Exhibition Silver Garden at VMU Botanical Garden in Kaunas

On July 13th the exhibition Silver Garden by Emilija Petrauskienė was opened in the VMU Botanical garden. The author of exhibition was attending and answering the questions of audience during the opening.

Emilija Petrauskienė was born in 1981 and works a full time family doctor. Art and later photography came to her life as a hobby. Now using almost only analogue techniques photographer captures her everyday life and create her silver herbarium. With some works from Silver Garden series Emilija Petrauskienė was twice featured in LensCulture competition gallery.
Silver Garden is a childhood garden frozen in silver. The project started from an idea to recreate a childhood’s garden. Which is always wonderful like a dream – full of colourful flowers with bees and butterflies fluttering around, fragrant herbs, light playing between leaves and secret. Emilija Petrauskienė did spend her early childhood in such a garden, which was surrounded with thick forrest. Under old apple trees we played with dolls, made from Clematis dead blooms and Pflox flowers, and ate rhubarb stalks dipped in the sugar. This garden I create is like time-travel backwards, where was no rush. Where we haven’t counted our time in minutes or seconds and summer holidays felt like lasting forever. Author chose ancient wetplate collodion technique creating the result similar to engravings and lithographs, also searching for compositions reminding old herbariums. And use slow photography while the process itself takes me back time. This project is ongoing – she creates garden not only on silver, but also behind the window. Where are collected interesting plants and then catalogue them on wetplate. All works presented in exhibition are scanned silverprints from wetplate collodion negatives.

The exhibition is open every day from 9:00 AM to 8:00 PM. (cash desks are open until 7:00 PM).

The exposition is located in the VMU Botanical Garden, close to the bridge in the begining of garden.
The exhibition will take place till 31st of October.

Exhibition is partly financed by Lithuanian Cultural Council, Kaunas City Municipality, Epson. Exhibition’s partner: VMU Botanical Garden, Kvapų naktis 2018.