Author: gourgourini

IONE & MANN is delighted to present Rhizome, a three-person exhibition bringing together the work of Irini Bachlitzanaki (b. 1984), Shannon Bono (b. 1995) and Thomas Langley (b. 1986). In kinship with the natural world, traditional craft practices as well as individual and collective cultural and emotional anchors, the artists explore the inter-connected, ever-evolving structures of the places we inhabit physically and spiritually and the deeply entangled nature of identity, perception and being.

Much like rhizomatic structures, Bachlitzanaki, Bono and Langley’s work appears to have no end points; bold, unapologetic yet tender, it emerges as a material expression of consciousness with a pared-down linearity that connects the internal with the external and defines a space that allows for individuality and belonging, rootedness and growth.

Inspired by material culture, artisanal traditions, nature and the biographies of objects, Irini Bachlitzanaki builds upon re-contextualising recognisable forms to examine our relationship with the world around us and ourselves. Within a practice that is primarily sculptural she plays with two and three-dimensionality and explores the object as image, signifier and continuation of the body and the self.

Drawing on cultural, geographic and historical references she offers us renditions of familiar forms: a traditional clay pot (in this case a ‘stámna’ or ‘kryologos’ found in her native island of Skyros) becomes flattened and moves into a new plane, its distinctive shape operating as a different type of container enveloped in an image-based narrative; the emblematic and ubiquitous opuntia cactus, a symbol of resilience encountered all across the Mediterranean and in dry, rocky areas around the world, reclaims its power as it rises from a concrete base and invites us to interact with it directing our movements in the space around it. The body, visually notably absent, feels undoubtedly present and so is the mind, assigning and re-evaluating meaning.

There is a linear, reductive, diagrammatic quality to Bachlitzanaki’s shapes but the simplification of forms does not seem to detract from their essence nor from their power to elicit an emotional response. Her sculptures, reductive yet dense with meaning, lend themselves to a multiplicity of narratives in a dialogue between cultural specificity and universality, informed by the associations and experiences of both artist and viewer.

Shannon Bono’s paintings embody an afrofemcentrist consciousness, sharing muted narratives and projecting black women’s lived experiences. She is invested in producing layered, figurative, compositions embedded with symbols and scientific metaphors that centralise black womanhood as a source of knowledge and understanding. Drawing on African spirituality, Christian iconography and Renaissance art, she consciously employs a purpose of cultural impact, liturgy and instruction for an improved society within her works. At the same time, she turns to her own experiences and beliefs to define and express black womanhood from her own unique perspective.

Her latest body of work, entitled ‘To Summers End in Gambia’ follows an intimate journey that explores themes of love, loss, healing and awe, as well as the power and traditions of West African divination. Working with a mix of acrylic, oil and spray paints, she uses the structure of her paintings to bridge seen and unseen worlds, the internal body with the external. The background, consisting of repetitive patterns reminiscent of Dutch wax fabrics but also biological and organic structures, appears both distinctive and integral; the body, depicted or implied, emerges seamlessly in the foreground as a powerful signifier, alongside elements of still life in the form of plants or mystical objects used in rituals of magic.

Bono uses figuration in an attempt to tell relatable stories, make sense of and peace with personal and shared experiences, but the power of her work urges us to look beyond the imagery and explore its symbolism and truth. Her world is rich and colourful but there is nothing superfluous about it; underneath it all, there is a simplicity that permeates it completely and authentically, a solid structure connecting and supporting the variegated elements of society, identity and selfhood.

Thomas Langley works within an interdisciplinary practice that includes painting, sculpture, drawing and installation. Through a lens that is often self-referential he is keen to explore universal themes in the human and artistic condition and the concept of what he describes as material thought, how consciousness makes its way into an object or a work of art. Born into a family of basket makers he has an affinity with traditional craft practices and the natural world both as a source of inspiration and raw material. Always seeking new territories for artistic comment, he tends to work in series with the works functioning as modular components of a wider narrative or sentiment.

His latest body of work sits at the intersection of painting and drawing; the series’ title, ‘Bodger’s Hovel’, references the highly-skilled itinerant craftsmen practicing a form of wood turning in nature, a practice dating back to medieval times. Using a mix of charcoal (a bodging by-product), wax and oil paint, he creates bold, monochromatic works derived from observing plant life, resulting in a loose yet dynamic botanical abstraction. The natural world emerges as a protagonist but, in reality, the imagery is inseparable from the material, the intention and the act of creation itself.

The artist’s hand is very much present as he creates raw, bold rhythmic compositions that function almost as language, conveying simultaneously the urgency of a call and the softness of a whisper. Langley’s entangled, expressive, undulating lines and the texture of the painted elements imbue the works with an energy that renders them more than a representation of botanical forms but an expression of a state of being.

RHIZOME
17-29 January 2023
Irini Bachlitzanaki · Shannon Bono · Thomas Langley

IONE & MANN Arc Gallery | 4 Cromwell Place, London SW7 2JE
Opening Hours: Wednesday – Saturday 10am – 6 pm, Sunday 10-4 pm and by appointment.
For additional information, images, or interview access to the artists please contact us at: [email protected]
Website: www.ioneandmann.com | Instagram: @ioneandmann

*Irini Bachlitzanaki is a visual art SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2022

A solo show by Kyriaki Goni at Blenheim Walk Galler,  Leeds Art University.

A story of small secret communities unfolds throughout the exhibition revealing their efforts to protect the plants whilst experimenting on new technologies of storing data in the plants’ DNA. Almost as if Haraway’s cyborg becomes a fusion of plant/machine in a revolutionary process of converting plant life into memory devices, disrupting hegemonic surveillance practices and processes of extractivism.

Data centres, one of the main digital ecosystems, allow us to store and share information, providing access to applications and data at great environmental costs. As the number of technological mega-infrastructures is constantly increasing across the world, so is the impact of digital activity on the natural environment; energy and water consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, waste, land use and biodiversity are some of the areas affected. Today’s climate emergency brings into question the growing demand of data centres to sustain our current techno-dependent practices, seeking for alternative solutions. Thus, the data garden communities advocate not only on privacy and informational self-determination but also on environmentally conscious and effective data management.

The mountain islands shall mourn us eternally (Dolomites Data Garden) 2022, presents the latest Data Garden community and a plant; a hybrid of Ortiseia leonardii, a conifer fossil 260 million years old, and Saxifraga depressa, a rare white flower that grows only on the summits of the Dolomites between 2000 and 2850 meters. The Dolomites, an ecosystem of high plant biodiversity in the Alps, has been recognized as one of the richest areas of endemism; they are also one of the most intensively exploited regions in the world. Mass tourism infrastructure continues to present a threat to the landscape resulting in habitat change and pollution. Excessive development, over-exploitation of land and climate warming necessitate the migration of plant species from lower altitudes to the summits, shifting to new territories in pursuit of more suitable and colder microclimates.

The installation begins with a CGI video in which the hybrid plant addresses humanity on behalf of its entire species. Information stored in plants’ DNA advocates for non-human communication protocols and technoshamanic interspecies communities spread across the Earth. Through an alluring simulation the transmission shares a planetary chronicle of deep time, geological transformations, and plant history along with an ominous future of forced migration. The mountain top then becomes the end of this journey, the last destination before extinction. Seemingly to an extraterrestrial transmission in reverse. The message demonstrates the diversity of life and technological achievements on Earth only this time from a plant’s non-anthropocentric perspective. It endorses human signals and language as a means of communication. Alongside the film, there is a sculpture; a wooden representation of the hybrid plant, produced in collaboration with local makers in the Ortisei region. And a set of four screen prints that depict digital drawings and notes documenting the artist’s creative process.

A way of resisting (Athens Data Garden) 2020 focuses on the first Data Garden and the plant Micromeria acropolitana, a small and humble perennial species, considered extinct for almost a century until its rediscovery in 2006. Endemic to the Acropolis hill – an archaeological site with more than sixteen thousand visitors per day, human disturbance becomes the plant’s greatest threat. Kyriaki Goni takes the species’ vulnerability as a point of departure to present a fictional story of a secret community’s efforts to preserve plant life and data privacy. In doing so the artist invites us to imagine a network of plant/machines operating as data storage devices, utilising experimental scientific methods that allows for information to be stored into a plant’s DNA. The installation’s fractured storyline does not unfold as a precise linear sequence, but rather reveals the interconnectedness, inseparability, and synthesis of natureculture.

In Kyriaki Goni’s Data Garden fiction and scientific facts are intertwined in an attempt to provide alternative futures and forms of resistance. Prints, videos, interviews with scientists, a sculpture, a polyphonic sound installation, and an Augmented Reality application are coming together to offer the potential for new insights into multi-layered, socio-eco-technological relationships. Data Garden invites us to critically evaluate the climate impact of digital technology with particular focus on the growing demand for data storage and the expansion of data centres’ infrastructures. Potential alternative storage solutions are proposed by the artist as imaginaries of a sustainable future. The exhibition brings together the two data gardens for the first time as a proposition of glocal, eco-technological networks of human and plant life promoting synergy, care, and solidarity.

KYRIAKI GONI | DATA GARDEN

Preview & Panel Discussion: Thursday 19 January 2023
4:30-5:30pm Panel Discussion (Auditorium)
5:30-7:30pm Preview (Blenheim Walk Gallery)
Leeds Arts University, LS2 9AQ
Free entry. Booking not required.

20 January – 1 April 2023
Monday to Saturday, 10am-4pm
Blenheim Walk Gallery, LS2 9AQ

*Kyriaki Goni is a visual arts SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2018

On Thursday, January 26th, from 18:00 to 21:00, Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center presents Alkistis Mavrokefalou’s first solo show, curated by Galini Lazani.

About his work An end – A beginning, Nikos Alexiou said: “This design, these lines, stand on the threshold. They are death and birth at the same time. They are both the end and the beginning”. This phrase could very well describe the entire artistic work of Alkistis Mavrokefalou. Because, even though at a first glance you may think that her work is all about nature or sensitivity or even romanticism, it entails some of the most profound existential questions that tantalize the human species. Life and death, pain and love, our place in the world and the connection between all its components, the continuity of existence.

In the exhibition tithoni* the artist presents a new series of micro-sculptures, continuing to gather most of her materials from nature. Exoskeletons of cicadas and shellfish, flower petals, fruit cores and nut shells co-exist with dry colour pigments, threads, lace and resin, in order to create environments and characters which define and claim the space around them. She builds up her installations in the space or confines them in transparent plexiglass boxes, complementing them with laborious drawings on millimetre paper, which often depict patterns of the human anatomy. For, within this natural environment, Mavrokefalou places herself and every human being, both as an observer and a participant, acknowledging the ironic contrast between fragility and resilience in the cycle of life.

Galini Lazani

January 2023

*the title of the exhibition paraphrases the name of the mythological hero Tithonus. The gods granted him eternal life, but not eternal youth. To liberate him from eternal old age after all, they transformed him into a cicada.

———–

ALKISTIS MAVROKEFALOU
tithoni
Ileana Tounta Contemporary Art Center
26.01.2023 – 24.03.2023

.

Bagaki’s work in painting, sculpture, drawing, text, sound and videos revolves around a persistent development of auto-fiction. Through the reconstruction of personal experiences or the creation of imagined events, Bagaki explores issues surrounding erotic relationships, sexuality, gender representations, and the precarity that many of the younger generation experience in Greece. Central to her artistic practice is nomadic wandering and flight as an existential condition in the quest for a sense of belonging.

The exhibition at EMΣT, the artist’s first major museum presentation, features a series of paintings with compositions of human figures standing alone or interacting in natural landscapes. The starting point for these works is desire: Bagaki’s dreamy paintings are produced, as she emphasizes, by and for desire. Intimations of physical attraction and erotic observation shape the artist’s relationship with the depicted bodies and their environment. The exhibition Something like a poem, a nude, and flowers in a vase unfolds as a kind of dreamlike wandering and observation on desire, sexuality, and erotic quest.

Eleni Bagaki was born in Chania, Crete; she lives and works in Athens.

Περισσότερες πληροφορίες εδώ

ELENI BAGAKI. SOMETHING LIKE A POEM, A NUDE AND FLOWERS IN A VASE28.01-07.05.2023
National Museum of Contemporary Art (ΕΜΣΤ)
Project Room 1- 3ος όροφος

*Eleni Bagaki is SNF ARTWORS Fellow (2020)

OKAY initiative space
presents

OKAY initiative space invites you to “DANDELION SEEKERS”. A collaborative curation by Zoe Metra & Captain Stavros, bridging two European capitals, Athens and Paris, with the intention of starting a dialogue between the artistic communities of the two cities, tonight 02/02, at 19:00, 7 Kefalliniaia Street, Kypseli.

A peculiar nostalgia for an ominous future seems to constitute the new, hyperlocal identity of origin of our generation. The multi-narrative setting that is composed in the OKAY highlights the artists’ interest in exploring new ontological classifications; capturing the unmetabolized anxieties of our collective unconscious and depicting the murkiness of the humanitarian crisis we are currently experiencing.

Curation: Zoe Metra & Captain Stavros

with

Vasilis Galanis
Katerina Dania
Konstantinos Mouchtaridis
Myrto Patramani
Phoebe Koutselos

Celia Boulesteix
Constance Tabourga
Augustin Katz
Clara Cimelli
Matthias Odis
Zoe Metra

*Vasilis Galanis is SNF ARTWORKS Fellow 2022

Visual ID: Alexandra Karaolanov

DANDELION
SEEKERS
a group show curated by
Zoe Metra & Captain Stavros
Athens / Paris

02/02-19/02/2023
Opening 02.02.2023 7 PM – 10 PM
Opening Hours THURSDAY-SUNDAY 5 PM – 9 PM

Bestiaries were medieval encyclopaedias of mythical and real animals, containing illustrations, allegories and moral lessons. These manuscripts were enriched with a large number of imaginative entries whose images and symbolism have had a lasting influence on our collective imagination in relation to animals. Inspired by these bestiaries, the exhibition explores and brings together a series of contemporary artistic practices that refer to animals in terms of mythologies, histories and their relationship to humans, with the ultimate goal to record topical readings around their symbolic status in contemporary art.

Humans have never lived independently of animals, both at times when they feared them and today, where they tend to annihilate them. As a result, the animal themes in art remain inexhaustible. This intertwining of human and animal is fatal: very often the human condition can resemble an animal hybrid. There have always been times when we our hearts felt like lions’ hearts, our feet like goats’, and our teeth a little sharper. But who is the “beast” today in a nature relentlessly persecuted and menacingly shrinking because of human activity? What are the allegories and lessons we ought to identify in our cultural production that is taking place within an environmental collapse?

Works of the exhibition refer to languages, postures and imitations that refer to our connection to the animal world, to old and modern mythologies, psychoanalytic interpretations and symbolisms, to new animal hybrids of our contemporary world, waiting to be transcribed. The exhibition presents an anthology of approaches, a new classification that expands and activates our admiration for a mysterious and fascinating world, of which we are a part.

Participating artists:
Maria Antelman, Calliope Bekou, Guy van Bossche, Katerina Christidi, Ιsabelle Cordemans, Bryony Dunne, Nicole Economides, Alexis Fidetzis, Thanos Foudas, Dimitris Fragakis, Vangelis Gokas, Renate Graf, Anestis Ioannou, Andreas Kalli, Kapurani Bros, Panagiotis Kefalas, Kosmas Kosmopoulos, Stephanie Lagarde, Varvara Liakounakou, Caroline May, O.lala, Stavros Papagiannis, Ilias Papailiakis, Fotini Poulia, Evi Roumani, Nina Saunders, Pieter van der Schaaf, George Stamatakis, Kostas Tsolis, Sarah Vanagt, Brian Whiteley, Katerina Zacharopoulou

*Nicole Economides, Alexis Fidetzis and Anestis Ioannou are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

BESTIARY: ARTEFACTS, ALLEGORIES, REPRESENTATIONS
09 FEBRUARY – 25 MARCH 2023

Crux Gallery
Sekeri 4, Athens 106 74, Greece

BESTIARY: ARTEFACTS, ALLEGORIES, REPRESENTATIONS

“And all of the sudden I was taking my friend to the hospital. My friend smiled at me, put her fist in the air and entered through the glass door. My friend is a very strong person. My friend is a fighter. My friend is Beate and this is dedicated to her.”

In the frame of a circle of friendship, nineteen femininities come together to address the notion of receiving and providing care in order to survive in environments that challenge their very existence. Going beyond the fixed notion of the family and the recent commodification of wellness via life coaching and individualist self-care app trends, they focus on affectivity, solidarity, relationality and interdependence over charity, self-indulgence, self-preservation and resilience. They push back against disadvantages by bringing forward vulnerability and codependence, as ways to go through the world with one another, in a spirit of radical kinship and hope.

With works by Eva Anerrapsi, Maria F Dolores, Anastasia Douka, Dora Economou, Selma Köran, Irini Miga, Rallou Panagiotou, Nina Papaconstantinou, Natasha Papadopoulou, Nana Sachini, Georgia Sagri, Beate Scheder, Sofia Touboura, Marina Velisioti, Kyveli Zoi and 1992 (Ioanna Mitza & Pegy Zali); codependent curatorial by Xenia Kalpaktsoglou and Olympia Tzortzi

*Eva Anerrapsi,  Anastasia Douka,  Irini Miga, Marina Velisioti, Kyveli Zoi and Pegy Zali are SNF ARTWORKS Fellows in visual arts

we tell ourselves stories in order to live
17 February – 11 March 2023
Opening day: 17 February, 7 pm – 10 pm

European Short Pitch, initiated by NISI MASA – European Network of Young Cinema, is an annual program aimed at discovering and supporting young European talents in the development of their short films, and fostering coproduction and collaboration between industry professionals from all over Europe.

European Short Pitch combines mentoring on short film development with a pitching and networking event, our Coproduction Forum.

This year, 3 Fellows join with their short movies

SAJBIJA 
Director: Carmen Baltzar
Producer: Danai Anagnostou
https://www.europeanshortpitch.org/sajbija

THE UNRELIEVED WEIGHT OF AN INERT MASS
Director: Eirini Vianelli
Producer: Danai Spathara
https://www.europeanshortpitch.org/the-unrelieved-weight-of-an-inert-mass

HONEYMOON
Director: Alkis Papastathopoulos
Producer: Maria Hatzakou
https://www.europeanshortpitch.org/honeymoon

*Danai Anagnostou, Eirini Vianelli and Alkis Papastathopoulos είναι SNF ARTWORKS Fellows

Palimpest Landcapes
Film Program and Q&A
Thu, 02 Mar 2023
Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), London

‘Sprouts of a dragon’s teeth’, the latest short film by Danae Io, will be screening at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), London on March 2nd, along with Jean-Marie Straub’s ‘à propos de venise’ and Marianna Christofides’ ‘Days in between’.

Like palimpsest pages on which new writing has been superimposed on the traces of old, this programme of short films looks at landscapes as sites where multiple histories have been inscribed and overwritten on the physical terrain. In their varying filmic languages, the selected works explore landscapes not just as backdrops to narratives but as devices partaking in historical processes.

The selection of films ties in with Danae Io’s research during her residency at Delfina Foundation into ways of depicting landscapes through film as spaces where different histories co-exist over time, blending social and physical spheres. The programme operates by bringing her work in relation to filmmakers that explore the connection between people and land as well as the ways dominant narratives are formed in adjacent locations to her research.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with Delfina Foundation artist in residence Danae Io and Viviana Checchia, Residency Curator at Delfina Foundation.

Find more information about Palimpest Landcapes Film Program and Q&A here.