Nº 54: Irene Pouliassi
Irene talks London galleries, a maze-like warehouse in Walthamstow and her favorite artist to follow.
We’re back with Irene Pouliassi. Read on to find out what she’s into, and if you’re new here, hit subscribe for secret recommendations every Monday.
A London-based Corfiot sculptor who runs a gallery and loves gin+tonic.
☞ UNLADYLIKE: Found 4 amazing ladies and we created UNLADYLIKE! Join us in celebrating International Women’s Day with Abigail Norris, Celia Mora, Elizabeth Dimitroff and Sadie Lee! A series of figurative paintings and sculptures explores the idea of the human body as a metaphor for female representation in art through sexuality, gender, and aging. It runs until the 25th of March!
☞ COUPS CONTEMPORARY: An absolute MUST! The gallery just opened this September and has already given us four cutting edge shows marking a great start of an exquisite line- up of London based and international artists. The current show taster bravely gives an insight into the gallery’s vision, whetting the appetite for what is to come over the next year! Go up to the 3rd Floor of 53 Great Portland Street and enjoy the show (which I am also included in)!
☞ GOD’S OWN JUNKYARD: A maze-like warehouse turned into a psychedelic paradise full of neon lights and vintage signs! Neon art made from found objects, retrieved and renewed waste as well as reclaimed neon signs and old movie props create a purple haze that blazes forth in an old industrial estate at Walthamstow! It’s like you found Vegas in the middle of an urban desert. Also the owner’s story and idea of setting up this Gallery/ prop shop adds up to the wow factor of the place. Its better to be experienced rather than narrated, but nothing can describe it better that the bellow blurb from their website: ‘Repaired and resurrected, coupled with quirky art and powered up to shine like jewels of light. Icons in their own right, God’s own junkyard where neon never dies.’
☞ TAKE YOUR ART SERIOUSLY BUT NEVER YOURSELF: While we (artists/curators/gallerists) act as connoisseurs, your art reveals your flaws, greatness, insecurities, wittiness, resilience, etc. beneath the art jargon. Once you realise it, everything looks better! Be cool, chill out, and enjoy bad criticism! You are creating an impact, and criticism propels you forward.
☞ CATALINA OUYANG: A sculptor, writer, person to religiously follow! Their sculptures reflect myths and oral histories and are drawn to its complex, mysterious, layered symbolism, and the way it conjured a mythic, abject body rife with associations yet obdurately unknowable. I first encountered their work at Simon Lee gallery and for one week I was obsessed!
♪ LISTENING TO:
Album: Divisive, Disturbed’s new album
Song: La Fine by Maneskin
☠︎ HATES: The person who does not sing along with the operatic section of QUEEN’S Bohemian Rhapsody, should not be trusted. Period. Also, pretentious people/entitlement, spicy food, stereotyping and shoe blisters.