ELEMENTS 2024 at SCHUNCK
Last weekend was the final weekend of ELEMENTS 2024. Together with 10 other art and culture institutions, we celebrated the diversity and quality of contemporary art in the Euroregion from 23 May to 23 June.
On 23 May, the ELEMENTS partners met up at Jester in Genk. A month later, the closing took place during Open Studios at the Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht.
During ELEMENTS, you could come to SCHUNCK and see Alevtina Kakhidze's exhibition, Frictions Festival and join Architecture Day. Alevtina Kakhidze's work is on display in the store window and on the second floor of the Glaspaleis until 1 September. At St. Pancratius Church, Alevtina shows work by 14 contemporary Ukrainian artists.
Frictions Festival
On 13 June, 'PAND and SCHUNCK presented a new edition of Frictions Festival, under the title 'Collecting Friends'. It was an evening full of special moments and encounters, with performances, an installation artwork, improvisation set with music, and a projection with works by different artists. Koos Buster also stopped by to make friends and get inspiration for his series of ceramic plates, which he will make for the SCHUNCK collection.
During this evening, two new exhibitions opened to the public as well. The exhibition of Curator for a day, curated by the Vrienden van SCHUNCK, in the Aad de Haas gallery. In addition, the exhibition of Driver's Seat opened, SCHUNCK's youth group, who also made a selection from the SCHUNCK collection. Their selection was named 'SeX WAR MOTHeR'. Read more about both exhibitions here.
Architecture Day
This year, the national theme of Architecture Day was 'Making Space'. As part of Architecture Day, we focused on the repurposing of churches. The Euroregional aspect was discussed in detail here as well.
On Friday 14 June, Roel De Ridder outlined the situation in Flanders in his lecture 'Architectural quality in repurposing Flemish churches'. As an introduction, curator Sander van Daal gave an impression of church reallocations in the Netherlands and Germany through various examples.
During the bus tour on Saturday 15 June, we explored three examples of churches being repurposed in Heerlen, Geleen and Mönchengladbach. The programme was a preview of a yet-to-be-developed project by SCHUNCK in autumn 2025, which will focus on dealing with vacant, Euroregional religious heritage. Each church testifies to the rich religious past and the value of architectural heritage in our region. Under the motto 'Recognise the value of your history to make room for reuse in the future', we explored possibilities to bring new life to these buildings.