The Earth’s Silent Messages
Pod klenbami / Under the Vaults
The Earth’s Silent Messages
Exhibition of children’s artworks
Curators: Anton Čierny, Nina Vidovencová, Katarína Jankechová
Cooperation: Oleksandra Potrohosh, Sofia Holoshchuk
Duration of Exhibition: 11. 6. 2022 – 30. 4. 2023
Location: Under the Vaults, Jozef Kollár Galery, Námestie Sv. Trojice 8, Banská Štiavnica
The project was implemented in cooperation with the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava and supported by the Tatra Banka Foundation
Hello!
Welcome to the exhibition. Its name is The Earth’s Silent Messages. On the walls, you can see artworks by children from various places. For some of these works, it took just a short while to get here; for others, it took days because they travelled all the way from Norway.
The topic of the exhibition is nature – forest, meadow, sky, sun, water or ocean, animals and insects. Through their drawings and paintings, children show that they pay careful attention to nature. They see its variations and also that it changes. We have less and less nature; it is tired, damaged and threatened. This is all sometimes called climate change. How do you think you could help nature heal? We, for example, recycle; and when we are not using them, we turn off the running water and the light.
If you wish, your work can be part of the exhibition, too.
Can you see the big table in the middle of the room? Feel free to sit down and make whatever comes to your mind regarding the topic of the exhibition into an artwork. Try closing your eyes and imagining you are in nature. What do you see? Can you draw it?
Then, if you want to, you can place your work among the others in the room. For sure there will be space for your picture.
And now, we will tell you how The Earth’s Silent Messages exhibition was created. Children from various schools in Slovakia but also from Norway sent us their works reflecting the topics of nature and climate change. Then, we invited a few children to a two-day creative workshop here in the Gallery.
On the first day, we walked through forests, meadows, along water, discovering nature’s treasures. But, above all, we listened to nature. We walked in silence and heard fascinating sounds – loud buzzing of bees, plopping of water, rustling of leaves and many others. We recorded some of them and you can hear these sounds in the exhibition.
You will not believe what happened next. We founded a band called 10 minutes of silence. We found all our musical instruments in nature and recorded our first song. Stay quiet, maybe you will hear it in the room.
On the next day, we were in the Gallery. We sat at the table and let nature enter our imagination. Then we used the linocut technique to create new artworks. This is how the technique works: into a soft pad, called lino, children carved various motifs. Then they used a roll to apply a thin layer of paint on their linocut and pressed it against paper. Imagine using a stamp; it is something similar, except this is a little bigger stamp. To do this workshop, we were inspired by children from Norway. They used wood instead of lino. This technique has a slightly different name – woodcut. You can see the outcomes of both in the first and second rooms of the exhibition.
On the third and fourth day, only we, the people who prepared this exhibition and wrote this letter, stayed in the Gallery. We attached the artworks to sheets of cardboard mounted on various places in these three rooms. We left a special spot for you, too. Then, unfortunately, we had to leave. Therefore, we are very happy that you are here. Now, you and other people who care about our planet Earth can make a contribution to the exhibition.
Thank you for helping us create The Earth’s Silent Messages.
Tóno, Nina, Kasha, Silvia and Katka
