The curatorial team of SEA Foundation is visiting Moravia and the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic enlarging its network with connections from the vibrant Czech contemporary arts scene. We are visiting cultural collectives, and institutions and having studio encounters with artists in Brno and Ostrava city, the second and the third biggest cities of the country, and in the smaller places around these cultural districts. Intentionally we are pointing our attention to the spaces away from the capital as we see cultural potential in such regions. The SEA Foundation is itself based in the province away from the main Dutch cultural axis, therefore, it is in our favour and our responsibility to support the creative processes and contemporary art scene, exchange knowledge and make friendships in the regions alike. It is in our long-term interest to organise curatorial visits and invite international curators to the Noord Brabant region.

Brno

While we can argue that Brno is closely connected to the art scene in Prague, it keeps its off-the-grid atmosphere with the growing number of artist-run and off-space galleries. It is also very well connected with Wien. Similarly, as Dutch and Belgian artists mix, Moravian regions are quite inhabited by Slovakians who participate in local cultural life.

In Brno, we are connecting with the House of Arts which runs two exhibition spaces dedicated to the contemporary arts and the Brno AiR program. Within the House of Arts, the project Vašulka Kitchen Brno, the Center for New Media Art, is based. Recently, we collaborated on the reading program with Vašulka Kitchen Brno when they hosted the session at their location with artist, photographer and curator Barbora Trnková.

Apart from getting to know these institutions, we are also doing studio encounters with local artists Polina Davydenko, Judita Levitnerová and Maud Kotasová whose practices were picked by our team from the list of suggestions carefully prepared by curator Šimon Kadlčák. We are visiting the art school FAVU which is celebrating 30 years of its existence this year and the American artistic duo MSHR leading the visiting atelier at FAVU this semester.

As previously said, Brno has a dense network of artist-run galleries and curatorial collectives. During our visit, we are happy to meet the curatorial collective running an exhibition space Cejla and visit the vitrine gallery PostPostGallery. Last but not least, we will see the exhibition space in the centre of Brno, Galerie TIC, and two exhibition and AiR project spaces based in unusual locations such as Kaznice which is a former prison from the end of the 18th century, and Industra which is running in the former Arms factory.

Ostrava

Ostrava city lies in the Eastern part of the country closely bordering Poland. It is a post-industrial city that offers a unique and edgy atmosphere, with the concrete scenery set in between the mountains, with a smaller artist community which however does not disappoint in its curatorial program. In the city, we are paying a visit to the contemporary art gallery PLATO which is operating in a heritage-listed municipal slaughterhouse from the late 19th century and temporarily in a building of the former hobby market Bauhaus. We are meeting with curators Edith Jeřábková and Jakub Adamec. Apart from curating in PLATO, Edith Jeřábková is organising the symposium project Les/Woods: More-then-human Curiosity which caught our interest. SEA Foundation’s team is meeting at the club Fiducia which is one of the longest cultural organisations still running in the Moravian-Silesian region. Fiducia is hosting the Photography Gallery and Galerie Dole.

As well as in Ostrava we are organising a couple of meetings with artists having a studio in the city, Šimon Szabo and Sabina Knetlová. In the newly built campus of the University of Ostrava, we are visiting the GAFU gallery with a private tour of an exhibiting artist Svätopluk Mikyta who is a Head of the Drawing and Printmaking Studio at FAVU, Brno and a co-founder and art-director the artist in residence centre Banská_St_a_nica in Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia.

Olomouc and Ťřinec

Finally, we are also travelling to Olomouc to visit XY Gallery with the current exhibition of artist Artur Magrot, and Třinec Municipal Gallery. In the Třinec neighbourhood, we have also been invited to visit artist duo Uutěrky and their self-built screenprinting workshop.

We are looking forward to seeing it all.