Amalia Flarakou-Flari

This public exhibition Augmented Encounters was part of Brighton Artist Network outdoor arts project urBAN, exhibited in the noticeboards of The Level Park in Brighton, UK between 27^th -30^th May. 

This exhibition is a culmination of the project Augmented Encounters that I have been developing throughout the 2021 lockdown, sited in The Level park in Brighton, UK. There are more details of the development of this project in the images below.  

In these noticeboard works my aim was to prompt a double take in the viewer by creating an intervention within a public information format. To create these works I digitally printed images of the noticeboards onto silk and then used the fabric against my body to stage performances back in the original context. I chose to use a process of repeated staging to create an illusionary effect of the image regressing back into time, drawing attention to a familiar part of space that is often overlooked.

These works were made as part of an instagram exhibition Ideas Travel Faster Than Light. This was a collaborative project with Jindal university Delhi, curated by Jasone Miranda-Bilbao. In this collaborative project students from the RCA and Jindal university exchanged instructions to create a new artwork.

The instructions I received were “To go through the performative act of interacting with a mirror”. For this I wanted to use environmental mirrors, which led me to think about bodies of waters at sunrise. I was interested in how mirrors reflect a part of reality not immediately available to us. Placing us in our context as if we are looking at ourselves through another perspective.

For these experimentations I choose to work in another local public space, Brighton rock gardens. I specifically chose this spot because it has a large pond which would allow me to work with a reflective, still body of a water.

These pieces some selected works from the development of my Project Augmented Encounters. For this work I used overlooked viewpoints in The Level park, Brighton as inspirations for site-specific interventions and performances. Brighton developed throughout the 2020/2021 lockdown. These initial interventions brought together as an imagined series of pseudo-landmarks in the booklet below.

Augmented Encounters: Microdystopia's at The Level, Brighton is a pseudo information booklet for The Level park in Brighton, UK. This booklet documents a series of site-specific interventions that happened during the 2021 lockdown, with accompanying text that aims to provoke an alternative visual narrative to the park space. In this narrative the peripheries of public space become the focus provoking a fictional present that runs alongside the places and sights we think we know. 

This booklet and corresponding artworks were the developmental work for the Augmented Encounters public exhibition in the noticeboards at The Level park, Brighton, UK.

These 2 pieces are indoor site-specific interventions made in 2020. Initially to the Dyson studios in the RCA Dyson building and then in my home during the 2020 lockdown. These works informed my interest in making site-specific interventions in public space this year.