Join us to celebrate the launch of Queen of Wands by Dovilė Šimonytė
Saturday 29th October
Doors: 6pm
“You ought to bow a little before you enter the house. Upon entry we are greeted by a smell of dried plums, sour and seeped by smoke. While our eyes are adjusting to the darkness we might not notice an old cane standing in its own corner, all bent from the senescence of its owner. We turn left, here in the kitchen … The only decorative piece in here is a carved shelf barely hanging from the wall, it houses a row of wooden goblets gleaming from greasy lips and fingers. Almost every second one of them holds a hollow egg. On each egg, as if painted in a thick watercolour, there are depictions of plants, animals and people, who tell their stories in a small handwriting. Perhaps these eggs had a sentimental meaning for their owner, so their relatives could not decide whether they should keep them or throw them away.”
Join us to celebrate the launch of Queen of Wands, a book of stories and drawings by artist Dovilė Šimonytė. The artist will give a reading from the book and discuss the creative process of its production.
In the summer of 2020, Šimonytė was invited to contribute work to Timemaker, an exhibition at Pamarys Gallery in Juodkrantė (Lithuania), curated by Marija Repšytė and Žilvinas Landzbergas. The exhibition combined folk art objects from Lithuania National Museum of Art and contemporary artists' works: synthesized present, past and future by recontextualising and breathing new life into museum objects and bringing them into a dialogue with contemporary ideas and practices. For the exhibition, Šimonytė created a card deck named Queen of Wands. The drawings and stories invite the visitor to temporarily make a jump in time and space. The narratives were based on exhibited pieces and interpretations of random-drawn Tarot cards. Thirteen artworks were chosen. Their authorship spans practices of unknown artists, lesser known masters (Lidija Meškaitytė), folk artists (Ona Katauskienė, Motiejus Tautvydas, Lionginas Šepka), contemporary artists (Arvo Leo, Laura Kaminskaitė) and designers (Justė Linkutė). These works encompass sacral and mundane objects of the past, and the present-day contemporary art context.
The book is a limited edition card deck artist’s book, curated by Marija Repšytė and printed by 12:15. The book is financed by the Lithuanian Council for Culture and this launch of the book would not be possible without the support of the Lithuanian Culture Institute in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Dovilė Šimonytė is an artist interested in superstition and their influence on the outlook of everyday worldview. Her work is centred around stories gathered in saunas, cafés, kitchens, influenced by heat, nudity, caffeine and trust. Narratives develop in a world where a sickness is equated to a fallacy and healing is performed by quacks or local witches, who employ questionable and peculiar techniques. These merge into pathological lies, intertwined with wellness cult, long queues and the hope to recuperate.