Category: ARTWORKS

On Thursday October 24th, our Fellows 2019 had the chance to meet the 2 ARCAthens Residency Fellows at the beautiful yard of ATOPOS. Aristeidis Logothetis -ARCAthens founder and executive director- welcomed us and gave a short introduction about the scope and activities of ARCAthens, highlighting the importance of networks for artists. Visual artist  Tomashi Jackson and curator Miranda Lash  talked about their creative time in Athens, their work and research topics and exchanged ideas with ARTWORKS Fellows around topics that emerged from the open discussion. Some of the topics were migration, education and democracy. Lastly, Stamos Fafalios,  ATOPOS co-founder, guided the Fellows through some of the archives, sharing insightful stories.

ARCAthens is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating opportunities for visual artists to expand the discourse in the arts as well as in the local communities of Athens.

Atopos cvc is a non-profit, cultural organisation interested in the expression and adornment of the human body. The word ‘atopos’, from the ancient Greek “άτοπος”, refers to that which is the strange, the unwonted, the eccentric and the unclassifiable.

On the occasion of the recent renovation of the Patrick and Joan Leigh Fermor House in Kardamyli, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) in collaboration with the Benaki Museum invited 10 of our Fellows to visit and reflect on the site. Here are their impressions  through personal notes, photographs, drawings and videos.

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1. Cacao Rocks in collaboration with Alexandros Simopoulos

Comics, ink and acrylic on Polaroids, 2019 (Notes)

Alexandros Simopoulos

A series of painted-over Polaroids taken during

our visit and processed later. 

What is the distance between narrative and fact?  

Cacao Rocks

Improvised Telephone

A fishing line links Patrick Leigh Fermor to Pausanias. 

Each one holds a disposable cup to his ear.

The line has to be stretched in order for them to hear each other, but here and there

it is tangled up in prickly pears, masts, civil wars, shells, goats’ horns, olive groves, the backs of dolphins and ancient temples or cages of the gods, as they are also called. 

Their speech is broken up by white noise, cicada songs, heartbeats, hookah bubbles and summer thunder.

The improvised phone becomes our memory, along with all that we now despise, having surrendered to the universal dream.

A soldier’s boot in a whale’s stomach, the sweat of a woman dressed in black at the salt lakes, a Byzantine coat of arms and the reflection of the sun on the whitewash is what stayed in my eyes.

There wasn’t time for me to swim around Merope like you did every day. The truth is I don’t even know if I can do it, but hopefully in the future I will at least try.

Thank you Michali

Cacao Rocks

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2. Giannis Delagrammatikas

on reflection, P.L.F.
video, 1’ 06” 

In 1933 Patrick Leigh Fermor began his first journey to Constantinople. A few items of clothing and a volume of Horace’s Odes accompanied him on his wanderings.

Kardamyli was chosen as the place he returned to, the retreat where recollections of travel, intense experiences, and inner journeys would be shared in his literary universe.

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3. Niki Gulema

The landscape and objects in the house become the subject of sketches in a notebook.

“Except where their cutting edges were blurred by landslides, the mountains looked as harsh as steel. It was a dead, planetary place, a habitat for dragons. All was motionless.”

Excerpt from Patrick Leigh Fermor’s Mani

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4. Katerina Kotsala

Walk on Me
2019

-cotton paper, the imprint of a pebbled floor, 55x25cm

-2 watercolors, a color study of a pebbled floor, 29×20.5cm

 Himself a walker, Patrick Leigh Fermor built a pebble path in his backyard. 

Walk on Me reproduces the pebble floor in the yard of the Fermor house; it is the imprint of the pebble surface on cotton paper. Watercolors refer to a color study of the pebbles used on the floor and evoke the distinctive sunset of Mani in Messinia. 

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5. Orestis Mavroudis

BRIGHT SPECIAL LEIGH
MINI TERES 1 SPOT
BRASS TR
H.P.  D 3W /827 40D
220-240V 50/60Hz
EN60598-1
EN60598-2-1
IP65
CE
MADE IN GREECE ’19

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6. Kosmas Nikolaou

Drowning in the Details

Ten images that act as quick notes lead one’s gaze around the house, to points that we wouldn’t usually notice on our first visit. Ten images lead us to look at the house’s modern technical infrastructure. Quick clicks in space, a quick rotation, cracks, sockets, and air ducts. Small details betray the discreet renovation, noisily attesting to the new function of the house and, ultimately, its new owners.

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7. Stefania Strouza

The Dark Ones
2019, digital collage

 The photo collages are based on snake patterns that appear as engravings in different parts of the house and are juxtaposed with the belongings of its owners. The symbolically charged combinations hint at an introverted universe closer to the unconscious. They seem to be referring to Patrick Leigh Fermor’s mystical aspects as they ‘traverse’ an increasingly complex and ambivalent post-war world.

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8. Pavlos Tsakonas

Portals
A series of digitally processed photographs 

First impressions of structural surfaces and details of the Fermor house, color-treated in the style of a quick sketch or note. The original stimulus that activates one’s curiosity to delve into an intensely adventurous world. 

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9. Neritan Zinxhiria

Mythology of Blue

The sea as a bridge that unites and doesn’t divide:

an author’s many travels, presented in summary through the covers of books that kept him company.

Our first gallery visit with the SNF ARTWORKS Fellows 2019 took place at Piraeus, at 2 exhibition spaces – The Intermission and Rodeo Gallery.

The Intermission, a new exhibition space which opened recently in Piraeus , focuses on shows of established and upcoming artists with contributions in the international art scene.  Fellows had the chance to see the inaugural show – a new work in situ by the American artist John Knight – and discuss with the owner and director Artemis Baltoyanni.

Fellows experienced also a guided tour at the show of Tamara Henderson Womb life by the director and owner of Rodeo Gallery, Sylvia Kouvali. Henderson makes work that extends her bodily adaptations to places and situations, people that she engulfs and she is embraced by while attaching on to them via personal emotional mechanisms.

Until next time!

Last night, we launched the 2nd SNF Artist Fellowship Program with a welcome party, α party to know us better. Here are the photos from this amazing night by Andreas Simopoulos :)

We hope you enjoyed  and met our friends and family!

On Monday September 23rd, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) and the Museum Benaki invited some of our Fellows to visit the recently renovated house of the famous British author Patrick Leigh Fermor.

The author Patrick Leigh Fermor and the photographer Joan developed a special relationship with Greece, which led them to build their permanent residence in Kardamyli, Mani, where they lived until the end of their lives. The house was designed by architect Nikos Hatzimichalis, in close collaboration with them, and was completed in the mid-1960s. In 1996, they bequeathed the Leigh Fermor House, which is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful properties in Greece, to the Benaki Museum, expressing the desire for the house to be used for the purposes of the Museum and remain open to the public.

The SNF supported, as lead donor on the project, a study on the use, operation, and sustainability of the house, then the necessary repair and renovation work. The main objective in this process was to preserve the original character of the buildings and the surrounding space. 

The house has opened to the public for tours, and in the near future it will function as a space for conducting educational activities and cultural events open to the public and for hosting researchers. 

Many thanks to Stavros Niarchos Foundation and Museum Benaki for the amazing hospitality!

What do we really share when we co-exist in the same space?

How is our identity extended through our relations with others?

The exhibition STILL HERE TOMORROW begins with the idea of the poetics of relations and unfolds as a rhizomatic map with multiple connections among the works. The title functions affirmatively and constitutes a necessary assertion against the conditions of precariousness. Coexistence, exchange of ideas and creative tensions become a means of resistance to uncertainty. The 45 artists in the exhibition propose narratives that dispute the conditions of the present as they open up the debate to the future.

Painting, sculpture, video, photography, performance, installation, new media and sound works activate spaces in the building of the National Library of Greece and the Southern Walks of the Stavros Niarchos Park. The exhibition spaces are seen as an open archive of arguments. The works put forward distinct narratives, converse with one another and with the venue itself, live together without losing their autonomy, and at times question the very structures in which they have been placed.

The artists focus on research and experimentation, while their theoretical explorations are accompanied by persistent renegotiations of both form and material. The construction of history and nature, which is symbolically linked with the spaces where the exhibition unfolds—in the Library and the Park respectively—challenge our present social condition.

With these works, the artists explore the potential of personal narratives and reflect on the role of digital and physical archives, the expectations and the challenges of technological evolution, while questioning humans’ relationship with other forms of existence and the individual’s relations to the community. They employ elements from everyday life in order to approach the ‘uncanny’, and return to past mythologies in order to create different ones for the future. They rethink the concepts of ownership, automation, work, production and identity, discerning their exclusions and delineations, thereby imagining tools to both disrupt and break free.

More about STILL HERE TOMORROW and the full list of artists exhibiting and their work, here 

It took us 2 trips, several meetings to New York and London, 4 ARTWORKS Mentors to decide the nominees until, in collaboration with our partners, we selected who the suitable candidates are for the residency programs at ISCP and Delfina. The acclaimed International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York will host Paky Vlassopoulou, while the Delfina Foundation in London, Kyriaki Goni and Petros Moris.

 Delfina Foundation was established in 2007 and is located in the centre of London. It is one of the most important institutions offering Art Residencies through partnerships with other institutions from all over the world. For the first time, artists from Greece gain access to the residency program through ARTWORKS. Delfina provides opportunities for artists, curators and writers to develop their work and to gain space and time for research on specific themes.

The International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP)  was established in 1994. It is housed in a former factory in Brooklyn with 35 work studios and 2 exhibition spaces. Over 1,350 artists and curators from more than 80 countries have undertaken residencies at ISCP. Its programming actively engages the audience and nurtures the artists’ contacts with the dynamic New York art scene.

Katerina Stathopoulou, presented her work and discussed with our Fellows at the ARTWORKS Office, on Sunday 23.12.2018, in a festive mood, just before Christmas Eve.

Katerina Stathopoulou lives and works in New York. Most recently, she worked as Curatorial Assistant in the photography department at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). On May 2018 she joined the Public Art Fund as Assistant Curator. She was also a member of the Visual Arts Selection Committee of the first SNF Artist Fellowship Program.

Our Fellows attended the Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin Artist Talk, organised by the New York University in Athens and MedPhoto Festival, on Thursday, November 1st. ARTWORKS’ attendance there, followed the Fellows’ first meeting with Broomberg & Chanarin who participated in the ARTWORKS Fellows studio visits / work presentations with their students.

On Thursday, November 1st Broomberg & Chanarin, discussed their work and presented their new film “The Bureaucracy of Angels”. The discussion was moderated by Eduardo Cadava, Professor of English, Princeton University.

Adam Broomberg (born 1970, Johannesburg, South Africa) and Oliver Chanarin (born 1971, London, UK) are artists living and working between London and Berlin. They are professors of photography at the Hochschule für bildende Künste (HFBK) in Hamburg and teach on the MA Photography & Society programme at The Royal Academy of Art (KABK), The Hague which they co-designed. Together they have had numerous solo exhibitions most recently at The Centre Georges Pompidou (2018) and the Hasselblad Center (2017). Their participation in international group shows include the Yokohama Trienniale (2017), Documenta, Kassel (2017), The British Art Show 8 (2015-2017), Conflict, Time, Photography at Tate Modern (2015); Shanghai Biennale (2014); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2014); Tate Britain (2014), and the Gwanju Biennale (2012). Their work is held in major public and private collections including Pompidou, Tate, MoMA, Yale, Stedelijk, V&A, the Art Gallery of Ontario, Cleveland Museum of Art, and Baltimore Museum of Art. Major awards include the ICP Infinity Award (2014) for Holy Bible, and the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize (2013) for War Primer 2. Broomberg and Chanarin are the winners of the Arles Photo Text Award 2018 for their paper back edition of War Primer 2, published by MACK.

No empty seats on Monday!Thank you all for joining us for ARTWORKS SCREENINGS!

ARTWORKS presents a selection of short films (fiction, documentary, animation) by the awardees of the 1st Stavros Niarchos Foundation Fellowship Program at the Greek Film Archive. ARTWORKS SCREENINGS bring to the fore contemporary filmmaking in Greece with the aim of creating a meeting point between emerging filmmakers and their audience.

The film screenings will be followed by Q&A sessions with Menelaos Karamaghiolis.

PART Α  17:00

George Nikopoulos
Butter bunny and his grape must cookies (2014, 23’)

Mr Butter Bunny was a famous chef. The most famous one in the hole forest. One day he decides to cook his girlfriend’s favorite, grape must cookies! He goes into his kitchen and collects the ingredients … Water, cinnamon, sugar, olive oil, flour, must … Must …. Must?

Eirini Vianelli
Icebergs (2017, 9’22’’)

Icebergs is an existential, dark comedy consisting of 14 short vignettes, ranging from the mundane to the absurd. It is based on the book “Scenes” by Award-winning screenwriter Efthymis Filippou.

Ioanna Petinaraki (Production)
Carnivore (2014, 28’)
Director: Dimitris Vavatsis

The story is about Menelaos, a man who has decided to take revenge on the person who murdered his parents fifteen years ago, by torturing and killing the murderer’s family.

Konstantina Kotzamani
Limbo (2016, 30’)

The Leopard Shall lie down with the goat, the wolves shall live with the lambs. And the young boy will lead them. 12+1 kids and the carcass of a whale washed ashore.

Georgis Grigorakis
45 Degrees (2012, 14’)

Athens, August 2012. 45 degrees. The fridge is empty. The situation is very tense. A father changes under the burden of the economic crisis. It’s getting dark and it’s still boiling hot. A capital at the border of exploding.

PART Β  19:15

Jon Simvonis
Nipenthes (2016, 13’51”)

Σε ένα εγκαταλελειμμένο κοινόβιο όπου ζουν ηλικιωμένοι, κάποιος ανάμεσά τους πεθαίνει. Φροντίζουν το σώμα του, ράβουν το κοστούμι του, αλλά η κλωστή τελειώνει πριν ολοκληρωθεί το κοστούμι.
Through the walls of an abandoned commune, a thread runs knitting the moments of the silent individuals accompanying the deceased while his death suit is getting ready.

George Fourtounis
Ikaros (2015, 38’)

Michalis has a plan and awaits. His father leaves. Now he is alone with his mother, his sister, his brother and a knife.

Despina Economopoulou
AURORA (2015, 6’16’’)

A screaming whisper to remind us the damage our consuming hysteria of plastic is causing to public health and the environment. The monster we keep feeding is eating us up.

Smaragda Nitsopoulou
Ars Moriendi: Ubi sunt or where are those who were before us? / Memento mori / Vanité (2016-2018, 6’)

Ars Moriendi is comprised of 3 separate and yet related works orbiting around the same themes of death and memory. The goal of this series is an introspect look of the personal and at the same time oecumenical non-experience of death and the fear of oblivion, treated as the only possible way of global solidarity. The political and artistic scope is underlined by the use of archival footage and voice over of different languages and themes.

Manolis Mavris
Μaneki Νeko (2017, 19’)

“Maneki Neko” is a psychoanalytic erotic thriller that lingers between the imaginary and realistic, with enigmatic transitions from the everyday to fantasy and back. The film takes place in a taxi driving through Athens. In this taxi, the past meets the future and the protagonist’s worries clash with his desires.

PART C 21:15

Loukianos Moschonas
Jeunes hommes à la fenêtre
(2017, 18’)

Two graphic designers at work, by mistake, start playing with an empty scanner’s possibilities. They venture into assumptions, eventually open up to each other, and let go of the strange images, until they let go of themselves.

Daphné Hérétakis
Archipelagos, naked granites (2014, 25’)

Between bereaved desires and lost hopes, a film diary bangs against the walls of the city. The daily life of a country in crisis, the inertia of revolution, the individual issues that confront the political, questions of survival that confront ideals. Can we still ask the simplest questions?

Despoina Kourti
Ourania (2017, 16′)

Ourania is a middle-aged woman who has neglected herself. An unknown young man who suddenly appears in her life will help her rediscover her feminine nature.

Neritan Zinxhiria
The Time of A Young Man About To Kill (2015, 19’)

In the mountains of Northern Albania, a young man seeks revenge for his father’s death. The murderer has disappeared a few months ago and the police is still looking for him. The young man kidnaps the killer’s only son and raises him up until he reaches his 16th birthday, when according to the Kanun, the Albanian law of revenge, a child becomes a man and he is allowed to kill or to be killed.

Jacqueline Lentzou
Hector Malot: The Last Day of the Year (2018, 23’19”)

New Year’s Εve dawns in a moon-kissed car and Sofia has a dream that she tells no one: while walking on a desert, she gets to know that she is sick. She pretends that she does not care. Has she lost her heart?

Vassilis Oikonomopoulos presented his curatorial work to the ARTWORKS Fellows and discussed the different strategies for the creation of international art collections by museums and institutions in Europe and the Middle East. He referred to a number of art institutions as subversive examples that change the way art is exhibited and engaged to the public.

Vassilis Oikonomopoulos is a member of the selection committee and the mentorship program of the 1st SNF Artist Fellowship Program by ARTWORKS. He is a Curator at LUMA Foundation Arles. Prior to LUMA Vassilis, was the Assistant Curator, Collections of International Art at Tate Modern. He worked with Tate’s Middle East and North Africa Acquisitions Committee on formulating Tate’s strategy in the region. At Tate Modern he has co-curated the retrospective exhibition Alexander Calder: Performing Sculpture and also organised the 2016 Hyundai Commission Anywhen, with French artist Philippe Parreno in the Turbine Hall.

Our fellows took part in a Grant Writing Workshop by Yona Backer. The Workshop was organised by ARTWORKS and was hosted at the Contemporary Greek Art Institute iset on 14.09.2018.

The workshop covered all aspects of Grant Writing for artists working in all disciplines with the goal of giving confidence and a clear road map when applying for grants. It covered the essential elements of proposal writing, including how best to describe the artist’s work, create context, and make a compelling case for funding. The workshop also addressed how artists can choose the best work samples when applying for grants, review website and social media presence to present their best digital self.

Yona Backer is a producer, curator, consultant, and a founding partner of Third Streaming, LLC (3S). She has had a twenty-year career supporting artists and cultural institutions, and is committed to a collaborative approach to arts programming and management. Third Streaming Advisory Services (3SAS) is a New York based consultancy that specializes in providing strategic guidance, program development and evaluation for nonprofit organizations, foundations and independent producers in the cultural and philanthropic sectors.

Loukia Alavanou presented her work for the ARTWORKS fellows at the Contemporary Greek Art Institute iset. On the occasion of her latest project New Horizons, in which she used stereoscopic virtual reality shots (VR360), she discussed the reception for VR technology in the visual arts and the cinema. She also talked about the new possibilities as well as the creative shifts that technological developments can cause in the field of art.

Loukia Alavanou (b.1979,Athens) is a visual artist and filmmaker who currently lives and works between Brussels and Athens. She completed a MA in photography at the Royal College of Art in London in 2005 under the supervision of British collagist John Stezaker, with a scholarship by the Onassis Foundation. In 2007 Alavanou won the DESTE prize and in 2008 she was for the Paul Hamlyn Award for visual artists. She has exhibited her work internationally. Her solo exhibitions include: Rabbit Catcher, Ulap / Upload Art Project -Trento (2012), Episodio 3, Kanelopoulos Cultural Center – Eleusis (2011), Next Door to Alice, Rodeo – Turkey (2010), Chop Chop, upstairs Βerlin gallery – Berlin (2007), Loukia Alavanou, Haas & Fischer Gallery – Zurich (2007), Cactus, The Breeder – Athens (2004). She has participated in numerous group exhibitions and worked with international institutions, with the most recent ones including: Paratoxic Paradoxes, The Benaki Museum – Athens (2017), Deste 2017, An anniversary Exhibition, The Museum of Cycladic Art – Athens (2017), The Equilibrists, The Benaki Museum, Athens in collaboration with the New Museum, NY (2016), ikob-Award, The ikob Museum of Contemporary Art – Eupen (2015), And no matter what the phone rings, Moscow Biennale (2015), No country for young men, Palais de Bozar – Brussels (2014), Reverb: New Art from Greece, SMFA – Boston (2014), Hell as Pavillion, Palais de Tokyo – Paris (2013).

The SeaNema Open Air Film Festival took place between July 30th and August 2nd and the ARTWORKS team was there! Our fellows’ presence was outstanding: Among those selected to compete, were Despina Kourti with the film OURANIA and Manolis Mavris with the film MANEKI NEKO while Loukianos Moschonas presented his film MANODOPERA.

Fellows Loukianos Moschonas, Giorgos Nikopoulos and George Fourtounis also participated in SeaNema Screenwriters Lab!

Making the most of the Mediterranean climate and the picturesque landscape of Kefalonia, SeaNema Open Air Film Festival is the only film festival in Greece, and one of the few worldwide, in which the film projections are not hosted in cinema halls but in specially formed areas by the sea. The Festival aims at becoming an important meeting point for acknowledged and new filmmakers alike from all over the world, who will have the opportunity to promote their work and enjoy themselves, along with a numerous audience, in a dreamy place under the sound of Ionian sea waves. 

Sylvia Kouvali, welcomed SNF ARTWORKS fellows in the new space of Rodeo Gallery in Piraeus, on the occasion of the Snowlion exhibition by Leidy Churchman.

Sylvia, the founder of the gallery, together with her colleague, Michelangelo Corsaro, talked, among other things, about the art scene in Istanbul, London and Athens, starting from the first location of the gallery to its latest expansion in Piraeus.

The SNF ARTWORKS Fellows then moved to Paleo to celebrate the SNF Artist fellowship Program’s first part. The program continues in September with workshops and artist talks!

The first half of the SNF Artist Fellowship Program is almost complete! Just before we break for summer, we joined some of our SNF ARTWORKS fellows at their studios to be presented with their work.

Our first round of Studio Visits included: Filippos Vassiliou, Augustus Veinoglou, Paky Vlassopoulou, Kyriaki Goni, Giannis Delagrammatikas, Alexandros Kaklamanos, Katerina Kotsala, Chrysanthi Koumianaki, Orestis Mavroudis, Iason Megoulas (Cacao Rocks), Rania Bellou, Kosmas Nikolaou, Foteini Palpana, Malvina Panagiotidi , Eleni Papanastasiou, Maria Papanikolaou, Pavlos Tsakonas. Alexis Fidetzis, Despina Flessa.

More studio visits will take place in September. Stay tuned!

ARTWORKS fellows met and discussed with the American artist Paul Chan and Sam Thorne, the curator and director of Nottingham Contemporary on the occasion of the Odysseus and the Bathers exhibition organised by NEON at the Museum of Cycladic Art.

Paul Chan spoke about his artistic practice and then guided the fellows in the exhibition before the official opening.