Brigitta Varadi: Exploring the Invisible – Gallery Guide

G ALL E RY GU IDE

OVERVIEW Brigitta Varadi explores the unseen, everyday rituals of working life. Varadi’s research-based practice is an integral aspect of her art making with each project incorporating experimentation and re-discovered craft traditions.

Exploring the Invisible features a room-size installation of nearly 2,000 ceramic tiles and 19 felted-wool panels made by the artist. The minimalism of Varadi’s art and rawness of her materials belies an intensively laborious process. Instilled with a meditative rhythm, she repeats the same gesture several thousand times as a tile is formed, or wool felted.

In 2019, Varadi visited Shelburne Farms as a BCA artist-in-residence where she interviewed staff and researched the site’s history and farming practices.

Through a series of workshops, she led community members in creating handmade tiles as she engaged them in conversations on sustainability and cultural heritage.

Interweaving notions of fine art and craft, labor and heritage, Varadi connects us to the importance of tradition in an era of mass-production and global economies.

Heather Ferrell, Curator and Director of Exhibitions

CHECKLIST SOUTH AND WEST WALL

PLATFORM

Enshrined, 2019 Felted raw wool from Navajo Churro sourced from Shelburne Farm, VT, silk gauze, merino wool, and wood Two Sections: 6' x 12' 5" and 6' x 15' 5" Single-channel video (6 min. 25 sec) Courtesy of the Artist

Fragments Recollected, 2019 Fired raw clay and cottonwood ash glaze sourced from Shelburne Farm, VT ½" x 4.25" diameter each Courtesy of the Artist NFS

EAST WALL Exploring the Invisible, 2020 Single channel video (16 min. 42 sec.)

Courtesy of the Artist NFS

PRICE SHEET PANELS WEST WALL SECTION ONE 1. 28" x 18" 2. 28" x 48" 3. 22" x 35" 4. 50" x 28"

$900 $1,800 $1,100 $2,400

1

5. 22" x 28" 6: 50" x 35" 7. 44" x 60"

$1,100 $2,800 $2,900

3

2

4

6

7

5

SOUTH WALL SECTION TWO 1. 72" x 31" 2. 29" x 60" 3. 42" x 48" 4. 16" x 43" 5A. 12" x 35" 5B. 12" x 8"

$18,150 $2,800 $2,600 $2,500 $900 $300

6. 45" x 43" 7. 31" x 16" 8. 31" x 25" 9. 31" x 36" 10. 43" x 31" 11. 45" x 43" 12. 12" x 9"

$2,700 $950 $1,200 $1,400 $2,200 Video - NFS $350 4

2 3 SCREEN 11

5B

5A

12

10 9

8

7

6

GALLERY PUBLIC PROGRAM BRIGITTA VARADI: TILE MAKING Family Art Saturday Saturday April 25th 2020, 11am – 1pm BCA Center, 135 Church Street

BIOGRAPHY Brigitta Varadi (b. 1970, Budapest, Hungary) is a multimedia artist who delves into tradition, craft, and the everyday rituals of working life. She investigates themes of sustainability and cultural heritage through a combination of research, community workshops, and material experimentation. Varadi has exhibited extensively with shows in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden, Hungary, France, Finland, and the United States. Select group exhibitions include Crowded Threshold, National Design and Craft Gallery, Spring Break Art Show, NY, and Currently 80, Sculptors Guild, NY, with solo exhibitions at Westbeth Gallery, NY and the Budapest Gallery, Hungary. Her most recent communitybased residencies include the Museum of Arts and Design, NY, and BCA Center, Burlington, VT (in collaboration with Shelburne Farms, Vermont), and in 2020, she will be fellow at Civitella Ranieri Foundation, Italy. Currently, Varadi serves as residency director for Chashama North (chaNorth), Pine Plains, New York.

Brigitta Varadi’s research-based artist residency and workshops are a partnership between Burlington City Arts and Shelburne Farms. Combining the missions of both organizations, the artist led conversations about social and cultural issues impacting the Vermont landscape and its community, culminating in a BCA Center exhibition in 2020.

BCA Exhibitions are funded in part by a grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Vermont Arts Council.

BURLINGTON CITY ARTS 135 CHURCH STREET BURLINGTON, VERMONT, 05401 BURLINGTONCITYARTS.ORG