This summer, as part of the Art Stays festival, the ancient rooms of Ptuj Castle will once again host contemporary visual art alongside historical artworks.

Talya Lubinsky (ZA): Marble Dust

Marble Dust contemplates the material relationship between permanence and disintegration embodied in memorial sites and the landscapes of cemeteries. It is at these places in which the ostensibly permanent comes into contact with the ephemeralitiy of the disintegtrating body. From this inherent tension the artist poses questions on loss and return, absence and presence.

Paul Hazelton (UK): Dust breeding

Paul Hazelton started his signature “dust sculptures” in 2006 after observing the dust that had collected on objects in his studio. Recollecting his mother’s obsession with cleanliness he decided to call these early dust-works ‘Immaculate Conceptions: concepts involving the control of dirt and subversion of cleanliness’. It is the curious mix of domesticity and the desire to transcend materiality in Hazelton’s dust work that creates a bridge between what we understand as everyday living and the question of being.

Opening: Saturday, 12 July 2025, 8.30 p.m.

On view until 14 September 2025.