Editorial

74
Four massive "walls" made of dozens of old
picture frames each hanging from a metal
frame on the ceiling make up the installation.
The frames hovering above the viewer’s
eye level form an architectural territory,
an elevated space. Familiarity, despite
the overwhelming size, invites us to step
into the "interior" space: layers of seaweed
grow out of the picture frames. A claustrophobically
enclosed space, destructing
and forbidding familiarity and estrangement,
passage and blockage, remembrance
and forgetfulness coexist. (Antonis Danos)
Antoniou’s installation aims to understand
"truth" as being fluid, like the seaweed’s
growth; always subject to memory’s ability
to remember, yet constantly alternating,
in a way that the past cannot conflict
with the sense of present – or future – personal
and national identity. (Artemis Eleftheriadou)
helene black
Born in 1950, in Cyprus and grew up in
Australia. Since 1992, she has been living
in Limassol, Cyprus. Studied art at MTC,
Melbourne University, with further parttime
studies at the National Art School,
Sydney. Her work has featured, amongst
others, at the Soders International Art Biennale,
Stockholm (2003); Buenos Aires Art
Biennale (2002); "Festival of Arts and
Sciences", Aix-les-Bains, France (2001);
"Cinema Concrete", dLux Media Arts, Sydney,
(2001); "Blanc sur Blanc", Saint Etienne
Museum of Modern Art, France (2001);
"Medi@terra 2000", The Factory, Athens;
"Through The Looking Glass", Beachwood
Centre for the Arts, Ohio, USA (2002).
She was awarded 1st prize (Cyprus) at the
"Homage to Vincent Van Gogh" compe-
tition (1996), and her entry was selected
for the permanent collection of the Foundation
Vincent Van Gogh, Arles, France.
She is a founding member of NeMe, an
interdisciplinary collective.
[www.hblack.net;www.neme.org]
Helene Black’s Relative Distance echoes the
dynamic of her own name, for a distance
is embedded in it – and sustained. It is also
recognition of the distance inherent in all
names. Black, a Greek Cypriot, migrated
as a child to Australia then returned to
Cyprus, yet not as a return to close a cycle,
for her insistence of retaining the anglicised
version of her name is a choice to stay in
the breach – a moving ambivalence, a simultaneous
refusal and embrace of belonging.
Black’s body of work over 30 years includes,
among other concerns, a concentration on
the physic mediations of portraiture –
whether painting, photography or, more
recently, film. Through these mediations
within portraiture Relative Distance incorporates
"Time" as a central motif – central
because it is always possible to return to a
place, but time is irreversible. (Denise Robinson)
Helene Black’s Relative Distance constitutes
another invitation into familiar - yet displaced
- territory. In the dim light of a room’s
interior, we are visiting a woman’s story (of
her life). The projection screen is dominated
by her presence, filmed in her living
room’s surroundings. Hegemonic -
moral, social and economic - discourses
have colonised, however, her narrative as
much as they have been inscribed on her
body, sited as little more than a 'stage prop',
in the second, nearly static projection. In
the row of images along the room’s exterior
surfaces, her space has now also been