Art Moves 2012: International Festival of Art on Billboards
Date uploaded: September 12, 2012
Art Moves 2012
International Festival of Art on Billboards
September 12th – October 16th, Toruń, Poland
For five years, Art Moves has been taking art into the public space using billboards – the symbol of the modern age of consumption – and changing it into a symbol of consideration, reflection and an insight into ourselves and the surrounding reality. The project wants to reach out to ordinary people, those who do not usually attend art galleries and museums. The project is driven by the belief that art can be very important to contemporary people, being a perfect resonator able to induce vibrations in the minds of the viewers, freeing people from their everyday routine and offering new perspectives on reality.
Art Moves is the only festival of art on billboards in the world. The festival’s programme features both the works of renowned artists and of young authors, who sent their works in for the billboard art competition. In this edition of the festival, the works of 20 artists from 9 countries will be exhibited. The works presented in the urban space during the festival are divided into two categories – the main exhibition and the competition exhibition.
The main exhibition:
Rirkrit Tiravanija / USA
Peter Liversidge / Great Britain
Susan O'Malley / USA
Alicia Eggert / USA
Christine Wong Yap / USA
Joanna Górska / Poland
Anatol Knotek / Austria
Rafał Góralski / Poland
Egor Kraft / Russia
The competition exhibition:
Michał Leśniczak, Maria Wawrzyniak / Poland
Przemysław Bukowski / Poland
Radosław Żubrycki / Great Britain
Roy Meuwissen / Canada
Darya Zaichanka / Belarus / Austria
Kevin Duff / Great Britain
Taber Calderon / USA
Jerzy Skakun / Poland
Benjamin Bor / Hungary
Sayyed Mehran Zare / Iran
Rirkrit Tiravanija – is widely recognized as one of the most influential artists of his generation. His practice combines traditional object making, public and private performances, teaching, and other forms of public service and social action. His installations often take the form of stages or rooms for sharing meals, cooking, reading or playing music; architecture or structures for living and socializing are a core element in his work. He has exhibited widely, including solo shows at Kunsthalle Basel, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Los Angeles County Museum of Art and International Venice Biennale. Winner of the 2004 Hugo Boss Prize awarded by the Guggenheim Museum.
Peter Liversidge's work begins with the conceptually-based practice of creating proposals for performances and artworks across a wide expanse of mediums. Liversidge types these proposals on an old manual typewriter; the proposals describe ideas from the practical to the purely hypothetical, ranging from “I propose to paint the wall that the proposals are hung on a dark grey” to “I propose to dam the Thames and flood the City of London.” The artist’s active engagement with each space and community for which he creates proposals is at the center of his varied and dynamic practice. Liversidge has worked with a diverse range of institutions, including the Tate Gallery in 2008, the Centre d’art Santa Mònica (Barcelona) in 2008, Bloomberg SPACE, London 2009 and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in 2010. He has also developed projects for the Europalia Festival in 2007, Art Basel Miami in 2009 and Edinburgh’s sculpture park, Jupiter Artland, also in 2009.
Susan O’Malley in her socially-based projects uses simple and recognizable tools of engagement – offering Pep Talks, asking for advice from strangers, installing roomfuls of inspirational posters, distributing flyers in neighborhood mailboxes – in order to offer entry points into the understood, and sometimes humorous, interactions of everyday life. Ultimately O’Malley’s projects aspire to incite hope, optimism and a sense of interconnectedness in our lives. As both an artist and curator, she has participated in programs and exhibitions throughout the San Francisco Bay Area as well as internationally in Denmark and Poland.
Christine Wong Yap is an interdisciplinary artist working in installations, sculptures, multiples to explore optimism and pessimism. Her work examines the paradox that mundane materials or situations can give rise to irrational expectations, emotions, and experiences. Influenced by conceptual strategies, phenomenology, and psychology, her output is experimental and idiosyncratic, yet shares economical means and candid appearances. Her work has recently been exhibited at Untitled Gallery (Manchester, UK), at Project Space Leeds (Leeds, UK), Steven Wolf Fine Arts (San Francisco, USA), and Jenkins Johnson Gallery (New York, USA).
Alicia Eggert is an interdisciplinary artist whose work commonly takes the form of kinetic, interactive, and time-based sculpture. She often uses language and time as sculptural materials. Because her art practice is driven by concept as opposed to process, her most successful work is made in collaboration. Collaborating with other artists allows Eggert to share the experience, the excitement, the responsibilibility and the success with another person. Eggert's work has been shown at the Triennale Design Museum in Milan, SIGGRAPH Asia in Hong Kong, the Portland Museum of Art in Maine, the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse.
Galeria Rusz is an art group based in Toruń, established by the two artists: Joanna Górska and Rafal Góralski. Their main interest is the creation and presentation of art in public space. Since 1999, they’ve run their own billboard gallery at Szosa Chełmińska in Toruń, called ‘Galeria Rusz’, which is the world’s longest ever existing project displaying art on the same billboard and in the same location. Górska and Góralski create billboard posters, paintings, murals, undertake artistic interventions and public art actions. The artists have so far created over 200 artistic billboards. Artists from Galeria Rusz have received numerous awards. They have participated in various exhibitions in Poland and abroad.
Anatol Knotek is an Austrian artist and visual poet. Beside painting, visual and concreto poetry, installation and conceptual art are at the center of his artistic work. One of the most important elements of his art is his ability to convey a little bit of humor, so that even while addressing serious issues, he manages to create the perfect combination of lighthearted and provocative thought. His work has been presented internationally in group- and solo- exhibitions and has been published in journals, newspapers, schoolbooks and anthologies.
Egor Kraft’s artistic research is based on European & American conceptual art, minimalistic art, Russian avant-garde. He is also interested in contemporary video art and media activism as expressive practices, and in French philosophy, media theory as a theoretical basis (of his art). He cares for the visual language and aesthetics in the epoch of a total оverproduction of images. He has exhibited in Gerlesborg / Sweden, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev, Amsterdam, Sydney.
Billboard Art Contest attracts interest from artists around the world
784 artists from 62 countries entered the contest “Where is the meaning? At the top or at the bottom?”. 1450 art works from Europe, Africa, North and South America, Australia and Asia were received. The jury panel composed of artists and curators, including: Mark Titchner (artist, London, GB), Gavin Wade (artist-curator, Director of Eastside Projects, Birmingham, GB), Adam Niklewicz (artist, North Haven, Connecticut, USA), Joanna Górska (artist, curator, Art Moves Festival art director, Toruń, Poland) selected 10 most interesting projects which will be exhibited on billboards in the competition component of Art Moves Festival 2012. The jury decided to confer the main award of 12000 PLN to Michał Leśniczak and Maria Wawrzyniak from Poland.
Festival programme:
September 12 - October 16 – expositions of art works on LED screens (Kraszewski Street, Szosa Chełminska/NOT, Czerwona Droga/ Jan Paweł II Avenue)
September 12 - September 18 – expositions of art works on mobil billboards
September 13, 7pm – meeting with invited artists, Brama Klasztorna
September 14 - October 16 – expositions of art works on billboards (Rapacki Square, Chopin Street)
September 14, 7pm – official opening ceremony, concert of the Twilite, Brama Klasztorna
The festival has been co-funded by the Minister of Culture and National Heritage, the Local Authorities of Kujawsko-Pomorskie Region and Toruń Municipality.
Contact: [email protected]
