Soula is an artist and designer based in Melbourne, Australia.
Soula has a great love for both design and the visual arts. Beginning her professional career as creative director of ooi.com.au, a design company she owns together with her husband Theo, Soula also had the opportunity to exhibit her fine art paintings and prints at various Melbourne galleries.
Soula explores different bodies of work through many mediums, initially beginning by sketching before progressing works in acrylics and oils, various printmaking forms and egg tempera where subject matter permits.
Through whimsical characters, building facades and/or streetscapes, Soula’s subjects reflect her cultural heritage, travel, and personal life experiences – one of which is living with chronic pain.
A sea change from Melbourne now sees Soula Co Directing Queenscliff Gallery (QG) with her husband Theo on the Bellarine Peninsula. Soula more broadly applies her fine art and design experience by curating exhibitions and managing QG’s brand and identity.
Soula is represented by QG, housed in an 1868 Wesleyan church space. Her work is available at both the QG and The Convent Daylesford.
Masonik is an Australian multi-disciplinary arts collective, who have performed, nationally and internationally since 2006.
Masonik’s immersive experience creates electronica / jazz-fusion / neo-classical and soundscapes layered with video projections. As Visual Artists, Masonik generates artworks based in graphic design, film, photography, sculpture, installation & theatre.
Masonik were regular contributors for the ABC Radio National show, ‘Sound Quality’ & were invited to record in the ABC studios in Sydney. Masonik has also created long form exhibitions and performances titled ‘Altar’d Lament’. These have been presented across Australia & Athens.
‘Altar’d Lament’ is a multi-disciplinary art installation and performance project. Though the critical locus of the project is the destruction of the cosmopolitan city of Smyrna in 1922, ‘Altar’d Lament’ is a pantheon for Neo-rebetes.
Masonik embarked on a pilgrimage to Piraeus and Athens to confront ‘rebetiko’, a cultural form that can be simultaneously fragile and resilient, both comforting and threatening. Refuge for the exiled, the tradition altered creating a narrative to an open-ended underworld. So was created this Unorthodox Amanes Altar.
‘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
“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.
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
Jenny Dumont has travelled to many countries over the years to paint and view the work of past and present masters. She worked as an artist and teacher during her time living in Greece, Canada and since 2008 in her Bayside art studio in Melbourne Australia. Originally trained in Graphic Design but greatly inspired by the Surrealist movement with artists such as Dali, Man Ray and Duchamp. She went on to blend and create works that explore several different mediums and styles from modern acrylics and traditional oils to abstract inks and resins.
Her journey with resin as an art medium began in 2014 with works executed on custom made round boards and canvas. Inspiration came mainly from nature especially flowers, the beautiful local Bayside beaches, and the landscape of this earth in general. She mixes inks, pigments and powders with clear resin which is then poured in layers to create a composition that is fluid, has depth and is rich in colour and visual texture.
Jenny’s artist journey reflects her love of Surrealist ideals of juxtaposing images, mediums and methods. These attributes are an influence on her style and belief that, ‘not all needs to be as we know it’. Whilst working with and teaching resin, she began experimenting with the creation of art through furniture. Leaning on her experience as a wood and metal craft teacher, her love of art and mixing mediums, Jenny sourced home furnishings with unique architecture and their potential for metamorphosis. Each piece is lovingly restored, reinvented, and adorned with a piece of resin art, one of a kind and unique to that piece.
Today, Jenny is a full-time artist, Secondary teacher and entrepreneur. She continues to work with mixed media, experimenting with the vast boundaries this medium has to offer. She stands by the belief that, ‘an artist should not be branded but be a conduit, a forever evolving fluid medium’. Private collections of her work are held in Greece, Singapore, Canada, United Kingdom and Brazil.
Exhibitions:
1999 Pylaia Art Gallery Greece
2003 Matticks Farm Art Gallery Canada
2004 Vancouver Island Food and Wine Festival
2009 Canterbury Art Show Melbourne
2010 Beaumaris Art Group2014 Art for Life
2013-2021 Bluethumb Art Gallery
2015 Antipodean Palette Steps Gallery Carlton
2015 The Bayside Art Show
2015 Mingara Art Gallery Phillip Island
2015 Emerging Art Gallery Windsor
2015-2016 Without Pier Gallery Bayside
2017 Beaumaris Art & Craft Exhibition
2015 November issue of Inside Out Magazine
Bachelor of Education in Art and Design, Melbourne University (1985-1989)
Secondary Art and Design teacher, Arts coordinator, State examiner and mentor for VCE art students (1990-1992)
Professional exhibiting artist and teacher (1993-current)
Co-founder of Steaming Ink Design Partnership (advertising, graphic design and photography)
James Raftopoulos is a Melbourne based Graphic Designer and Artist. Through abstract mark-making, rudimentary printing techniques and digital compositions and motion, James explores the fuzzier edges of what outlines the human experience. James has exhibited work in group shows across Melbourne, culminating in his first regional solo show ‘Alive/Opaque’ in 2018.
Pasakos reflects scenes of the Melbourne Docklands. It holds many experiences for the artist from his childhood, cultural identity, and reflects a sense of home. These elements form the foundation for the artist. Most of his works to date are part of an ongoing personal journey to endeavour to understand belonging and identity. Deep connections are made between the two worlds of his Australian upbringing and Greek heritage. He often visits the Melbourne Docklands to collect his thoughts and to view the maritime landscape, to seek his own iconography, narrative, purpose and understanding of sense of place.
The Docklands is an historical area with much significance to the Australian contemporary landscape, which came into prominence during the Victorian Gold rush of the 1850s as a very busy Melbourne shipping hub. Portraying the Melbourne Docklands is to continue the narrative of travel and discovery. During his travels overseas, he has often considered the valuable migrant stories. His works reflect these powerful experiences as they act as reminders of the fragility of our sense of self in the world, and the way in which that sense of identity may develop and spawn new cultural identities that change or shape values of other cultural frameworks. His methods are in Printmaking, Drawing and in Mixed Media. Works can be seen as surreal and atmospheric. They are often rich in colour and evoke a sense of mystery. They can be quite dark and with this brings a personal insight of the artist. As a practicing artist, Pasakos has been involved in many collaborative projects, print exchanges and exhibitions that has allowed him to produce other thematic works that have enriched not only his own techniques and methods but his practice and narrative. Pasakos grew up in Melbourne and now lives in Ballarat, a rural Victorian city. He studied Visual Arts at Monash University, Melbourne. He has a Bachelor of Visual Arts Degree, a Post Graduate Diploma in Printmaking, a Graduate Diploma in Teaching, a Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Education and a Master of Fine Art majoring in Printmaking & Drawing.
Since 1991 Pasakos has regularly exhibited in both solo and group exhibitions throughout Australia and internationally. His works are represented in public, private and university collections. Pasakos is a Visual Arts Lecturer at Federation University Australia teaching into Printmaking, Drawing and Studio Practice.
Global conferences – Peered Review Papers admitted and accepted – exhibitions:
International Print Conference, IMPACT – International Multi-disciplinary Printmaking, Artists, Concepts and Techniques
Sophia Xeros-Constantinides’ art-making was re-awakened as a mother of two. Once Sebastian and Bianca were both at school she was able to study Fine Art part-time as a mature-aged student at Monash University, Caulfield Campus. Prior to this, Sophia had seen her dear mother, Maria Xeros Colbert, learn to paint at summer school in Melbourne in the 1960s, under the direction of artists Robert Grieve and Dawn Westbrook, and later Sophia saw Maria extend her embroidery skills to new heights at the Embroiderer’s Guild, Victoria.
Through her clinical work as a Medical Doctor and Psychological Therapist treating pregnant women and new mothers, Sophia started to explore the visualisation of women’s reproductive experiences. This led Sophia to use drawing, printmaking and collage in her post-graduate art-making, to create her own visual metaphors for the complex and often traumatic reproductive experiences that women reported to her and to others. Sophia’s own maternal grandmother, Yiayia Evdokia, lost her first-born babe-in-arms Eleftheria when they had to flee Smyrna before the catastrophe in September 1922. Later, Evdokia had thirteen more pregnancies but only five babies survived to grow as children and adults.
In her Collage work, Sophia explores the female form and questions what it is to be human. Her art-practice is characterised by appropriation and juxtaposition that manifest in her collage works on paper and in her prints and drawings. These works challenge integrity and identity, recall surrealistic and uncanny forces and give expression to alternative realities.
Since completing her PhD, Sophia has taken up Painting in oils and gouache. For this she has ventured to Europe, and back to England, where she had lived for eight years, in her secondary school years, in Birmingham with her aunt Margaret Ryle and her dear Uncle Nick. She finds inspiration in the traditions of European art, in figurative painting, in colour and in representing the interface between Nature and (Western) Culture.
QUALIFICATIONS 1998-2001: Bachelor of Fine Arts (Hons) Faculty of Art & Design, Monash University 2002-2005: Masters of Fine Art (by Research) Monash University (Thesis Title: “Procreative Bodies Envisioned: A Visual Exploration of Female Reproductive Experiences.”) 2006-2017: Doctor of Philosophy (Fine Art)(by Research), Faculty of Art & Design, Monash University. (Thesis Title: “Strangers in a Strange Land: Envisioning the Darker side of Motherhood.”)
ART THERAPY PUBLICATION ‘Myself as a Tree: The enabling power of an Art Therapy intervention in clinical work with post-natally distressed women-mothers’ in “Therapeutic Arts in Pregnancy, Birth and New Parenthood” Edited by Susan Hogan, Routledge, New York, 2021.
SELECTED PRIZES / AWARDS 2012: Mayoral Art Prize Maroondah City Council (acquisitive) 2006: Prize-winner (acquisitive) textile art in Fabricate 2006, Embroiderers’ Guild, Vic 2002: Australian Postgraduate Award
SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2016: Bitter-Sweet Embrace PhD Exam Exhibition, Monash Uni, MADA Gallery, Caulfield 2013: More Earthly Delights, Catherine Asquith Gallery, Collingwood 2012: Earthly Delights, Jackman Gallery St Kilda. 20-page catalogue, Earthly Delights 2010: Bedlam: The bitter-sweet embrace of motherhood, Maroondah Art Gallery, exhibition of collage, drawings and digital prints. 28-page catalogue, Bedlam 2009: Gestate – AAIMH/Marcé Conference Solo Exhibition, University of Melbourne 2006: Running with Pigs – Solo Exhibition exploring peri-natal loss, P.O. Gallery, Ballarat 2005: Concoct – Masters Fine Art by Research Exhibition, Monash Faculty Gallery, Caulfield 2001: Template: Beginnings & Becomings-An exploration of women’s experience in relation to reproduction, Women’s Bodies/History Conference, University of Melbourne
