Tate St Ives: Emilija Skarnulyte

This exhibition runs until the 12th April 2026.

It's taken me a little while to get to this exhibition, for one reason and another, but I am so glad I finally did!  In some ways, I don't really know what to say about .  I saw a lot of things and it is going to take me some time to process everything I saw.  I think this is because in some ways, I was feeling things that were polar opposites.  The space had much of the films had a meditative quality.  I felt very calm and relaxed after my time at the exhibition.  I think it's a very dreamy space.  On the other hand, some of the things were uncomfortable or challenging.  For instance, giant snake on a huge screen.  In some of the films, I just don't know exactly what it was I was actually seeing.

Let's go back a bit.  The space was incredible and completely transformed from my previous visit.  The gallery has two rooms.  The first room is smaller and leads to the second much larger room but it also has access to toilets on the left.  This room was largely unchanged, structurally, except it had gained a partition wall across the entrance, so you walked in, greeted by a large lit up image of a Lamia and then left, past a TV showing two snakes twinned together into a shape a bit like a double Ourobos before finding yourself towards the back of the room with a large screen to the right of the entrance.   This screen was showing the film Aldona on repeat.

The Lamia and snakes were both gloriously striking images, very graphic and set the tone for much of what was to follow.  Even when things in the films were uncomfortable or unsettling, they were always beautiful and striking.  These films are all beautiful art.

Aldona is Emilja's mother who became permanently blind in 1986  as a result of the radiation from Chernobyl.  Aldona lives a simple life, surrounded by beauty.  I imagine she has lived in that same place for a long time and knows every inch of it intimately and still appreciates it.  It's easy to assume, as a seeing person that without sight, we miss all the beauty of a place, but watching Aldona negotiate her way through her world, it was very clear this is not the case.  Watching her stand in the sun, it clear she was taking in the world around her, just as much as anyone else would, probably even more so.  The space was set up in order to engage our other senses.  Bird song played and above my head, bundles or aromatic herbs had been hung from the ceiling.  I have a very poor sense of smell, but even I enjoyed them.  I think that's the scene that hit me most, was Aldona just stood in the sun, experiencing her world.  Watching Aldona move around, walking across rough ground, experiencing the sculptures in a local park, listening to a story.  She had apples, probably gathered from her garden and as she tied up the cores, she told us that now she would take these things and place them under the apple tree to fertilise it.  There was a sense of circular living and contentment, a certainty of her place and acceptance.  This film was a tribute to Aldona.

Moving in to the next room, it was surprising how big it was.  Last time I was here, it was four interconnected galleries with three small rooms.  Now it was one large rectangular room.  A series of four curved screens had been placed in the centre, to make a circle you could enter from either end or the sides.  This space was called the Wheel of the Goddess and referenced the stone circles of Cornwall and the lunar calendar.  A series of four films was displayed on these screens and the screens did not show exactly the same thing most of the time.  Sometimes one screen showed a mirror image of the one next to it, so that things moved together and merges.  Sometimes one screen showed an inverted image, so you had no idea which was the 'right' way up.  Sometimes a screen would have zoomed in image of what was on the screen next to it.  Sometimes two adjacent screens acted as one.  From a circular seat in the middle, I found myself looking at mostly the screen in front of me, and sometimes the one to the left and much less, the one to my right.  

At each end of the room, there were further installations.  At the end I had entered a huge image of microscopic marine creatures took up the entire wall.  To the sides, placed so you could see each image perfectly, were two very large singular microscopic creatures.  Sometimes these were lit up and visible from the centre of the circle, sometimes they were dark.  At the far end of the room was another large screen and this was very much visible as well through the gap in the circle.  I found myself watching snippets of those films as well as the ones shown in the circle because they all interconnected.  Sometimes the connections were overt, with the same images or another viewpoint being shown.  Their was a curious sense of being enclosed in the circle, contained, but also being drawn outwards and connected with everything going on outside the circle too.

The films shown in the circle were Hypoxia, Aphotic Zone, Riparia and Sunken Cities.  Generally, I could not tell where one one film ended exactly and the next began.  It was a seamless experience.  I entered I think, to Aphotic Zone, which was filmed off the coast of Costa Rica, 4 km below the surface.  Life still survives there but it often looks a little different.  There was a lot of beauty.  The film however was about scientists seeking a coral species resistant to climate change.  The images shifted to those of coral samples being taken which involved breaking and damaging the corals.  These images were not beautiful in the same way, not meditative.

Riparia follows the river Rhone and looks at it as a boundary and a living entity.  It also explores a spiritual dimension with two serpenty / mermaidy figures.  It finishes with a rotating image of a goddess figurine and this was how I clearly knew this film ended!  It was difficult to tell what things were....  was that a macro shot, looking down on the Rhone and it's tributaries or was that some sediments and life forms from the Aphotic Zone?  In the end it doesn't matter, because these films all echo the same sense of the natural world and it's geometry.  The sections with the figures were echoed on the screen outside the circle with a different viewpoint of the figures being shown, one slightly more distanced.

Sunken Cities explored the Roman city of Baiae which is now in the sea following volcanic activity.  Remains of graceful columns and walls, taken over by life as if they were any other rock face.  Beautiful mosaics preserved under a layer of sediment, easily swept aside.  

With Hypoxia the images shifted from graceful Roman archaeology, to that left behind more recently in the Baltic Sea.  Dead zones have been created by pollution and cold war relics loom out of the darkness.  A tank.  Ammunition scattered across the sea floor.

It was clear that these films together provided a seamless journey through this dialogue between nature and humanity.  How do we save it without damaging and destroying?  How do we appreciate all it's beauty?  Are we still in touch with it's spirit and the old stories?  Nature will take what we leave and with time, will repair and reclaim, but at what point does it become too much?

Moving out to the large screen, there were six reclined seats, covered in black snake effect fabric.  I was surprised to find that when I was on one, my sightline was the very top of the screen.  I thought, from seeing snippets of the films from inside the circle, that I had an idea of what I would see but this seating changed my viewpoint completely.  A black shiny ceiling had been placed above the screen, so it reflected the film perfectly but with a dimmer light.  I was watching the reflection as much as the main the film and I was perfectly placed to watch both.

Again there were four films being shown.  Aequalia, Rakhne, t 1/2 and Circular Time: for Aleksander Kasuba.  I began with Rakne which looks at a future data centre, under the sea.  Stark, industrial hardware on a vast scale.  It makes the point that our current use of data storage is unsustainable.  It takes space and resources to save data.  

t 1/2, which means half life references the nuclear physics concept where radioactivity decreases by half over the half life.  In this work, she is a siren archaeologist in the future, guiding us through industrial landscapes and asking, what is the half life of these things we build?  How long will they continue to effect the world?  Will they decay and be reclaimed by nature?  Some of these artifacts have a nuclear dimension too.  I couldn't tell you which building was which but they included a nuclear power plant, a neutrino observatory, a cold war submarine base and a radar installation.  But all through the film, it was beautiful, a stark and terrible beauty, but still awe inspiring.  This film also incorporated Sirenomelia which showed additional footage of the two serpent like figures.

Circular Time: for Aleksander Kasuba is inspired by the visionary architecture of Kasuba.  Geometric shapes shift and flow.  Animated.  It's a visionary piece that expands on the beauty of t 1/2.  Taking us from real world to imaginary world.

Aequalia explores independence and interdependence.  The milky waters of the Rio Solimoes and the dark waters of the Rio Negro, meet, but do not merge in Brazilian Amazon.  Botos, pink river dolphins swim both these waters.  A half human, half fish figure swims through the waters, seen from above, escorted by Botos.  We can pretend to be independent from nature but we are completely interdependent.  

So the backbone of the exhibition is both the space as a whole and these two sets of four films.  I loved that the films formed circles and interacted.  I loved that the four (films) echoed the four of the circle made physical in the gallery.  This circle of life, includes death and decay.  Aldona knows this, she makes it clear when she returns the apple cores to the tree as fertiliser.   When she washes her hands thoroughly using small amounts of water saved from the rain.  We are forgetting this in our grand visions.  As the Romans world decays, beautifully, so will ours one day too decay...  but will it be a legacy of beauty or ongoing death and depletion.  Do we reach too far?

I could end here...  but there were some other films and sculptures in the space.  If water could weep (Mermaid's Tears) are a series of sculptures inspired by the story that Amber is made from mermaids tears.  These shapes echo those of amber, beautifully organic, irregular and complex.  Each clear tear was on a base made from circular concrete, like those we use for concrete pipelines.  They were lit from beneath in an ever changing spectrum which highlighted the shapes beautifully, like little pop art lamps.  I would absolutely love one of these in my home....  But...  these beautiful pieces are tears from the water...  in a space full of films that take place in the water, about what we humans do.

Telstar was produced in Cornwall and is a film of ancient megaliths including Men an Tol and a Quoit as well as pictures of the satellites at Goonhilly.  There were two projectors with the film being shown on either side of a suspended white screen.  The two versions of the film were at opposite points in the film I think, but you couldn't watch both at the same time, endlessly circling each other, from the future, to the past, and back.  These satellites are the megaliths of our time, but will they decay as well?  Will they be spiritual and beautiful things that future humans love?

Lastly, there was a bank of four TV's placed on the floor and these showed some excerpts from Circular Time: for Aleksandra Kasuba as well as Sofijia.  Sofijia features footage Emilija has gathered over time.  The work is inspired by  Ciurlonis work Rex which to Skarnulyte showed an entire world in graceful curving arcs.  The images of this film are worlds Skarnulyte has found, shown in circles and they include wetlands, coastlines and ancient sites.  I liked that this installation was called Moon Maidens...  Four little moons, not all showing the same image at the same time, all the time, but all related.

So, in short, the space was incredible and it was deep.  It was a wet school day, so not terribly busy but I think most people dipped in and out of the space.  I imagine they came away with as much as they wanted to...  Some stayed in one spot and watched more of the films there.  I don't think anyone else watched all of the films all the way through while I was there.  I get it.  I spent a long time in that gallery.  I have quite a thorough sort of personality, I like to experience things in full a lot of the time.  I like to commit to that thing.  I gained a lot from experiencing this exhibition in this way.  I have gained a lot too from writing my thoughts and feelings and processing them in this way.  I see the exhibition more clearly now than I did when I was experiencing it and I have huge respect for those who put it together.

Just walking in to the gallery it was an experience.  It was stylistically stunning, a visual landscape to explore.  I could imagine a glamorous party full of very cool people happening there.  People moving through did not detract from it, they just added, while remaining private as they were just black silhouettes.  I had no issues taking pictures of people in the space as I doubt they would easily be able to identify themselves.  They were just graphic shadows moving between the shadows and lights of the space.

The exhibition runs until the end of the Easter holidays and I may even go then, just to experience it in a different way....