UEL Art Project Gears Up for Showcase in Athens
Two artists with strong links to the University of East London (UEL) will take part in a major arts festival in Athens later this month. Mikey Georgeson, a senior lecturer in the
Visual Arts and Isabell Metsapelto, a UEL fine art graduate, will present their CosmiKnot show at the Platforms Project, a major festival for independent artists. The festival will feature more than 900 artists in 56 shows, exhibitions and displays.
The CosmiKnot show was devised by Georgeson, with previous events featuring art, music, chanting and even cooking. It began as an exhibition he curated for the University’s Way Out East Gallery, with his idea being that instead of individual artists in a show, a group of artists could create a fictional art collective, one that is looking to build a better world.
Georgeson says the festival in the Greek capital is an ideal place for the collective’s story,
The objective of Platforms Project is to map artistic action as it is produced in the context of collective initiatives by artists who decide to join forces in seeking answers to artistic questions by creating the so-called platforms.”
The fair runs from 26 to 29 October at the Technopolis City of Athens and will see the first publication by the CosmiKnot collective, along with the publication of a book of Metsapelto’s drawings called “I don’t even like cars anyway.” The UEL graduate is what the collective call their “lyric poetess “with her drawings showing surreal scenarios and ambiguous characters in a deeply personal myth of desire and modernity. Many feature cars and Metsapelto says, “I use car figures as a subject matter. I like the idea of creating my own odd paradise.”
Georgeson says his collaboration with Metsapelto has been a valuable experience for him and the collective, “Making the book together has brought a new dynamic cohesion to the work. It’s a pleasure to be part of bringing Isabell’s drawings together in this way.”
The Athens festival has been running for ten years, becoming one of the biggest such events for independent artists anywhere in Europe. This year, for the first time, it is expanding to include theatre, music, architecture and design, with the organisers saying they want to explore the synergy between these art forms and the visual arts.
