Alexandra’s beautiful prints
ALEXANDRA Storer, who makes very beautiful and covetable prints, was born in London
in 1961 and trained in printmaking at Bath College of Art.
She has a show at he Chrysaliniotissa Craft Centre, which is
tucked away in those pleasant back streets just off Famagusta Gate, Nicosia.
There are several workshops creating
beautiful art in glass and also wood, as well as icons, design productions and ceramics.
There is also a delightful shop
where, last Friday, I had the best olive pie ever, with the very generous coffee.
This exhibition of prints was previously
shown at Nicosia’s Argo Gallery, jointly with Joumana Sayegh, a ceramist exhibiting on the same theme.
Alexandra
says of her work: "The subject matter is based on Bronze Age Cypriot design, with some Myceanean elements, taken from
pottery, bowls and pots of the time.
"I have set out to make these traditional images contemporary, using reflection and
repetition, and my interpretation of these simple, but beautiful, designs has led to some surprising results, giving a new
look and energy to the works.
"I print everything by hand on handmade paper, each piece being individually worked with
a baron, which is a traditional Japanese tool. The prints are cut from lino or wood and it has been very stimulating to explore
these ancient ceramics and to translate them into prints.
"I came to Cyprus more than seven years ago, with my family,
to live in my grandfather’s village of Dhali, for the first year, before we moved to Kaimakli in Nicosia.
"I have
had various illustration commissions in Cyprus and in England and I am currently working on a number of book cover illustrations
commissioned by Moufflon bookshop”.
Space captured brilliantly in black and white
MILKA Panayotova showed some beautiful Scape Views on paper at Studio Gallery, 65 Pericleous Street, Nicosia
‘Scape
Views’ puts together a number of recent works that explore landscapes and spaces, both imaginary and real.
Any
space acquires its character only when man leaves a sign on it and so it becomes a place, one that we know, one that we dare
explore and use.
But do our cities embody such a place? How much of our surroundings are we really able to perceive? Maybe
the parameters of contemporary city life don’t give us the chance to really look at what is around us.
Or maybe
there is too much to look at? Our surroundings change every day and so does our perception of space.
The show examined
this complex man-space relationship with simple and graphic lines, which build up new architectures and yet places we may
be familiar with.
The black-and-white signs on paper walk across the gallery, thus creating a new place, which the spectator
my simply use for reflection.
Milka Panayotova completed her degree in Fine Arts in Florence last year.
She has participated
in many group exhibitions in Italy and has collaborated in various events in the field of theatre and performance.
Her
range of work extends from painting and etching to video, performance and dance/theatre. She currently lives and works in
Cyprus
Milka was born in Bulgaria and came here at the age of 13.
She did private lessons in various places in Nicosia
although she had already started taking Art lessons in Sofia.
After finishing high school in 2001, she went to Florence,
Italy, where she graduated from the Accademia di belle Arti di Firenze last year. At the moment she lives and works here but
still hasn’t got her own studio.
Masala
MASALA is an exhibition by three Cypriot-based artists, whose work has been profoundly influenced by
experiences in India; Lazaro Hadjisoteriou, Mary-Lynne Stadler and Raymond Wilson.
The exhibition is at the Melina
Mercouri Centre, next to Famagusta Gate, Nicosia.
It will be open on Thursday, June 7 from 12 noon -10pm and on Friday
June 8 from 10am-8pm.
‘Masala’ is a group exhibition of work influenced by travel in India of three artists
who recently came together and discovered that country to be a common source of inspiration
They all come from very different
backgrounds and happened to meet in Cyprus!
While each approaches the subject from a completely individual viewpoint, all
successfully convey something of the essence of their experiences in India, whether through colours, subject matter or choice
of medium.
Lazaro Hadjisoteriou
As a child, Lazaro went to the UK after 1974, where she studied art and design.
Her
love for Cyprus eventually brought her back to the island where she continued to work in the art and design field for several
years.
Her travels to the Western and Eastern world, the wonderful people she had met, and her intense experiences along
the way, have had a profound influence on her work. The bright and vibrant colours of her paintings reflect the life and spirit
of India.
"India, for me, is a great abstract painting. Logic and mind do not enter but only the heart speaks".
Mary-Lynne
Stadler
Mary-Lynne is a professional painter/print-making artist living and working in Cyprus since 2003, and making work
inspired by the atmosphere of the places and situations that she finds herself in.
Early in 2006, she travelled to
Cochin in Kerala, India, where she encountered the dignified grace of a local woman carrying out her simple daily chores.
The recent series of paintings are a celebration of the woman’s sense of place, dance and belongings that the artist
experienced in watching these humble activities, while Mary-Lynne’s lithographs, inspired by the dominating presence
of washing rock in every backyard, convey a real sense of silence and mindfulness, qualities that she sensed were palpably
present in all of Rosalie’s (the Indian neighbour) activities .
Raymond Wilson
Raymond is a multi-media artist
working with found objects and unconventional materials in an intuitive way.
He depicts the human figure in its psychological
environment with strong delineation and pure colour, transforming discarded objects into haunting plaintive figures.
Since
graduating from Gray’s School of Art in Scotland in 1996, he has undertaken residencies and exhibitions in Cyprus, Egypt,
and Scotland. Raymond’s life and work have been strongly influenced by his experiences across the Indian subcontinent.
His colours reflect the vibrancy of India, and the fragility and diversity in the celebration of human life.
Christos Kalfas at Gloria’s Gallery.
SUCH an array of superb surrealist paintings.
Walking into Gloria’s
was like entering a dream. These dreams were superbly under aesthetic control, however, each one with a different and a new
message.
Painted with sensitive understanding and knowledge, the chosen forms are always balanced superbly on the
canvas.
The placing was exceptional. I think the Greek word is "topothetisi."
The emotional ‘disturbance’
is in the artist’s vision and he conquers the aesthetics, as well.
The images can spiral off into rare and
complicated fantasies while the subtle order of the forms keeps ‘hold’ of the canvases.
In other words, a
great and satisfying exhibition seen as a whole but at the same time each individual painting superbly covetable as well as
individual works of art.
Varnavas Varnava, at Kypriaki Gonia
VARNAVAS was born in Kythrea and studied at the Thessaloniki School of Fine
Arts, Greece.
He has participated in many group exhibitions but his Kypriaki Gonia exhibition in Larnaca is his first one-man
show.
Art critic Kyriakos Katzourakis comments on Varnava’s paintings:
"Varnavas’s talent and inner wealth
is almost immediately understood when someone first sees his painting. It is a kind of painting full of colour and simplicity,
free of ostentation and self projection.
"It sounds self-evident, and perhaps it is somewhere deep inside, but nowadays
when the artist is swamped with information, with a variety of images found everywhere, with the excessive image of reality
as it is shown through the media, it is not self-evident that one uses the austere means of painting to express complex issues.
"A
characteristic of the images that Varnavas puts on the surface is the chromatic scale which seems to defy the mainstream applications.
He sometimes matches dissimilar aspects with the inner necessity of colours and not their aesthetics."
Until June 15.
Venice Biennale
KIKOS Lanitis is one of the artists in Faccia Lei - Portraits in Transition - in between media
and cultural areas of contemporary art.
It will be hosted in Venice in the spaces of Spazio Thetis, a company dedicated
to environmental research, located in Arsenale Novissimo.
The opening will be on Wednesday, June 6 and is a project from
Museum Arterra from Austria.
The curator is Elena Agudio.
The Cyprus Pavilion will open to the public from June 10 -November
21 and is at the Palazzo Malipiero.
Entitled "Old Earth, No More Lies I’ve Seen You," it is curated by Denise
Robinson.
Haris Epaminonda and Mustafa Hulusi are representing Cyprus.
More information next week.
The opening
reception will be at 6pm on Thursday, June 7.
Maria Spyrou
MARIA Spyrou’s exhibition at Technis
gallery is entitled ‘Colourful Journey’ and continues until June 9.
On the ropes
CHRISTA Loucaidou Efstathiou has an exhibition that will open on Saturday at Zavos Coco de Mer (old Rousos
Hotel), Yermasoyia, Limassol, which will continue until June 12.
It is titled ‘Ropes’ and is inspired by Leonardo
da Vinci’s sketches of a concept for a rope-making machine.
Like many of his other ideas, it never got built.
She says: "I focused on different ways where a rope could be used. I mainly focused on old fishing boats and ropes, however
the use of ropes is unlimited, so is my work…"