Constantine Nicholas (HatziYiannakis) was born in Perth, Western Australia and currently lives in Sydney. He is a 3rd generation Greek Australian. His ancestry is from the isle of Kastellorizo where his grandparents and many others migrated in the early 1900s escaping foreign occupations, and seeking a new life in Australia. Most landed in Fremantle, and other parts of Australia and stayed. Nicholas has always questioned his identity which has been an ongoing theme in his work. He creates rich and layered works, installations and digital projects. His work offers fragments, of text and imagery, citing colonial, aboriginal and commercial references which the artist uses to question his Australian identity. “An ongoing theme in my work is to use historical journals (other’s truth), maps and illustrations to present a ‘point of view’.
His new line of work since 2020, harkens back to very early works, are more abstract and less referencial in nature. ART LINES explores space, digital photography and drawing to create rich coloured abstract line-scapes. Visit lynkfire.com/Artcons9
Nicholas has participated in more than 70 exhibitions in ANZ, APAC and USA. Represented in Public and Private Collections in AUS, NZ, APAC, US, EMEA.
A long term teacher and practitioner of Sogetsu Ikebana (Japanese Floral Art) and a key member of the ikebana community in Australia, having studied for 18 years. Along the way was awarded multiple accreditations, culminating in the final, ‘Riji’, the highest accreditation possible outside of Japan. In 2014, spent three months in intensive study at headquarters in Tokyo as the recipient of the Norman and Mary Sparnon scholarship.
Teaching since 2004 and, more recently, commenced teaching monthly Masterclasses for the more advanced students of ikebana.
Participated in numerous exhibitions for Sogetsu Ikebana Victorian Branch and Ikebana International as well as a Sogetsu Exhibition in Tokyo. Was invited to be a guest demonstrator at the Ikebana International World Conference in Okinawa in 2017, to an audience of 1100 delegates and 3 Royal Princesses.
Conducted numerous workshops and demonstrations here, in Victoria as well as Brisbane, Wellington and Christchurch. Exhibited numerous times at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show and was awarded a number of prizes, including three firsts in the Shop Window Competition.
As the Sogetsu curriculum evolves, sculptural work has recently been introduced. This has given rise to branching out into sculpture. In 2017, in collaboration with another artist, created an outdoor sculpture for an apartment complex. In 2019, collaborated with artist, John Meade, in designing the 10 metre tall, street sculpture, Love Flower. Subsequently, is branching into large and more commercial sculptures and installations.
In 2020, due to the constraints of Covid-19, conducted a Zoom demonstration, hosted by the Mumbai Chapter of Ikebana International, shared worldwide and via YouTube.
‘A gesture in visual art is an expression of an idea or meaning which is presented and performed through the somatic effect on material and site. In other words, it is an expression of the body’s temporal rhythm, as well as a record of the body’s interaction and encounter with material and space.‘ Emmy Mavroidis
Born in 1965 in Melbourne, Emmy Mavroidis is a Master by Research candidate at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music at The University of Melbourne. Currently, she is conducting research focusing on Drawing: Gesture, the Body, and Movement. At the Faculty of Fine Art and Music, The University of Melbourne, she earned a Master’s in Contemporary Art in 2020. Following her completion of her Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting) degree at the Victorian College of the Arts in 1986, she earned her Diploma in Education in 1992.
She founded Nyora Studio Gallery in 2003, a thriving arts centre in Melbourne. Emmy teaches & mentors other artists through the Nyora Gallery Resident Artists Program as well as holding exhibitions and workshops on drawing and sculpture.
2021-current Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, The University of Melbourne, Victorian College of the Arts Master of Fine Art, by Research 2019-20 The University of Melbourne, Victorian College of the Arts Fine Arts & Music, Master of Contemporary Art 2003 – current Nyora Studio Gallery Director, Melbourne 1991 The University of Melbourne, Institute of Education. Diploma of Education 1984–1986 Victorian College of the Arts Bachelor of Fine Arts, Painting
SELECTED PRIZES AND AWARDS 2023 Artist in Residence at DRAWinternational Caylus, France 2022 Recipient of The University of Melbourne, Stuart Black Memorial Scholarship for excellence in drawing. 2020 Winner of the Arnold Bloch Leibler Award, Yering Station Sculpture Award, Yarra Glen, Victoria. 2020 Grant awarded, Nillumbik Shire Council. Time of COVID-19, Art and Cultural Development, 2019 Montalto Sculpture Prize, Finalist, Montalto Vineyard and Olive Grove, Red Hill, Victoria 2018 Lorne Sculpture Biennale Small Sculpture Prize, Finalist, Lorne, Victoria 2016 Winner, Yering Station Sculpture Award, Yering Staff & Directors Choice Award, Yarra Glenn, Victoria 2015 Adelaide Perry Drawing Prize, Finalist 2014 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize – Semi-finalist 2013 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize – Semi-finalist 1985 Clifton Pugh Drawing Prize, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, Victoria 1985 The Trustees of the National Gallery of Victoria Award, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, Victoria
Born in Paphos, Cyprus. Living in Melbourne Australia, Barbara’s art practice is an emotive, intellectual, and philosophical investigation of life and place in the modern world. Exploring her inner consciousness and how it interacts with her external surroundings. There is a constant push-pull effect of anarchy and control. The aim is to find balance within the chaos of these two spaces and discover what results. An ongoing theme within the artist’s practice is the study of the human condition. Examining our value system as a society and on a personal level. The use of colour is a critical part of her dialogue analysis. Engaging in an unspoken language through a spectrum of colours, form, scale, materials, and physical space.
Barbara has exhibited in Australia, Hong Kong, London. Her artworks are held in both private and public collections throughout Australia, Asia, New Zealand, Europe, and North America.
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
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).
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
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
“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.
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
