23 January – 13 February, 2009. From 23 January Lithuanian Embassy in London (84 Gloucester Place, W1U 6AU) presents innovative and original works by the Lithuanian textile artists Eglė Ganda Bogdanienė, Severija Inčirauskaitė-Kriaunevičienė, Lina Jonikė, Austė Jugelionytė, Laima Oržekauskienė and Laura Pavilonytė, who represented Lithuanian textile at the international exhibition „Cloth & Culture Now”. The exhibition was shown at the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, from January 29th to June 1st 2008 and attracted record-breaking audiences – 6,000 in the first 3 weeks. Later the show was moved to the Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, and was shown there for the rest of the year.
Lina Jonikė. Architectural monument
This exhibition represents a destination reached, on a continuing journey through traditional and contemporary textiles. The objective here has been to explore that transition from the repetition of traditional practice, to the development of a contemporary language of making, and the factors that influence that development.
Both cloth and culture provide means of communication between people and communities. The term cloth – textile – encompasses an ever expanding range of activities, as can be seen in this exhibition. Culture can be defined as a learned and shared symbolic set of beliefs and attitudes, which shape and influence perception and behaviour. What is learned is sometimes forgotten, and new discoveries are always being made. Both cloth and culture are not absolute, but exist in a constant state of change. And so the outcome of this particular textile journey is a moment in time: cloth and culture now.
Severija Inčirauskaitė-Kriaunevičienė. Autumn collection
Laima Oržekauskienė. Optimal position I, II
Lithuania is a country where, traditionally, textiles have served as overt and covert expression of local and national identity, and as a means of cultural differentiation and empowerment. Whilst contemporary artists are still concerned that their language of cloth should be retained as expression of a cultural particularity, there is also a strong desire for new influences, forms, ideas.
The artists in Cloth & Culture Now are re-presenting traditional ways of working in new contexts, outside restrictive structures, testing cultural and national demarcations. They are engaging with the past with the intention of shaping the future, and through this regenerative process offer tradition the best hope for its survival.
Cloth & Culture Now is the outcome of a 3 year research project by Lesley Millar, Professor of Textile Culture at the University for the Creative Arts, UK in a unique collaboration with the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, UK. In total 35 artists from 6 countries worked on this project, many with the support of their Arts Academies and Universities. The countries taking part have been: Lithuania, Latvia, Finland, Estonia, Japan and the UK.
