Arts Glyn Hughes

Certificate for Rhea

Earlier this month painter Rhea Bailey received a certificate for serving as a distinguished symposium lecturer at the 2007 World Forum that was co-hosted by the American Biographical Institute of the United States and the International Biographical Centre from Cambridge, U K.

The occasion was held in Washington DC on July 3-8.

This certificate of Global Fellowship is part of an international delegation exclusively invited to attend due to extraordinary professional accomplishments and an interest in furthering knowledge, cultural awareness, peace and fellowship among citizens of the world.

Cyprus Art 11,000 Years, an Artist’s View

By Rhea Bailey

"First I would like to thank the organizers of the World Forum who give us the opportunity once a year to meet and create a global web of sensitive minds. Cyprus is the island in the Eastern Mediterranean where Aphrodite, goddess of beauty and love was born. Being at the crossroads of civilization, through the ages Cypriot artists assimilated foreign influences expressing their own world.

I am going to present my view of 11,000 yeas of Cypriot art.

I shall begin with a cat and finish with a cat. …..

The first one dates back to 8,100 BC and is the oldest work of art found in Cyprus.

The oldest grave found, is that of a stone-age man, and next to it is a smaller grave, of his cat.

The cat at the end, is my inspiration from the African type cat in the grave – " the all knowing cat and the waters of change."

In between we shall travel through the ages, following symbols, forms and colours used by the Cypriots to transform the inner codes of the land and nourished them into ART.

We shall listen to their musical sounds, first on reconstructed ancient instruments, then medieval song, modern compositions, and back to an ancient poem praising the Sun God.

This is a time to rest from words and follow an inner path."

The slide show by Rhea

At the conclusion of the International Gallery Symposium Dr Michael Grant the chairperson reported.

"And our last speaker Ms Rhea Bailey talked on the subject of Cypriot Art – 11,00 Years, an Artist’s View. In short, as we all viewed her artwork, it became evident to me that Cyprus Art 11,000 Years had evolved into the expression of passion; an expression of liberty. Thus a quote by an unknown source reads as follows. The greatest lesson we can learn from the past is that freedom of expression is at every core of every successful nation in the world."

Philip Savvas and the northwest frontier

Although born in Torquay, Philip Savvas is of Greek-Cypriot parentage from Kato Drys. He paints a great deal and was trained by Kyriakos Lyras, an exceptionally fine water-colourist based in Lefkara, by his mother, Haroula Savvas, an artist, and Anetta Stylianou, both former pupils of Lyras.

Philip is also influenced by the super paintings of Telemachos Kanthos and has had his own art work exhibited at Diachroniki Gallery, Ledra Street. This firmly places him in the school of Cypriot traditional painting and his landscapes of this country and village activities are extraordinarily beautiful, well observed and have exceptionally sensitive brushwork.

Philip is also fascinated by countries and travel. He loves, admires and also learns from and paints of different cultures – especially tribes.

He helped finance the Kalash Literacy Project and was lucky enough to visit the Kalash Valleys in the summer of 2002 on the North West Frontier of Pakistan.

The Kalash are descended from the army of Alexander the Great. They worship Dionyssus and Zeus’s brother Di Zau. They still speak a language akin to Greek and dance and live like the ancients did.

Philip says " Of course like any indigenous minority they are vulnerable to their surroundings and the modern world. Hopefully my work expresses this and emphasizes their uniqueness.

In 2002 Philip decided to paint a series of paintings for exhibiting in honour of the Kalash and hopefully to help their education and medical centre in Peshawar. This will hopefully be later in year in Thessaloniki, the Kalash spiritual home.

Philip says he has had a wonderful year painting scenes of Cyprus – especially the beautiful village of Kato Drys.

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Still On

Supernova – Constellations The Power House

Until July 22

Bringing together 27 artists from Britain, Greece and Cyprus SUPERNOVA – CONSTELLATIONS comprises painting, sculpture, video and installation, confirming that geometric abstraction is far from over, but has, rather, been absorbed and transformed by a new generation of artists.

Thalassa: A huge exhibition based on the sea at Gallery K has already opened and will continue until July 31. There are at least 30 entries in this water marathon. Oil too. Cool off at Gallery K.

Apocalypse has a summer MIXED exhibition until 15t September 15.

Last Thursday at Kypriaki Gonia, Larnaca was the opening /installation (with birds) of Iota Ioanides’ magnificent structure which will carry on throughout the month.

Street Art -Colour Explosion the 3rd Private exhibition of George Heracleous continues at 42 Elenis Paleologinas Street, Limassol until 26th of the month. It is being held under the auspices of Pegasus Art Foundation.

Photo captions.

A: A Gold

Rhea Bailey receives her medal in Washington

(there is also a disk)

Philip Savvas

1: Philip Savas: Platanos Plane Tree. Kato Drys.

2:

3:

4:

5: Kalash Dancers

6:

7: The Artist at the Kalash Museum Pakistan

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ARTS

LIA

Nadia Nicolaides

celebrates 40 years

NADIA NICOLAIDES has celebrated 40 years of teaching dance since the formation of her Dance Academy in Limasssol, with a performance last week at Limassol’s Pattichion Municipal Theatre.

Yes, it was Nadia who choreographed a huge homage to The Pink Panther when just after the 1974 invasion, Limassol’s Carnival boasted hundreds of perfectly costumed and perfectly timed Pink Panthers thronging the streets. I remember it well.

We survived.

At the packed the Pattichion for three nights last week - a film of it should be sent to every dance capital overseas - Nadia presented Maskarada.

This is a brilliant symbolic achievement of survival. True Cyprus dance art.

Maskarada, originally entitled "All The World’s a Stage," certainly reflects the complexity of life now and Nadia, with her assistants, gave us an evening of two hours hitting the contemporary notes without a fault

The Nicholaides Dance Academy was founded in 1967 by Nadia (Lambrou) Nicholaides and gave its first public performance at the Rialto Theatre in December 1972.

As Nadia mentioned in her dedication to the anniversary performance: "In the town of Limassol where we all live, work and play, the town where the arts had their beginnings and flourished.

Whether it’s our birthplace or adopted town, we must all remember that the greatest threat to its future is indifference."

A Cypriot raised in Africa, her natural ability for dance was noticed at a young age and she was awarded a scholarship to study at the Valdette Studio of dance in Zambia.

As an active member of the Junior Musical Society she participated in stage and television performances.

She furthered her dance studies at the University of Cape Town Ballet School.

While a student there, Nadia was chosen by the artistic director to dance with the professional danced company the ballets Firebird and Giselle. On her return to Cyprus in 1967, she established her own dance school in Limassol, The Studio of Ballet.

As a pioneer of dance on the island, she introduced, taught and promoted the Royal Academy of Dance (RAD) in education and also the Cecetti and Tap syllabi and ever since has remained a staunch supporter and a key figure in the growth of the Royal Academy of Dance’s activities in Cyprus.

A number of her former pupils are now RAD-affiliated teachers.

She began a collaboration with CyBC Television where the Dance Academy’s productions were filmed and promoted here and abroad.

She also promoted dance through the various societies she founded, held office in, or participated in as a key member.

Nadia was invited by Loulou Symeonidou to set up and direct the Dance Department of the Ethnikon Odeion (national Conservatory) in Nicosia, a post she held for many years, assisted by ballet teacher Christiana Perentou.

Nadia has also won praise as a stylist and designer of theatrical and dancers’ costumes.

For eight continuous years, she spearheaded the organising of the International Summer dance Schools under the artistic direction of Lambros Lambrou in conjunction with Ballet Austin, the support of the friends of dance associates Ria Danielidou and Doros Heroas and the Cultural Services of the Ministry of Eucation and Culture.

Nadia was instrumental, as coordinator between the Cyprus government and Ballet Austin in Texas, in raising sponsorship for the world premiere of Lambros Lambrou’s ballet "Ulysses."

Nadia has two daughters, Natalie and Nicole - who are both dance educators - and has three grandchildren.

Maskarada

THE audience’s considerable excitement at Pattichion before the performance actually began was captured and they were given two hours of enthrallment from start to finish.

Evocative costumes, masks and headgear; black and white became colour. Even the hems of skirts had a life of their own, going this way and that. The tiniest tot relied on individual talents, not just because she was knee-high to teenagers but because she could dance well, too.

Males - whether hip-hopping or simply partnering or just adding choreographed stage business - knew just what they were doing.

At one moment when there had been lots of tap a slipper whizzed past my seat from an enthusiastic member of the audience.

A huge ballooned basket came from the skies and swung over a part of the stalls.

White drapes appeared from nowhere. The march of clogs, smiling and survivalistic was positive and not in the least militaristic.

This was youthful energy.

The cloggies had smiles on them and could pirouette if need be.

It was as if Degas had met Jackson Pollock and got wed.

Supernova-

Constellations

BRINGING together 27 artists from Britain, Greece and Cyprus Supernova-Constellations at the Powerhouse comprises painting, sculpture, video and installation, confirming that geometric abstraction is far from over, but has, rather, been absorbed and transformed by a new generation of artists.

While abstraction lies very much at the core of this exhibition, the works themselves are wide-ranging and diverse.

Supernova, featuring British artists, was curated by Caroline Douglas at the British Council, and was followed, in response, by the creation of Constellations, featuring Cypriot and Greek artists, curated by Yiannis Toumazis, at The Power House.

Phillip Allen, by Caroline Douglas.

"Phillip Allen’s paintings are born out of a continuous practice of sketching. Working on a small scale, on A5 paper, using felt pens, the sketches chart the inception and development of his abstract forms and arrangements.

"Typically, variations of particular formal arrangements will be pursued through a vast number of sketches, which are then developed in small series of paintings on boards of different sizes.

The scale and media of the paintings identifies them as gallery-based work, and Allen speaks about the ‘paradox of painting’ as the struggle played out within the traditional confines of the rectangular canvas.

"He likens the activity of painting to the Escher drawing of a staircase, which defies visual logic by playing with perspective so that the flights of stairs interlock in physically impossible ways.

"It is a hermetically closed field of endeavour, emphatically non-representational, which perpetually turns about itself to find new paths to explore."

Hirst skull solo show

takes $250m in sales

LONDON (Reuters)

British artist Damien Hirst's latest solo show "Beyond Belief" at London's White Cube gallery, which closes this weekend, has taken $250m in sales in just five weeks, the gallery said.

And that does not include the star work, a diamond encrusted platinum skull whose sale for an asking price of $100.5m is still under negotiation.

"The show has realised a quarter of a billion dollars worth of sales without the skull," a spokesman for the gallery said.

Apart from the skull, the show has many new works by Hirst including pickled creatures, a dove suspended in mid-air, a flayed human statue holding its own skin and a series of pictures of a Caesarean birth operation on Hirst's wife.

The 42-year-old is expected to take a 70% cut of the proceeds with the gallery taking the remaining 30%.

The past month has been a good one for the boy from Bristol.

Hirst, who first made his name with diced and pickled quadrupeds, last month became the world's most expensive living artist at auction when his "Lullaby Spring" pill cabinet sold at Sotheby's for £9.6m.

But the diamond encrusted skull is by far the most precious piece to date by Hirst, already a millionaire several times over.

As an indication of the wealth he has amassed since being spotted in 1991 by BritArt mogul Charles Saatchi, Hirst, who financed the skull himself, said he couldn't remember whether it had cost £10 or £15 m to make.

The skull, cast from a 35-year-old 18th century European male, is coated with 8,601 diamonds, including a large pink diamond worth more than £4m in the centre of its forehead.

Hirst said he was inspired by similarly bejewelled Aztec skulls. While the skull is platinum and the diamonds flawless - and ethically sourced, Hirst stressed - the teeth are real.

"It was very important to put the real teeth back. Like the animals in formaldehyde you have got an actual animal in there. It is not a representation. I wanted it to be real," he told Reuters when the skull was first unveiled to the public.

Hirst, whose works regularly fetch millions of pounds, said he hoped the skull would not be snapped up by a private buyer and taken away from public view.

"It would be sad it it ends up in a vault somewhere that nobody sees. Obviously I would like it to be on display," he said. "If anybody buys it, I would make that part of the conditions".

He rejected suggestions that his works were more a standing joke against the art establishment than real works of art.

But when asked what his next project would be he immediately replied: "Two diamond skeletons shagging - no, just kidding."

Still on

THE recent exhibition at Gloria’s is of paintings by Dr Nicos Angelides and opened on Wednesday, July 4, at 8pm continuing until the 14th of the month.

Net income will be donated to the Red Cross home for Sick Children.

Remarkable work from a very talented artist (and surgeon) No 9 is better than those in any professional exhibition and at a hundredth of the usual price. Maybe next time Dr Angelides should exhibit some appliques. They could be brilliant.

Thalassa: A huge exhibition based on the sea at Gallery k has already opened and willcontinue until July 31. At least 30 entries for this water marathon. Oil, too. Cool off at Gallery k.

Apocalypse has a summer mixed exhibition until September 15.

Last night (Thursday) at Kypriaki Gonia was the opening /installation (with birds) of Iota Ioannides’ magnificent structure which will carry on throughout the month.

New collection from

Cyprus poet

CYPRIOT poet Avraam Constantinou is hard at work at his second selection of poems following the success of his work ‘East of Rome.’

Limassol-born Constantinou, 30, has reecevied an award from Lapithos Municipality for ‘East of Rome,’ and, having studied journalism, has cooperated with several local papers - including ones across the Green Line - and the bi-communal ‘Dialogue.’

Apart from Greek, Constantinou also speaks English and Turkish.

Constantinou’s latest poetic works are inspired by the Epirus area of Greece.

He has also enjoyed cooperation with well-known Greek composer Christos Yiannopoulos.

‘East of Rome,’ which Constantinou describes as an examination of the Hellenic soul, is available from most bookshops.

It was brought out by Power Publishing.

Some excerpts, translated from the original Greek into English, follow: "Quieten down Mrs Despina and do not shed too many tears, in years and time, it will be ours again..."

"The aroma of lemon blossoms fills the air/the nightingales sing/I take handfuls of Paradise’s water to drink."