The installations, created by renowned artists, designers and architects from Croatia, Europe, Japan and Chile and selected by the Czech curator Michal Koleček, evoke traditions and stories that are important to the local communities. Their value is functional as well as aesthetic – some of them will be transformed into areas to relax, playgrounds and spaces for conversing and learning.
All of the works deal with certain specifics of the location in which they are installed, with the guiding principle being to concentrate on the aspect that is important to the local community and that links the past and the present to a certain extent. The curator of the Lungomare Art flagship is the renowned European curator, the Czech Michal Koleček, who selected the artists.
“Lungomare Art” reveals tales that are impossible to find in your run-of-the-mill tourist brochures and you can start exploring them from any location you wish. On the coast: at the entrance to Brseč, on the hiking trail overlooking Lovranska Draga, on land and under the water in Volosko, at the Rijeka Fish Market, at Grčevo Beach in the Rijeka neighbourhood of Pećine, at Svežanj Beach in Žurkovo in Kostrena and at the entrance to the main beach of Crikvenica. Or on the islands: at the pier in Lopar on Rab, above Baška on Krk or at Vela Riva in Mali Lošinj. The tour can begin in the summer of 2020. The artworks were created by well-known artists, including the likes of Liam Gillick (UK), Jiří Kovanda (CZ), Numen/for Use (HR), Harumi Yukutake (JP) and Smiljana Radića (CL).
Contemporary art leaves the museums and meets local communities
Due to the European Capital of Culture project, contemporary art will leave the museums and meet the local communities in Rijeka and the Kvarner region by forming a new culture-and-arts tourist route that brings new and permanent value to the places participating in the programme.
The numerous local partners were attracted to the project by the fact that the programme increases the visibility and appeal of their towns and villages and that the artists’ expression will allow them to tell their own interesting local stories, bring them to the attention of the cultural audience and visitors and become an identifiable and noticeable fixture on the cultural map of Europe.
The “stories” from Kvarner are part of the European cultural heritage and inspire European and global artists
In this segment of the European Capital of Culture programme, the artists connected with the local communities and drew inspiration from the real lives of the townspeople and stories that touch upon the present moment in towns and villages along the Kvarner coast and on the islands.
The permanent value of this programme maintains a physical presence in the sculptures and installations placed at the aforementioned locations, while offering interesting and hitherto untold stories to potential visitors in the form of artworks. The reputation and recognition of the commissioned artists at the European and global levels will inevitably draw the attention of art lovers to these locations, thus increasing the value of tourist visits to Croatia and Kvarner in the future.
Works by artists from Europe, the rest of the world and Croatia that are displayed in Rijeka and Kvarner as part of the Lungomare Art flagship bear evidence of the uniqueness of European culture, which is rich in diversities that connect and bring together European and global citizens. The stories from Kvarner, as told through artworks, are incorporated into the cultural and artistic heritage of Europe and affirm the historical and contemporary belonging of Croatia to the European cultural area.
Stories as well as sculptures
The Authorial Boras project is an integral part of the Lungomare Art programme. Select regional authors spent a month, from March to May 2018, in Kvarner discovering the interesting features of this region (each individual artist at a different allocated location). All the authors were required to write a short prose piece about the location where they were staying. The programme curator was the writer Željka Horvat Čeč, who selected the authors bearing in mind the phrase “port of diversity”, which is the motto of Rijeka – European Capital of Culture 2020. A total of 16 stories were ultimately written for the Authorial Boras anthology, which was published by RIJEKA 2020 and V.B.Z. and designed by Studio Sonda, with Kruno Lokotar as the editor.
Photo: Kristijan Vučković
