Alkatraz Gallery

Situated in Metelkova mesto Autonomous Cultural Zone and run by KUD Mreža Arts and Culture Association, Alkatraz Gallery started out as a project iniciated by young students of academy in 1996. Encuraging experimental art, site specific projects in different approaches and media, the main goal of the gallery is to feature monthly projects of young (inter)national artists. With the seria entitled Contemporary Art Tea Parties, it gives occasionally the platform for the comunication on issues of contemporary art, culture and society with the aim to encurage discussions missed in the local, microcultural context.

History

After studios in Metelkova mesto Autonomous Cultural Zone were in the middle of 90s slowly filled by artist, the Alkatraz Gallery was founded by the informal group of artists, at that time mostly students of the Department of Sculpture, Academy of Fine Arts and Design with Boštjan Drinovec and Nataša Tajnik on the head and primarily with the goal to present home production of Metelkova.

In 1998, the gallery obtained two curators, historians of art Bojana Piškur, today the senior curator of Museum of Modern Art in Ljubljana, and curator Jadranka Ljubičič, who is managing the Gallery since 2000. They reorganized the programme: besides exhibiting authors from Metelkova, the gallery began to feature works also of more recognized artists. In time, it expanded its horizons by hosting foreign authors.

As a non-profit space, the Alkatraz Gallery has been sponsored by the Soros Foundation from the time of its formation until its withdrawal from Slovenia. Since 1998, its has been sponsored also by the city of Ljubljana and by the Ministry of Culture of Republic of Slovenia.

Location

Located within the Metelkova mesto Autonomous Cultural Zone, in a former barracks of the army of ex-Yugoslavia, the Alkatraz Gallery is known from its specific "outlook:" the façade is covered almost entirely with mosaics and different sculptures, inspired by the slogan of Metelkova citizens all for one and one for all. Large numbers of young participants contributed significantly to shaping of its look.

Exhibitions

With more than one exhibition per month the Alkatraz Gallery is featuring mostly the recent production of Slovene artists, presented as solo exhibition, so there was recently exhibiting Dominik Mahnič, Žiga Kariž, Nika Oblak and Primož Novak, Goran Medjugorac, Tina Smrekar, Jur Samec, Nika Autor, Robertina Šebjanič and plenty other artists from Slovenia. International artist presented recently in the Gallery include Elke Auer and Esther Straganz, Miklós Erhardt, and many artist from the Balkan region as Goran Despotovski, Srdjan Ljubiša Stoiljković, Slađana Mitrović, Sara Filipovič, Isidora Ilić, Loreta Visic, and many others.

In last years the programme is involving more and more international artists, as well established one, and cooperates with other institutions. In 2009 the Gallery was so one of the venues for the Ljubljana International Biennial of Graphic Art, event basicly prapared by the International Centre of Graphic Arts, which proposed the theme of the main show (The Matrix: An Unstable Reality) and further developed by curatprs of invited institultions. Within this event the Alkatraz Gallery featured works by international artists as Anita di Bianco, Ivan Grubanov, or Ahmet Ogut, etc. Further, the Gallery cooperated in 2009 with the Studio 8 Gallery from Ljubljana with whom the art project of the Brazilian artist Camila Rocha was presented.

In the same year the Alkatraz Gallery gave also its exhibiting space to the SCCA-Ljubljana Centre for Contemporary Arts and to the curator Saša (Glavan) Nabergoj, the only constant member of the World of Art, a course for curators and a series of lectures being organised since 1997 to encourage young prospective professionals to streamline their endeavours in tackling contemporary art. After eleven editions of the World of Art, which was penned by Alenka Pirman (who initiated the programme together with Lilijana Stepančič), Nabergoj presented personal selection of all courses, featuring also the work of Lada Cerar and Sašo Sedlaček, Alen Floričić, Marko A. Kovačič, Tanja Lažetić and Dejan Habicht, Ivan Marušić Klif, etc. The Gallery cooperated several times with the City of Women International Festival of Contemporary Arts.

Contemporary Art Tea Parties and other activities

Beside workshops, suitable for children and teenagers conducted mostly by Katjuša Kovačič and Urška Domevšček, and beside gueded tours of professionals involved in the programme of the Alkatraz Gallery, the space is next to KUD Mreža and GULAG – Institute for Contemporary Art known as the organizer of the Contemporary Art Tea Parties, prepared in different spaces around Ljubljana by Petja Grafenauer Krnc, Jadranka Ljubičič and Zoran Srdić.

As monthly meetings promoting discussion and dialogue within contemporary art, the Contemporary Art Tea Parties are addressed on all pofessional and interested profiles involved in the contemporary art with the aim of establishing a constructive dialogue, increasing and exchanging the knowledge on topical subjects. The very first discussion in Februar 2007 opened actual themes on the field as the current state of art education (Škratova čitalnica, Metelkova), further the meetings were discussing art terminology, dealing with the notion of the death of art of American philosopher Arthur C. Danto (in Tovarna Rog).

On the only Contemporary Art Tea Party in 2009, occuring within the Ljubljana International Biennial of Graphic Art it was discussed about the importance of having a large exhibition site like Biennial is since its founding in 1955.

Commercial brunch

Since 2008 the Alkatraz Gallery is visiting international art fairs with the aim to present more radical positions of the artists that are coming out from critical or even ironical situations towards the actual global problems. Since then the Gallery attended each year one art fair: in 2008 Volta Show in Basel, and in 2009 Viennafair. Each time the Gallery presented art works of Damijan Kracina, Nika Oblak & Primož Novak and Tomaž Tomažin, who are creating in different art media from installations, drawings, photography to videos. The commercial activity is run by the current artistic director Jadranka Ljubičič.

Exhibition space

Gallery: 90m² (10m W x 9m D x 4.5m H), incorporating 30 linear metres of wall space; installation system: hammer-and-nail installation throughout; lighting: halogen lighting system; sound: mixing table, amplifiers; technical equipment: 2 TV sets, digital camera, digital camera, video recorder, screen, video projector, slide projector, laptop computer; climate control: none; availability: space can be rented by appointment if it fits the programme.

External links

[ Alkatraz Gallery webpage]
Alkatraz Gallery (1997-2004) webpage
Alkatraz Gallery on Facebook
Interview with Jadranka Ljubičič, director of Alkatraz Gallery, 2 links on You Tube

Alkatraz Gallery

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