Tuesday 27 November 2012

Thessaloniki and its collectors

One more exhibition for the 100 years of the Thessaloniki liberation is that at the Byzantine Museum.
It shows souvenirs of the city that are owned by private collectors who gave them to the museum to be shown to the public. A beautiful exhibition but unfortunately my photos weren't very good.


 Ariadne, one of Las Incantadas.

 Well, that I did not know that a Zeppelin had been put down during the First World War in Thessaloniki!



 That same evening another free and very interesting entertainment. We attended a theatrical performance inside the Yeni Cami (New Mosque) in our neighbourhood. The titleof the performance is misleading. It was the stories and accounts of explorers that visited the city at that time after the liberation.


Monday 26 November 2012

Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art

The rest of our visit at the Macedonian Museum of Modern Art on Saturday was exciting too.
I always love what they have on permanent and temporary exhibitions.
The permanent....




 The temporary...




 I loved those chairs. You could even upholster your own.
 Sometimes I really wonder where the boundaries of Modern Art are. Can you spot the art in this photo? No it is not hubby!
 Yes it is that long yellow metal tube!What is it?What does it mean? I don't know!It goes all the way to the ceiling!
Another exhibition...

My favourite exhibition apart from the Greek Monsters was this one.


 Beads played a great part in this one.And it does look very easy to make doesn't it?But you didn't think of it,did you?
But my all time favourite was this one. It was all ribbons and beads and it turned around!Lovely! I didn't want to leave!I was mesmerized!
It is by Lionel Esteve  Rock Flower 2006


Enjoy the ride!



Sunday 25 November 2012

Greek monsters

The title in today's post is ambiguous and has a double meaning.
Yesterday morning(Saturday) we went to the city centre on foot as usual. We love walking in the city.
Our destination was the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art bazaar.
On the way we met with a demonstration and for a while changed our route and followed the demonstrators to learn some details why they were in the streets.
They were citizens of Chalkidiki peninsual (where my summer house is) who were fighting against the gold mines that are going to be built in the area destroying century old forests.
The destruction of the environment on the one hand, the development on the other.
In a country where nothing is produced any more the gold in its soil has become casus belli!
Should we allow such a big development take place and destroy the environment where we live and which won't be sustained for our descendants?Or should we stop it and leave poor people without jobs? Of course no one but the rich will get richer through this development.
You can read more about this here and  here and here.

 After the demonstration we went to the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art bazaar.
I didn't buy anything although, because the prices were much higher to what I wanted to spend.
So instead we took advantage of the museum's free entrance day and looked around.
There were many different exhibitions but the one we loved most was the Greek Monsters by Beetroot.
It shows a new perspective of Ancient Greek Mythology monsters.
The poster of the exhibition....

The Cyclops...

 Cerberus...

 The Medusa...
 Thessaloniki....
The Minotaur




After this very interesting exhibition we saw some more things in other galleries of the museum which will be posted on the next blog post.

Thursday 22 November 2012

A painting exhibition

One more exhibition hubby and I went to some time ago was at Alaca Imaret,(=the colourful poorhouse).


It was an exhibition of icon paintings related to the liberation of Thessaloniki 100 years ago.






 Among the other artists was Konstantinos Kougioumtzis who is a fellow shadow puppeteer and iconography artist in Drama.
We loved his works of Art.

 Especially Karaghiozis as a soldier of the war in Macedonia.
 There was also a lovely shadow puppet.

Alaca Imaret is so beautiful inside as well.


If you want to see more of Konstantinos' work you can visit his current exhibition in Drama.