we are pleased to invite you to the opening of the exhibition Barke (engl. Boats) on Wednesday 11 September 2019 at 11am in Stari Grad Museum, at the very beginning of this year’s edition of the Days in the Bay festival!
BARKE
Ceramics, photographs, video projection (with soundscapes by Eleonora Pauli)
Ivana Petan, Bojan Brecelj / MEDLand Project
The Barke (Boats) multimedia exhibition is built by three elements. The first are Bojan Brecelj’s photographs, focusing on the construction of wooden boats on the island of Samos in the Aegean Sea, which is one of the few places in the Mediterranean where wooden boats are sought and masters still have a lot to do!
Looking at the strong structures of the boats made of wood growing here, on the hill above the sea… the questions appeared: Is this the past? What is really the future of sea travel? Having in mind this questions, these photographs were created.
The second element of the exhibition are ceramic sculptural works of Ivana Petan – abstract forms of boats, made in the technique of paper-porcelain, chamotte clay and glazes.
In the hours when the sea and sky are painted in the same colour, they look like one big blue. Through it, beings of different worlds draw traces of innumerable shapes, creating a unique mandala of destinies. Each trace tells its story – its creation, its path and its mission that it yearns for. To imprint the traces of sea, to take its form, it happens through the respect, hearing and participation of all visible and invisible phenomena that create the whole of the open and every moment of the new water-air space of life.
The third element of the exhibition is the visual and sound story, a video projection of the MEDLand project – a voyage of sailing boat Nalu amongst the islands in the Mediterranean, a project on which the creation of this entire exhibition is built on.
Bojan Brecelj, is a Mediterranean native, a recognised professional photographer, artist and journalist, sailing the Mediterranean since childhood. His experience with the methodology of a large-scale project like the MEDLand project comes from his participation in many journalistic and artistic projects and teams, as well as from his own projects. In 2010, he started a series of portrait works in the Mediterranean area, creating foundations for the present project.
Ivana Petan was born in Zagreb, and currently lives and works in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Her art work includes functional and artistic ceramics, among which, for her, there is no qualitative difference. She likes to experiment. Ceramic sculptures and installations are created through connection with nature, certain spiritual qualities and a wider space of exhibition site. In this way, her work combines ceramics and geomancy. She participates in international group exhibitions, symposiums, geomantic projects, and exhibits independently.
Eleonora Pauli studied literature and languages in Berlin and Cambridge. She loves listening and encountered many new and inspiring sounds while travelling with Bojan on Nalu. When she’s not sailing the Aegean, Eleonora works as a journalist in Berlin, Germany. She writes and produces short radio plays for Deutschlandradio, collects sounds for her next satirical commentary or just walks the city streets with her microphone in her hand and her ears wide open.
We invite you all to the Museum and look forward to your visit!