Contemporary art exhibition 2019 “Into my garden come”

Contemporary art exhibition, 5-20 October 2019, Aigio, Greece

Primarolia organisation, the Municipality of Aigialeia and DHKEPA (Municipal Public Benefit Eterprise of Aigialeia) organise the first Primarolia Festival, 5-20 October, in Aigio. Opening for the first time the emblematic currant warehouse of Kanellopoulos-Kritsotalakis, it invites in its space the contemporary art exhibition “Into my garden come” as well a series of cultural events.

Eight artists arrive in Aigio from Greece and Great Britain eager to begin a new conversation with the place and create new works of art. Aigio, a town cradled between the sea and the high mountains holds a history that dates back to ancient times and offers a fertile ground of artistic creation and dialogue through a contemporary art exhibition. They are motivated by Primarolia Festival, the landscape of the region and also the timeless commercial, nutritional, historical, social and cultural value of the Corinthian currant. The exhibition focuses on the metaphorical concept of the garden. The title is taken from Emily Dickinson’s verse “Into my garden come”, perceived as a meeting and gathering of senses, ingredients, objects, ideas – a point of conjunction, of matter and meaning, of past and future. This new sowing of people, ideas and meetings takes place in the coastal zone of Aigio, known as Vostizza during the Middle Ages, meaning the city of gardens, lending the famous name to the local currant variety PDO «Vostizza»

The exhibition creates the conditions for the establishment of a garden as a place of memory, gathering, a fertile, poetic, fantastic place where one might metaphorically observe the foundations of a garden and the planting stages of growth, sowing, planting, photosynthesis and pollination. The localized character of the exhibition unfolds in a listed and restored building, in one of the old warehouses which participated in the town’s industrial history as well as being a favoured spot of the famous Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos.

The artists get inspired by the landscape, the seed and its history and approach them interdisciplinary and inter-artistic with a series of new comissioned artworks (microscope images, mixed media, film, performance for camera, sound scultures, ceramics), especially planned and implemented for the space and the theme of the exhibition. The seed through Rob Kesseler‘s microscope lays the foundantion seeds of the exhibition. Aggelos Antonopoulos creates external and internal spaces ready to receive the planting material. In Bill Psarras‘ artwork the soil is redefined poetically and hosts the planting of the garden. Luc Messinezis and Yiannis Brouzos (Oannes) create a scultural narrative of the garden through mysterious flowers. Agalis Manessi‘s artwork abstractly hightlights the medium carried by the force of the wind – such as the pollen. Maria Tsagkari wanders in imaginary gardens looking for the pollination of their flowers. Kostas Pappas approaches the space as an intermediate place for the process of photosynthesis to take place.

The exhibition – curated by Nansy Charitonidou – holds a site-specific characteristic as it develops within an emblematic, preservable and restored building, one of the oldest currant warehouses which carry the industrial history of the city and also its cintemporary culture. The building, owned by Kanellopoulos-Kritsotalakis, was built in 1900 as a currant warehouse, the office and house of a great currant trader, while in 1985 was a place of inspiration for Theo Angelopoulos for his movie “The Beekeeper” as Cine Pantheon.

The opening day of the exhibition will take place on Saturday, October 5th at 19:00, opening the first Primarolia Festival.

Primarolia Festival opens to the public for the first time this year and, parallel to the contemporary art exhibition, presents a series of cultural events, musical and cinematic tributes in collaboration with the French Institute and the Goethe-Institut and poetry evenings.