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Effy Alexakis

For over last four decades, Effy has been documenting the historical and contemporary presence of Greek-Australians both here and overseas, in partnership with historian Leonard Janiszewski. She is publicly recognised as ‘the photographer who popularised Greek-Australian history’ and is acclaimed as one of Australia’s leading socio-cultural documentary and portrait photographers.
Renowned for her intimate and sensitive portrait presentations, she is considered a pioneer in debunking Greek-Australian stereotypes and presenting the complex personal, diverse and evolving faces, lifestyles and occupations of Greek Australians, across generations.
Effy’s images are held in major public collections, including the National Gallery of Australia, the State Library of New South Wales and the Australian Embassy in Athens. Effy has curated and co-curated various fine art, photographic and sociocultural exhibitions, together with sociocultural installations.
Major cultural spaces around the country have exhibited her work. Effy has also exhibited internationally. Her two most significant exhibitions have been the ‘In Their Own Image: Greek-Australians’ (this is also the title to their ongoing national archive project) and ‘Selling an American Dream: Australia’s Greek Café’ that was launched at the National Museum of Australia in 2008. With Leonard, they have produced four major books; three extensive exhibition catalogues; more than 250 book chapters, articles or conference papers; and three film documentaries.
In 2022 Effy was recognised as a ‘Woman of Influence’ by the Hellenic Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (HACCI) for her photographic documentary work spanning 40 years. In early 2023 Effy’s work was published in a new book, ‘Forty Photographs, A Year at a Time’ where she selected one contemporary image from her vast archive to represent each year since 1982 to the present in order to reveal the changing face of Greek-Australians.
In late 2023 she will be releasing her latest book, ‘The Heart of Giving, Father Nektarios’ Soup Kitchen’ where since early 2021 she has been documenting the work of Father Nektarios, a Greek Orthodox priest who with his many volunteers have been providing a soup kitchen from the church hall at Sts Constantine and Helen Church in the inner-west suburb of Newtown.

BA, from Sydney University, in 1980, majoring in Fine Arts and Archaeology
Diploma in Education (Secondary – Art), Sydney Teachers’ College, 1981
Post-Graduate Diploma in Professional Art Studies (Photography), from Sydney’s City Art Institute, 1983

RECENT EXHIBITIONS
FORTY PHOTOGRAPHS – A YEAR AT A TIME EXHIBITION
Greek australian experience as a forty year photo chronicle, neoskosmos.com
New photo exhibition, sbs.com.au
Forty photographs year time exhibition, greekherald.com.au

SURVEY EXHIBITION
A greek australian portfolio, greekcitytimes.com
Newest exhibition combines photographic work spanning four decades, neoskosmos.com
Photo exhibition in sydney captures spirit of greek australian community, greekherald.com.au
Sydney exhibition of photographic work over past 40 years, greekherald.com.au

GREEK CAFÉ EXHIBITION
Milk bars and rock music living the american dream in a greek cafe, www.smh.com.au
Australias greek cafes, www.smh.com.au

INTERVIEWS
A visual history of greek australians, ekathimerini.com
Honouring the photographer who popularised greek australian history, neoskosmos.com
A symposium celebrating the work of the greek australian photographer, sbs.com.au

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Thalia Andrews

CALL

Thalia put her career and love of art on hold to raise her family, but now she pursues her true passion as an expressionist artist.

Most of her work is inspired by nature- landscapes, seascapes and underwater life. ‘Beauty is hidden in the colours, textures and shapes found in our natural surrounds, parks, mountains and forever-flowing seas’. She hopes people view her work as both vibrant and exciting with the colours, textures and strokes applied, reflecting the depth, meaning and unique quality of each of her paintings.

Thalia has a Diploma of Fine Arts (Painting), is both a long serving committee member of the Greek Australian Cultural League and member of C.A.S (Contemporary Art Society, Victoria).

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Christina Heristanidis

Christina Heristanidis is an award winning filmmaker. Her films have screened on national television, at film festivals and in art galleries, including the NGV. She has a degree in Fashion Design from RMIT University (1984) as well as a degree in Media Arts (1996), also from RMIT University. She followed these up with a Graduate Diploma in Film and Television from the Victorian College of the Arts (Melbourne University). She has taught in both the School of Fashion & Textiles and the School of Media & Communication at RMIT University.
In 2000 Christina wrote, directed and co-produced her film Dear Bert which won The United Nations Association of Australia Media Peace Award for promotion of Multicultural issues. She has been on the selection panel for short documentaries at The Melbourne International Film Festival from 2003 till 2018 inclusive.

Graduate Diploma (Film and Television) Victorian College of the Arts. At The University of Melbourne (completed 1997)
Bachelor of Arts (Media) RMIT University (completed 1996)
Bachelor of Arts (Fashion) RMIT University (completed 1984)

Past projects, exhibitions and awards

2020: We The Makers Create. National Wool Museum Geelong Public Gallery
2019: Liminal State – a digitally projected exhibition of lost, forgotten and abandoned clothing as part of VAMFF
2012: L’Oréal Melbourne Fashion Festival, cultural program event. Hand Eye Collective, hosts a series of discussion around current issues and ideas of major importance in fashion design thinking today
2012-Present: Founding member of The Hand Eye Collective
1999-2018: On the selection panel for short documentary film for Melbourne International film Festival (one year off to have a child)
2001: Winner of The United Nations Association of Australia Media Peace Award, for Promotion of Multicultural Issues
1998: Winner of Dox Direct- Cinemedia and SBS Independent Accord Competition
1998: Judge for The Melbourne International Film Festival

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Troy Argyros

Troy Argyros is a third generation Greek Australian born in Melbourne, 1990 and grew up in a multigenerational household.

He holds a Bachelor of Fine Art from Monash University, and has spent several years studying classical drawing and painting at The Florence Academy of Art in Florence, Italy.

Troy focuses on the beauty of light across the genres of portraiture, still life, and landscape.

He has held six solo exhibitions in Melbourne, was the recipient of The Graeme Hildebrand Emerging Artist Award in 2017 for Oil Painting and his work is featured in numerous private collections internationally.

2017-2020 The Florence Academy of Art Painting Program
2013 Graduate Diploma of Visual Art Education Monash University
2010-2012 Bachelor of Fine Art Monash University
2009 Certificate IV Visual Art and Contemporary Craft Holmesglen TAFE

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Christella Demetriou

“In memory of Christella, whose work had a profound effect on the cultural life of the Greek Community of Melbourne, with the request that the following excerpt and images about the life and work of Christella Demetriou be used for inclusion in the Greek Australian Art Directory (GAAD).”

Media Press Release

Run and Fly, Monster Tooth!*
A posthumous exhibition of paintings by artist Christella Demetriou

1st – 30th May 2019
Darebin Arts Centre, cnr Bell St & St Georges Rd, Preston, Vic. 3072

A posthumous exhibition by Christella Demetriou, Run and Fly, Monster Tooth!, will premiere at the Darebin Arts Centre on Wednesday, 1st May. The retrospective will feature a selection of works spanning Demetriou’s career as well as artefacts celebrating her diverse and multi-layered creative life.
Esther Anatolitis, Executive Director of the National Association for the Visual Arts, will open the exhibition. Commissioner, Rosaria Zarro will represent the Victorian Multicultural Commission. Artist & curator, chair of arts Mildura board, founder of museum of innocence Mildura, Domenico De Clario, & poet Andrea Demetriou (The Inconsolable Clock) will speak about her work.

Christella Demetriou was an artistic polyglot. She not only excelled as a painter, but was also a composer, a classic instrumentalist of the bouzouki, an unknown poet and an athlete. A refugee from what is now occupied Cyprus, Christella and her family migrated to Australia in 1976. She exhibited widely and performed in both Australia and Greece.

As a painter Christella was an artistic cryptographer, she used abstraction to hide within her paintings everything she could not endure, everything she could not face. She paints her feelings, her despair at the elusiveness and the falsification of love, her inability to reconcile her dreams with reality, her mother with her father, life with death, the invisible wound with the visible indifference. The deeply rooted pain of being uprooted, of not belonging, and finally her constant and chronic confrontation with cancer are indelible themes of her work.

According to curator Mitch Goodwin, “Christella’s paintings make for difficult, but soulful viewing. They are darkly euphoric explorations of the contrasting, often conflicting, modes of abstract expression. They endure because they explore a longing; a constant search.”

Christella rarely spoke directly in her paintings, however the directness of her poetry and the indirectness of her colours are communicating vessels. From her hospital bed, when she was stripped of all sense of ego, insecurity or fear she spoke her last words of love. Looking her sister straight in the eye, she said, “People are afraid to look at love directly, it’s overpowering. You are pure love, inside out, upside down, from all angles.” She also whispered to her, slowly and in anguish, “Life is a journey in the desert without relief… but you break the nightmare.”

Monster Tooth was Christella’s childhood nickname. A day after her death, artist and curator Elizabeth Gertsakis wrote to her friend, Run and fly, beautiful one!

Christella Demetriou passed away in 2018 at the age of 52.

Poetry Night (related event). On Monday the 13th of May at Ithaca house, Level 2, 329 Elizabeth St., Melbourne, at 7 p.m., academic Nick Trakakis will present his translation of major contemporary Greek poet Tassos Livaditis, whose poems have been set to music by Mikis Theodorakis; Some of the most polemic poems of Vassos Lyssarides, legendary leader and honorary president of the Socialist Party of Cyprus , will be read as a tribute on his 99th birthday; Edward Caruso will speak about his new poetry collection Blue Milonga which travels across the natural and political landscape of Argentina and Chile; Garry Foley will present Andrea Demetriou’s poetry book, The Inconsolable Clock, which expands from the wars for resources to the existential dead end, and is introduced by Christos Tsiolkas; finally poems by Christella Demetriou, translated by her friend Pavlos Andronikos, will be read.

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Tony Pierrakos

Little did I know at the time, as a child running around the laneways and streets of Brunswick and Carlton that some 30 years later I would be walking the same lanes and streets, this time with camera at hand. I can’t recall why I asked my parents for a camera for my 12th birthday, but that’s when it began, first I thought photography was family pictures, then by the age of 16 I wanted to take sports images and photojournalism. By the time I accepted a position to study at RMIT the thought of making a living from photography was far from my mind, photography had become an art, to be view by your peers and general public in galleries. The years after graduating from RMIT in 1996 were filled with European and South American travel along with commercial photographic assisting, which I did not have a passion for. Through luck or fate I ended up opening a stall in 2001 at the Queen Victoria Market. So intone photography was created, keep it simple, create my own photographic artworks of my favourite subject matter which was Melbourne urban landscapes.

The last twenty years have been a great journey, a lot has been learnt, experienced and thankfully achieved. The opening of my string bean container (intone photography urban) has the potential for me to showcase a new and exciting range of works and ideas. I have learnt many things about trying to make a living as an artist, my most important rule was to always interact with the client, to better understand what they want and to help them understand what could be better. Another rule is to not rest on your laurels, many failures have come from doing this, develop ideas, push the boundaries, source your products and protect what you have built, I know far too well that what I have been able to achieve is far too rare unfortunately, so I don’t take it for granted.

I look forward to collaborating and exhibiting along side my fellow Greek – Australian artists, learning and sharing the processes we take creating our art pieces and gaining inspiration at the same time.

This pandemic has been a trying experience for most of us, if not all. Its been a bit of a reset button for myself, my reaction was to purchase a brand new lens and head to the streets and document the lockdowns, I loved the experience and produced some work that I was very proud of, much of which I shared on my social media instagram page @intonephoto which was well received, on the flip side my work also showed a lot of sadness in the imagery, mask wearing kids, shop closures along with bare streets.

Thank you for taking the time to read my artist bio.
Tony Pierrakos

Bachelor of Arts in Illustrative Photography RMIT
(2001 – Present) Business owner intone photography Queen Victoria Market
2013-2014 Antipodean Palette Exhibitions
1997 Centre of Contemporary Photography Agfa Summer Salon
1995 RMIT Graduate Exhibition
1991-1992 Brighton Bay Graduate exhibition

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Efrossini Chaniotis

I am a Sculptor and Painter with a passion for story telling through art with a focus on themes that are inspired by my Hellenic heritage and modern art.

I have expertise in Painting, Sculpture, Street Art and Murals, Installation, Performance Art and Graphic Design. My training in Art Therapy and role as a co-founder of the Melbourne Art Therapy Studio, provided me with additional skills in the therapeutic application of the visual arts in both clinical and private, individual and group settings.

Bachelor Degree in Visual Arts /South Australian School of Art, Australia
Bachelor Degree in Fine Arts/ Athens School of Fine Arts, Greece
Erasmus Scholarship/Madrid School of Fine Arts, Spain
Master of Art Therapy/ La Trobe University, Melbourne

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Antonios Baxevanidis

Antonios Baxevanidis was born in Likostomo Pellas on the 15 May 1944 as the civil war was ravaging Greece. He was two weeks old when his parents returned to Thessaloniki. He attended the technical school of electrical engineering in Thessaloniki and was also a keen cyclist and basketball player. He served in the Greek army for two years.

In 1968 he migrated to Australia and his love for theatre and cinema led him to study the Stanislavski method of acting with Shayna Hevron. He also studied at Crawford productions film school and went on to his first acting role with the Malvern Theatre Co. playing Mr Apopolos in “My Sister Eileen”. He attended theatre workshops at the Melbourne Actors Lab with Peter Kalos.

He also worked as a freelance photojournalist and he is a member of AJA well known for his photograph of Nelson Mandela which was published by Kodak.

Film credits include Kostas (1979) by Paul Cox, Malcolm (1986) by Nadia Tass, The Young Wife (1984) ABC series, The Keepers (1984) ABC, Dougherty SBS, Flowers of Rethymnon by John Tatoulis SBS, Prisoner: Cell Block H (1979), Eisai to tairi mou! (2001) Greek television series. He also appeared in Acropolis Now (1989), 10 Easy Steps (2014) with Louis Mandylor from My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), It’s a Date (2013)ABC and Dream Of a Shadow, a Greek Australian production.

Antonios is a member of the Actors Equity of Australia MEAA and has taken part in over 50 short films, and numerous commercials.

Theatre credits include: The Respectful Prostitute, The Shifting Heart, Zoo Story , Scapino, Pluto by Aristophanes directed by Michael Nikoloudis from the Northern Theatre of Greece, Salonica Bound at La Mamma theatre by Tom Petsinis, directed by David Myles, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest HST Theatre directed by David Myles.

Antonios has also taken part in over 12 music videos. His recent success was in the music video of Tones and I: Dance Monkey (2019) that has over 1.8 billion million views.

Antonios Baxevanidis Filmography

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Maritsa Micos

My artwork draws energy and inspiration from the land in its many forms, The layers of impasto and graffiti like marks are evident within my contemporary mixed media palette which comprises of acrylics, aerosol, collage, gouache, ink, graphite. Artists such as De Kooning, CY Twombly and Aida Tomescu have influenced my style.

The process of mark making became my focus when I joined the Drawing Marathon in Soho NY and worked under mentor Graham Nickson. The vocabulary of drawing crossed the boundaries of paint and my personal style broadened through unorthodox tools and exercises. As a result my art process became intuitive in its approach.

Bachelor Fine Art University of New South Wales
New York School of Painting drawing and sculpture

My art is fluid and interpretive. My recent project involves multi-media collage influenced by the luxury market.

“The challenge was not to translate everything I see, but rather create spaces which house the information.”

Maritsa Micos Dragonas

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Sifis Tsourdalakis

Sifis Tsourdalakis was born in Melbourne, Australia.

Son of Soctates and Anna Tsourdalakis, he was born in Melbourne in July 1975. He grew up in a Cretan family environment and he was introduced early to Cretan music by his parents. His father, born in Melambes of the Agios Vasilios district of the Nome of Rethymno, migrated to Australia in 1965. His mother from Asi Gonia of the Apocoronas district of the Nome of Chania migrated also to Australia in the same year.

From an early age Sifis, together with his twin sister Eleftheria and his older brother Antonis, were the main members of the of the Rethymnians Association of Melbourne, “Arkadi”, dancing group and later of the Cretan Brotherhood of Melbourne and Victoria. Sifis has inherited the musical talent of his ancestors as his grandfather Antonis Tsourdalakis was a famous mandolin player in the district of Agios Vasilios since 1918. All his grandfather’s brothers also were players of Cretan musical instruments. Two of his uncles, Kostas and George, in Melbourne, were skilled Cretan musical instrument players as well as two of his cousins. Sifis in this environment has followed the family tradition.

His father, Socrates, was one of the founding members of the of Rethymnians Association of Melbourne, “Arkadi”, and its Secretary for ten years. In this capacity he was in contact with many of the Cretan musicians that the Association was inviting to Australia from 1973 onwards. Most had been provided with hospitality at his home, such as Mountakis, Sifogiorgakis, Skevakis, Melessanakis, Skordalos, Papadakis, Kaklis, Makrogiannakis, Alefantinos, and many more. Listening to their music made an impact on young Sifis that resulted in him wanting to follow the family tradition of a career in Cretan music.

In 1979 when George Papadakis was visiting Melbourne together with Manolis Kaklis, recognising the emerging talent of young Sifis he gave him as a gift of one of the two Cretan lyras that he had with him. Since then young Sifis treasured this gift of the lyra. With the only teacher his Cretan musical instinct and listening to the recordings of the early Cretan musicians, his love for the Cretan music flourished and started his early musical career.