Aris Georgiou Catalogue

26 April – 21 May, 2017

CURATED BY JACK PAM exhibition produced by the Australian Museum of Contemporary Photography Delmar Gallery, Sydney

TIME TAKEN Photography’s great magic trick is to freeze life, a moment in time captured by an item that everybody in the western world has access to in their pockets. This trick is the exact reverse of the one found in cinema theatres. Here, still images hidden by motion, imperceptible to the human eye, flicker past at 25 frames per second. Situated somewhere in between these two magic tricks, Circumstantial Evidence is a selection of images, a body of work to be viewed in a series. This process reclaims time as a photographic element and throughout this curated space, single images lose their identity and become temporarily part of an assemblage. As with the mechanics of cinema, exact moments in daily life are so often hidden by the constant march of time and our own personal amnesia of each passing moment. As Blake Stimson indicates “[Photography] is not to reproduce life as experienced in time but instead to see what cannot be seen by the naked eye, to see what can be seen only when time is stopped.”1 The power of great photography is therefore to invent an image that represents much more than a moment, frozen in time.

Throughout his career and with each frame, Aris Georgiou has worked to take time away mechanically and investigate it emotionally. Through his studies, a human story unfolds, aided 1 Stimson, Blake. “The Pivot of the World.” Photography and Its Nation, Cambridge (2006).

by complex repetitions, reversals, climaxes and resolutions.

The defining characteristic of a moustache, the movement of a curtain in a window, the shape of a light fixture—they all have their equal and opposite as a fragment of the past standing still. This conversation between objects, people and settings spans space and time and produces a body of work which is far from one-sided.

We bring our own unique identity and contextual relationships to the compositions within the frames. This is possible as Georgiou is telling an emotional story with characters present in our own lives through a process of mining for photographs in everyday life.

The construct of histories created by Georgiou is illustrated in the epic triptych of images that is central to the exhibition presented at Delmar Gallery (Athens Downtown, May 1989, Chicago, Illinois (Newtown), August 1978, Rymnio Kozanis, October 1996). This trilogy—a motorcycle story—begins in the centre frame. Pictured is a rebel on a motorcycle, with a carefree attitude, free and living in a world that adores him. The reality of the situation is of a boy sat in a goods crate with three bicycle wheels attached D.I.Y style.

With no access to the pedals outside the crate he sits motionless, waiting for the moment of photography to pass and hopeful of a push. In the right-hand frame sits a beautiful woman atop a real motorbike. She physically embodies the American dream and every young boy’s fantasy. On the left is the story’s conclusion. We see the sharp contrast to hope and fantasy through brutal, comic

realism. The flipside of motorised two-wheel freedom; three men in suits embrace, enduring the commute to work in Athens, 1989.

The riders sit perched on the Honda, carefully making sure not to handle each other too intimately. They claw at each other’s jackets finding purchase on outer fabric. The two back passengers’ eyes ponder a business deal taking place on the footpath as they speed by. The image presents the confronting nature of austerity, the suffocating rituals of modernity and the complexity of male pattern baldness. This story, presented across three images, explores a reality we did not sign up for when pretending to ride a motorcycle in our backyards, fantasising about our future. They present life as a compromise and the sometimes-uncomfortable nuances of modern society.

As a curator, it is a pleasure to examine the generous photographic career of Aris Georgiou and to work at amplifying the underlying tempo which naturally occurs in his work. The core notion of time and its passage is clearly important to him, either consciously or not. Photography is a craft of witnessing and for Georgiou it is almost always done in the presence of human beings, whether they are physically pictured or not. Through constant investigation and creative repetition, his work observes our social world, the built environment and layers of history that are refusing to be forgotten.

Although a lot of the photographs can be considered historical, Circumstantial Evidence is not a body of work that is telling it

like it was, but rather one of telling it how it felt. This nuance has enormous cultural value and political importance. Without bodies of work such as this, our historical archive of the past would be manipulated by photojournalists and press rooms with an angle in mind, enforced by a political or social agenda. Dedicated and creative interventions inform the world’s photographic archive with images found rather than images created. Artists working with a camera, such as Georgiou, contribute to the important field of the professional citizen photographer, an area of production populated by bodies of work such as Nan Goldin’s The Ballard of Sexual Dependency and Robert Frank’s The Americans. The resonance of this type of work contributes to what Jaques Rancière describes as a “new landscape of the possible”2, which is the basis of creating new thinkable realities or simply other forms of ‘common sense’ that enable wider possibilities for the future. Without such work from artists investigating a consistent trajectory and a unique sensibility across many years, we would be left with a skewed representation of the past and a narrowed perception of the future.

The diptych of images Dion Archaeological Site, Mt Olympus, May 1990 and The Sad Cadet in the train to Petodvorets, April 1998 portrays the Greek and Roman era ruins at Dion, Greece on the right and a boy in uniform on the train to Peterhof Palace, St 2 Rancière, Jacques. The emancipated spectator. Verso Books, 2014.

Petersburg on the left. The right image speaks of loss, erosion and decay. It explores the past’s dreamy impression on the present and its impulse on our memories. It is part of a series of images created of archaeological sites that have been published separately and independently in books by Georgiou on two occasions. Both books, beautiful in their own right, seem like an impulsive obsession with subject. An obsession not with archaeology or ancient Greece but with memory itself. In this exhibition, Dion Archaeological Site, Mt Olympus, May 1990 —like many other photographs—is coupled outside of its original context. Here, it sits next to an image sharing a visual symmetry. The design of the train window in the left-hand frame shares the shape of the ancient angular wall quietly resting in tall grass thousands of years after it was built. Beyond this pictorial repetition, the diptych also shares reflections equally of the past and of the future. The boy looks intensely nostalgic, as though he is participating in a journey in another century. The wall, on the other hand, although visibly old, is not dissimilar to any new construction made today of contemporary brick and mortar. Here, the play of memory, human endeavour, and the connection of disparate realties is impressed on us as we read the visual syntax of the images together. These two photographs, like many others throughout Georgiou’s work, explore at the fabric of the space created between ‘this has happened’ and ‘this will happen again.

The conclusions of a career spent witnessing the human condition stand before you in Circumstantial Evidence. The planet we live on is examined by an artist using the photographic magic trick to point out value in the world as he sees it and hoarding its insistent presence. The photographs are developed by a certain set of parameters connected to Georgiou himself. Some are more obvious—he is Greek, he travels, he is an architect. Most are subtler and are hidden by his processes. These elements form the collective context that the body of work is created from. For the viewer, this is less important, as presenting fictions and documents of another’s life can encourage us to reflect on our own. This act can demystify our own thoughts and help establish new positons for reminiscing and meditating on criticality. Georgiou is a serial photographer who in his work is not reflecting-on, but rather reflecting-on-the-feelingof. Throughout this process there is an opportunity to observe our own past and the encouragement of new trajectories for the future. Unlike his photojournalist colleagues, his images are of everyday life. It is therefore important for us not to underestimate their importance and contribution to the world’s cultural archive.

Georgiou has been a witness to history and we are now a voyeur of his creativity. What can be gained in that space, can create personal and social emancipation and build a platform for new possibilities for the future.

- Jack Pam, Curator

EXHIBITED WORKS Alexander the Great and Bucephalus, Thessaloniki, Christmas 1974 66 x 99cm Dion Archaelogical Site, Mt Olympus, May 1990 26 x 40cm Thessaloniki, June 1969 26 x 40cm The Large Anti-Skopje Demonstration, Thessaloniki, February 1992 49 x 73.5cm Vassilis Eliadis, Metal Polisher, Thessaloniki, January 1979 49 x 73.5cm St Basil’s Cathedral, Red Square, Moscow, April 1998 25.5 x 38cm Jardin Royal, Paris, October 2002 25.5 x 38cm Sani, Kassandra, Chalkidiki, June 1989 25.5 x 38cm Public Garden, Munich, June 1998 25.5 x 38cm Dion Archaelogical Site, Mt Olympus, May 1990 25.5 x 38cm Giannis Tziotzios, Waiter, Thessaloniki, June 1994 25.5 x 38cm

Renovation of the Church of Panagia (Virgin Mary), September 1977 73.5 x 49cm Fifth Avenue, New York, August 1978 73.5 x 49cm Place Jean Jaurès, Montpellier 1972 73.5 x 49cm Hatzidimoula Building, Thessaloniki, July 1977 73.5 x 49cm Eva Mahn’s Studio, Halle-am-Saale, Germany, 1998 100 x 154cm Hephaisteion, Ancient Agora of Athens, May 1989 100 x 154cm Frank Maccioca, Palavas-les-Flots, Herault, France, May 1972 100 x 100cm Neokles Economides, Waiter, Thessaloniki, June 1994 53 x 80cm Jerusalem, West Bank, May 1993 53 x 80cm Museum Cloakroom, Moscow, April 1998 31 x 47cm St Jean de Vedas, Herault, France, May 1976 31 x 47cm On the Thessaloniki Waterfront, December 1976 31 x 47cm

Apostolos Kokkalas, Candlemaker, Thessaloniki, January 1979 31 x 47cm

Thessaloniki, December 1976 42 x 31.5cm

Kythera, October 2002 31 x 47cm

The Sad Cadet in the Train to Petrodvorets, April 1998 100 x 154cm

Stoa of Attalus, Ancient Agora of Athens, May 1989 31 x 47cm

Dion Archaelogical Site, Mt Olympus, May 1990 100 x 154cm

Athens Downtown, May 1989 100 x 154cm

Thessaloniki, May 1985 42 x 31.5cm

Rymnio Kozanis, October 1996 100 x 154cm

Saint Guilhem le Desert, South France, 1977 42 x 31.5cm

Chicago, Illinois (Newtown), August 1978 100 x 154cm

Apostolos Kavatzikis, Stavros Evangelidis, Barbers, Thessaloniki, January 1979 26 x 40cm

New Orleans, July 1978 34.5 x 51.5cm Mercedes 300SL-GULLWING, Champs Elysées, Paris, 1992 34.5 x 51.5cm Moscow, April 1998 53 x 80cm La Mure, South France, April 1974 53 x 80cm Off Melenikou Street, The Rotonda Area, Thessaloniki, July 1972 100 x 100cm Madras. Eric’s Umbrella. Maybe his Books, too, February 1997 42 x 31.5cm

La Cité des Pins, November 1973, Montpellier 1973 26 x 40cm Nathan Jehaskiel, Real Estate Agent, Thessaloniki, December 1999 26 x 40cm Makedonomachon Square, September 1977 26 x 40cm Thessaloniki, January 1987 26 x 40cm Thessaloniki, December 1974 26 x 40cm

Aris Georgiou: Circumstantial Evidence Curator: Jack Pam exhibition held at Delmar Gallery, Sydney 26 April - 21 May, 2017 produced by the Australian Museum of Contemporary Photography installation photography by Silversalt