A Place Called Space: EMST - the permanent collection: 1

Sunday, 6 September 2020

EMST - the permanent collection: 1

There have been many 'at lasts' in this blog recently: as the lockdown has been easing we have been able to do lots more things, things we had not done for quite some time. Last Sunday was my first visit to an art gallery for over six months and it was such a pleasure.

We visited EMST in Athens (National Museum of Contemporary Art) as their permanent collection has finally been installed. The new museum is wonderful and if you want to read more about it, you can go here

It's a wonderful collection, spanning three floors. Not a painting in sight! I am still not sure how I will organise what we saw into blogposts, but this is just an introduction of some of the exhibits that are dotted about outside the main galleries.

As we tried to enter the museum, a security guard indicated we should wait outside. He came out, took Ken's temperature, allowed him to go in, closed the door, and then he took mine before I could enter. Inside, the security checks are like being at an airport: bags through the x-ray machine, individuals walking through the x-ray arch, and body checks for a 'select' few.

Having successfully negotiated all of the above, we decided to start from the 4th floor, the top floor. Three floors house the permanent exhibition. There are no temporary exhibitions at present.

Artemis Potamianou, Just Untitled, 2014 (mixed media)

The stacked painting frames form a two-level column creating a symbol for all those artworks which remain unrecorded, forgotten or omitted from art history books, yet remain an inextricable part of the history of art. Potamianou often creates works that deal with the artwork itself while at the same time criticising and questioning established institutions and the official version of art history.