‘Water Amphora’, diameter 22cm x 60 height- 2018.

The European Commission in Cyprus and Europa Nostra, selected this particular Cypriot terracotta amphorae, for the European Year of Cultural Heritage. Three amphorae were made, all three shared the same quote by Gottfried Semper and the same 7thC BC bird:

 

A video with artist’s notes were made:

The handwritten text is a quote from Gottfied Semper´s Der Stil in den technischen und tektonischen Künsten (1860–63; “Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts”): Every artistic creation (…) presumes the destruction of reality, of the material, is necessary if form is to emerge as a meaningful symbol, as an autonomous human creation»

#Prolegomena - practicalAesthetics

#materialTransformation

#CulturalHeritage - Artistic motive

And on the other half is a handpainted 7thC B.C. archaic bird with tree branch ( as seen in the Cypriot Archaelogical Museums and reproduced today by the Handicraft Centre, a government-sponsored foundation committed to preserving Cypriot heritage handicrafts).

At the entrance of the amphora is a  stainless-steel sink fitter.

 

For the most part, an amphora was tableware, or sat close to the table, was intended to be seen, and was finely decorated as such by master painters.

Stoppers of perishable materials, which have rarely survived, were used to seal the contents. This water carrying amphora , today replaced by the tap (hence the contemporary household sink gadget) has the exact copy of the painting of the 7th BC bird with a branch (seen in one of the amphorae of the Cyprus Archaelogical Museum). And the readymade sink stopper on its lip. “READYMADES” (an art term), usually associated with Duchamp, are ordinary manufactured objects that challenged conventional notions of what is, and what is not, art.

 

Cultural heritage implies values and traditions, a shared bond, our belonging to a community. It represents our history and our identity; our bond to the past, to our present, and the future.

 

As an artist I spend a great deal of my time visiting museums. And on my way out from many of these museums, I pass by the gift shop. I believe that today we live in a Culture of Copies, replicas or reproductions.

 

Within these art museum gift shops, one can often find plaster casts of famous sculptures, copies of ancient amphoras, postcards, magnets, posters, etc., copies, reproductions in all different sizes of the art objects held in the museum itself. And I always wonder who makes them? In Cyprus, the Cyprus Handicraft Centre has trained staff to make the most excellent copies in clay painting, with an aim to preserve cultural heritage.

 

Museums are commonly described as storehouses of the real, authentic, material object, yet today they are eagerly embracing old and new copying technologies, not only for selling in their gift shop, but also for exhibiting inside their museum space, from handcrafted to 3D printing of museum copies (sometimes even replacing the authentic that either belongs to another museum or is lent), to complete multimedia sensorial-immersive digital exhibitions, usually of old masters such as “Caravaggio’s art revitalized” etc

 

This has provoked debates which have produced binary oppositions: the original versus the copy, the material versus the immaterial, the real versus the virtual, and the authentic versus the inauthentic ( not to mention the interrogation of fakes and forgeries).

 

The sum up, the “water amphora” is placed on a rotating stand (with a microwave mechanism), and merges different chronological styles, from the bird of antiquity to the modern household readymade sink, via the German architect Gottfried Semper, (1803-79) who who spend his life studying and writing about the classics in “Style in the Technical and Tectonic Arts”.

 

A rotating display stand to exhibit this amphora made by the artist would be the optimum way to exhibit this piece. The rotation mechanism is taken from a microwave.