Empty Space

This project explores the relationship of the abstract photographic image to notions of interiority and exteriority as these relate to the transition from the unconscious to conscious reality. It is about a play between representation and abstraction. This exploration draws mainly upon Donald Winnicott’s psychoanalytic ideas of transitional phenomena in an intermediate area of experience between the internal and external reality. Within this area – the potential space, creativity originates as a zone of fictive play and free mentation that facilitates the subject’s journey from
‘what is subjectively conceived of’ to ‘what is objectively perceived’ throughout his/her development towards adaptation in the reality world. Working in a field of tension between photography and painting, as well as between photography and drawing, I am exploring the fluidity and endless possibilities of photographic abstraction. Flirting and playing with what is conventionally a photographic record of something in front of the lens, I enter a performative creative process where I intervene in the construction of the images with the gestural act of placing pieces of thread on the walls of my dormitory room. Out of this play abstraction emerges as a journey about the real, a journey following the route of a circle; beginning in the real world, withdrawing to an inner world of unconscious processes and returning back to reality. The line that draws this space is both abstract and concrete, both abstract and figurative creating multiple directions in a photographic space of emptiness, which eventually appears full of potentialities waiting to be realised.
It is a transitional line, which implies that the relationship between inner and outer reality can be performed and can become a space of action and intervention.
By shooting in a large format of 4x5’’ colour transparencies with maximum depth of field, I create an ambiguity between a photographic document of a wall in full details and another new place; a flat modernist art field similar to the empty white canvases of Robert Ryman or the illusionary nature suggested by the linear spatial drawings in the three-dimensional work of Fred Sandback. In the end, as in the work of Uta Barth, the photographs negotiate an abstract space of emptiness as a potential space of abstraction between a psychologically charged space of subjective projection and an objective material space of aesthetic contemplation.
I have shown this project in a number of physical gallery spaces. Every time I interact with existing details on the gallery walls, and I am installing it according to how I want to position the photos in space in relation to those details, in a similar way that I followed to place the thread on the walls during the process of shooting the photographs.
An exhibition of my project in a virtual online gallery space can be seen by visiting the following link:
https://publish.exhibbit.com/gallery/507307983/solo-gallery-10929/
The series consists of 6 photographs in total.
Five photographs are presented here in dimensions of about 37x30 as proportionally equivalent to the final
exhibition size below.
The final exhibition photographs are Giclée prints on Fine Art Paper, mounted onto Dibond, 80x100 cm
Documents
With each image in this series, I present the audience with an artifact, a document of Photography, in a conceptual play to subvert the associated with it idea of seamlessly recording everything that stands out there in the world in front of the camera’s lens. I enter a performative act of slashing the surface of an unexposed 5x4˝ black and white negative. A cameraless image produced from scanning the processed negative becomes the witness of this violent act, as it carries all the traces of my forceful gesture, which disturbs the flatness of its seamless surface. The visual result is an abstract pictorial space, which seems to be ‘bleeding’ from the traces caused by the deformation act of slashing.
This work is concerned with issues regarding the utopian idea of ‘flatness’ of modernist painting and the
‘seamlessness’ of photography, which I challenge by engaging in the abstract expressionist act of slashing the medium’s surface. This psychologically charged gesture is a comment on my relationship as a photographic artist to my medium of photography. It emerges as a radical expression of my need to break through the perfect, seamless, flat surface of the photograph and work against my personal values for perfection. This act of slashing resonates with Lucio Fontana’s 1960 Spatial Concept `Waiting'. But unlike Fontana’s elaborate act of cutting the raw canvas, here I have forcefully violated the surface of the negative in an attempt to beat its resistance. Blindly handling the negative in a dark bag, my only guide were the tactile sensations between my hands and the materiality of the negative. The series consists of at least 10 photographs. Five photographs are presented here with white border in dimensions
16x21.5 cm in total (actual image size 14x18 cm). So far, they have been exhibited as inkjet archival prints on pearl paper with white border in a box-frame of dimensions 40x49 cm in total (actual image size 14x18 cm) but they have the potential to be presented in a number of different ways.




Solo shows
2020, Brighton In The Corona Age, online show, Brighton Photo Fringe 2020
2016, SQUAIR, Brighton Photo Fringe 2016 online exhibition on Instagram
2009, Empty Space, Grey Area, Brighton, UK
2008, Potential Space for Abstraction, TheSpace@Acumen, Brighton, UK
2007, Empty Space, George Rodger Gallery, UCA Maidstone, UK
2004, The Potential Space, Mphil Upgrade Exhibition, George Rodger Gallery, UCA Maidstone
2003, Internal Reflections, Ano Archanes, Crete, Greece
2003, Internal Reflections, Photosynkyria 2003, Thessaloniki, Greece
2000, Archanes- Light, Ano Archanes, Crete, Greece
Group shows
2022, Empty Space, ETERNITY virtual exhibition at The Holy Art gallery, London
2018, Evolution Arts Students Photography Show Case curated by Eva Kalpadaki, BPF2018
2015, The Voice of the Artist digital exhibition, SEE.ME, SCOPE Art Fair,
2014, Art Takes Miami, SEE.ME Exhibition Space digital exhibition
2014, Abstraction|Reality|Process, CAC Gallery, Brighton Photo Fringe 2014, Brighton
2013, #CreativesRising, One-night Skyscraper Projection & SEE.ME space digital exhibition, New York
2013, The Story of The Creative,SEE.ME, New York
2013, Transitions, Pure Arts, The PowderMills Hotel, Battle, East Sussex
2012, Along the Lines of ..., Brighton Photo Fringe 2012, Brighton
2012, ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY, Central Exhibition, KAUNAS PHOTO FESTIVAL 2012, Lithuania
2012, Cork Street Open Exhibition 2012, London
2012, TDACS SHOW OFF, as member of the artists group TDACS, Café Delice Gallery, Brighton.
2011, PHOTO , MOKSHA Cafe Gallery, Brighton
2011, PARALLAX AF, La Galleria, Royal Opera Arcade, London
2011, BRIDGE, BOM Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
2010, slash|line|bloom|fuzz|time-Abstract Encounters, Photo Fringe 2010, Café Delice Gallery, Brighton
2009, Group show, Art and Escape Gallery, North London
2009, Phoenix Brighton Arts Courses Tutors, Phoenix Brighton
2009, Internal Reflections, Henfield Gardens & Arts, Venue no. 5 – Temata
2008/2009, Empty Space, Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2008, A Foundation, London
2008, Red Space, Gallery 40, DMH Stallard, Crawley
2008, Red Space, Photo Fringe 2008 group show Diversity, Gallery 100, DMH Stallard, Brighton
2008, Empty Space, Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2008, A Foundation, Liverpool
2005, Fotoebnefsi, The Hellenic Centre, London, UK
2003, LOOKOUT- Athens First Aesthetic Public Intervention of Unpredictable Size
2003, Photosiginonoume (Photocommunicating) – an exhibition of the winning and best participating photos in the
context of the competition ‘‘Routes’’ organized by the Greek Ministry of Transportation
2001, New Color, Athens Photographic Centre, Greece
2001, New Glance, 8 West, Athens, Greece
1999, Patras, a town in 13 stories, Photographic Centre of Thessaloniki, Greece
1998, Patras, a town in 13 stories, National Bank, Patras, Greece
1997, Applied Art Photography, Uni of Patras PhotoClub Exhibition, Patras Old Public Hospital, Greece
Awards/Prizes/Competitions
2020 Shortlisted for the ‘State of the World’ competition by PRIX DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE PARIS
2012 Selected for the Central Exhibition ‘ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY’, KAUNAS PHOTO 2012
2012 Selected for the Cork Street Open Exhibition 2012
2011 ipa (International Photography Awards) 2011, Honourable Mention in the CityScapes Category
2011 ipa (International Photography Awards) 2011, Honourable Mention in the Abstract Category
2008 Selected for the Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2008 exhibitions in Liverpool and London
2006 UCA Research bursary for the last year of my PhD research 2006/2007
2003 Greek State Foundation scholarship for PhD Research 2003-2006

Publications/Citations/Other
- TimeSilencePhotographyFriends online publication, Summer 2021 Edition
- Itch Magazine (Online version), Issue 08, Available at: http://www.itch.co.za/?article=488
- Yearbook 07-08, Moments of Greek Culture, IANOS Publications, Athens, 2009
- Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2008, exhibition catalogue
- Contemporary Greek Photography by Kostas Ioannidis, Futura Publications, Athens, 2008
- The Response, Vol. VI, VII, VIII & IX Fabrica Gallery Volunteers Magazine
- Traces: The Object and The Past, Photosynkyria 2003 exhibition catalog by Thessaloniki
Museum of Photography, Thessaloniki, February-March 2003
- Thirteen stories in a city, Patras by Patras University Photography Group of Cultural Groups of
Students, The Ioannis and Efterpis Topalis Foundation, June 1998
- Photographs, Photo-albums (January 1996, June 1997) by the Univeristy of Patras Photography Club
Artist Talks/Presentations
2016 Artist Talk, Brighton Photo Fringe monthly meetings
2013 Artist Talk in the context of ‘We Are the Brighton Photo Fringe’ celebrations of 10 years of the Brighton Photo Fringe

2010 Pecha Kucha Brighton VOl. 8, a presentation of students’ works from Phoenix Brighton
Title of presentation: ‘How can we photograph nothing’
2009 Artist Talk, Grey Area Gallery in the context of solo exhibition ‘Empty Space’
Membership of Artist Groups
2012-2017, Member of the Artist Peer Group PLATFORM as Fabrica gallery’s support for artists in the South East
Acquisitions
- Part of my work from the series Internal Reflections is held by the Developmental Heraklion Company Ltd in Ano
Archanes, Crete, Greece
- The photograph ‘Untitled 05’ from the series ‘Red Space’ is held by the Huib Limberg Digital Photocollection.
Available at: http://www.huiblimberg.com/Fotocollectie.index.html
- Other works have been acquired by private clients
Curatorial Projects (curator of student projects)
2018, Evolution Arts Student Photography Show Case, Brighton Photo Fringe 2018
2014, Abstraction|Reality|Process, CAC Gallery, Brighton Photo Fringe 2014, Brighton
2010, slash|line|bloom|fuzz|time – Abstract Encounters, Brighton Photo Fringe 2010,
Café Delice Gallery, Brighton