NIKE SAVVAS is exhibiting her brilliant installation 'Finale (Embrace)', 2023 in the Pavement Gallery (Manchester, UK).
Simulating a confetti-filled finale, and activated by electric fans, Finale (Embrace) adopts a celebratory tone that conjures ends and new beginnings. Referencing Abstract Expressionism, it speaks to the spirit of the moment and to open possibility, to the embrace following separation, an embrace of love and longing.
Pavement Gallery delivers an ambitious exhibition programme of international contemporary art. In the past it has featured the work of John Cage, Lawrence Weiner, Joseph Kosuth, Melanie Smith, Martin Creed, David Batchelor, SUPERFLEX, and others.
Until 13th July 2023
NIKE SAVVAS at the AGNSW
Nike Savvas, Rally, 2014, Plastic bunting, wire rigging, electric fans, Dimensions variable.
The Art Gallery of NSW has recently re-opened its remodelled 20th Century Galleries. Spanning across two floors later works continue the investigation of abstract colour – including a masterwork by American Frank Stella, and a dazzling contemporary installation by Australian Nike Savvas – while pop explodes in works by Americans Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Corita Kent, and in earlier kinetic pieces by locals Frank and Margel Hinder.
NIKE SAVVAS was invited by The Art Newspaper Greece to speak in "Art in the Public Sphere"
Nike Savvas at the event ‘Art in the public sphere’; photo: Studio Panoulis.
NIKE SAVVAS was recently invited by The Art Newspaper Greece as one of the key speakers in their first public event “Η Τέχνη στην Δημόσια Σφαίρα (Art in the Public Sphere)”.
In this event, Savvas shared about her experience of creating art in public space, as well as her intentions behind her projects. In her conversation with Alexandra Koroxenidis, she explained: “My art seeks to eliminate classifications and genealogies. In this context, the hierarchies between the private and the public are annulled.” She also shared, ”In a way, my work is also an attempt to give a feminine aspect to the male-dominated tradition of abstract expressionism and minimalism…”
A video recording of the whole event will soon be available on the website of artnewspaper.gr.
NIKE SAVVAS INTERVIEWED IN ARTIST PROFILE MAGAZINE
Nike Savvas, Chroma Haze, 2020, painted steel installation, dimensions variable, photo Silversalt Photography
In the latest issue of Artist Profile (Issue 56), NIKE SAVVAS and GUAN WEI spoke with Michael Young to understand the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on artists who practice between studios in Australia and overseas.
“Even though living in Sydney with her husband, Savvas commutes regularly between Sydney and a studio in London, and has done so for many years. “I find the creative mix in London exciting and my work feeds on this. I react to the energy of others, and the energy of engagement and activity that opens my work to invention. Living in London has become part of my process. I spend between three to four months a year, there,” she said. Last year she headed to London for a working visit that would last just several weeks, or so she thought. Ten months later she was still there, trapped in a country where the borders had slammed shut and where the Covid death rate was escalating exponentially, and with a health service was on the verge of imploding.”
Young's essay is now freely available online here >
NIKE SAVVAS COMPLETE PUBLIC COMMISSION IN NORTH SYDNEY
NIKE SAVVAS has recently completed Chroma Haze, a beautifully-executed art commission for 1 Denison, North Sydney.
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Nike says of the work: "I am actively conscious of the colours around me, both in the real world and also in art and science. I collect, observe and record these colours constantly. I believe in the egalitarian power of colour, this is very important to me. ‘Chroma Haze’ can be compared to an ‘open analogue wave signal’ in that it embraces ephemerality and variation through personal encounter.”
EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS & NIKE SAVVAS AT THE CCC
Nike Savvas, Zero to Infinity, 2003, blown glass storks
EUGENIA RASKOPOULOS & NIKE SAVVAS are featured in the exhibition Whose Story Is This? Anyway! at the Chinese Cultural Centre, Sydney.
This exhibition is a dialogue between Chinese & Australian women artists, curated by Ll Hong. It reflects the the invaluable contributions and positive efforts made by women artists from China & Australia, and how such contributions influence, change and reconstruct both the culture & the society we live in.
The exhibition continues until 30 April.
ART AUCTION FOR BUSHFIRE RELIEF
ARC ONE artists JANET LAURENCE, HONEY LONG & PRUE STENT, NIKE SAVVAS and ANNE ZAHALKA are among sixty leading contemporary artists who are working in solidarity to raise funds for the Australian bushfire crisis.
On Wednesday 12 February, the National Art School will host a silent art auction event. Raised funds will be donated to nominated charities The Climate Council, Firesticks Alliance Network and WWF Australia.
The artworks for sale can be previewed now via the Home Bushfire Relief website.
Live auction on 12 February from 7-10pm. Register your attendance here!
NIKE SAVVAS
NIKE SAVVAS is the cover artist of Art Monthly Magazine, October. Accompanying the cover is an insightful essay by Savvas herself, detailing the inspiration behind Finale: Bouquet', her major installation at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongawera.
Savvas explores the history of ticker-tape parades and her work's relationship with the domain of abstract expressionism. In particular, Savvas mentions her unexpected affinity with the work of Lee Krasner, and how painting may exist in a post-medium condition no longer tied to traditional materials.
Pick up a copy of Art Monthly to read the full story now.
NIKE SAVVAS
NIKE SAVVAS has created a large-scale, site-specific commission for the Toi Art Gallery at Te Papa Tongawera, Museum of New Zealand.
Made up of thousands of colourful tabs suspended mid-flight, Finale: Bouquet is a kinetic, colourful and optically dazzling art installation. As a student of painting in the 1980s, Savvas became increasingly dissatisfied with the assumed two-dimensionality of the medium and the prescribed limits of its materials. Her practice has since developed a central concern with the broader experiential zone of conceptual, spatial and sensorial immersion. "It's like a huge abstract expressionist painting", she says of Finale, "a painting in the making, with tens of thousands of brushstrokes." The colours Savvas has chosen are inspired by the watercolour artworks of native flora by the early 20th century New Zealand artist Sarah Featon.
The exhibition will continue until 12 January 2020.
Review in Artist Profile magazine >
Images: Nike Savvas, Finale: Bouquet, 2019, recyclable plastic, electric fans, 7.8 x 18.9 x 8.7 m. Photos courtesy of Te Papa.
NIKE SAVVAS
Image: Nike Savvas, The Oarsman, 2018.
NIKE SAVVAS' striking The Oarsman, 2018, is included in the Mustafa Hulusi Posters project, Hoxton Square, London.
The work incorporates the image of a Perpetual Motion balancing toy – a small stainless steel rowboat that is set adrift in a big blue beyond. As a mesmerising ocular device intended for relaxation it swings and bobs under its own trapped momentum and energy.
As a broader metaphor for life, the oarsman speaks to a zone of perpetual transition, of comings and goings, of ups and downs, of changed directions and arrivals and departures. It speaks of ebbs and flows, of temporal states and the passage of time. While the term ‘row your boat’ may infer taking charge of the course for one’s own life, it also acknowledges the struggles that are to be endured in striving to overcome our limits.
JUSTINE KHAMARA & NIKE SAVVAS
Justine Khamara, Untitled Portrait 1, 2007, assembled colour photographs, 188 x 150 x 116. Photographer: John Brash.
Nike Savvas, Halo, 2016, perspex, mirror, 210 x 310cm
JUSTINE KHAMARA and NIKE SAVVAS are featured in Echo Chambers: Art and Endless Reflections at Deakin University Art Gallery. Curator James Lynch has said "The exhibition contains rarely seen photographic and sculptural works which focus on shadows, reflections, duplicates, doubles and doppelgängers, stretching our fixed and complete sense of the self."
The exhibition will run from 13 February to 29 March across three separate galleries at Deakin University.
TRACY SARROFF & NIKE SAVVAS
TRACY SARROFF and NIKE SAVVAS are included in the exhibition 'Curiouser & Curiouser' at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery.
Curated by Julian Woods, the exhibition takes inspiration from the opening passages of Lewis Carroll's book 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland', exploring ideas of time, perception, the inexplicable and tactility. 'Curiouser & Curiouser' opens on 14 December.
Tracy Sarroff, Cyber Plant – Blue, 2012, acrylic, fluorescent light, 14 x 14 x 127cm.
NIKE SAVVAS
Nike Savvas, Atomic #1, 2005-2012, C-Type Photograph, 124 x156cm
NIKE SAVVAS' spectacular installation work Atomic: Full of Love Full of Wonder is included in the exhibition Spacemakers and roomshakers at the AGNSW.
Nike will talk about her work on Thursday 26 July, at 12pm at the AGNSW. Meet at the information desk.
NIKE SAVVAS
Nike Savvas, Atomic: full of love full of wonder, 2005, AGNSW, Contemporary Collection Benefactors'.
Photo by Jenni Carter.
NIKE SAVVAS' work Atomic: full of love full of wonder will be exhibited at the AGNSW in Spacemakers and roomshakers: Installations from the collection. The impressive installation will be on view from mid July through to October alongside other immersive and expansive artworks in the Gallery's collection.
NIKE SAVVAS
Nike Savvas, Papillon, Installation View, 2017.
NIKE SAVVAS has been commissioned to develop a spectacular large-scale installation at Barangaroo. Titled Papillon, this dynamic artwork is comprised of beautifully coloured ribbons suspended from the ceiling of Exchange Place, near the Wynyard Walk escalators.
NIKE SAVVAS
"The expression “Living on a Promise” is about potential and possibility, hope and trust. It’s also about lies, broken promises, and disillusionment. Each different work invites the viewers to engage in their own way and on their own terms. Sometimes I want the colours to overwhelm, sometimes I need them to be at the service of a proposition, and other times they do something different. I make the colour choices as I go along. I use feeling and experience."
NIKE SAVVAS is interviewed by Art Guide Australia about her forthcoming exhibition at ARC ONE Gallery, Living on a Promise.
Nike Savvas, Living on a Promise (A1) (detail), 2017. Photo: Zan Wimberley.
NIKE SAVVAS
Nike Savvas, Living on a Promise (A1), carbon fibre, acrylic paint, aluminium, 52 x 40.5 x 40.5 cm. Photo: Zan Wimberley
Leading contemporary artist Nike Savvas returns to ARC ONE Gallery this October with her latest exhibition, Living on a Promise. An opening reception will be held on Thursday 26 October, 6-8pm.
Highly-recognised both in Australia and internationally for her immersive, colourful and optically charged installations, in Living on a Promise, Savvas presents a new body of work that optically activate space within striated lines of vertical colour. Small in scale, her works project large visual auras, combining high-vibrancy layered screens with oscillating colours and floating surfaces. The effect is at once mesmerising and disorienting; a pulsating mix of hue and space that tests and delights the senses.
Developed from numerous sources, including her acclaimed Liberty and Anarchy installation at Leeds Art Gallery (UK, 2012), these works offer diverse points of access, from mathematical equations and systems of logic, to perception based optics, colour and ephemerality.
Living on a Promise follows a research trip to the archives of MOMA, New York, where Savvas undertook an in-depth examination of the critically celebrated Responsive Eye exhibition of 1965. Contributing to an existing art historical discourse pertaining to optical phenomena and colour frequencies, this exhibition examines how different optical algorithms produce different outcomes – and occasionally even false colours. In these works, Savvas “seeks to dismantle conventional boundaries, overstep thresholds, and … to open into a new world of artificial patterns, optical ghosting, fugitive colours and temporal aliasing”.
Since training as a painter in the late 1980s, Savvas has consistently probed the traditional conventions of painting as a medium, such as two-dimensional space, surface and materiality. In this exhibition she explores painting’s potential anew, producing a ‘synthesised’ space in which the viewer experiences a disorientating shift in their perceptual register – a juncture between fact and subjective reception.
MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO & NIKE SAVVAS
Congratulations to MARIA FERNANDA CARDOSO and NIKE SAVVAS, who have been invited to show work in the 2018 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art, curated by Erica Green, founding Director of the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art. Inaugurated in 1990, the Adelaide Biennial is the country’s longest-running survey of contemporary Australian art and an important platform for Australian artists to realise new works and projects of a scale that require an institutional context for their conception, realisation and presentation.
NIKE SAVVAS
NIKE SAVVAS has been featured in the prestigious journal 'Diacritics' in an extensive article on her practice, as well as the front and back covers! Diacritics, a Cornell University publication of literary theory and criticism, has included in the past important writers and philosophers such as Jacques Derrida, Michel Focault and Claude Lévi-Strauss. Keeping a strong visual component, in recent years the journal has highlighted a single artist per issue.
NIKE SAVVAS
NIKE SAVVAS will be discussing her installation-based practice at the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum, 55 North Terrace, Adelaide, on Tuesday 8 August, 1.30-2.30pm.
Nike Savvas, 2016 (detail), installation view, Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art. Photograph by Sam Noonan.