Before the storm

 

Mon Coin Studio - Aigaio

Mon Coin Studio, Athens.

I have mixed feelings about this place. As I have said before, I am not very keen on the ceramics they exhibit, but this is a matter of taste. Furthermore, this is the second (out of three) times I have been in the shop and was told they did not know the price of something I asked about. There wasn't even the offer to ring me after they had found out what the price was. Not very competent, or professional, and they don't seem to care.

This is a new venture however, and I do feel the need to support it, but I do get frustrated every time I go in. The whole operation seems to be very haphazard: the second time I visited I was told in a very adamant way, that taking photographs was not allowed - the other times I was encouraged to take photographs. They don't seem to know what they are doing.

Studio Aristotelis Barakos

Antigone Pantazi

Kika Ninari

Manos Kalamenos

Evi Geo

Akron Aoton

Haris Panousopoulos

3Some Ceramics

Pink Dolphin

Maria Marinoglou

Dora Morphi

 

The launch

Often, when we go swimming or for a walk, we see lots of sailing boats on the horizon. The other day, on our way to Skippers we saw them being launched while we walked past the sailing school in Alimos  marina. 

It's school children, and we were amazed at how competent and confident they seemed to be.

Two and a half hours later, after a fairly long walk and a pleasant hour at Skippers, we could see the boats in the horizon. Not easy to spot them, as they were very far, and I had to zoom in, but they are faintly discernible in the distance. 

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I had written this up and was planning on posting it the next day, but then we came across another group of children in Floisvos Marina.

Three sailing boats were being led in by a rescue boat

you can see the rope in this photograph

Ready to step out of the boats on to land

The man in the rescue boat wheeled over three trailers and then he disappeared - the rest was up to the children

who wheeled their boats 

to the water tap - one of the boys was already there, had cleaned his boat and was waiting for the others

The boats and their parts were hosed down. The children were very young and yet very competent and responsible. This keel is as high as the boy holding it up. My guess is that the two boys were around 7 years old, and the girl a bit older, maybe 9.

Fairy Tale for Adults, Giorgos Taxidis

Fairy Tale for Adults by Giorgos Taxidis at the Athens Art Gallery.

'I remember in 2015, when top of the news was a shocking image of a three year-old boy, somewhere on the Turkish coastline, with his face buried in the sand, abandoned as deceased, rising the number of drowned refugees and immigrants...

Tracing my own life and my ancestor's through texts, narratives, photos and videos I retrieve - or even better, 'recreate' - a memory that I lived through remembering or something that I had never experienced, but know it as if I had lived it. I was three years old, when my family repatriated in Greece. In my mother's arms with my two brothers and my father, driving from South Russia for endless hours through the frost, sleepless, turning on the engine of the car every ten minutes during the night, so that we didn't freeze. So did my grandparents when they left hunted and barefoot one night in 1918 from Pontus leaving their home and burning all their belongings. I will never forget the words of my grandmother: 'we are people without homeland'.

People migrate constantly seeking a better future, as I did when moving to the USA to study or as others did to survive from poverty, hunger and war. Our stories will always accompany us, simply common, familiar. And drawing will always hold the memory of our emotions transcending from individual to collective'. (Giorgos Taxidis).

Using his family history as a starting point, Taxidis explores the dynamics of migration, of the displacement of peoples and the hardship that follows. He surveys aspects of human mobility, the ways these affect our perception of social reality and how we position our own self within the contemporary world. This exploration of socio-cultural, personal and inter-personal narratives is carried out through his family archive, bringing to the fore topical current issues encompassing human movement and displacement.

His chosen mediums are pencil, charcoal, soft pastel, oil on canvas, lino print on paper, lithography and sculptures created with soil, roots, ash and acrylic glue. The images are hazy like photographs which are out of focus - just like our memories are.  They become reflections of our own memories, like abstract landscapes divulging the self-portrait of life. They are a manifestation of the need for continuity and the eternal battle for survival.

Funeral Scene, 2017, (oil on canvas)

In Red, 2018, (oil on canvas)

Out of the Ground, 2019, (soil, roots, acrylic glue)

Memories VI, 2017, (soft pastel on paper)

Memories VIII, 2017, (soft pastel on paper)

Memories II, 2018, (soft pastel on paper)

Human, 2020, (soil and acrylic glue)

Human II, 2019, (soil, ash, acrylic glue)

Fairy Tale for Adults, 2020, (pencil and charcoal on paper)

Forbidden Land, 2019, (lithograph on paper)

This looks like an abstract lithograph, but on closer inspection, there are no lines, but

a list of people and how they died in their quest for safety and a better life. 

A stunning piece.

Fragments of Absence, 2018, (linoleum on paper)

The fading of memories, until in the end, there is nothing left - a blank.