News Releases

Image & Icon: The New Greek Photography

The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) presents a new photographic journey through modern Greece on display in the ROM's Terrace Galleries, Level Two, from June 15 to August 12, 2001. Image & Icon: The New Greek Photography is an insightful, stimulating exhibition that goes well beyond the conventional images of ancient-monument tourist brochures and Hellenic picture books. In the vibrant faces of its people and the stark images of its post-industrial landscapes, Image & Icon reveals today's Greece as seen by its artists. It serves as a valuable complement to the Summer 2001 feature exhibition, Gift of the Gods: The Art of Wine and Revelry, and to the rich collections on display in the Greek World and Etruscan Galleries.

In Canadian society, Greece is rarely thought of beyond the clichés of tourism and antiquities. Image & Icon challenges those stereotypes with over 100 diverse photographic images of contemporary Greek life. Image and Icon covers the emergence of photography as a significant art form in Greece following the establishment of the Photography Centre of Athens in 1979. The artists included and the themes surveyed in the exhibition situate Greek photographers solidly within the nexus of important international styles and issues of common concern in the arts. Significantly, the exhibit also deals with the double-edged sword of Greece's overwhelming classical inheritance: the benefits and difficulties of living "in the shadow of the Acropolis".

Image & Icon is brought to the ROM by John Stathatos, a prominent Athenian photographer for the Thessalonika Museum of Photography. "The period between 1975 and 1995 was a critical period of cultural development in Greece," he reflects. "In this time, the professional initiative of a few young photographers laid the groundwork for the movement I have termed The New Greek Photography."

The exhibition is divided into three units: "Exploring Space", in which the photographer investigates the far boundaries of both physical and psychological territories; "Reading the Medium", where individual experiments with various photographic technologies have determined the final outcome; and "The Visual Dimension", in which there is a clear intention to enhance an element of the visual arts.

The exhibit Image & Icon: The New Greek Photography will provide a valuable complement to ROM's Ancient Greek and Etruscan galleries by focusing on contemporary Greek artists and their complex relationship to this classical heritage. Juxtaposing classical art and archaeology with its modern counterpart is an innovation for the ROM and will provide an enriched experience for ROM visitors.

The show will also coincide with Gift of the Gods: The Art of Wine and Revelry, an original ROM exhibition on the fascinating history of wine through the ages. It features numerous artifacts from the ROM's Greek, Roman, European and Canadian collections, and it will be displayed in the Garfield Weston Exhibition Hall from June 16 to October 21, 2001.

 

 

Issue date:
May 4, 2001

For more information:
Media Relations
Tel.: 416.586.5547
Fax: 416.586.8022
E-mail: media@rom.on.ca

News

More information on RSS Feeds and subscribing

Media release information is accurate at the issue date noted.

For older news releases, particular details (including dates) may have changed in the intervening period.