By Maria Gregoriou
Tomorrow night the Stass Paraskos Cyprus College of Art will be opening its 46th Annual Summer School Exhibition entitled Bread and Roses at 7.30pm in Paphos.
Times are tough but culture and tradition still thrive, and it’s a tradition for the College of Art to showcase the art created by members of its Cyprus Summer School every year.
First held in 1969, when Paraskos – Cyprus’ most famous artist and founder of the artists’ studio group – organised the original Cyprus Summer School in Famagusta, this is the 46th year that the annual summer show will be exhibiting works from major artists from all over the world, as well as many hundreds of art students visiting Cyprus.
This year’s show takes its title from the American poet James Oppenheim, who claimed that working people need bread to feed their bodies, but they also need the beauty of art (i.e. roses) to feed their souls. The exhibition is being organised by Margaret Paraskos and Emilios Koutsoftides, who will also be exhibiting their work.
Other exhibitors include British art student Rachel Head from Cardiff University, who is experimenting with bold colours from the Cypriot landscape and exploring ways to challenge traditional perspectives in painting, as well as Martina Vermorrel, who studied at the famous Dartington College of Arts.
During her studies the artist specialised in performance art, but in Cyprus she has become a printmaker, gaining inspiration from the behaviour of the bees and wasps she’s observed in the countryside around Paphos. In her work she compares their social lives with those of humans.
Cornish artist Chas Valentine combines figure and pattern drawings in pen and ink to explore the relationship between art as a visual and semiotic language, drawn from bringing together contemporary art, art practice and art theory.
Exhibitor Nell Nicholas is about to begin her degree in Fine Art at the City and Guilds of London Art School, also now the home of the former Director of the Cyprus College of Art, Dr Michael Paraskos. Nicholas says that “up to now I have worked in two dimensions using the human form as my starting point. In Cyprus I am trying to be more experimental by working with different materials and different subject matter.”
Also involved in studies, Jasmin Marker is a second-year student at Belfast School of Art in Northern Ireland. She is influenced by the ideas of William Morris, not only as an artist and designer, but as a political radical who believed everyone should have the right to enjoy art. The artist is inspired by Morris’ belief that, “art should encourage a slower, more reflective and pleasurable approach to life.”
Petra Hudcova, from Prague, studied Fine Art at Leeds Metropolitan University and an MA at Central St. Martin’s School of Art. She has worked and exhibited internationally and is interested in the modernist monuments of ex-communist countries, though Cyprus has also been one of her inspirations for her work.
Betty Hall studied Fine Art at Bath Spa University and creates drawings that document and record emotions. The artist hopes that her work will conjure emotions in the viewer, through the basic subject matter of relationships.
The exhibition will be open until August 7 from 11am until 5pm.
Bread and Roses
Annual Cyprus Summer School Exhibition. Opens July 31 at 7.30pm until August 7. Cypus College of Art, 6 Stass Paraskos Street, Lempa, Paphos. 11am-5pm. Tel: 99-452757
