DienvidKurzeme.travel: At the Aizpute City Festival, the Iron Art Symposium will light up the night
Dace Gailīte | 2024.08.03
As part of the Aizpute City Festival, on August 9th starting at 18:00, the 20th International Iron Art Symposium's final show will take place on the banks of the Tebra River. This year, artists from Latvia, Finland, and Canada are participating.
In 2009, following the initiative of artist Kārlis Alainis, the 6th International Iron Art Symposium took place at the “Serde” workshop and residence center in Aizpute. Prior to that, it had been held in Valka, Riga, and Liepāja - Karosta Cultural and Information Center K@2. For over ten years now, the symposium has become an annual tradition during the Aizpute City Festival. The location for the final show is also not chosen by chance – it is on the banks of the Tebra River, opposite an island that once housed a ceramics kiln.
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"Iron's advantages are its good technological properties suitable for casting and relatively low cost, which allows it to be used in various creative experiments. It is several dozen times cheaper than another popular sculptural material – bronze," says Signe Pucena, head of the artists' and residence center “Serde.”
The symposium uses old, obsolete radiators as raw materials, which local residents dismantle and replace with new heating systems in various buildings in Aizpute. According to the artists' experience and observations, Soviet-era cast iron radiators break into pieces of a suitable size, which are then mixed with coke coals, melted, and cast into sculptures. The technological process is complex but fully adapted for outdoor implementation.
"The Iron Art Symposium is a visually impressive and artistically significant event for both the participants and the visitors. It is scheduled annually during the Aizpute City Festival to reach as broad an audience as possible and enrich the festival program. The final show – furnace stoking and sculpture casting – usually takes place in the evening, so visitors can enjoy the visually stunning finale to the fullest," says S. Pucena.
The full Aizpute City Festival program can be viewed HERE.