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Amalia Flarakou-Flari

Amalia Flarakou-Flari works within the public realm, creating site-specific responses to urban green spaces that investigate the image, material and environment relationship. Her practice is a playful space for experimentation, challenging notions of the familiar to create uncertain outcomes.

Amalia is currently a recipient of the Leverhulme Trust Arts Scholarship and previously graduated from the University of Brighton with a first-class honours in BA Fine Art Printmaking (2018).

Upcoming exhibitions: MA Print and MA Photography 2021: Double Vision & After The High Tide, Cromwell Place, London (2021). 

Recent Exhibitions: Augmented Encounters as part of Brighton Artist Network outdoors arts project urBAN, Brighton (2021) Artist as Independent Publishers, University of the Arts Bremen (2021). Ideas Travel Faster Than Light,Collaborative Project with Jindal University, Delhi (2021)Hammersmith and Fulham Digital Art Festival, HF Arts Fest (2021).

Amalia work has been shortlisted for several prizes including Red Mansion Art Prize (2020), Material Hybrids, Artconnect in collaboration with Modulor Berlin (2020). and the John Seager Bursary Award (2018). Amalia lives and works in Brighton, UK.

Amalia Flarakou-Flari

My practice explores levels of representation that produce different ways to read familiar public space. This year my practice has been responding to urban green spaces as a way of seeking engagement and community connection during the lockdown restrictions. This shift into the public realm was important, as there has always been an overarching interest in my work in the everyday, particularly how we view and experience space.

In my current work I attempt to augment familiar experiences of urban public parks, by producing imagery that mimics and misrepresents everyday encounters and sightlines. I work with a variety of different media, combining digital print, photography, sculpture and performance. In my process I digitally print photographs onto silk and then stage performances in situ. I use the draping of the fabric to provoke a sense of collapse against the original context. The viewpoints that I photograph exist away from our usual trajectories. Instead capturing overlooked architecture and peripheries such as a graffitied wall and a neglected noticeboard in my local community parks. I am inspired by the possibilities to provoke alternative visual narratives through uncanny interventions. Echoing parallel existences in the present moment.

Augmented Encounters I
Augmented Encounters I — Installation view from public art exhibition: Site-Specific Intervention in public notice boards at The Level Park, Brighton containing a digital poster print 58x38cm, 2021. Exhibited as part of Brighton Artist Network outdoor arts project, urBAN.
Augmented Encounters III
Augmented Encounters III — Installation view from public art exhibition: Site-Specific Intervention in public notice boards at The Level Park, Brighton containing a digital poster print, 100x60cm, 2021. Exhibited as part of Brighton Artist Network outdoor arts project, urBAN.
Augmented Encounters Map
Augmented Encounters Map — Installation view from public art exhibition: Site-Specific map created to document my works inThe Level Park, Brighton containing a digital poster print, 90x50cm, 2021. Exhibited as part of Brighton Artist Network outdoor arts project, urBAN.
Augmented Encounters I
Augmented Encounters I — Installation view from public art exhibition: Site-Specific Intervention in public notice boards at The Level Park, Brighton containing a digital poster print 58x38cm, 2021. Exhibited as part of Brighton Artist Network outdoor arts project, urBAN.

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 27th -30th 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.

Medium:

Site-specific Interventions and performances in The Level Park Brighton, UK using digitally printed fabric and digital print.

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Fluid Reflections
Fluid Reflections — Digital image of site-specific performance at Brighton Rock Gardens, UK. Digitally printed fabric 1.5x1m, 2021. Exhibited online via instagram for Ideas Travel Faster Than Light collaborative project with Jindal University, May 2021.
Dream Mirror
Dream Mirror — Digital image of site-specific performance at Brighton Rock Gardens, UK, 2021. Initial experimentations for Ideas Travel Faster Than Light collaborative project with Jindal University, May 2021.

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.

 

Medium:

Site-Specific performances at Brighton Rock Gardens.
Incubation Ends
Incubation Ends — Site-specific performance in The Level park in Brighton, UK. Digitally printed silk. 1.7x1.3m, 2021.
Surface Collapse
Surface Collapse — Site-specific intervention in The Level park in Brighton, UK. Digitally printed fabric. 2x1.5m, 2020

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.

Medium:

Site-specific installations and performances using digitally printed silk.
Augmented Encounters: Microdystopia's @ The Level — A6 staple bound booklet

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.

Medium:

Digitally printed staple bound booklet

Size:

10.5x14.8cm

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Dyson Studios
Dyson Studios — Installation view: Digitally printed vinyl adhesive on aluminium, 1.6x1m, 2020. Site-specific piece to Dyson studios, RCA Dyson building.
Hallway Corner
Hallway Corner — 2 Installation views: Digitally printed fabric 80x30cm, site-specific piece to my house made during 2020 lockdown.

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.

Medium:

Digitally printed fabric installed in situ

Leverhulme Trust Arts Scholarship