Winner of this year's Wolfson College Cambridge Royal Academy Schools Graduate Prize, Irini Bachlitzanaki, in conversation with Dr. Meredith Hale about her work and The Combination Show exhibition.
The Combination Show
Borrowing its title from the name of the room, The Combination Show brings together a selection of older and more recent works that employ various embroidery techniques to create different versions of everyday objects we share our lives with. Images seemingly protrude out of their flat backgrounds and three-dimensional objects sink back into them as the works oscillate between image and object. A play on opposites that come together, the utilitarian and the decorative, the prop and the real, soft and hard, these works attempt to imaginatively feel around the space as well as the material world. They simultaneously explore the relationship of sculpture to other forms of representation and the relationship of making works of art to other forms of production, artefacts and commodities.
The framed embroidered pieces, hanging tapestries, upholstered and smaller sculptures, along with research material and preparatory work are part of an ongoing body of work that flirts with several different processes and draws inspiration from craft and design practices. These pieces Illustrate a strong pull towards materiality and an interest in practical skills, traditional or otherwise, whilst also allowing for material experimentation.
Irini Bachlitzanaki was born in Athens, Greece in 1984 and now lives and works in London. She studied History of Art at UCL and Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, Chelsea College of Arts and most recently the Royal Academy Schools. She has participated in group exhibitions in Greece, the U.K. and elsewhere and has had two solo shows in her native Athens. The Combination Show is her first solo exhibition in the U.K.
Image: Rinnig (Gooseberry Fool), 2021(digitised drawing detail)
Image courtesy of the artist
