London as you have never seen it before
Jurgita Gerlikaite’s Take on London.
Liberation
London has always been a city of contradictory but enchanting elements – the stately and predictable next to the innovative and wild. The iconic history present on most of her architecture across from the post-modern display cases that are her latest structures. The well-worn traditions in the face of the complete trashing of established convention.
London’s rich and fiery history, world-renowned and much emulated traditions combined with its lavish forays into the avant-garde, have singled out the city as a unique member of the “world-class” list of destinations and cultural centres.
Indeed, London is one of the main springboards of Western Civilization in all its current aspects sharing its influence with such wellsprings of earlier times as Rome and Athens.
And one of the KEY elements of that model of society is the freedom to explore the endless possibilities of lifestyle, expression and social structure. To this degree, it is a platform squarely rooted in this world which yet stimulates the creation of continuous “alternates” – a “morphing” of reality, as it were, dependent only on the imagination.
Thus, to depict “London” in dedicated works of art as anything less than a magnificent “blending” of seemingly contradictory and disparate elements, is to deny the recipient a true appreciation of the city’s full depth. These elements are the backdrops to some of the world’s most enduring, intriguing and loved literary characters, not to mention architectural styles and institutions.
And, true as all the above may be conceptual to the scholar or the student of cultural developments and history until now the full DEPTH and blending of ALL these elements has not been depicted artistically as a basic theme of the artwork itself.
In “The London Series” – a collection of digital/photographic collages by Lithuanian-born Jurgita Gerlikaite, the artist takes on this challenge for the first time.
The collection takes the many elements of London’s institutions, history, symbolisms and its reputation for wild flights of fancy, and morphs them together into an immediately familiar, but strangely surrealistic adventure that throws the viewer into a search for the “meaning” within the layers presented in each piece and for orientation as the apparently familiar proves elusive on further inspection.
The elements in each picture are not necessarily consistent in time or in content… they blend together so well that one is drawn into a reality that is of this time and place, yet not quite ‘of this world’.
For example, one piece in the series entitled “In Memory of…” combines a background wall of classic paintings under a treated image of sculptural relief and a soft white luminescence that shimmers in front of the sculptural elements looking strangely ghostlike.
It’s as if you are looking through a window into the mind of a person, a foray into his memory as a disembodied spirit, and looking at something somewhere between both worlds.
Or IS that what it means?
Quite apart from the image’s beauty (it is stunningly ethereal), its message is enigmatic, though you feel you are “getting close” whatever you perceive at each given moment.
This uniquely “blended”, “here-but-not-really-here” aspect of that picture is a thread that runs throughout the collection and this gives the feeling of being “drawn in” to contemplate what it all means.
The works each produce the same effect using different elements in combination, so it would be advisable to have a fairly open schedule before viewing them. What starts as a passing glance often turns into an intense reverie that makes one lose track of time and abandon any preplanned schedule.
But this, after all, is one of the greatest rewards of viewing fine art that reflects the personality and philosophy of the artist. This is certainly true of Jurgita Gerlikaite’s art as a whole. It is such an unusual blend of subjects and styles, that it defies all attempts to pin it to any one genre.
Judged by the London Series, her work is both literal and wildly surreal, although the content is completely recognizable, but it is yet presented in a way that makes it hauntingly “somewhere else”. Her other images offer different themes and different locations, but they ALL have this “morphed” alternate reality aspect to them which makes them both familiar and fascinatingly unfamiliar at the same time.
The Palace of Westminster
Asked why she chose London for such a large series in this style, the answer came swiftly:
“I fell in love with the richness of everything that makes this city what it is, including Londoners,” she said about her first arrival in London three years ago, when Jurgita and her brother Darijus, a jewellery designer, came to run an art gallery in Islington, North London. She had already spent seven years in Denmark living in the proverbial artists’ lofts.
Her background was rich in variety and imagination from birth as she comes from a family of accomplished artists. Her grandmother was a painter and tapestry artist and widely regarded as a national treasure in Lithuania; her father is a portrait painter and her mother an art critic at the National Art Museum in Vilnius. Jurgita underwent extensive training in fine arts and alternative media at institutions in Reykjavik, Copenhagen and in her home town of Vilnius.
But the young woman who left the nest at twenty, never to return, followed her own unique path which explored both her desire to travel and her fascination with different cultures. So far, she has held twenty solo exhibitions and contributed to several group exhibitions around the world. Her travel has taken her to Dubai, Oman, India and the United States in addition to her travels across Europe.
She considers London to be one of her favourite places, to the extent that she has taken up residence in the neighbouring county of Sussex, after her initial work in the Islington Gallery.
Her “London Art Series”, which she says is still growing, is her tribute to the grand and “layered” reality that, for her, is London itself.
One can only wonder what impression London through Jurgita’s eyes will make on Londoners and visitors to this great city.
– Steve Drabin, USA, 2014
