Mary Plant’s exhibition Mythographies opens soon in Paphos

September is soon to arrive, bringing with it the return of artistic showcases as galleries and museums resume after their summer break. In Paphos, the retrospective exhibition of Mary Plant opens at Palia Ilektriki Cultural Centre on September 3 featuring a collection of work under the title Mythographies.

The exhibition, curated by Marina Christodoulidou and Marina Demosthenous and organised by the deputy ministry of culture, Paphos Municipality and Kimonos Art Centre, is the first to showcase the multifield oeuvre of the Cypriot visual artist over the last 40 years.

“The exhibition embarks from Plant’s early work,” explain the organisers, “created during her studies in London and immediately after. This line of work, on tissue paper, brings out tactility as the foremost expressive element and establishes both discernible and indiscernible correlations with the writing process in its broader sense.

“Writing, but also myth,” they add, “manifested in Plant’s work from the very beginning, are innate components as well as formalistic elements in her art, feeding into each other as the exhibition title suggests. Plant approaches her work along an extended study process through which she puts together written and living narratives while documenting multifaceted interpretations of myths.”

Mythography is the process through which Plant draws and collects signs to lay out on the painting surface. Her practice revives the myth within contemporary contexts and sheds light on the mythical, through forms and compositions that endow her ventures in her own visual language. The broadest spectrum of her work revolves around the emergence of goddess Aphrodite from the sea, therefore around the question of the origins of form from an amorphous state. Plant also narrates the goddess’ mythical or imaginary biography, which she ascribes to a variety of versions.

Invoking the sacred stone that was reposed in the temple of Aphrodite in Palaepaphos, the artist brings out the goddess’s primal, archetypal representation. In this manner, Plant explicates Aphrodite’s eastern features and her multicultural being – none other than the very identity of Cyprus and the Mediterranean as a melting pot of civilizations.

“The symbolism of Aphrodite as a referential figure of creativity runs the length of Plant’s body of work, most poignantly in the Aphrodite’s Garden and Hymns of the Cyprian Sea series, whose epitome of creation is drawn from Anthogrammata (2000),” comment exhibition organisers. “The latter is an alphabet inspired by the forms of flowers and fruits, which Plant intended as a new scripture for a visual language. Following her journeys to Siberia and Mongolia in the 1990s, the artist creates a cluster of works under the theme of Eros. Here, as well as in the earlier Salamis (1980), the artist’s unabridged texts recur in the form of visual art poetry, making Plant the first Cypriot woman artist to create artist’s books. These books make up her unique sculptural work, in an ongoing evolution from the early years of her practice to this day.”

Today, Plant lives and works in her homeland, caught in between Nicosia and Paphos with her artwork part of numerous private collections in Cyprus and abroad.

Her upcoming exhibition, which will remain open until October 27, will also include a series of parallel events engaging the public.

Mythographies

Retrospective exhibition of Mary Plant. September 3-October 27. Palia Ilektriki Cultural Centre, Paphos. Opening night: 7pm. Monday – Friday: 9am-1pm and 3pm-6pm. Saturday: 10am-1pm. [email protected]