18 January 2007

Horst Weierstall at Argo Gallery HORST’S exhibition continues at Argo until January 27 and information on his new work was on this page last week.Horst was born in 1944 in Wuppertal, Gemany.He studied at Dartington College and Falmouth School of Art in England (1975-1981).Dartington was an institution that had close associations with the Indian philosopher Rabindra Tagore, the German architect Walter Gropius and the German dance choreographer Kurt Joos. Here he had his first contact with artists, writers, musicians and dancers who were interested in post-modern theories and interdisciplinary practices such as Steve Paxton, former collaborator with Robert Rauschenberg and John Cage, Mary Falkerson, Peter Hulton and others.He settled in Cyprus in 1981.He has made frequent journeys to his hometown of Wuppertal, where he linked up with the artists of the post-Fluxus movement. 1985 saw the beginning of a friendship with the German poet and writer, Joachim Sartorius.Over the years, he has made journeys to Berlin, Egypt, Jordan and Crete.In various installations, actions and performances he focuses on border situations concerning body, time, space and movement as inter-related phenomena. Since 1984, he has been involved in a series of events based on his conception ‘Momentum’ which started in Wuppertal, culminating in the 1989 Nicosia Green Line peace action Momentum V1. The aim of these activities was to encourage direct and indirect interaction with the audience/community. During 1979-2003 the artist linked up with other artists, performers and curators, e.g. from Germany, America, Holland, Greece, Armenia, England, Spain and Cyprus creating inter-cultural land interdisciplinary projects. He also created artists’ books of small and large scale often inspired by contemporary and classical literature, for instance Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Goethe, Aristotle and others. One of these projects ‘Riverbrook’ was presented in 1997/98 at the Melina Mercouri hall, Nicosia, Central Library, Wuppertal, Germany and the Municipal Arts Centre. He has also sown in Yerevan, Armenia (2000) and participated in the Artists Bookfair, London Institute, Tate Britain. Recently he has been a coordinator and artist participant in a research and performance project ‘One Square Foot’, at The Space, Nicosia and University of Exeter, England.Horst Weierstall is the co-founder of the multi-cultural artists’ community ‘The Space’ in Old Nicosia and he has been instrumental in teaching students at the Frederick Institute of Technology, Nicosia, over the past 10 years.Horst has had numerous exhibitions in Cyprus and abroad and represented Cyprus at the XXth Biennale in Alexandria in 1999 and the Xth Triennale in New Delhi, India, in 2001.He exhibition at Argo continues until January 27.
Artist turns Mount Everest'strash into treasuresBRUNSWICK (AP) Thousands of adventurers have been drawn to Mount Everest by the challenge of climbing to the top of the world. Jeff Clapp was drawn by the trash they leave behind.Inspired by a documentary about Everest's rubbish, Clapp travelled to Nepal and brought a load of discarded oxygen bottles back in 2004.He has created a business of transforming those banged-up aluminium containers into gleaming bells, bowls and ornaments with a goal of inspiring people to do more to clean up the environment in their own small ways, just as he has."One guy can make a difference," he said, whether by transforming trash into treasures, turning off lights, installing insulation or using less gas.What began as a "madcap idea" is now called Bells from Everest. Clapp has sold 35 bells and bowls so far.The trashing of Everest began even before Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay first scaled the world's tallest mountain in 1953. Hillary acknowledged leaving behind oxygen bottles, food containers and torn tents in a pile near his base camp.Like Hillary, virtually all hikers rely on oxygen because the air at Everest's summit has only one-third of the oxygen found at sea level. Over the years, hundreds of bottles piled up along with discarded climbing gear and other trash.Rick Wilcox, of Eaton, New Hampshire, saw 500 to 600 bottles en route to the summit in 1991. It was common practice for climbers to dump gear to save weight on the way down. "When it becomes your life or your gear, you choose your life and leave the gear behind," he said.DepositsThings have changed in recent years.Efforts to clean up the 8,710 mountain include a successful bounty programme for oxygen bottles left behind. The Nepalese government now requires expeditions to pay deposits that are forfeited if rubbish is left behind.By doing this, fresh garbage is reduced and the cumulative problem is controlled, Deebas Bickram Shah of the Nepal Mountaineering Association said in an e-mail.John Bagnulo, who reached Everest's summit on his 36th birthday last May 11, said he was heartened by what he saw on the less-travelled north side."I didn't see that many empty oxygen bottles, so that's a good thing," Bagnulo said by telephone from Massachusetts, where he now works at a wellness centre in the Berkshires."I was pleasantly surprised by the low volume of trash." Clapp, an artist, chef and concerned father, was inspired to go to Nepal by a National Geographic documentary about trash on Everest, which some called "the world's highest junkyard." He obtained 132 cylinders from the Nepal Mountaineering Association for $7,000. It cost nearly that much to ship them back to Maine.StrippingBack at home in Brunswick, he works on the canisters in a basement workshop where the floor is littered with piles of aluminum shavings.The hardest part, he said, is stripping away the yellow fiberglass shell to expose the darkened, oxidised aluminium underneath. He then uses hand tools to shape the bottles as they spin on a wood-turning lathe.Eventually, they're buffed to a shiny silver colour. Prices range from $1,600 to $3,000 for bells, and $500 to $1,500 for the bowls.Little goes to waste. The shavings are put in glass balls to become $15 Christmas ornaments that Clapp originally created as gifts for family members. They're sold at several locations, including the gift shop at Walt Disney World's Expedition Everest roller coaster, he said.The work takes time, especially for the more expensive items. In December, he sold six pieces in one five-day period, which he described as a flood of orders.Clapp, who's 48, said buyers like getting a unique piece of artwork and knowing that they're helping the environment at the same time. "They see the added value of purchasing a gift item that has social responsibility," he said.When his supply of oxygen cylinders runs out, Clapp doesn't plan to retrieve any more of them. By the time he uses them up in a few years, he'd like to return to Nepal to show locals how to create the bells to make money for themselves.Clapp has had a preliminary discussion with a Bates College graduate who founded Porters' Progress, a Sanbornton, New Hampshire-based organisation that works to improve the lives of the porters who carry equipment for Everest expeditions.ChallengesBen Ayers from Porters' Progress said there are challenges including startup costs but he likes Clapp's idea of teaching metalsmithing skills to poor children. It's "just crazy enough to work," he wrote in an e-mail from Katmandu.Clapp said he hopes to line up corporate sponsors for the project, and to create a documentary. Eventually, he wants to write a book."My ultimate goal of returning this project to Nepal is very exciting to me," he said. "When I first visualised creating this artwork, I was driven with the concept that it would be a benefit to others, specifically in Nepal."
New arts magazineA NEW quarterly arts magazine - ARTI.ON - is out, published by EKATE, with Chief Editor Vola Kokkinou.The President of EKATE is Daphne Trimikliniotou and Christos Symeonides is Vice-President. Editorial Advisers are Christos Symeonides, Spyros Demetriades, Aristeides Stasi and Nicholas Panayi.Dr Eleni Nikita, Cultural Services Director, introduces the magazine.The magazine is certainly a very good read.Just what we need.Marina Schiza, of Phileleftheros, gives a very strong interview with Yiannis Toumazos who was the coordinator of Manifesta, titled: "Integrity and truth are not negotiable virtues, whatever the cost”.This excellent article is followed by another equally essential one on Manifesta titled The Rise and Fall of Manifesta 6 in which Christina Lambrou speaks about that "most important cultural event" through newspaper clippings from Politis.Do you remember Nicos Kuroushis monumental work "RAINBOW" from 1975? We were all there cheering at that dangerous time.. It has been demolished. Read Dr Savvas Kokkinos memorable article – and see the photographs. Our own Georges der Parthogh has written a most moving and understanding article on George Lanitis A Year After His Death.This is a superb art magazine.
Christos Foukaras at Gloria’s Gallery
CHRISTOS Foukaras was born in Kissonerga in 1944 and studied at the Sourikov Institute of Fine Arts in Mocow from 1970-1976. He also studied painting for the first two years and then specialised for the next four in monumental painting at the studio of Professor Claudia Alexandrovna Toutevol.Awarded the MA in 1976, he then moved to Athens where he worked and exhibited at the Ora gallery a series of works inspired by the events of 1974. From 1979 to 2004, he worked as an art teacher in the secondary schools. Now he works as a full time artistHe has a show at Gloria’s Gallery in Nicosia from January 24 February 10.Nicos Hadjinicolaou has written in “The World of our Forefathers”: "Christos Foukaras is currently one of the most important artists in the Greek-speaking world. This is due to his creative work and due to his moral stature.""The son of poor farmers from Kissonerga, he studied painting in Moscow, returned in 1977 to the land of his ancestors and has lived there ever since. "The house at Kissonerga is an unconfined refuge, where the artist works, surrounded by paintings and other artists: his wife Mariam, his daughter Katerina, until recently his mother-in-law Lavinia Bajbeouk- Melikian, daughter of the painter Alexander Bajbeouk - Melikian, and his father-in-law Sascha Souchanof."Kissonerga itself, in spite of the devastation suffered by its unremitting "modernisation" in recent years, looking from above at the sea and the road leading from Paphos to Akamas, surrounded by banana plantations, retains the features of an oasis."In this village far from ‘public relations,’ dedicated wholeheartedly to painting and sculpture, Foukaras has produced over the past 30 years a manifold and, in spite of all qualitative inequalities, powerful oeuvre, a "view of the world" that deserves to be more widely known."In the current exhibition he presents a selection of recently painted works, products of full time endeavour, as, since 2004, he no longer needs to contend with the daily obligations of teaching art at secondary schools."Like so many other artists today, Foukaras could have chosen to do video, or computer art. He preferred to work with more traditional tools: oils, pastels, pencil. This choice has certainly barred the road in certain directions: those where success requires the acceptance of what today is indicated as the exclusive understanding of modernity. "But I believe that, at the same time, it has opened a channel of communication with all those for whom the use of traditional tools remains capable of expressing contemporary sensitivity, without precluding innovation in the approach to the world surrounding us."It all depends where one stands."The magic of reality is due to the multiplicity of the social and physical worlds that compose it. The urban landscape of Manhattan is an altogether different world compared to the landscape a few miles north, where the Hudson flows. "The poetics of the motorway following the coastline from Limassol to Paphos, the lines are asphalt, the forms of the vehicles, the sounds of their engines and their CD players reaching wave-like our ears as we overtake them, a just as much an inseparable part of our life as the cultivated fields, animals grazing, peasants in villages, offices, vegetable shops, factories, supermarkets and kitchens with their electric lights. "This is where people live and human relations develop: this is where the struggle for survival and the battle for conquering or maintaining power takes place. All these themes have found their painters and their poets. But they constantly seek new ones because our position in nature and in society is at the same time stable and constantly changing. Even the most effective and important artistic achievements have, from a moment onwards, historical character. "They are not ‘outmoded', as is sometimes suggested. They simply express a world forever gone. One needs to make an effort, acquire a basic knowledge of the conditions under which they were produced and also a familiarity with the then prevailing aesthetic ideas in order to appreciate fully the works of preceding eras."Nature and society. Cyprus in 2007. Paphos. Kissonerga. The world of our forefathers."A world of impressive cohesiveness and immutability emerges from the oils and pastels. Everything revolves around a few basic subjects: the pilgrimage to the Saint Neophytos fair, the slaying of the pig. The wedding, carnival, catching crows, still lives. " ‘The World of Cyprus,’ by Diamantis, encounters here a diverging impulse and a sequel at the same level. The pitfall permanently in wait to neutralise approached of this kind is ‘genre painting.’ "Foukaras was successful in avoiding it in most of his works. An excellent example of elevation of a powerful genre scene unto epic dimensions is offered by the diptych of two small pastels entitled "Return".