Stella Baraklianou
Simple Flowers
Carnations, 2021, 50x80cm, Digital C-type print on Baryta Canson paper
In my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that perished twenty years ago. Mark Twain |
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Our intrinsic fascination with beauty is a complex and sometimes misunderstood relationship. While each person’s definition of beauty is always a subjective and very private matter, one only has to step back and observe how we each shape our personal space, the cities we live in, how we wish to spend our time or the objects we strive to own, to realise that our desire to create and be surrounded by beauty is inescapably one of our primal urges.
Is this vanity? Sometimes. But evidently, at a societal level, our quest towards capturing, recreating and celebrating beauty has been one of the instrumental drivers for some of our most significant advancements in art, architecture, technology and even medicine. |
Purple Clematis, 2021, 50x80cm,
Digital C-type print on Baryta Canson paper |
Purple Clematis (2), 2021, 50x80cm,
Digital C-type print on Baryta Canson paper |
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For all our technological accomplishments, however, our connection with nature and our attraction towards the beauty of the natural world remains a primal instinct. We hold an inherent admiration for natural beauty that supersedes our fascination with technology. It is no coincidence that the depictions of natural scenes such as landscapes or still life have featured as constant topics of choice, alongside the human form, whenever new technologies afforded us novel ways of capturing the world around us.
From new painting methods and equipment, to photography and the digital, aspiring to capture and even replicate the majestic complexity of the natural world has remained an instinctive urge. |
Cream roses in pint glass, 2021, 60x60cm, Digital C-type print on Baryta Canson paper
Arrangement of roses long dish, 2021, 50x80cm, Digital C-type print on Baryta Canson paper
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The depiction of still life compositions, which Stella Baraklianou’s Simple Flowers focuses on, is a topic that is inexorably linked with our desire to represent the beauty of the natural world, while combining it with our ability to overcome one of nature’s greatest perils: impermanence.
Still life compositions, such as the flower arrangements presented in Baraklianou’s work, are a visual celebration for what both nature and mankind have achieved. On the one hand we admire and enjoy the idealised composition of natural beauty, in this case in the form of blooming flowers, while at the same time we take pride in the human achievement of developing the skills and technology to be able to capture and overcome the ephemeral dimensions of nature. |
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There is something historically and culturally loaded about the flower in art: from purity and innocence to desire and death, the imagery of flowers has been a powerful metaphor for many artists. In the case of Stella Baraklianou, her photographs of bouquets and floral arrangements are more than a depiction of or a comment on beauty in a media-saturated world. Her pictures add sparkle to our technologically advanced and homogenous existence, but they also undermine this homogeneity, through claiming a space between the artificiality of the constructed image and the hyperbole of its re-enactment.
Vassilios Doupas Curator |
Arrangement of roses (missing) long dish, 2021, 50x80cm, Digital C-type print on Baryta Canson paper
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It may be an overly rational thought, but in the natural world nothing is built to last forever - ourselves included. This is a sobering realisation, but thankfully we are a resilient species. Our answer to the ephemeral is our ability to celebrate its beauty. We attribute great value to something that is only available to us for a fleeting moment, even more so when we identify it as beautiful. This has been our coping mechanism for millennia, serving us particularly well during the recent pandemic years.
The ability we have to de-rationalise and adopt a positive outlook in the face of certain loss, grounded in ideas such as the poetic beauty of the natural world’s impermanence, is what makes us a very strange species indeed. And it is this very defiant but delicate, almost man-made, beauty that Baraklianou’s work brings forward. |
Arrangement of roses in rectangular dish, (reverse), 2021 60x90cm, Digital print on velvet shimmer fabric
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The choice of subject itself carries a rather symbolic meaning as Baraklianou draws references from renowned florist and socialist reformer Constance Spry, whose 1957 publication provided the title for the project.
Baraklianou draws parallels between Spry’s and her generation’s desire to focus on beauty as a means of overcoming the dark memories that shadowed the post-war period and the pressures felt during our own experience throughout the Covid pandemic. During both periods, flowers acted as a means of connecting us with the beauty of nature, arranged and presented through the camera lens in a way that overcame their ephemeral dimension. The flower arrangements in Simple Flowers carry an unashamedly artificial and stylised beauty. The compositions are captured in a bright and colourful light, with a clear intention to create an uplifting mood. The compositions are celebrated, not merely presented, acting as a reminder of photography’s ability to tap into primal urges that help us overcome the ephemeral nature of the natural world. |
Red Roses, (gold), 2021, 50x80cm,
Digital C-type print on Baryta Canson paper |
Red Roses, 2021, 50x80cm,
Digital C-type print on Baryta Canson paper |
With thanks to:
Vasilios Douppas, Curator of Art
for his commentary
Floral arrangements
by Lizzie Simpson
@inagaddaflowers
www.vidaflowers.co.uk
Shot at:
Light Space Studios
@lightspaceleeds
www.lightspaceleeds.co.uk
Vasilios Douppas, Curator of Art
for his commentary
Floral arrangements
by Lizzie Simpson
@inagaddaflowers
www.vidaflowers.co.uk
Shot at:
Light Space Studios
@lightspaceleeds
www.lightspaceleeds.co.uk
Bio
Stella Baraklianou artist and educator (b.Greece) utilises photography, installation and writing to explore themes of the ephemeral and the unstable. A key theme throughout her work is the tradition of the still-life and the references to flowers.
Solo exhibitions (most recent): The Magician ( 2021), Gloam Gallery, Sheffield and Island, The Wind Constantly, (2017), STCFTHOTS, Leeds. Selected group shows include: (forthcoming, 2022) Seeing Stars, Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds; Photo Tallinn Art Fair, Tallinn, Estonia (2019) and Photography is Magic, Aperture Foundation, New York (2016). Stella has participated in international artists residencies at Banff, Centre for Arts and Creativity, Alberta, Canada (2016) and SPAR, St. Petersburg, Russia (2018).
She holds a PhD in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London Arts (2007) and an MA in Photographic Studies, from the University of Westminster (2002). Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work is held in private collections. She is currently Senior Lecturer in Photography, at the University of Huddersfield.
stellabaraklianou.com
Solo exhibitions (most recent): The Magician ( 2021), Gloam Gallery, Sheffield and Island, The Wind Constantly, (2017), STCFTHOTS, Leeds. Selected group shows include: (forthcoming, 2022) Seeing Stars, Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds; Photo Tallinn Art Fair, Tallinn, Estonia (2019) and Photography is Magic, Aperture Foundation, New York (2016). Stella has participated in international artists residencies at Banff, Centre for Arts and Creativity, Alberta, Canada (2016) and SPAR, St. Petersburg, Russia (2018).
She holds a PhD in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London Arts (2007) and an MA in Photographic Studies, from the University of Westminster (2002). Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work is held in private collections. She is currently Senior Lecturer in Photography, at the University of Huddersfield.
stellabaraklianou.com