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  Balticalia Lithuania is the first major exhibition of contemporary Lithuanian art in London, and showcases the work of four of the country's most exciting artists in the fields of installation art, graphic art, photography and video. Plus One Gallery - 13 th-30 th September 2006 Preview - 12 th September, 1830-2100hrs 89 Pimlico Road , London , SW1W 8PH Photo from left to right: Saulius Vaitiekūnas, Eglė Kuckaitė, Lithuanian Ambassador Vygaudas Ušackas, Edita Voverytė

The artists represented at Balticalia Lithuania take in a wide spread of styles, from the vibrant, chromatic photographs of one of the rising stars of Lithuanian photography, Edita Voveryte, who, at only twenty-one years old, was acknowledged as a sensation at the LUMO 2001 Contemporary Arts Festival in Finland, to the enigmatic installations of Saulius Vaitiekunas, and his work "Message", in which two tons of boulders taken from the Baltic sea-coast spill in massive abundance from a neon-lit telephone box out onto the gallery floor.

However, while the works vary considerably in style and composition, one characteristic is common to all of them, and this is their unerring capacity for subverting expectations. Jurga Barilaite, the extraordinarily versatile video artist and painter, who is notorious for performances in which she has created vast super-scale paintings of a baby's head by "fighting" a canvas on the wall with boxing gloves covered in white paint, at Balticalia Lithuania shows a video work that, unlike the multi-wall projections of many contemporary artists working in this media, concentrates the viewer's attention not on many walls of simultaneous projections, but instead on a single glass of milk in a darkened room, into which is vertically projected a moving image of the artist herself struggling to stay afloat. Likewise the huge "wall actions" of graphic artist Egle Kuckaite, for which she won first prize at the Tallinn International Graphic Art Biennale in 2004, seem at first sight to depict beguiling, calm images formed from simple black lines, but a closer inspection reveals that each line is in fact composed from thousands of individually hand-carved ink-stamps repeating swimming human figures, winged angels, and a myriad of other tiny images applied directly to the gallery wall. And while the photographs of Edita Voveryte are all from a series entitled "Self-Portraits", none actually depicts the artist herself, but instead the models are all close friends whom she feels to be part of her, part of her "self".

Balticalia Lithuania is organised and curated by Jonathan Wiggin of New Realms Limited in partnership with the Ministry of Culture of Lithuania, and has been made possible by the generous cooperation of the Plus One Gallery, who have offered their splendid new Chelsea gallery space as a venue. The Plus One Gallery is one of London 's most prestigious private galleries and specialises in the finest traditional and contemporary realist and photo-realist art.

For more information and images please contact Jonathan Wiggin at New Realms on 07887991221 or Indre Daunyte at Lithuanian Embassy on 07989968815