Anna Lascari (Left of the Parthenon, 2015, 3D video animation, sound, 2 min. loop) Left of the Parthenon depicts the social and political environment experienced by the Greek population resulting from the ongoing crisis and austerity. The setting of the animation is in the commercial district of downtown Athens, which is mostly deserted at nights and on the weekends. A cat is locked outside on the narrow balcony of a commercial building’s first floor office. We observe the cat’s desperate efforts to attract attention and her nervous and endless pacing on the balcony. We hear her constant, distressed meowing as she searches for someone to help her. Finally, we witness a vicious attack, which, nevertheless, succeeds to a miraculous escape. The work demonstrates an anxiety, the cries for help in a condition that has reached an impasse, as well as the exhausting attempts of finding a way to escape. Consequently, while the existing social economic situation was faced with stasis, new networks of solidarities and alternatives that resist all forms of enclosure emerged. In the project, the cat exposes this struggle to defeat fear, and the leap to her freedom.

Gerry Bibby’s (Flock, 2018, chairs, tables, rope) working method is a distinct combination of performance, poetry and sculpture, broadly engaging with the places and people of his close working environment. His extensive writing practice often introduces complex text fragments that are brilliantly interwoven with and imbedded in these operations. His work is the outcome of a great awareness of given situations, into which playful subversions and strategic projections of multifaceted cultural relations are inserted. Against the backdrop of (personal) history, a new definition of artistic processes is called to constant attention, and where action is ready to be taken. Flock is the combination of a performance devised and orchestrated from afar, and a stack of chairs and a table whose legs are bound together with rope in the same way as the sheep of Tinos. Constraints/chains translate into a strong image of use value and property and are interesting when considering the economies of producing: of thinking through the restrictions, but also the perversion of the locations and fixtures for production.

Olga Balema’s (Untitled, 2018, stones, modelling clay, motors, electronics) sculptural work consists of rocks found on the island of Tinos, with small concaves cut into them, and stubs made from epoxy clay that neatly integrate with their formed shelter. Attached to them are mobile phone motors, creating an irrational disturbance. These small vibrations, combined with materials that would “naturally” have little relationship with each other, seem to be put together only to make visible an abstract feeling—a feeling the artist describes as lying somewhere between anxiety and vertigo. Having used stones from exhibited sites in Berlin and L.A. in the past, they speak of a particular place and time, an encounter, synchronized for a short moment.

Maria Georgoula (The Number Four, 2018, plaster, processed pigs’ snouts, beads, leather shoelace; The Pig Bagpipe Song, 2018, plaster, rubberized fabric, processed pig’s ear) In her sculptural work, Georgoula is interested in what may be communicated and translated solely through the abstract form, with only some recognizable found objects, animal parts or figurative elements standing out, while a greater narration is absent. Looking at strangely commodified objects and the merging of diverse forms, contexts and functions, absurdly satirical narratives are composed. What could the possible relationship be between a pig’s ear, beads and a bagpipe? The elastic makes its way through the rigid, the common combines with the oddly chosen material and gives way to an arrangement where other possible stories are spread out. Or in the artists’ own words: “A lot of these works could be understood through the legacies of early surrealism and the Theatre of the Absurd, but with an emphasis on what may be evoked through the study of form and objects (rather than story and language) as manifestations of a material polyphony that, despite taking over the everyday, may go unnoticed or be apathetically embraced through its commercial journeys.”

Juliette Blightman (Day 193, 2018, Gouache on linen; oh shit, 2018, toilet, plant) Art and life, and the dissolving boundaries between the public and the private are central to Juliette Blightman’s work. Where to distinguish between the two, where does the production process end, and the work begin? Through using a wide palette of media—from writing, painting, and films, to installations and lecture performances—she makes biographical notes of her closest surroundings, relationships between people, of private experiences or intimate situations. In constant dialogue with, and spoken through, (digital) media and its changing factors of time and means of interaction, her work is also about giving back time. In Day 193 an atmosphere of a melancholic retrospective unfolds; a scenery of mixed emotions that coexist side by side. A photograph stuck on the painted canvas depicts a somewhat private moment of a young girl, shot from behind, sitting on a bidet in a bathroom. A large green palm tree growing out of a toilet, a loudspeaker placed next to it—refers to an earlier installation work of hers. Blightman’s sensible consciousness of precious aspects of time (also owing to the advent of motherhood) creates a phenomenological narration in space and time.

Maria Loboda (Smoke heralding the end of the affaire, 2018, ceramic, maquette of Tinos) Smoke might be one of the most ancient forms of communication, to signal a warning, call for attention, and also herald decisions. At the same time, it is a vital element of the liturgical use of incense as a symbol of adoration or tribute, as well as defence from baleful forces. Maria Loboda works with a diverse range of materials in their aggregate states of all sorts; found objects, architecture, plants, legends and histories, scientific research, circulating around, carrying stories about the past and the future. When fused together in one space at one time, into one recipe so to speak, all these elements might manifest (un- ) wanted appearances of their biting backstories. They might operate like slow-working poisons, as transcendental media, showing their secret lives of power, telling us about our possible desires and fears. Asking questions of how everyday objects, architecture and knowledge affect the human body, our behaviour and relationships. Upon accepting the invitation to this exhibition on a remote island like Tinos, the idea of building a maquette of the island’s topography was an immediate approach, as one way to become acquainted with the configurations/conditions of an unknown place from the far distance. The position of the smoking work—small built vessels that are sending out smoke signals—is indicated on the model, pointing towards their actual placement on the island, in the immediate neighbourhood of the artists’ temporary residence while setting up the exhibition. What might the smoke be foreboding? An eruption of a volcano, a simple weather change, or a gentle forecast of the end of the affair?

Anders Clausen (Untitled (feathers), 2016 – 2018, bird feathers, paint, airbrush, chlorine bleach, or nickel galvanized; Untitled (Urmeter), 2018, messing) His two work groups on display—reproductions and reinterpretations of the second prototypic meter bar that was designed in 1867, defined as a fraction of the earth’s meridian through Paris, and a collection of bird feathers, treated in a range of different colours, textures, metals, shapes and sizes—are examples of scientific research and evolutionary principles, with the associated social and political engineering that it takes to set standards for today’s status quo. Precision and strength can be attributed to the meters, and as someone wrote earlier about the work: “The public meters of that time can perhaps be likened to the public WiFi of today. One could think that it is the accessibility of these technologies that is responsible for their success. Both the meter and the internet have created a total dependence.” In contrast to the rigid meter, presented vertically or horizontally in the room, the feathers might be seen, bending and rather flexible in their form, though artificially manipulated as if to interfere with their naturally processed development over a long period of time.