Owl Hill Gallery participates in the international contemporary Art Riga Fair
For the second consecutive year, Owl Hill Gallery of the Academy of Arts at the Faculty of Arts and Education of Kaunas kolegija is participating in the international contemporary Art Riga Fair. This year, the fair will take place from 21 to 27 September at the Latvian Railway History Museum in Riga, where the gallery will be represented by Academy of Arts lecturers Sigutė Bronickienėand Birutė Šležienė, both artists working across different fields of visual art.
S. Bronickienė is a graphic artist and recipient of national and international awards. Her work has been exhibited in North Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Croatia, the United States, Australia and Japan. B. Šležienė is an artist working in ceramics who has held 10 solo exhibitions in Lithuania and participated in numerous group exhibitions and ceramic art symposia.
A distinctive feature of graphic artist S. Bronickienė’s work is handmade paper, whose shaping and colouring are no less important to her than the process of creating a linocut and its print. High-quality paper and the chosen printing technique enable her to create deep reliefs in which light and shadow interact, revealing a variety of textures. However, S. Bronickienė’s practice is not limited to printmaking. The artist also makes original use of the unique qualities and possibilities of leather as a material.
Ceramic artist B. Šležienė expresses herself through two creative fields – photography and ceramics. In photography, she explores the genres of landscape and portraiture. Through her interpretation of landscape, the artist discovers new and distinctive ways of expressing her ideas. In her portraits, meanwhile, she draws inspiration not only from the present but also from the past, looking back to the Renaissance period.
In ceramics, she is intrigued by the search for forms and textures and by the opportunity to express artistic ideas through the physical form of a ceramic work. Both photography and ceramics enrich B. Šležienė’s artistic practice, allowing her to explore image, form and materiality through a range of artistic means.