The circle is used in the name of our festival as a symbol of connection, of the intertwining of content and of the collaborators of the different social networks involved in the project. The circle also defines the multitude of cultural events that we organise in cooperation with local and foreign cultural associations and public institutions, and in networking with foreign cultural institutions and embassies in Slovenia. Another unique advantage is that our organisational team is led by professionally educated people from the fields of arts and tourism, whose international connections broaden and open the platform for future cooperation in the fields of culture, tourism and business.

INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION

Over the years ART CIRCLE International has made countless professional contacts abroad in the field of culture and beyond. Each year we host over 60 foreign and Slovenian artists and curators at art embassies – special type of art residency – in Slovenia and in cooperation with foreign partners, which is an excellent starting point for the conception and implementation of new cultural collaborations between countries. In cooperation with cultural institutions, art academies and diplomatic representatives in countries that have an art embassy in Slovenia, the ART CIRCLE International team has carried out several cultural collaborations – art exhibitions, exchanges between Slovenian and foreign artists, talks with artists, art workshops, teambuildings and more.
We look forward to new and original presentations of ART CIRCLE’s rich art collection abroad, as well as to presenting and expanding our unique visual arts festival abroad. An important part of international collaborations is hosting cultural content from foreign countries that collaborate with ART CIRCLE in Slovenia, as it broadens and deepens the knowledge of the international cultural scene and brings foreign cultural production closer to the Slovenian and local public. The venues where international collaborations are regularly carried out are art embassies, venues in the Goriška region and Italy, and we are additionally proud of the guest appearances at the Regional Museum in Gorizia, Italy, the Attems Petzenstein Palace, the Bratislava Castle Gallery, Bratislava, Slovakia, the Ljubljana City Hall and collaborations with municipalities in Slovenia and abroad.

More information about our past and future international collaborations is regularly published on our website under the collaborations tab and on our FB page.

ART COLLECTION

All artworks created by invited artists during the festival are part of the extensive public-private art collection of ART CIRCLE International. It is accessible to the general public in Slovenia and abroad at festival events and at Art embassies hosting the invited artists. The collection is very rich, with over 500 works of art and has been created since its inception in 1997 in various media such as painting, sculpture, ceramics, photography and printmaking. The festival is also expanding its art collection into the fields of intermedia art and film.

BEGINNINGS

SYPOSIUM CERAMICUS MEDANA MMXI
“Plato, the Greek classical philosopher, used the word symposium to describe a gathering over a glass of wine to discuss love. Wine in those days was very different from what it is today. It was stored in pottery containers, it was enriched and it was called retzina. Similar traditional wine can still be found in Greece, although it has changed a lot over time and with the use of wooden containers. The pottery was decorated with reliefs or painted.”
We invited renowned artists from the European area to Medana to paint the clay bottles and prepare them for bottling. Selected winemakers processing organic wines filled the bottles. It is the choice of material, clay, that should remind us of the initial processes of storing wine, and remind us that there comes a time when we need to look inwards, to devote more energy to preserving the environment and to ecological approaches to food processing.
At the Uroš and Nejka Klinec homestead, together with our partners, we have organised two annual meetings of international and Slovenian visual artists, a poets’ meeting, the Days of Poetry and Wine, and the Summer in Medana. SYPOSIUM CERAMICUS MEDANA MMXI was organised from 2011 to 2013, producing several publications, a collection of paintings and a small collection of sculptures.
A collection of paintings in the wine cellar and a special exhibition of a selected painter were installed at the Movia homestead. We have also set up a gallery at the Ščurek homestead, where a special feature is the wine cellar with painted wine barrels.