Juste Kostikovaite

Gerda Paliušytė @ Kunstraum, Jun 17

15 June 2016

Curatorial project, AIROOM residency will screen film ‘The Road Movie’ (2015) by Lithuanian artist and curator Gerda Paliušytė at London’s Kunstraum on June 17.

‘The Road Movie’ is a partially scripted documentary that follows the members of rap duo ONYX on a day trip through Vilnius. Their 1993 hit ‘Slam‘ was among the first American rap songs to reach the country after its independence, and it became deeply rooted in local culture.

The work is described by a Frieze review written last year and used as the press release for this screening where it says it is both a melancholy portrait of the Lithuanian City, discerning what, in the 25 years since its independence from the Soviet Union, has fulfilled its promise and what has not, as well as a slapstick commentary of cultural history.

Airoom’s curator Juste Kostikovaite works closely with artists creating intricate solo shows in spare rooms of homes and other spaces emptied out and specified for each occasion, often taking the place of Airbnb income. The next solo show for the project which seems to exist on the websites and documents of others, will be by Riga-based artist, Evita Vasiljeva.

See the FB event for details.**

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Dorota Gaweda + Egle Kulbokaite @ Green Ray, Dec 15 – Jan 10

15 December 2015

Dorota Gawęda and Eglė Kulbokaitė are presenting their joint exhibition, imgn s㎩oes o dtrrtrlztn, at London’s Green Ray, opening December 15 and running to January 10, 2016.

Running out of Deptford space Enclave over the next six months, Green Ray is a collaborative curatorial project by Gabriela Acha, Nathalie Boobis and Katy Orkisz hosting public events, reading groups, screenings and exhibitions.

The project inaugurated its ‘Mezzanin Series’ with Emily Furneaux (nee Shepherd)’s emilytofurneaux@gmail.com exhibition and a performance by  Marios Stamatis and Lea Collet of ‘Trailer for a Remake of Chorus for Four’ on December 6.

Gawęda and Kulbokaitė’s exhibition, meanwhile, follows a short story of an anonymous ‘she’ character dismembering her own body and conceiving of spaces of “deterritorialisation; ex-timacy voluminously stretched” (i.e. “s㎩œs o dtrrtrlztn; xtimacy vol㎛㏌o㎲ly strtchd”).

The work carries on the Berlin-based Young Girl Reading Group founders and Agatha Valkyrie Ice creators’ interest in an ongoing dispersed project collaboration, that this time manifests as part of Juste Kostikovaite‘s ‘AIROOM’ residency programme, where artists and curators make their temporary living spaces in otherwise AIRBnB-rented rooms inspired by ‘Tinder Swinton’ “a character tired of Tindering”.

See the Green Ray website for details.**

Dorota Gaweda, Egle Kulbokaite and Clémence de La Tour du Pin, Agatha 1.2.0.1 @ Hilton (5), 2015.
Dorota Gaweda, Egle Kulbokaite and Clémence de La Tour du Pin, Agatha 1.2.0.1 @ Hilton (5), 2015.

 

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New Pabulum (2015) exhibition photos

27 October 2015
New Pabulum, means (new) nourishment in terms of both intellectual material and food. It’s also the title of the recent show at London’s Kunstraum, which ran from September 6 to October 10, held between two artists, the Folkestone-based Simon Davenport and London-based Aline Bouvy (whose image-heavy websites are remarkably similar) and curated by Juste Kostikovaite. The press release, which is in part an abstract ‘to do list’ explains intentions such as “See a child die”, “Detest old clothes” and ‘Establish “Wet Nurse Cafe”‘. A Wet Nurse Cafe, as the text continues is something that combines the traditional and natural ‘production’ and site of food with something industrial. Breast feeding as reinterpreted, re-shuffled. “As Bruno Latour proposed”, the press release continues, “we regroup the contemporary elements along a spiral rather than a line.”
Aline Bouvy + Simon Davenport, 'New Pabulub' (2015) Exhibition view.
Aline Bouvy + Simon Davenport, New Pabulum (2015).

For New Palubub, Davenport made a small series of concrete slabs that have different shaped and sized swirly mosquito coils on their fronts. They (‘Tablets i – iii’) lie, unattached on black painted straw bales. An image of two black corn on the cobs also accompany a birds-eye-view photograph of a tractor, the scale of which is undeterminable, that is harvesting a surface – also undeterminable. It looks like the tractor is harvesting stones. On top of the photograph is painted two small black oil paint blobs or eyes, which makes the image smile. It fits that the tractor is the mouth.

Belgium-based, Aline Bouvy made two new friezes or reliefs made from industrially produced linoleum cut up by the artist called ‘The Description Doesn’t Fit’ (2015). The reliefs are large and with people in them. Curiously they are descriptive in that you see something so illustrative (or figurative) as a person crawling with a swirly pipe leading all the way from their anus to their mouth over what could be grains, like the harvest Davenport’s tractor couldn’t harvest, although it is also just the raw material of the image’s surface. The other frieze by Bouvy sits close by and features a central figure, black with thick linoleum at a table – ribs protruding – and surrounded by ghost-versions of him/her self, whose bodies have been replaced by the same fainter material applied underneath the crawling figure. **

Exhibition photos, top right.

New Pabulum was on at London’s Kunstraum from September 6 to October 10.

Header image: Aline Bouvy + Simon Davenport, New Pabulum (2015) Exhibition view.

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