Legnica Jewellery Festival SILVER

REPORT

The culmination of the 37th edition of Legnica Festival SILVER is over. This year’s leading theme was CITY and the culmination took place on 20-22 May. As usual, the culmination attracted a great number of Polish as well as foreign visitors – artists, professionals and lovers of vanguard jewellery.

Silver weekend traditionally began with the Dwarf March – a march following the Golden Finger Dwarf – patron of the Festival. His figure was designed in 2010 by Gijs Bakker during one-week-long International Silversmithing Workshop SILVER TIME, LEGNICA COPPER ORE SEMINAR, in which 11 artists from the whole world took part. Their task was to create works related to the specificity of the region. Inspired by legends about dwarfs – protective spirits of mines and miners – Gijs Bakker made the Dwarf from waste materials left after copper production process. Since that time Golden Finger has been the patron of Legnica Festival SILVER, and the march following him and ending with his enthronement opens the Festival every year.

At the Festival weekend 25 exhibition openings took place together with other events, among them the theoretical seminar Borders of Global Art: CITY – Mecca, El Dorado, Mordor, i.e. contemporary universe, that has been accompanying the Festival for 17 years. This year lectures were delivered by: Piotr Jakub Fereński, PhD, Giedymin Jabłoński, Marta Andrzejczak, Jessica Kufa, Michał Kosior and presentations by Mari Ishikawa, Vered Kaminski, Jorge Manilla, Tabea Reulecke and Daniela Malev, Chunghi Choo, Janjaap Luijt. Other events were Silver Screen film shows, a jazz concert by CSW Trio at Cafe Modjeska and the announcement of the City photography contest results. Around the city there were happenings and artistic actions. Their result was a silver ring in the Old Town Square, in front of the Gallery of Art, but also Festival flags, balloons and lots of small silver rings all over the city.

At the crowded openings of vanguard jewellery exhibitions there were present authors from Poland, Germany, Sweden, Holland, Denmark, France, Great Britain as well as from Israel and Mexico. Artists from the About the artists cycle talked about their work: Vered Kaminski, Mari Ishikawa, Felieke van der Leest, Tabea Reulecke and Daniela Malev, Jorge Manilla, Sergiusz Kuchczyński, Aneta Lis-Marcinkiewicz and Adriana Lisowska (both from LIS² group), Jing Yang, Wojciech Rygało and the curator of the exhibition on behalf of Jamie Chung. Exhibitions from the Debuts cycle were also opened in the presence of their authors: Dorota Sokołowska and Justyna Stasiewicz. The international association HammerClub was represented by Janjaap Luijt with some other artists, there were a few authors from the group JAC – Jewellery Art Concept and several artists representing the educators from the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź on whose behalf prof. Andrzej Boss spoke.

Professors Caroline Broadhead (from Central Saint Martins in London) and Florence Lehmann (from the Higher School of Arts upon the Rhine in Strasbourg) talked about the exhibition belonging to the Silver Schools cycle. Two amber exhibitions were also opened: the Amberif Design Award exhibition traditionally present at the Festival and the Amber and Form exposition celebrating the 20^th anniversary of the International Association of Amber Artists. There were 3 exhibitions directly connected with the CITY topic: poster exhibition, photograph exhibition and Holownia. The AU+ group (Marcin Bogusław, Bartosz Maria Chmielewski, Filip Jackowski and Michał Wysocki) presented their works in Legnica for the 6^th time and the exhibition opening was accompanied by their performance showing jewellers’ work. On Sunday one more exposition was opened: sacral jewellery by Polish authors, which, despite its uptown location, attracted an impressive number of viewers. This exhibition was located at the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Legnica and it was opened by Zbigniew Kraska – the director of the Gallery of Art in Legnica, and father Jan Mateusz Gacek – the parson of the Sacred Heart of Jesus parish.

During the most important ceremony on Saturday – the announcement of the results of the 25^th Jewellery Competition CITY – the prizes were awarded of the total value of 40 thousand zloty including: Grand Prix of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage worth 15 thousand zloty, 1^st Prize of the Lower Silesia Marshall worth 5 thousand zloty, 2^nd Prize of the President of Legnica City: 3 thousand zloty and 5,25kg of silver granules. This year’s contest theme – CITY – attracted 272 artists from 33 countries. The award-giving ceremony raised a lot of excitement as before the ceremony names of the winners had been kept secret.

Grand Prix of the Minister of Culture and National Heritage was presented to a Swedish artist Tove Knuts by Elżbieta Witek, MP; 1^st Prize of the Lower Silesia Marshall was presented to a Mexican artist Alejandra Solar by Tadeusz Samborski – Deputy Marshall of Lower Silesia; 2^nd Prize of the President of Legnica City went to Sham Patwardhan from India and was presented by Tadeusz Krzakowski – the President of Legnica. Among award-winning Polish artists there were: Magdalena Szadkowska (Polish Modern Art Foundation Award), Małgorzata Kalińska (Jubinale Fair Award) and Jarosław Westermark (Gold Silver Time Fair Award). Inhorgenta Munich Fair Award, present at Legnica Festival since 2008, went to Elisa Sophia Hermann.

In recognition of his contributions to the promotion of Polish goldsmithing art and artistic jewellery as well as a thank-you for his long-term cooperation the director of the Gallery of Art in Legnica, Zbigniew Kraska, was given a medal of the International Fair Gold Silver Time presented by Rafał Galimski, MCT Chairman, and a statuette of the Association of Jewellery artists presented by Marcin Tymiński, the Chairman of the Association.

The culmination is over, but you can still see 25 exhibitions of vanguard jewellery from all over the world located in 9 venues around the city centre. Each exposition is signalled by a pole set near the gallery. Entrance to all exhibitions is free.