10th Artist’s Book Triennial Vilnius 2024 in Plunge – info for Press

We are planning to show about 30 artist’s books from the 10th International Artist’s Book Triennial Vilnius 2024 in the Plunge Municipal Clock Tower Library. We cannot show more artist’s books, taking into account the exhibition space and the safety of the books.

Time: 6 September – 7 October, 2024
Location: The Plunge Municipal Clock Tower Library, Plunge, Lithuania

The 10th International Artist’s Book Triennial Vilnius 2024 is an ongoing international interdisciplinary art project.

International Artist’s Book Triennial Vilnius is more than an exhibition or a set of lectures or creative workshops. It is an international movement dedicated to the artist’s book, bringing together a wide range of artists, curators, museums and gallerists from Lithuania and abroad into one artist’s book family. Vilnius is the centre of this artistic movement.

The theme of the 10th Anniversary Artist’s Book Triennial is “To Be”, born out of a reflection on the current state of the world, with its conflicts between states, crises, and pandemics that affect each of us personally, leaving us all with various existential questions.

Questions that can be unexpected and uncomfortable. Questions that, for a long time, only seemed relevant to inhabitants of some other, “distant” countries but not to us. To be or not? And how to be? How to exist at all, when sometimes there is more evil than good? Is it still possible to be human in the context of our times? These are questions that we have to answer for ourselves and not for anyone else, but the answers are not always forthcoming.

An artist’s book is not only a conceptual book, but also an art object with a clearly expressed idea, realised through employing various book forms and structures from the past centuries. An artist’s book combines words and images, and traditional book design principles with interdisciplinary art.

To create a contemporary artist’s book, the artist uses a variety of materials, such as paper, wood, stone, glass, metal, etc., which are more typical of other art forms, such as sculpture. The aim here is not to illustrate the text (often, artist’s book do not feature text at all), but to convey an idea through the relationship between different materials. An artist’s book is a unique one-off or limited-edition work, numbered and signed by the author.

The artist’s books on the theme “To Be” were submitted by 197 artists from 41 countries. An international jury selected 77 artist’s books for the exhibition from 29 countries. The Main Prize was awarded to the artist Jeong-Eun Lee from South Korea. Honorary prizes were awarded to five artists: Barbara Beisinghoff (Germany), Carmelo Cacciato (Italy), Eeva Louhio (Finland), Ema Shin (Australia), and Yuko Wada (Japan).

Organisers: Circle “Bokartas” & Artist’s Book Museum Vilnius
Curator: Prof. Kestutis Vasiliunas

In Cooperation with:
Vilnius Academy of Arts, Vilnius, Lithuania
IAKH: Globus Galerie + Edition Lebensretter, Leipzig, Germany
Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, Venice, Italy
The Lithuanian National Museum of Art, Vilnius, Lithuania
The Plunge Municipal Clock Tower Library, Lithuania
Kunst- und Museumsbibliothek, Köln, Germany
Evanston Art Center, Evanston, IL, US
Reed Library of the State University of New York at Fredonia, US
The Morgan Conservatory, Cleveland, US
Biblioteca del Hospital Real, Granada, Spain

Sponsors:
Joseph and Ludi Visser
Kęstutis Vasiliūnas
Vilnius Academy of Arts
The Plunge Municipal Clock Tower Library
Lithuanian Council for Culture

© Artist’s Book Museum Vilnius 2024