New photographs of Orvidas Garden at agnès b Covent Garden
15 October - 12 November, 2011. In collaboration with agnès b and The Serpentine Gallery Garden Marathon 2011Artist and Film maker Jonas Mekas invites Audrius Naujokaitis to show photographs from his body of works of the Orvidas garden.
photo by Audrius Naujokaitis
Vilius Orvydas (1952-1992) was a Lithuanian sculptor/environmental artist, and Franciscan monk. During his short life, in his home near Salantai in northwest Lithuania, he created an extensive environmental installation that he referred to as "a spiritual centre". Throughout his life he wrestled between Franciscan asceticism and oriental contemplation.
To create the environment he used rocks destined to be split for construction, upturned trees, discarded debris from Soviet missiles, and for some time there was a tank and an airplane thrown upon a heap of rocks. Despite officially sanctioned attempts by Soviet and local party activists to dismantle it, as well as efforts by the official Lithuanian academia and Ministry of Culture to marginalize it as the «obscurant» work of a crackpot, Orvidas kept building it and expanding it.
Fortunately, the work was conceived and executed on such a grand scale, that even after two decades of vandalism and neglect the Orvidas Garden still retains much of its original spirit. For many of the younger generation of Lithuania today the Orvidas Garden has become a place of pilgrimage and wonder.
The Serpentine Gallery Garden Marathon includes presentations by Jonas Mekas and David Ellis, recently returned from a revisit to the Orvidas Garden.
An exhibition of photographs, taken this September from air and ground by Audrius Naujokaitis, will be showing at agnès b. on 35-36 Floral Street, Covent Garden, London, from Saturday 15th October until Saturday 12th November.
The Serpentine Gallery Garden Marathon event will run from the 15th until the 16th October.
The UK premier of Jonas Mekas’ new feature film Sleepless Nights Stories will take place at the Leicester square Vue Cinema on Tuesday the 18th October at 7pm as part of the London International Film Festival.
For further information please contact Benn Northover at benn@jonasmekasfilms.com
