelhaus, Laafeld/Potrna 30, Bad Radkersburg, Austria

We would like to inform you about the exhibition project of Petra Varl, an artist taking part in SCCA-Ljubljana project Internet Portfolio, and the art group KOLEKTIVA and Vesna Bukovec, SCCA-Ljubljana's webmaster and member of the art group.

ACRYL’s festival is called "Museum Frauen Circus", in English "Women’s Circus Museum", that moves around like a circus and changes their annual show. With containers filled with works of art it establishes contacts in cultural locations enlarging the presentation platform for feminine contemporary art and simultaneously uses the cultural infrastructure location. The name "Museum" stresses that it is a serious work and is serious in what is presented in the exhibitions.

At the 2012 exhibition of contemporary art are participating women artists: from Slovenia: Saša Bezjak, KOLEKTIVA: Vesna Bukovec, Lada Cerar in Metka Zupanič, Polona Maher, Barbara Predin, Rene Rusjan and Petra Varl.

Other artists are coming from Austria: Sarah Bildstein, Gertraud Enzinger, Renate Krammer, Erika Lässer-Rotter, Daniela Riedl, Linda Maria Schwarz, Johanna Serdinschek, Edith Temmel, Germany: Uta Weber, Israel: Daphna Weinstein and The Netherlands: Cym.

Art group KOLEKTIVA (Vesna Bukovec, Lada Cerar, Metka Zupanič) is participating with the project Hiteti ali biti temeljit? (digital print, video (3'25"), 2004).

The work is a result of a public action of KOLEKTIVA performed on a residency in Nottingham, UK in 2004. The title is a Slovene sentence, which was publicly displayed in the centre of Nottingham city. Each word has its English translation and phonetic transcription, taken directly from a Slovene-English dictionary. Each word has several translations, which generate subtle differences in meaning. The phrase cannot be translated exactly, leaving space for people to compose their own sentence. The video shows random people trying to pronounce these Slovene words. The structure of power held by native speakers of dominant world languages (such as English) is subverted, as we ask them to pronounce Slovene words.

Petra Varl was born in 1965 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She graduated with a Master of Fine Arts degree from The Ljubljana Academy of Fine Arts in 1997. She has shown her work in numerous independent and group shows, including the Sao Paolo Biennial. Since the year 2000 she has been working as an Associate Professor of drawing and graphic arts at the Fine Arts Department of the Teacher’s College of the University of Maribor. She lives and works in Ljubljana and Maribor.

KOLEKTIVA is an art group from Ljubljana, Slovenia. The three members of the group Vesna Bukovec, Lada Cerar and Metka Zupanič studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana and are also active as individual artists. Their joint projects are focused on various aspects of communication, inter-personal relationships and everyday life. They often engage with the diverse public such as individuals, art public, passersby or specially target groups and invite them to take an active part in the creative process and become the source and co-authors of the work. They understand the process of art making as a means of imagination, negotiation, exchange and cooperation. KOLEKTIVA has presented its projects in several solo exhibitions in Nottingham (2004), Zagreb (2004), Celje (2004), Graz (2006), Ljubljana (2007), Maribor (2008), Warsaw (2010), Venice (2011), Ptuj (2012) and in many international group exhibitions, such as: 11th Biennial of the Young Artists of Europe and the Mediterranean, Athens (2003); Young Art Europe, MOYA Museum of Young Art, Vienna (2005); Narratives: -35/+65, Two Generations, Museum Joanneum, Kunsthaus, Graz (2006); Some Other City, Sarevo Winter Festival, Sarajevo (2007); Berliner Liste 2009, Palais am Tiergarten, Berlin (2009); SCULPTURE TODAY. Components junctions and intersections., Gallery of Contemporary Art, Celje (2010); E-motion to cohabit, Galleria d’Arte Moderna Palazzo Forti, Verona, (2010); Vstop prost/Admission Free festival, Celje (2012).

LINKS:

• Invitation (pdf)
• acryl.weblog.mur.at
• www.pavelhaus.at

[Published June 29, 2012]