I miss the land but does the land miss me?

A new group exhibition opens in Nicosia this week featuring artists from Cyprus, Canada and the UK. Titled I Miss The Land But Does The Land Miss Me?, the exhibition will be staged at Art Seen Gallery from Friday to December 21, presenting the works of Panayiotis Doukanaris, Carali McCall, Henrietta Simson and Amy Stephens. By means of expanding painting and sculpture processes, the four artists in this exhibition explore the material spaces humans inhabit.

“Carali McCall uses the line as a drawing process to address time and energy executed through performance. By holding a piece of the physical landscape (a rock) she is interested in the act of endurance,” organisers say. In this exhibition, McCall and Stephens have collaborated with the indigenous landscape to shape a new performance on the opening evening with documentation and artworks that will remain in place for the duration of the show.

Doukanaris’ blank canvases embody the uncanniness of encountering an indeterminate landscape. In their transparent fragility, they paint the becoming of a place, the birth of the familiar and the emergence of a poetic encounter. The works offer a new approach to traditional methods of painting, questioning the before and after of a previous performance. The artist is also interested in the (re)configuration of collective and individual identities.

Simson’s works disrupt the structures that have traditionally shaped how landscape is viewed. This is achieved by stressing the material and the power of the image. The works on display play with illusion and embodied presence. They offer realist assumptions that draw out the connotations of care that accompany the categorising and collecting frameworks of the museum diorama.

Stephens’ artwork is underpinned by geology and travel. Her main focus is to re-appropriate and recycle objects from the immediate landscape. By elevating local artefacts, she offers an exchange of ideas and a new perspective about the everyday. All rocks and minerals come with their own story, but the abundance of any material can be a source of invisibility.

“Tectonic plates are always on the move and therefore so is the process of building new territories and spaces in between. As a collective, the artists in this exhibition have worked alongside each other to bring an exhibition together that demonstrates a commitment to their chosen materials and to their relationship with time amongst the landscape,” organisers conclude.

In addition to the exhibited work, two performances are set to take place over the first weekend of the exhibition by McCall. During the opening event, she will present Performing Rock (Cyprus) at 8.30pm, a piece lasting just over 15 minutes and then the following morning, at 11.30am, a Circle Drawing will be presented, adding to the discussion of the exhibition.

I Miss The Land But Does The Land Miss Me?

Group exhibition. November 25-December 21. Art Seen, Nicosia. Opening night: 6pm-9pm. Monday, Wednesday, Friday: 4pm-7pm or by appointment. Tel: 22-006624