Island of lust gallery8/15/2023 ![]() ![]() The clay objects are left out in the sun they perch on any suitable surface along the rocky path leading to the slaughterhouse cities are built on rocks. People have made clay columns a donkey with a monkey on its back a man lying down with a cat coming out of his belly a sickle and hammer a man sitting on a bench. Anyone can come to the space and make 'whatever' - there is an abundance of clay. ![]() The slaughterhouse has been turned into a ceramics studio (complete with images printed out for inspiration: the bronze head of Poseidon, for instance, celebrities.). The next morning, we visited Urs Fischer's interactive installation/project, Yes, at the Deste Slaughterhouse - the Hydra project space for Dakis Joannou's DESTE Foundation. Henry Miller (whose Colossus of Maroussi is a memoir on his time in the country) Picasso (who once drew a picture of a dove over the Parthenon in support of jailed activist Manolis Glezos) John Fowles (whose epic The Magus is based on the Greek island of Spetses) and Leonard Cohen (with a home on Hydra) are all artists who have been enamoured by Greece one way or another. Greece is bountiful when it comes to the sheer beauty of its natural landscape, and the proof is in the artistic responses to it. When the crisis hit, that slogan became painfully ironic. Returning to Hydra by water taxi that night, a saying came to mind: 'Live your Myth in Greece.' The Ministry of Tourism coined it years ago. An impromptu intervention, Papadopoulos's instinct was, quoting another artist, 'perfect.' It ended with a rumbling, poly-sonic set by The Callas in full performance-band mode, during which time artist Panos Papadopoulos, wearing sunglasses, coolly (and stealthily) stripped naked and inserted himself, as if from the shadows, between the ray-banned Callassettes - (think Robert Palmer/Nico) - wearing nothing but white lace capes and white panties, positioned around a tree. Performances started at around 8pm, and included a sunset walk up a hill to view two women simulating hetero-sex on the roof of The Callas's house down on the field below (kudos to collector Laura Skoler, the first to clock that it was two women to begin with). ![]() Painter Aliki Panagiotopoulou described his writing as reminiscent of the Marquis de Sade, and The Great Eastern as an account of a journey from one side of the world to another and everything that happened in between.īut the Greek art scene has always been a resolute one. Later, Maria Papadimtriou hosted a pyrrhic ceremony of barbequed Greek village sausage.Ĭurated by Nadja Argyropoulou, this year's iteration of Lustlands: Vol.II, The Great Eastern (After Embiricos), was named after an epic story penned by 20th century Greek surrealist writer and photographer Andreas Embiricos. We had the pleasure of watching Pavlos Tsakonas assemble a maquette of a Minoan bull painted fleshy pink with a bevvy of candy-coloured, robed boys scrambling onto its back, conceptualised and produced in collaboration with Stelios Karamanolis. Dogs abounded, and artists were setting up in their numbers. The sun was high cicadas were clicking fig trees made the arid landscape feel moist and cool. (The ride to the Peloponnese from Athens is pretty amazing, as is the 20-minute ferry from Hydra, an island two hours from Athens.)įrom an island to the mainland, we arrived at Lustlands at around 5pm. Lustlands feels more like a celebration than an 'event' - a small gathering open to all who can get here. Hosted at the country home of Lakis and Aris Ionas, who form the art-cum-performance outfit, The Callas, the happening effectively happens in the middle of a field in Thermissia, situated on the Peloponnese peninsula. Conceived in 2012, it is a day of performances, a pop-up group exhibition, a barbeque, and a campsite. In a country Henry Miller once observed as 'aimless, anarchic, thoroughly and discordantly human,' this report begins at Lustlands. ![]()
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