Summary

Lagerphone 'Vilkas' (Wolf) made in 2013 (the stand in 2021) by Lithuanian-Australian Melbourne artist Jazmina Cininas and one of many used by members (including Jazmina) of the Melbourne-based The Lost Clog folk ensemble. The combined piece represents about 50 hours work in total (excluding collecting and sorting beer caps).

The lagerphones created by Melbourne artist Jazmina Cininas take the iconic Australian bush band musical instrument and adds the shapes of Baltic nature motifs to evoke a visual, auditory, and poetic reimagining of Lithuanian traditions. Artworks in their own right, the lagerphones serve as percussive instruments, which Jazmina first began making for the Melbourne-Lithuanian folk ensemble, The Lost Clog, when she joined them in 2011.

The lagerphone is part of a collection of photgraphs and videos which document Jazmina's creative process of making the lagerphones and performing in The Lost Clog folk ensemble.

Physical Description

Tall hand-carved wooden pole from salvaged timber, with wolf's head carved at top and head, pole and base decorated with used bottle caps using nails. Also a rubber stopper. There are 1047 bottle caps on the wolf itself (792 on the tail) and 171 on the stand, totalling 1218 caps.

Significance

The lagerphones created by Melbourne artist Jazmina Cininas take the iconic Australian bush band musical instrument and adds the shapes of Baltic nature motifs to evoke a visual, auditory, and poetic reimagining of Lithuanian traditions. Artworks in their own right, the lagerphones serve as percussive instruments, which Jazmina first began making for the Melbourne-Lithuanian folk ensemble, The Lost Clog, when she joined them in 2011. The Lost Clog performances bring the lagerphones to life through their approach to weave a narrative song cycle of seasons, love, and loss from archaic Lithuanian folksongs. Jazmina's artistic and music practice offers an acknowledgement and celebration of Lithuanian culture that was part of the first wave of non-British, post-World War II migration, recognising the contribution of migrant and refugee populations to Australia's cultural fabric. Jazmina is the daughter of parents who fled Soviet occupation of Lithuania after World War II.

The lagerphones explore themes of cultural preservation, maintenance and adaptation, as well as hybrid identity. Her lagerphones are all created from recycled materials - salvaged timber and used bottle caps (from Australian and international beers) - which is part of her evolution towards environmentally sustainable art practice while exploring her own Lithuanian-Australian identity. This particular lagerphone represents Vilkas (wolf), which appears in numerous Lithuanian folk songs and children's folk stories. The wolf is a particularly significant animal for Jazmina given her longstanding interest in the representation of female lycanthropy or werewolfism throughout the centuries, which spring-boarded from an exploration ofher own cultural hybridity through the emblem of Vilnius' Iron Wolf. The Vilkas/Wolf lagerphone has previously been exhibited in the trial run of The Sparrow Made Some Beer at Artery Co-operative studies in 2019, also featured in Lost Clog performances at her PhD exhibitions at RMIT and Maroondah Art Gallery in 2014, as well as Jazmina's solo exhibition, Blood Moon Rising at Port Jackson Press in 2016.

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