|
| Loukia Alavanou |
|
|
 |
|
|
| Loukia Alavanou's (b. 1979 Athens) practice involves visual and acoustic collage. She takes elements from usually well-known and iconic movies, together with static images from personal and social sources and subjects them to a dramatic choreography. Often emerging from an intense black background, the images move with a startling vitality and colour, and as we watch them we experience an unsettling reversal: charm becomes terror, hope becomes despair and clarity becomes confusion. Acoustically, there is a parallel process: the continuity of sound becomes discontinuity, and the beauty of a perfectly pitched voice becomes stark and tragic. Strange intrusions punctuate both the visual and acoustic threads, indexing a reality much closer to ourselves than what the products of popular culture are designed to protect us against. (Darian Leader) The characters that inhabit Alavanou's realms are sometimes recognisible, although often broken down into their essential parts (such as the head of Snow White in Wishing Well, 2005), other times they are built from unrelated body parts from different films where some elements are human and others cartoon renditions. The transitional space they inhabit is also in flux and controlled by the whims of Alavanou, she describes it as 'the space that bridges subjective omnipotence and objective reality'. In There is nothing between us a human mother figure has been turned into a mechanical and deathly creature from whose orifices collaged elements from old cartoons and contemporary horror movies emerge. 'The work is greatly inspired by Andre Green’s writings on the 'Dead Mother': His idea of a 'hole' in the child’s psychic world created when the image of a loving mother is transformed into a distant figure that is toneless and inanimate, like a dead parent. As he points out, negative identification with the 'dead mother' later on in life results in some kind of ‘emptiness’ that is filled in and manifests itself through an affective hallucination of the dead mother, as soon as a new object is periodically chosen to occupy this space.' (LA) Alavanou completed an MA in Photography at the Royal College of Art, London, 2003 – 2005. In 2007 she was awarded the 5th Deste Prize. Recent solo exhibitions include in 2007 _Haas & Fischer, Zurich and Chop Chop, upstairs berlin, Berlin. In 2006 Dead Real, New Video Works, upstairs berlin, Berlin and in 2004 Cactus, The Breeder Gallery, Athens. A selection of group exhibitions include the 5th Deste Prize 2007, Deste Foundation, Athens; 100 Tage 100 Videos, GL Strand, Copenhagen; Satellite Works, Centre de Production et de Diffusion en Art Actuel et Multidisciplinaire, Quebec; in 2006 This Ain't No Karaoke, HAAS & FISCHER, Zurich; Peach, Gallery Eugen Lendl, Graz; Dreamworks, Haas & Mayer Gallery, Zurich; Solitude. London Artists Today, upstairs berlin, Berlin. Loukia Alavanou lives and works in London. |
|
