VARES: Spring exhibition

VARES’ Spring Exhibition on April 27-28

On the 27th and 28th of April we will open the VARES spring exhibition, where Ola Lewczyk, Ben Weir and the artist duo DE JENS showcase their work done during the residency. The works are material, sensuous and community focused interventions that are shown in VARES house and around the town of Valga.

Ben Weir is an architect from Belfast, who is drawing inspiration from the contemporary condition of artists as transient beings. In the residency, he wishes to free heated elements from their usual fixity. For this purpose, he designs and builds a set of heated furniture, as kind of companions for daily camping, where objects are significant for survival.
Ben’s installation HEAT explores what warming objects could look like. In the course of the residency, Ben will design and fabricate a set of heated furniture pieces. On the weekend of the spring exhibition, Ben takes his hot inventions for a walk around the town of Valga.

DE JENZ is an artist duo Vibeke Jensen & Santiago De Waele living and working on a tiny island off the west coast of Norway. Their common wealth of experience includes curating, building, and creating urban installations. Their moving from metropolises to a small island and the shift in perspective accompanying the way of life in harsh coastal landscapes has created a new way of awareness, attention and togetherness with nature – AKWANAUTØYNA – in which landscape, life and art merge into one.
DE JENZ’s intervention HERE AND NOW is a community-oriented installation that explores both the historic and contemporary characteristics of Valga and Valka’s border towns. They will search for unused spaces with hidden potential where together with the local youth they will construct an informal gathering space that will be left for the local community to use and care for. The new meeting place opens with a public party at the spring exhibition.

Ola Lewczyk is an artist from Poland who during her stay in VARES will be creating bricks from locally found organic materials like construction rubbles, dust, sand, hair etc. The project uses making bricks as a way to re-think local manufacturing and connection to our surroundings.
Ola’s installation CLAY concentrates on a humble clay brick mixed with domestic and day-to-day waste. At the spring exhibition, she presents the process behind her brickmaking and architectural objects formed from already finished artificial stones.

If you want to grab a bite or need a place to stay, see what the Tartu 2024 hospitality network offers in the area: https://tartu2024.ee/recommendations-valga