Vilma Bader | The Sun Will Rise | 29/08 – 15/09/2023
Artists are convenors and archivists not simply of our historical times but of the mood and tenor of these times. Pandemics, wars, climate disasters — how does the mood of a city, a country, a place, shift? Or is it us that shifts? The Sun Will Rise engages with the role of language and place and plays with the power of optimism and magical thinking. It weaves together histories, stories, poetry, rituals and memories to expand on broader ideas around communal life and cultural and historical heritage. It is an immersive exploration, an active but non-intrusive attempt towards an archaeology of ‘place’. These works are an assemblage of moods, reactions and actions weaving between stories and histories of places both past and present. It is immersed in the local and particular, while also suggesting multiple narratives which link universal histories and the common memories they may share. The long list of residencies I have undertaken have informed my work. The Sun Will Rise is about localities and communities in three locations — Lithuania, Sweden and India. My work with textile is entirely hand stitched. I like the egalitarian method of hand stitching and its connection to the domestic and the intimate. Hand stitching has a particular relationship to time in a way that no other medium has. It also brings forth ways of making that are outside of painting into painting. I see it as a form of keeping track of time. My intent is to show work that interacts with life, with people, reacquainting them with their storytellers, and art as a way of knowing and seeing the world.
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Vilma Bader lives and works on Gadigal and Muru-Ora-Dial Land in Sydney, Australia. She completed a Doctor of Philosophy (Visual Arts) at Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney in 2013 on an Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) scholarship. She also completed a Masters of Visual Arts (by research) in 2009, a Bachelor of Visual Arts Honours (First Class) in 2007, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2006. Her inquiry based practice consists of personal histories and universal issues framed by linguistics and semiotics. In recent years her work has become increasingly about localities and communities elsewhere. This takes the form of cross-cultural storytelling and has taken her to various locations to undertake artist residencies for both her research and creative work. Her practice also involves long distance walks to better understand and experience landscape, having walked 1530 km across Northern Spain and Portugal and in 2021 a 275 km across the desert of Central Australia. A recurring theme in her work is how we see and understand our place in the world.
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This exhibition is part of a program of an annual Vilnius Gallery Weekend.
The opening of the exhibition will take place on the 29th of August (Tuesday) at 6 PM at the VAA gallery Artifex (Gaono st.1, Vilnius).
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