NEWS
December 2023
PAINTINGS OF ABSENT
6.12.2023 - 3.1.2024
Winter Garden, Tampere Hall, Tampere, Finland
Curator Anne Paldanius
The collection is about being an absent - of being away and having been away. There is an dreary park, a deserted house, no one is present. There are places which have once been shared, but all that remains is a faint memory of presence, or a indifferent stagnation of absent.
The paintings has been done in the years 2016-2018. Back then I was living somewhat restless life, travelling from another side of Europe to another one. I have returned to various places after some period of time when everything has turned irrevocably different. I've realised afterwards that the paintings to me describe absent of my self since I have left the places behind.
It is interesting how you attach to a place, which before you've shared with someone, when the places have had a deeper meaning. On sentimental level the places have become empty, in the end even meaningless. In the state of mind even the places seem to vanish.
October 2022
OF WATER
22.10. - 6.11.2022
Automat Space, Saarbrücken, Germany
Curator, Timo Poeppel
September 2022
VIVA LA VIDA !
3. - 18.9.2022
World of Tango -festival / Contemporary Art Center Pispala, Hirvitalo
Tampere, Finland
Curator, Alisa Volkova
Since the late 1800's the famous rubber ducks, (nowadays made of plastic), have spread all over the world. One unexpected spreading of the ducks happened in 1992, when three 40-foot containers holding 28800 plastic bathtub toys from a Chinese factory were washed off a ship to Pacific Ocean, containing 7200 each of blue turtles, yellow ducks, red beavers, and green frogs.
Two-thirds of the toys floated south and landed three months later on the shores of Indonesia, Australia, and South America. The ocean streams carried part of them to Alaska and then completed a full circle back near Japan. Many of the toys then entered the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia and were trapped in the Arctic ice. Their travel routes have provided researchers with more information about ocean currents. Viva la Vida!
Artist's statement
“As I descended into impassible rivers
I no longer felt guided by the ferrymen…”
Arthur Rimbaud
…because we had overconsumed. We thought that by purchasing we would have become happier. We though that our standard of living would have become higher and that everything would have become more attractive.
And I realized that the impassible rivers are not attractive.
Extract of curators statement
July 2022
PAINTINGS AND DRAWINGS ABOUT EMPTINESS, SILENCE AND STAGNATION
March 2022
NORDIC MEMOIR
3.-20.3.2022
FokiaNou Art Space, Athens
Curators, Mary Cox and Panagiotis Voulgaris
I'm sitting at the end of a pier, watching the reflection of moving clouds on the calm surface of the water. I feel like the pier is moving as if I was sat on the doorstep of an open airplane door. I wave my legs above the clouds – waving to the clouds which remain in the past.
Artist's statement of a reflection from his childhood
We have always been longing to here, to the lake, that is deeper than time, and which has an island where the future is hidden.
Extract from a novel Kivitasku by Anni Kytömäki
In the foreground a piece related to the series I have always been longing to here:
Cloud, gypsum on glass with black paper, 2022
Finnish institute at Athens contributed realizing the exhibition
February 2022
TEDDY BEAR AND CLOCK - exhibition of illustration
12.2. - 4.6.2022
Lapua Art Museum, Finland
Curators, Susanna Oversteyns and Sakari Hanhimäki
Dream Gate
August 2021
AVANTGARDEVEKKULA: BURNING DESIRE
12.6. - 29.8.20212
Art Center Haihatus, Joutsa, Finland
Curator, Tuomo Vuoteenoma
Avantgardevekkula: Burning Desire looks at these scorching human needs through sculpture, installation, image and sound. The exhibition is composed of artists and groups who convey experience, feeling and visions of the different levels of needs, and how they affect the surroundings. They show how in some circumstances the fulfilling of needs becomes a problem, and what it might mean to actually fulfill an insatiable desire.
Extract of the press release by the curator
Dream Walkers, Installation by Terhi Ekebom
Soundscape for the installation by Sebastia Boulter:
https://soundcloud.com/user-756842154/unissakavelijat
July 2021
THE CASTRO
6. - 17.6.2021
FokiaNou Art Space, Athens
FokiaNou Art Space is pleased to present The Castro, a group show curated by Mary Cox and Panagiotis Voulgaris, for which participating artists responded to an open call. The exhibition title refers to the famous San Francisco district that since the 1960s has become one of the most well-known centers of LGBT activism and culture in the world. The title's double meaning is the antithesis of a free environment, that of a traditional castle as a walled-in, exclusive and restrictive institution.
Artists were asked to play with the word castro, and its double meaning, presenting the bright and open castle of freedom, acceptance and equality, as well as the dark and enclosed castle of racism, homophobia and violence. The show comprises a wide variety of media: drawing, painting, photography, video and sculpture.
Press release by the curators
The song and the video by Sebastian Boulter and Taija Goldblatt are made in memory of Zak Kostopoulos (1985-2018), also known as Zackie Oh, a LGBTIQ+ activist in Greece. Kostopoulos was killed on a street in Athens in September 2018. The trial over his death began in October 2021 with six people being charged, four of them police officers.
The words in the song are an extract of a poem by Tassos Leivaditis. The extract was written on a wall at the place where Zak was beaten fatally. Leivaditis (1922-1988) was a poet, an essayist, screenwriter, literary critic and amongst many other works, the collaboration with Mikis Theodorakis, whom Leivaditis had first met when they were both in exile in the 1940s, continued in the field of songwriting, with the Greek composer putting many of Leivaditis’ poems to music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKJ6VoeJT1A
In memory of Zak Kostopoulos | Zackie Oh 1985 – 2018
Lead vocal: Marilena Orfanou
Backing vocals: Apostol Terminal
Cello: Mikko Supponen
Guitars and bass: Sebastian Boulter
Drums and keyboards: Teemu Takatalo
Video: Taija Goldblatt
Music: Sebastian Boulter
Composed to an extract of poem by Tasos Leivaditis
Recording and mixing: Teemu Takatalo / Mutual Sound Studios
Mutual Recordings
February 2020
THIS SIDE
7.2. - 27.2.2020
Chili Art Gallery, Athens
Curator, Paris Kapralos
From the pitch-black environment Sebastian Boulter digs out with charcoal the little light that can be imagined in the tunnel. There are penetrating roots appearing through the ceiling and collapsed sections of the roof, the floor and the walls. It is possible to discover sources, drainage pipes, Eridanos meeting Ilisos, rats and hundreds of cockroaches. The visual language of the works tends to diverge from realism to the world of imagination and illusion that cannot be avoided in the dim tunnel.
Artist's statement
Finnish institute at Athens contributed realizing the exhibition
May 2019
LEAD THE WAY
9.5. - 1.6.2019
FokiaNou Art Space, Athens
Curators, Mary Cox and Panagiotis Voulgaris
Socrates:
Let us turn aside here and go along the Ilisos; then we can sit down quietly wherever we please.
Phaedrus:
I am fortunate, it seems, in being barefoot; you are so always. It is easiest then for us to go along the brook with our feet in the water, and it is not unpleasant, especially at this time of the year and the day.
Socrates:
Lead on then, and look out for a good place where we may sit.
Phaedrus:
Do you see that very tall plane tree?
Socrates:
What of it?
Phaedrus:
There is shade there and a moderate breeze and grass to sit on, or, if we like, to lie down on.
Socrates:
Lead the way.
Plato, Phaedrus, 229a-229d
FokiaNou Art Space is pleased to present the work of Sebastian Boulter, an Athens-based painter from Finland whose work often refers to environmental issues. He is interested in manipulated landscapes by human beings and other traces and tracks that humans leave behind them in nature. This exhibition of a series of drawings and paintings takes as its subject the river Ilisos, from the area between Kaisariani and Kallithea. Although this part of the river has been covered, that does not preclude one from having a philosophical discussion with a friend next to the river.
Artist's satament
The exhibition has been organized in collaboration between FokiaNou Art Space and the Finnish Institute at Athens, with a financial support from VISEK (Centre for the Promotion of Visual Art).
January 2019
TODAY WE BURY ILISOS
The banks of the river Ilisos were systematically exploited by the Municipality of Athens from the 19th c. until 1920’s, as a source for sand and gravel, used to build the roads of the capital. Thus, following the growth of the population in the capital and the urgent need for more space in the urban environment, the part of the river up to the Panathenaic stadium was buried between 1939-1948; a decision made by dictator Ioannis Metaxas, with the legendary expression: "Today we bury Ilisos".
Sebastian Boulter was chosen to a group exhibition Athens Under the Microscope in FokiaNou Art Space with his charcoal drawing on paper Today We Bury Ilisos. The exhibition took place on the 16th - 31st of January 2019. In addition to this, he was invited by Mary Cox and Panagiotis Voulgaris, the directors of FokiaNou Art Space, to hold a wider collection of his drawings in FokiaNou Art Space in May 2019. Boulter’s series of drawings of the river Ilisos is a research of this hidden river in Athens, which has been covered since the beginning of the 20th century. Nowadays it runs from Kaisariani to Kallithea, 7 km underground through the city centre. Since February 2018 Boulter has been drawing the up- and down reaches of the river. In July he explored the river by walking through the tunnel, making photos of it, but also having intimidating, fascinating and touching experience of rather dangerous journey. Throughout the documentation and the experience, he continued the drawings of the river from inside the tunnel.
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The sculpture of the Semi-God Ilisos of the river is depicted by Phidias in the western pediment of the Parthenon on the Acropolis. Socrates and Phaedrus discussed the philosophy of soul and love on the riverbank of Ilisos. The Athenians got their drinking water from the river still one hundred years ago. Today, in the rainy season, it runs 7km under the ground. On dry seasons the tunnel is walkable from the other outskirt of the city to the other one in few hours, but it is NOT recommendable, and anyhow strictly forbidden.
Up reach of the river Ilisos in Kaisariani
Today We Bury Ilisos, 110x150, charcoal on paper, 2018