Brilliant event

THE Did You Feed The Humans, show is over. Now I can quote from back of the catalogue:

The "debutante artists" appearing in the installation at the Pantheon "Do Not Feed the Humans" do not exist; they are imaginary.

The artists were fabricated by Charalambos and Vasso Sergiou who set up and curated a series of ostensible group installations, under the common title "Group exhibition".

A brilliant event.

Exquisite art

Both Maria Tourou (closing tomorrow at Apocalypse) and Eleni Volou (new at Gloria’s) exhibit the most exquisite abstract paintings of an exceptionally high standard.

News has come in of The Twelve Madonnas by Yorgos Papadopoulos at Famagusta Gate Cultural Centre. On from Wednesday, June 11 to 22.

The Cultural Organisation Aeschylous Arcade opened a couple of days ago, continuing until June 21, with Rolling Frame.

Christos Avraamides in Slovenia

Christos Avramides will exhibit his photographs at the St Jacob’s Theatre, Ljubljana from June 10th to 14. Dancers Arianna Economou and Alexandra Weirstall will be performing there, too.

Dr Eleni Nikita, Director of Cultural Services, Ministry of Education and Culture, has written about Christos:

"The photographer Christos Avraamides has been a close observer of the first Cypriot contemporary dance companies ever since their first appearance on stage and the photographic and general artistic interest that they provoked in him gave a vivifying impulse to his consistent creative course.

He is today the only Cypriot photographer who is systematically occupied with dance and movement.

For the last 18 years his photographic lens registers the contemporary choreography in Cyprus, a fact of considerable historic importance.

Christos Avraamides immortalises the images born out of the choreographed movement and transforms them in his own unique way.

In his work the iconoplastic element possess an important place.

Dance is considered by many to be the art of the ephemeral – while the body is determining and defining the boundaries of the dancing art.

There is no bigger challenge for a photographer than the exploration of these boundaries amongst an eternal interchange of fantasy and reality.

The quality and the dynamics of contemporary Cypriot choreography and its creators can be traced without difficulty in Christos Avraamides’ photographic images.

He captures the course of contemporary dance in Cyprus, its continuous evolution and of course its blooming, the so called ‘spring’ of dance in our country which create an unforced impression. When the photographic lens investigates, accumulates and records information, under the pretext of dance and movement, it contributes to an essential degree to the progress of the art itself.

Christos Avraamides’ photographic documents pay in parallel a tribute to the public of contemporary Cypriot dance that is no longer constrained in the geographical borders of our little island.

The increasing tendencies of extroversion in this domain feed the continuous flow of progress out of which come many treasured benefits and profits.

The Ministry of Education and Culture is working in this particular direction too, forming bridges between Cyprus and the international dance and cultural scene.

The manifold support that it offers to the organised agents of dance in our country is always aiming at the progress of dance through different activities, events and programmes of local and international capacity.

It is generally acknowledged that creation encloses in itself many difficulties.

The only answer to the different possible obstacles is in the zeal, the talent, the artistic sense, the high aesthetic quest and professionalism, the inspiration and the dedication, elements that abound in the photographic persona of Christos Avraamides.

The Cultural Services of the Ministry of Education and Culture wish him every success in his work."

Superb exhibition

Where Do We Go From Here

ThE superb exhibition continues until July 31 and is from the collection of Nicos Chr. Pattichis of Phileleftheros newspaper at Nicosia Municipal Art Gallery.

I have included (and will next week too) several general images that demonstrate the wonderful collection and the careful and beautiful placings of the exhibits. The choice is wide and deep.

Huge prancing animals skip amongst paintings, sculptures and pieces. Each object controls its own space.

There is a magnificent glazed ceramic sculpture by Betty Woodman.

Currently, Betty Woodman is exhibiting at Galerie Besson, Old Bond Street, London.

Here is a section from the London gallery’s current catalogue by Barry Schwabsky which quite by coincidence I saw at a friend’s the other day. The Pattichis’ choice is certainly international.

"It took Woodman a long time to develop her art to this point.

Her deliberateness reflects her determination. Woodman’s immersion in the craft of pottery goes back to 1948, when she enrolled in the School for American Craftsmen at Alfred University in upstate New York.

Ten years later, an encounter with the paintings of Frank Stella became, as she later recalled, a key moment in the development of her ability to "perceive ceramics in the larger context of other arts."

Still it would be another 15 years before she would begin systematically exploring colour in her work; later in the 70s colour would again recede in importance, only to re-emerge in the early ‘80s, by which time, in Woodman’s view, "functional concerns have really become conceptual" – or as I might prefer to put it, they have become metaphorical."

More next week.