Polonca Lovšin: Back to the City, exhibition and presentation of artistic work. Polonca Lovšin is a versatile locally and internationally recognised artist who works in the field of artistic intervention, public art, video performance and animation. The presentation and exhibition were devised by the critic Ida Hiršenfelder in collaboration with the artist.

Back to The City (2011) is a video animation which the artist produced on the basis of artistic research about bees; it examines the human relationship with the environment, food and nature in cities and in the countryside. With stop-motion animation based on collage, a story emerges about bees, pollination, food and the human relationship to all this. The artists presents complex causes and effects that have upset the balance between the countryside and the city, because – due to the increasing optimisation of agriculture – urban nature can be seen as more natural than rural. The multi-layered collages are combined into a video animation presenting statistics, and historical and physical facts, which together make a narrative imbued with humour. The artist employed a similar technique in her previous lucid witty works, such as Why Slovene Houses Look the Way They Do? (2007), where she connects self-builds with legislation and the story of her parents, and City Cows (2008), which was the result of researching the destiny of farms inside Ljubljana.

All this will be the subject of Lovšin’s presentation in the series No Nails, No Pedestals; she will also be exhibiting for the first time a selection of collages made during the filming of the Back to the Cityvideo animation. Also on view will be the publication Back to the City, which was published in September 2011. The works will be on view by Wednesday, 30 November in SCCA Project Room.

Polonca Lovšin is an architect and artist currently completing her PhD in visual art at Bauhaus University in Germany. She is a versatile locally and internationally recognised artist working in the field of artistic intervention, public art, video performance and animation, where she examines alternative ways of living. The main theme of her work is the environmental engagement of individuals in urban space, which she delivers with witty interventions. Recently, she has focused on what separates the town from the country. Last year, P74 Gallery published a trilingual publication of her work entitled Back to Town (2011). In addition, she has co-authored Ready to Change (2003) and Ready 2 Change (2004) with Urška Jurman, and co-founded Obrat (2006), an artistic association, which is currently working on the Beyond the Construction Site project in Ljubljana (2010-). Lovšin was awarded Zlata ptica 2010 award for visual and inter-media art, as well as several grants and artist-in-residence programme.

Polonca Lovšin on DIVA Station Video Archive

[artist] Polonca Lovšin
[curator, text] Ida Hiršenfelder
[date] 16th till 30th November, 2011
[venue, producer] SCCA Project Room, Metelkova 6, Ljubljana