Artists: Rebecca Ackroyd, Stefania Batoeva, Julie Béna, Ragna Bley, Than Hussein Clark, Olivia Erlanger, Merike Estna, Daiga Grantina, Celia Hempton, Tamara Henderson, Ieva Kraule, Jenine Marsh, Daria Melnikova, Rūtenė Merkliopaitė, Mikołaj Moskal, Rosalind Nashashibi, Athena Papadopoulos, Zoë Paul, Daniel Rossi, Viktorija Rybakova, Anastasija Sosunova, Indrė Šerpytytė, Jala Wahid
Exhibition title: Entangled Tales
Curated by: Justė Jonutytė and Yates Norton
Venue: Rupert, Vilnius, Lithuania
Date: June 5 – August 3, 2018
Photography: Andrej Vasilenko / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Rupert, Vilnius
Entangled Tales brings together local and international artists to look at the ways in which we think, communicate and live with matter. The exhibition’s theme takes the lead from the artists’ practices and recent feminist approaches to materiality and ‘new materialism’. It considers how our correspondences with the matter with which we are entangled offer ways to explore memory, the body, forms of participation and modes of knowing. Looking at how artists work and think with their materials, Entangled Tales considers how matter is not inert, passively awaiting our formation and control. Rather, matter responds to touch and we in turn respond to and are touched by it.
Life emerges in such co-responses with a world of matter, beings, processes. How this world is configured through practices and responses enables (and can prevent) other responses to emerge in turn. As such, there is an ethics of care and responsibility in this acknowledgement of matter as something with and through which we think and act, as many feminist scholars and practitioners in various fields have observed. Karen Barad, from whose writings the exhibition takes its title, argues that responsibility to other lives and the world with which we are entangled involves being able to respond to such lives, to be ‘response-able’ to them. And to be able to respond itself requires an attentiveness to the lifeworlds with which we live.
In this way, Entangled Tales asks with the artists how we learn and communicate through practices of re-configuring matter, while considering what forms of response-abilities and forms of knowledge such practices and configurations enable. These correspondences with matter do not, after all, stop when the work is done, since the work is not merely a secure archive of marks and forms from which we can trace a now distant gesture. Instead, the work is something that we continue to think with and exist alongside – that is, respond to. It is an obvious fact, but perhaps one worth stating: without materials to think with, we’d have nothing to think about. The exhibition, then, is an invocation to keep thinking and to consider thinking as an embodied practice affected by the matter we think with. And as the exhibition’s architecture emphasises, both art works and the responses to them are situated in interrelated webs of correspondences and matter. It is in this entangled web that we can follow threads of matter, asking with the works, what are the entangled tales they seek to tell.
There will be an accompanying programme of tours, talks, events and workshops, including lectures by Anna Gritz (KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin) on the 18th of July, by Dr. Rick Dolphijn (Utrecht University) on the 25th July, a clay workshop by exhibition artists Anastasija Sosunova and Daniel Rossi with Rupert’s July artist-in-residence, Sarah Chow, on the 12th of July, and a closing performance by Julie Béna on the 2nd August.
Architects: Ona Lozuraitytė and Petras Išora
Co-ordinators: Vitalija Jasaitė and Kotryna Markevičiūtė
Supporters: Lithuanian Council for Culture, Vilnius City Municipality, Office of the Embassy of Canada to Lithuania, Pakrantė, UAB Exterus
Special thanks: Emalin (London); Cooper Cole (Toronto); Galeria Wschod (Warsaw); Galerie Joseph Tang (Paris); OSL Contemporary (Oslo); Parafin (London); Rodeo (London); Southard Reid (London); Temnikova & Kasela (Tallinn); VI, VII (Oslo), Vilnius In Your Pocket City Guide, UAB Rimar Statyba, Giulia Civardi, Jonė Miškinytė Akvilė Šlėgerytė, Adomas Narkevičius.
Entangled Tales, 2018, exhibition view, Rupert, Vilnius
Entangled Tales, 2018, exhibition view, Rupert, Vilnius
Zoë Paul, Black lungs, 2018. Mixed media, site specific wall painting and two black ceramic vases
Entangled Tales, 2018, exhibition view, Rupert, Vilnius
Anastasija Sosunova, Private States, 2018. Steel, polyester resin, chewing gum, silicone. Steel construction, 140 x 39 x 1 cm. Resin object, 48 x 39 cm
Ieva Kraule, Clean Thoughts, 2018. Clay, acrylic, varnish, steel, wood, linen rope, linen, cotton threads, soap, wood shavings. Variable dimensions
Tamara Henderson, Treaty of Slippage, Wake of Limbs, 2014. Copper, paint, sand, glue, wood, 90 x 157.5 x 94.5 cm
Entangled Tales, 2018, exhibition view, Rupert, Vilnius
Viktorija Rybakova, Tentacular Series, 2017. Glazed ceramic, variable dimensions
Entangled Tales, 2018, exhibition view, Rupert, Vilnius
Merike Estna, From liquid to hard to soft too hard, 2017. Hand painted tufted carpet, 61 x 45 cm
Ragna Bley, Receive in Past Tense, 2017. Acrylic on Dacron, 330 x 170 cm
Rūtenė Merkliopaitė, Montevideo, 2016. Oil on canvas, 31 x 27 cm
Entangled Tales, 2018, exhibition view, Rupert, Vilnius
Entangled Tales, 2018, exhibition view, Rupert, Vilnius
Entangled Tales, 2018, exhibition view, Rupert, Vilnius
Entangled Tales, 2018, exhibition view, Rupert, Vilnius
Daiga Grantina, Coat-ee off Cat Curl, 2018. Fabric, plastic, wood, foam, cardboard, paint, 250 x 150 x 50 cm. Exhibition History: Crash Test, La Panacee, Montpellier, 2018
(Right) Athena Papadopoulos, The Grapevine (Dear Stalker) II, 2017. Hair dye on image transfers, fabric, thread, nail polish on alligator claw, suede, jewelry chain and eyelets, wood and deer antlers covered in resin-based glue mixed with self-tanner and synthetic hair clippings, clear enamel and screws, 268 x 295 cm; (Left) Olivia Erlanger, For Jenny and Esther Swiss Cheese; 2018. Porcelain, glaze, resin, 15 x 10 x 10 cm.; Olivia Erlanger, Open Box House Slipper, 2018. Porcelain, glaze, resin, 15 x 10 x 10 cm.; Olivia Erlanger, Black Twisted House Slipper, 2018. Porcelain, glaze, resin, 15 x 10 x 10 cm
Viktorija Rybakova, Curious Skin. Paper, 70 x 35 x 35 cm
Jala Wahid, ( بازاری شێخهڵلا ) Sheikhalla Bazaar, 2018. Jesmonite, feathers, bronze powder, epoxy resin, mild steel, 250 x 154 x 2.5cm. Individual components: Jaji, ژاژی) 2018 ) Jesmonite, feathers; Jigar, جگهر ) 2018) Jesmonite, bronze powder; Fizzed up nips, 2018. Jesmonite, epoxy resin; Lashes, 2018. Jesmonite, mild steel. All variable dimensions.
Zoë Paul, Black lungs, 2018. Mixed media, site specific wall painting and two black ceramic vases.
Julie Béna, Mandrake, 2016. Silk cape, fabric and plastic, 150 x 30 cm
Than Hussein Clark, Cancellation Elevator , 2018. Epoxy resin, steel, steel wire, copper, candelabra, candles. Two hanging sculptures, each 24 x 24 x 60 cm
Jenine Marsh, the overgrowth, 2018. Flowers, synthetic rubber, variable dimensions.
Athena Papadopolous,BCP VI, (BurnBBBurn), Hair dye, mascara, fake eyelashes, nail polish, image transfers, polyester resin, taxidermy/dress pins, medical gauze on mesh, bridal veil, garter belts, various glues, clear lacquer foam, wood, enamel paint, acrylic pen, hooks, steel wire, 60 x 80 cm.
Olivia Erlanger, For Jenny and Esther Swiss Cheese; 2018. Porcelain, glaze, resin, 15 x 10 x 10 cm.; Olivia Erlanger, Open Box House Slipper, 2018. Porcelain, glaze, resin, 15 x 10 x 10 cm.; Olivia Erlanger, Black Twisted House Slipper, 2018. Porcelain, glaze, resin, 15 x 10 x 10 cm
Entangled Tales, 2018, exhibition view, Rupert, Vilnius
Than Hussein Clark, Cancellation Elevator , 2018. Epoxy resin, steel, steel wire, copper, candelabra, candles. Two hanging sculptures, each 24 x 24 x 60 cm.
Entangled Tales, 2018, exhibition view, Rupert, Vilnius
Entangled Tales, 2018, exhibition view, Rupert, Vilnius
Tamara Henderson, Treaty of Slippage, Wake of Limbs, 2014. Copper, paint, sand, glue, wood, 90 x 157.5 x 94.5 cm.
Entangled Tales, 2018, exhibition view, Rupert, Vilnius
Rosalind Nashashibi, The Exiled Prime Minister, 2017. Oil on canvas, 140 x 100 cm
Entangled Tales, 2018, exhibition view, Rupert, Vilnius