Two halves

NICHOLAS Panayi and Mustafa Hasturk have a joint exhibition at Eaved House.

It is near Hagia Sophia and anyone you ask will tell you the way. Not everyone having a car up North means that you can walk safely through the streets. The hilariously comical bumper to bumper farce in Makarios Avenue for example does not occur – yet.

Just ask.

I walked through via Victora Street and discovered, happily, that the EMAA Grup Sergisi were not exhibiting at the Armenian church but at Hazdar. More on this show next week. However.

Two Halves at Eaved House is a purposeful exhibition, in that it demonstrates how figuration can lie side by side with total abstraction.

Panayi’s energetic (sometimes violent) male nudes clamber up walls and even continue on the floor in a different posture.

A feeling of energy fills the space.

Hasturk’s non-figurations have their own built-in energy, with cuts and additions and sensitive paintworks. Thus the exhibition extends our knowledge of how wide is art. Here at Eaved House; feeling, space and understanding abound.

Jenny

Haywood

at

Mmisshimou

EXCELLENT artist Paris Metaxas sends this about the new show at his gallery Mmisshimou (his spelling).

It is by the young Welsh artist Jenny Haywood.

Jenny Haywood writes: "My artwork for me is a process of learning and discovery. I love to work with colour and my paintings explore the interaction of colours and forms across space, how they can be used in different ways to create a certain environment or mood and the way they flow across the canvas.

"I try and keep my work as light and expressive as possible so as to capture a spontaneous response and read into the process of learning."

There should be more Paris.

Cyprus

College

of Art

PROFESSOR Benedict Read of Leeds University will inaugurate an exhibition of paintings and sculpture by teachers and post-graduate students of the Cyprus College of Art. The exhibition will be at the Limassol Studios, 19 Makedonias Street, Limassol from Friday, June 2 to Friday, June 9.

Taking part in this exhibition with a difference are artists from Britain, Cyprus, Germany, Ireland and Tanzania.

The works on show include abstracts and representative imagery from the life and nature of Cyprus.

Sylvia Nitti and

Lance Hunter

KYPRIAKI Gonia Gallery invites you to an evocative exhibition of paintings by Cypriot artist Sylvia Nitti and her husband, American artist Lance Hunter.

The exhibition showcases contemporary images of the female form juxtaposed and layered with images inspired by Cyprus.

The opening will be by Dr Vassos Lyssarides tonight, Friday, June 2, at 7.30pm, continuing until the June 17.

Sylvia Nitti was born in Larnaca and attended the Pancyprian Lyceum. She received a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Brescia University in the United States.

Lance Hunter has received more than 23 awards and national juried art exhibitions in the United States.

He is a professor at Northeastern State University in Oklahoma, where he teaches painting and drawing.

This year he has been painting in Cyprus while on a leave of absence from NSU.

En Plo

Gallery

AN art exhibition opens on June 3 at 4pm until June 10, at En Plo, Paphos.

Christos Akordalitis, paintings; Panikos Nestoras, ceramics; Michala Karagiorgi, sculpture; Dirk Woerner, aquarelle; Ina Kritiotis, photography; Kiara Tsokkou, paintings; Danae Anastasiou, painted glass; Helen Hodgins, sculptures, paintings.

Daily opening hours: 10am-2pm and 4pm-9pm.

Tel 99542166 for further information.

Textile

landscapes

A GLORIOUSLY packed Famagusta Gate, a space which cries out for tapestries.

Those walls were made for hangings (may even have witnessed the odd one or two) where fabric softens the stone.

And, nothing could have been better than these "Textile Landscapes" by Malgorzata Swaiatlowska. The exhibition was within the framework of the German-Polish year 2005/06, the German Cultural Centre, Goethe-Zentrum and the Cultural Association of the Poles in Cyprus (Malwa) followed their governments’ suggestion to reconnect the cultures of the two neighbouring countries who had been estranged by a difficult past, to cross the divide and to share their respective cultural wealth.

Pavlos Paraskevas, Senior Cultural Officer at the Ministry of Education and Culture opened the exhibition. And there were very strong contingents of Germans and Poles present, including someone whom I always thought was Fassbinder’s best and most beautiful actress.

Malgorzata Swaiatlowska started her studies in painting and subsequently specialised in textile art, which has long since broken with techniques of traditional tapestry.

Her ability to promote the detail of a simple thread and for it to relate to the rest of the fabric is remarkable. As if a minute but meaningful stroke of a pencil/charcoal holds the whole powerful image together.

This whole encompassing of an image pulled the emotional content into dramatic tension without in any way stopping the flow, pull and push of the delicate fabric.

Even those who had the feeling of a great painting complete with tension and spatial distance had this quality.

The evening developed into a heart warming musical event, enough to make past "Holders of the Gate" lay down their armful of ‘embroideries’ immediately.

A great evening.

A Georgian painterly talent observed the lack of local artists at the opening – too busy rushing and pushing for Manifesta one presumes!!!

Artists’

Books

THE Moufflon, in Nicosia, shows new work by Marcus Cope and Stephanie Moran

"In our first collaborative artworks we have drawn on concerns from our respective practices and from our joint experiences of Cyprus. More specifically the memories of living in Lemba, and entertaining ourselves in the evenings by playing board games."

Marcus is interested in play, humour, confusion and the art of the Dada movement.

Stephanie’s practice involves collages of images, ideas, story-telling and notions of gender.

The chosen format of the game allows this collaborative work to occur fluidly, and followed many forced and unsuccessful attempts at collaborative picture making (which is where the artist’s disciplines lie).

They found the process of taking turns helpful and tried to keep the playfulness of games in mind during the production and within the look of the work.

The pink one

The blue one

The backgammon board

The collage case

Until July 31.

Richard Wentworth

at the Pharos Centre

AFTER a brilliant lecture the other week, the artist who had found time to travel around the island, even managed to create this reflective exhibition at Pharos Centre.

It has many connections with his previous work, including the signature piece of a bowl on a glass balancing above a ladder. It is still mesmeric.

However, there are very new works too, and, what is more, works that relate to our predicament here. The axe, the metal table, the mirror for one.

Mirror, mirror off the wall who is the most confused (?) of us all?

A must.

Very new shows

Maria Papacharalambous, at Artos, 64 Ay Omoloyyites Ave, Nicosia.

Dr George Savvides, at Opus 39.

Garth Frost, at Gloria Gallery from tonight.

Five Artists, at Argo.