Štefan Oriško
This year, the ceramic symposium in Lučenec had the 20th jubilee celebration. Few things have changed from the time it was established: organising and preparation of the event have remained complicated and the surroundings and technical equipment in a Kalinovo factory remained unchanged.
This year´s symposium proved again that a factory may have strong impact on creative work. Fireclay itself is a material with a wide, although limited scope of technical and creative opportunities as well as high baking temperatures and direct fire in factory furnaces. Artists used mass factory products – various types of bricks and fireclay items – as ready-made or semi-finished products to make new creative constructions.
History of the symposium proved that surroundings of the factory and the factory itself provoked the creation of several open-air artworks. This year, interior gallery items such as objects, suspension pictures or drawings prevailed. Seven participants at the 20th annual of the ceramic symposium in Lučenec came with different creative opinions.
An exhibition and a conference discussing the cooperation and establishing contacts with similar events in surorunding countries closed the symposium.
The 20 symposiums in Lučenec produced a unique collection of ceramic artworks. The gallery in Lučenec houses 235 artworks from 79 artists produced over 19 years and some new artworks from the latest symposium were added recently.