PRESS RELEASE - galerie huit

About the Founders and Curators
Photography Open Salon was founded and curated by the Artist and
Curator Vanja Karas and Gallerist, Conservationist and Author Julia de
Bierre with an aim to promote talented photographers from all over the
world and offer them international exposure within exceptional and
unusual settings.
JULIA DE BIERRE AND VANJA KARAS
Vanja Karas, Galerie Huit Open Salon Founder, Photographer, Curator and Art Director
(UK/Serbia)
Vanja Karas is a Belgrade-born, London-based artist, curator and Art Director. Vanja curated
the Open Salon Transience installation but also exhibited her series of work Solitary, at the
Galerie Huit as part of the Open Salon. Her series A Solitary Storm on the Danube is her take
on the theme Transience and the passing of time, as the work explores comforts and
discomforts of soliitude as well as how our mood and state of mind interferes with the voluntary and
involuntary basis on which we collect, process and recall our memories. This series is a collection of 24
images which act as frame rates witin one second of a film sequence in a Polaroid format. The installation
creates a narrative of frames, however, not in a consecutive order, but how one would think or remember a
particular sequence and the passing of time.
Vanja graduated from the University of Arts in Belgrade, followed by an MA from the Royal Academy of
Dramatic Arts and Kings College London. She subsequently studied photography at Central St Martin’s
College of Art and Design and the International College of Photography, New York.
Vanja began her creative career in theatre directing, and from there moved on to work in a range of other
visual arts media including film, video, multimedia, graphic design and print. In 2000 she founded Magenta
Grove London, an award-winning London based design agency.
In recent years her work has been focused mainly on fine art and social documentary photography. Her
photography has taken her from Nepal, India, Bhutan, China and Malaysia to Africa and Eastern Europe. She
has exhibited her work from Katmandu to Belgrade and has been commissioned for a number of private and
corporate collections, her most recent commission being for 50 St Mary Axe, (The Gherkin, London).
Vanja is the founder of Galerie Huit Open Salon with Julia de Bierre.
Julia de Bierre - Galerie Huit owner, Writer, Conservationist and Curator (France, UK,
Malaysia)
Born in Malaysia, Julia de Bierre is an Anglo-French writer, heritage conservationist, curator
and art-gallery owner. A graduate of Bristol University (Theatre and French), with a passion for
interiors and antiques, she curated the Chateau de Lucens, one of Switzerland’s most
prestigious Historic Monuments, for over a decade.
She has worked with major European art collectors and auctioneers, and created, within different castle
settings, a series of workshops, focused on fine and decorative arts.
Her bestselling book ‘Restoration Recipes’ (Quadrille) has been translated into more than seven languages,
and ‘Penang: Through Gilded Doors’ (Areca Books, English and French) is now in 2nd edition.
She contributes to leading magazines (World of Interiors, House and Garden, Eyemazing), and is the co
founder of the Galerie Huit Open Salon with Vanja Karas.
Julia divides her time between Arles, Paris and Penang (Malaysia). She brings Galerie Huit Open Salon back
home to Malaysia. She is also the founder of Galerie Huit Penang, which is in the heart of George Town, also
a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in Penang, Malaysia.