Category: Artworks news

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.

On Saturday, June 23, 2018, at 15:30 ARTWORKS co-founders Marily Konstantinopoulou and Dimitra Nikolou will participate in the 7th Stavros Niarchos Foundation International Conference on Philanthropy exploring the concept of Disruption, at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center. They will discuss the disruptive possibilities of the individual artist’s work and at the same time present the objectives of ARTWORKS.

Click here for the Conference program: https://www.snf.org/…/11121…/2018-SNF-Conference-Program.pdf

On Saturday, 09.06.2018, our Fellows attended a workshop on Artists Rights at the Contemporary Greek Art Institute iset by Marina Markellou. The all-day workshop focused on the legal framework in the USA, Europe with an extra focus on Greece. Our Fellows talked with Marina Markellou about intellectual property and the laws protecting their rights.

Marina Markellou is an Attorney and Adjunct Lecturer of Law at the Panteion University, the Open Hellenic University and the Open Cyprus University. She specialises in Intellectual Property law, corporate, civil and data protection law.

On 08.06.2018, a Masterclass was held by the director and producer Athina Rachel Tsangari at the Contemporary Greek Art Institute iset.

Athena Rachel Tsangari presented her work to ARTWORKS Fellows and extensively discussed with them about Greek Cinema and its production conditions. The discussion was co-ordinated by ARTWORKS Fellow, Georgis Grigorakis.

Athina Rachel Tsangari (1966) is a director, film producer and writer. She co-founded the production company Haos Film. Her first film was The Slow Business of Going (2000). Her next feature films were Attenberg (2010) and Chevalier (2015). Among other distinctions, Tsangari has been honored with two awards at the Venice Film Festival, as well as the Jury Prize at the Thessaloniki Film Festival for her film Attenberg.