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Hi, it's great to be in your studio finally.
I've seen so many pictures of it from all these different angles that it's fantastic
to be here in person.
So glad to have you finally here to see the work in the flesh.
Yes, me too.
Speaking of the work in the flesh, I wanted to maybe first start by asking you about all
the different elements that I see around, all these fragments of things.
And when I mean things, they really are completely random things.
I'm looking at cut out yoga mats on the floor.
I'm looking at leaves.
I'm looking at little pieces of sequins everywhere.
I'm looking at threads.
Yeah, there is a lot going on in the studio.
And as well as sketches on the wall.
It's like fragments is a very key part of your practice and of what the work means.
So can you walk us through the meaning of fragments and how fragments are integrated
in your work?
Yeah, absolutely.
So I often collect found objects that I'm attracted to instantly.
And I feel this desire to bring them back to the studio, having no idea exactly what's
going to become of them.
I'm initially attracted to things that I find beautiful.
And because I often think about notions, notions of beauty, I kind of unpack the objects I
bring back to the studio, but by taking them completely apart.
So this is quite a laborious and meditative process whereby I'll sit on my yoga mat and
take an object completely to pieces.
I completely fragmented.
And this means that each fragment will have in a way its own agency and can become part
of a completely new landscape.
So what you can see around the studio is different objects I've collected over the years that
I've taken up, that I've taken to pieces and they kind of unpredictably become part of
the surface.
And actually, I never really know what the end result will be of taking the object apart.
But all I know is that these fragments will have agency to start talking about a variety
of different subjects, whether that be pink dolphins or an archaeological fragment found
in a lefcina.
I try to think about different notions through the surface and through these fragments.
So that's why they're kind of spread around my studio because they always have the potential
to become part of the next work.
So walk me through this idea.
You're, let's say, out and about in Athens running an errand.
How do you actually look?
Well, I'm one of those people that is generally just kind of looking around on the floor.
I mean, I'm kind of attracted in general to waste and to detritus.
And I've always picked up things as a child and brought crap back to the house.
So this isn't something new.
It's something that I've always kind of done is bringing things back that I find really
beautiful and I don't know why.
And I end up thinking about that as it sits in my studio for long periods of time.
But like a few days ago, I found a pink birdcage in the trash near my house.
And it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, really.
It's like the shadows of the lines through the birdcage.
Where is it?
It's in my house still.
I need to bring it.
But kind of anything has the capacity, I think, for beauty.
And I love the idea of repurposing things that were on their way to become absolute
decay.
So, yes, if I'm going on a walk, like you say, running an errand, if something catches
my eye, I will without a doubt bring it back to the studio no matter what the size of this
thing is, whether it could be tiny and it could be large.
So is it an idea of basically needing to share or to show the beauty that you see in that
work to more people because it's a discarded object that is supposedly valueless and therefore
without beauty?
Exactly.
In a way, I feel like I'm trying to slow down the process because I've been thinking for
years about the fast pace of object to trash.
And because obviously as consumers, things become trash before they've even reached that
point in their life as objects.
So in a way, I'm trying to honor things around us that have too quickly become trash, which
I see some kind of beauty within them.
And then I unpack their beauty and try to show in a way others their beauty through
the surface.
So this could happen directly or more indirectly.
Like my painting could be an allusion to an object or to the life of an object.
But I'm trying to kind of capture.
So I might take the object apart and then it physically becomes part of the work.
Or I might be using it to paint over and over again until I've exhausted it.
So Lydia, another thing that struck me when I first saw your work, but now that I'm here
seeing it in the flesh, is the incredible amount of layering that you have worked with.
You've spent time in TINOS at the sculpture school.
There's many different dimensions and the fragments that you salvage are multi-dimensional.
But what I find really interesting in each and every one of the works that I'm seeing
here is that they are multi-layered while being displayed on a two-dimensional canvas.
But even the canvas itself, which is unstretched, has another life.
There's a kind of an infinity, in a sense, where things can continue to be layered and
layered and layered.
Can you dissect this a little bit more?
Yeah, sure.
I mean, there are layers in my work, you're absolutely right.
And in a way, for me to be able to reference all these kinds of different objects which
have their own histories, there have to be layers involved.
For me to be able to think about the relationship between scenes that I've witnessed or objects
that I've picked up, and in a way because my work has a lot to do with memory as well
and memory of places, there has to be layers for me to be able to kind of wedge them all
together.
So obviously in my work, there's always thread, thread plays a crucial role in my work.
Because generally I'm very attracted to line and the potential of line, and that's where
the grid comes in as well.
So in a way, one of those layers, one of the crucial layers is the grid, art historically
as well, but also in terms of me being able to control my own process, I need to implement
some kind of structure in my work, and that's one of the layers.
And is the structure connected to a story?
The structure of the grid is the literal way in which I'm able to allow the painting to
grow.
So that's kind of a technique I use to be able to connect disparate things.
In terms of the acrylics, for instance, that I use on the surface, this is the more uncontrolled
layer where the paint spreads in its own way.
I can't really control it because it's not primed, so the paint seeps through the surface
in whichever way it will.
But then when I start using graphite, or I start using sequins from a throwaway skirt
or hedgehog spines, all these things are very deliberate gestures on the surface which I
can control, but those are inextricably linked with the idea of textile, and fragments becoming
a textile as well.
So I like to think I'm in the realm of working between painting and textile.
But tell me, you have in some cases started a work where there wasn't enough space for
you to actually create what you wanted to, so you've had to add space, which is really
interesting where you've had to stitch and expand the space in an ad hoc traditional
way.
I mean, it's almost like a collage of canvas.
But then the stitching itself becomes part of the work.
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I'm interested in a way in everything showing, and that's why, for instance, with
the grid, I never go and erase evidence of having used a grid to unravel the surface.
You know, if I work on some arbitrary size of canvas, I like the idea that the gestures
that I've made will kind of then interfere with the rest of it, and if I need to add
more surface to it, then I will, because the marks need to expand, they need to go on further.
But because my work is quite unplanned, there's a lot of room, in a way, for unpredictable
gestures, and that's part of the process that I really enjoy, that a painting could start
off quite small, but then become much larger through fragments coming together.
So in a way, the notion of the fragment is something which is involved in the whole process,
not just the physical act of bringing fragments back to the studio.
But tell me something, when you talk about fragments, it takes me to, somehow, archaeology,
artifacts, broken pieces of an ancient sculpture, and we're sitting here in Athens, and both
antiquity and also Byzantine culture has played a role in your work, in forming your aesthetics
and the research that you've done.
Can you elaborate a little bit more on this relationship and the connections?
Yeah, absolutely, and what you're saying is really important, because actually, I remember
going to museums growing up as a kid in Athens and being very attracted to fragments of sculptures,
where there was pieces of a frieze, for instance, that were displayed alongside casts of what
would be the whole.
So there was always this idea of how was the whole recreated for the purpose of showing
an audience what the frieze looked like in ancient Greece, for example.
And that kind of possibility and trying to envision what things looked like back in ancient
Greece is something that sparked my interest in finding fragments of everyday life and
what kind of narrative they belonged to.
And I think, in general, there's something so captivating by these archaeological fragments,
where we don't know exactly what the rest of the statue or the monument looked like.
So it's up to us to use our imagination and facts that we have on that period to piece
together what the whole would be.
So I'm constantly, in a way, trying to imagine a new whole for these fragments that I collect.
But it's a story that you create.
It's a story that I create.
Sometimes it doesn't feel that way, because when I bring back someone to the studio, it
feels like I'm just telling the story of that object.
I'm not making it up.
Maybe that sounds crazy, but I feel like a duty to a thing, a duty to an object.
And it does become part of a new narrative, in a way, but using its kind of pure existence,
if I may say.
So in terms of the narrative of these found objects and what can be created out of them,
we've had a conversation where you've talked about being influenced by the whole Art in
Povera movement and the kind of the philosophy behind what they were trying to communicate.
Can you say a little bit more about how that feeds into your work or how that allows you
to create work?
Yeah, certainly.
So I kind of started looking into the Art of Povera movement when I was at Goldsmith.
And obviously I had known about the work of Yannis Kounelis, for instance, but I was particularly
attracted to the way in which he had used mundane materials and given them a sort of
extravagance in the space that they were exhibited.
So I think that was kind of a moment whereby seeing his work and seeing how the everyday
could be incorporated into a work using exactly the colour of the material and not changing
it in any way, I think that made me start being able to use found objects and appreciate
them as they are and not intervening with them too much.
So actually the only way in which I intervene with the actual object would be the fragmentation
of it and taking it apart, but not actually changing the colour of it, for instance.
So I'd say that the Art of Povera movement influenced my confidence in using found objects
that I'm attracted to.
And in referencing the grid with a capital G, many different artists come to mind, but
in particular I would say Agnes Martin because it's also somebody I think that you are interested
in her practice.
Well, you know, one of the main things I was attracted to with Agnes Martin's work was
the titles of her work and for instance a painting of hers called Little Sister, one
of her earlier works.
I just really liked the kind of intimacy of her titles and how they linked with the grid.
In a way she kind of saw the whole world through the grid and I see the potential of line like
that as well.
So in a way her sensibility of the grid is something I felt very attracted to and mesmerised
by.
Can you define to me what the grid is for you?
For me the grid is the answer to how I work.
So thinking about many disparate things at the same time, whether that be a throwaway
object and how that links with a Byzantine motif for instance, the grid will allow these
things to have a dialogue.
So in a way the grid for me is allowing for a dialogue to take place between seemingly
disparate things.
So is it like a conduit?
Yeah, it is.
It's like a gateway.
Maybe a gateway is a good way of describing it.
Because even though my work seems completely abstract, there is a structure underlying
the abstraction and there's a structure underlying the gestures that take place on the surface.
So the grid in a way is a fundamental structure to think about the disparate notions that
I'm looking at and it's a way for things to coexist.
But interestingly you can use many different things to create the grid.
It's not about making it just out of graphite or out of a pencil.
Is that correct?
It is correct.
Initially though, because my works start off with these kind of arbitrary gestures and
then the grid comes along afterwards, the grid is kind of dependent on what these gestures
are like as well, aesthetically, materialistically.
So as I had mentioned before as well, the grid kind of might come a quarter of the way
in or it might come a bit later in the work.
But the grid generally is what allows the fragments from the found object to be placed.
So for instance the sequence moves along the grid and that's why they have a symmetry as
well.
There's a mathematical kind of symmetry in the way that the sequence spreads.
Those parts are not random.
So the grid allows for this balance between control and abstraction.
One thing that really speaks and is so wonderfully refreshing in your work is your choice of
colors, particularly pink.
And I love the way that you have, I think, spent a lot of time looking into pink and
the meaning of the color pink because it's not just about Barbie and the current fashion
of pink, let's say.
Yeah.
But also in terms of the whole connection with spirituality, with the Byzantine liturgy
as well as in connection with blood and dolphins.
Can you just talk to us a little bit about pink?
Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I initially became interested in pink when my grandfather was dying in the hospital.
My first actual connection with pink was through death.
And my grandfather died of sepsis and watching the way the color of his skin gradually changed,
I suddenly became very attracted to an interest in the role of pink in decay.
So in a way, thinking about pink started from something very dark.
But I actually started to find a lot of comfort when my grandfather passed away in pink.
For me, pink has this solace about it.
It's a very comforting color.
It's an unthreatening color.
And so there's a personal significance in pink, and that's how it all began.
But then I kind of started looking at pink in Byzantine iconography and reading about
that while I was in Tinos.
And there wasn't much written about the significance of the pink found in Saints' Roads, for instance.
There was a lot written about the blue and the red, but not much written about the pink.
And pink does play a massive role in Byzantine iconography, but there's not much written
about the symbolism of that.
So in a way, I do use pink to think about a variety of disparate notions.
But something I had read recently about pink dolphins, as you mentioned, was the fact that
they're not in themselves pink.
It's the blood showing through their gray skin, which gives them the appearance of being
pink.
So then I started thinking about pink again as a force of life.
And that linked to what I had said initially about starting to think about pink and decay,
because they seem like they'd be quite disparate, because pink is also a color that seems sometimes
frivolous or artificial.
But yeah, through these dolphins, and this is why I began to use them as a repeated motif
in my work, is that pink can allude to notions of wisdom, for instance.
The older we get, the wiser we get, and in a way, these animals become, their pink becomes
more intensified as they get older, showing their wisdom.
So I'm kind of interested in pink having the capacity to talk about a variety of different
notions that we wouldn't initially associate.
And so usually, it's a color that I use in the first kind of abstract gesture that I
make on the surface.
And that is something that I find quite comforting.
But then other colors start to emerge through, it could be through a body of water, the body
of water that the dolphin is in.
It could emerge through the color of the found object.
So all the layers of colors reference the different narratives of the objects.
It references different phases of life.
But you keep coming back to this color.
I do keep coming back to this color, but there are times where through graphite, for instance,
if I'm using pink and graphite, the pink becomes more purple.
So I'm interested in the kind of organic decay of the color on the surface.
And if the pink is going to become purple, or if it's going to become more red, I allow
for that to happen.
I don't force pink into my work.
But yeah, like I said, initially, when I'm painting the subject, whether that be a pair
of throwaway shoes, or a pair of pink dolphins that I think are in love, the pink has the
same value, no matter what it's depicting.
All the objects are treated in the same way.
And I'm interested in there not being a hierarchy between the fragments in the painting.
They're all just part of a language of stuff.
Tell me, what would you like your work to be saying to people?
How would you like people to walk away after seeing your work?
I think what's important for me is the viewer starting to notice things, notice things around
them in everyday life.
Start thinking about things that are on their way out, things that are, you know, being
ready to throw away, whether that be a piece of furniture or something that the audience
are very quickly to turn into rubbish, to kind of think about the process of objects,
the life of objects, trying to give things more of an opportunity to still exist before
discarding it.
So for me, it would be more of a change in attitude towards things around us and appreciation
of objects.
So I think definitely to slow down in a way, and that would be a success if I could make
work where the viewer would just in their everyday life slow down a little.
And what would be your dream project to create that is something you aspire to do that you
haven't been able to do yet because of scale, because of circumstances, etc.?
Yeah.
I'm aiming for the idea of whatever I make on a small scale now, for that to be able
to transcend surfaces.
So what you can see now on the floor with the yoga mats, for instance, this was kind
of an organic spill of my works onto the surface I've been sitting on to unpick all the found
objects.
So for me, the goal is kind of to let any object have the capacity to become something
else.
So the work that I'm proceeding to make for the next few months will be accumulating yoga
mats, discarded yoga mats from women all over Athens to make a giant collage of these embroidered
motifs cut out in each yoga mat, but they're all going to become part of one whole.
So in a way, I'm starting to think about how the viewer will experience my work because
I'm interested in everything making sense as you're looking.
So instead of just stretching the canvases or framing them, there's going to be a more
elaborate way of stepping onto all these yoga mats and thinking about the histories of these
individual objects and how they've become part of one whole and what it means to look
at a piece of work and be stepping on something which has so much history in a way.
So I'm kind of interested in how my work can start becoming an experience rather than just
an object to look at.
As you're talking here, you currently have your canvases displayed.
There's almost a kind of a transparency where one can see through one canvas into another.
And there's a very fluid way of interacting with your work.
Absolutely.
And thinking about exhibiting my work, there needs to be a reflection of the studio as
well because the way in which some works are hung, some works are starting to emerge on
the floor, I think there needs to be an honest reflection of that when thinking about how
to exhibit them.
And it's more about creating like a world for the viewer of these things rather than
just showing glimpses through surfaces.
Right.
And that world you've referred, you've talked about Elefcina, about Dinos.
How do you think nature fits into your work or how your work could be in nature?
Well, just by the way in which the process is so organic and unpredictable, that's an
instant reference to nature in a way.
And the geometry in a lot of my work can link to fractals, for instance, and the repetition
of fractals.
So the way in which my work can be kind of rolled up and taken to a place is also a kind
of reflection of the nature of my work because I can roll it up and take it to a quarry,
for instance, or take it to a forest and get some inspiration as to how the colors will
unfold on the surface.
So there's a very direct link with nature as I'm making the work as well.
And when I'm stuck, this is often something I do is take the...
So like it's a conversation.
You take it into the space.
Yeah.
I'll take it to a space that I'll find quite mesmerizing, like a green quarry in Dinos,
for instance.
That has helped the last body of work evolve massively just in the way in which like the
artificial lake reflects the lines in the marble.
That's something that stuck with me for a long time and became a recurring element in
the surface of my work.
But also, for instance, a lot of the horizontal lines have to do with the rapid growth of
bamboo, for instance, and the way in which these bamboo shoots evolve as they're growing.
So there's a constant transformative element, transformative potential in my work, and that
does come directly from nature.
But why bamboo?
My dad actually, who lives in China, has been bringing bamboo to grow in his garden, and
that is one of his avid passions, and it's something that we often talk about.
So bamboo is actually something that I enjoy discussing with my father, and it's sometimes
the colors of bamboo and the way in which they grow kind of indirectly impacts the surface.
They grow easily in Greece?
No, there aren't that many types of bamboo in contrast to how many there are in China.
There are many more different types, and one that he brought recently was like the belly
Buddha bamboo, which starts having curves as it grows.
So I was kind of interested in thinking about the notion of growth and how the line becomes
a curve, and this happens in my work all the time, that this transformative potential between
the vertical or horizontal line becoming a wave or referencing a found object.
All this kind of goes back to drawing as well, which is like the underlying foundation of
my work.
Lydia, one of the things that I think they're coming back to is you're working on unstretched
canvas, that suppleness that seems to be so key to you interacting with the work in a
way that when you describe a stretched canvas that it somehow hinders you, hinders a certain
process, and there's a physicality there that is somehow uncomfortable.
Yeah, certainly.
I find working on stretched canvas hindering and actually there's something too official
about it which wouldn't let the work unfold in its own way.
So working on unprimed and unstretched canvas allows for the idea that the painting could
go on infinitely, which I think is a lot more powerful than having edges which the viewer
is confined by when viewing the work.
So as I had mentioned also previously to Tamara, the notion that the lines from one painting
could organically ascend to the next painting is extremely important because I need there
to be a flow of elements from one work to the next because that maintains a kind of
honesty in the work.
But you don't think that can happen with stretched canvas?
I think it can happen for other artists on stretched canvas but for me there's something
about the fluidity of textile which allows for more literal transitioning from one work
to another.
The way that the threads fall from the unstretched canvas does something in my mind that allows
me to go onto the next piece of fabric and that means my relationship to the work is
somehow kind of softer.
There's a fragility about it which makes sense with all the things I collect as well.
So working on primed canvas makes sense for the notions that I'm talking about.
But it seems to be almost like a physical, there's a physical element to it that is just
much more comfortable for you.
Certainly and I feel that that would be the same for the viewer as well because I think
people are often feel a threat or like an intimidation from paintings that are officialised
in this way of stretching them.
Actually I think they're more easy to access for the viewer as unstretched fragments, as
moments in a way because there's a fluidity in the unstretched that I think passes something
different onto the viewer.
One last question is I love the title of your work, The Banana Falls Very Far From the Tree.
Right, again, so that's really important that you mention that because I started thinking
about how far the consumer is from the origin of the consumer object.
So in a way that the title was kind of like a play on words from the apple doesn't fall
far from the tree.
But in a way I wanted that title to reflect how far we are from many of the things that
we consume in our everyday lives.
But then also what is interesting is that this is the work that we're also exploring
as a variation and in terms of blog printing.
What are your thoughts and feelings about that and why did you choose that work particularly?
Well it was the first painting that truly behaved as a textile.
So in the way that I showed you that the painting started off on a small piece of canvas but
needed to then grow and because it was on this isolated fragment I needed to add more
canvas to the side and sew them in order for it to be one stable whole.
For me it made sense that an object that I treated as a textile for that to then carry
on as textile in the way that we worked on it in the workshop.
So I think it made sense the painting that was treated most as a fabric for its evolution
to become something else.
And the fact that someone else is creating that work with your collaboration, how does
that make you feel?
Well you know it felt like an honour because the thought process behind making the work
was quite complicated and unusual that I was quite interested to see how someone else would
interpret the marks or even what the hell the painting could be about you know.
So there was a lot of layers that I was unsure about how they were going to be grasped but
I felt so touched in a way by how people that I've never met before would interpret the
painting and try to mimic elements of the painting.
Yeah and I think they've done a very sincere, it's been a very painstaking job.
Very much looking forward to seeing that.
Yeah me too, me too.
Thank you very much Lydia.
Thank you Tamara.