Beginnings at Vartai

Artists: Angela Bulloch, Liam Gillick, Ugnius Gelguda, Tim Kliukoit, Lina Lapelytė, Justin Morin, Quim Packard, Augustas Serapinas, the SOSka group (Mykola Ridnyi and Serhiy Popov)

Exhibition title: Beginnings

Curated by: Neringa Bumblienė

Venue: Vartai, Vilnius, Lithuania

Date: September 12 – October 11, 2015

Photography: Andrej Vasilenko, images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Vartai, Vilnius

<…>Son, can you play me a memory
I’m not really sure how it goes
But it’s sad and it’s sweet and I knew it complete
When I wore a younger man’s clothes. [1]

In one way or another, the artworks in the exhibition Beginnings employ a song or a melody in the context of contemporary art, as a convenient tool to speak about what is happening here and now, even if it is sometimes from a wider spatial or temporal perspective. The authors presented in the show are not strictly sound artists in the sense that they often or most often work with other means and techniques, therefore sound or a song in this instance does not come to the centre of attention in qualitative terms. Rather, it is a convenient, handy material – sometimes even a ready-made – used by the artists in creating their artworks. Collectively, the exhibition forms a soundtrack of the present day.

If it is said that one poem can accommodate an entire philosophical discourse, so a song in (pop, and) any culture can be a simple and attractive way to talk about what is happening before our eyes today. On the one hand, a song is unnoticeable; on the other hand it is a significant accompaniment to our lives. It records different moments from personal ups and downs, to more general, political, social and ecological problems at large. Despite being relatively short and insubstantial – consisting of only a melody and some verses – it articulates the here and now in a compact form.

Through the reverberations and presentiments of political crises, through the continuing search for women’s place in society, the margins of beauty culture, the spectrum of sexual identities to an analysis of issues of the contemporary institution and the building in which you find yourself in, song in this exhibition is the material and the means through which reality is recorded.

Sing us a song you’re the piano man
Sing us a song tonight
Well we’re all in the mood for a melody[2]

[1] Billy Joel, ‘Piano Man’, 1973, USA, lyrics.
[2] Billy Joel, ‘Piano Man’, 1973, USA, lyrics.