The Essence of BODYWORKS 05/04
1st May - 1st August
Municipal Arts Centre, Lefkosia

For 3 months the Municipal Arts Centre, supported by the Cultural Services & the Laiki Group Cultural Centre, presents 'Bodyworks', a major exhibition featuring works by 24 young European artists, 7 from Cyprus, on the theme of 'Sports & Contemporary Art'. The show has been organised within the framework of the 'Cyprus-EU, Events on the occasion of accession' & the 'Cultural Olympiad 2001-2004' programmes.

The main inspiration for the artists participating has been the concept of the 'sports ideal' and the essence of performance in both sport and art. By making links between the two, and by examining their significance through the ages, the artists have combined and reinvented these visually within a contemporary context.
Sport’s focus has always been on ‘hard training’, ‘competition’, ‘a set of rules’, working within a preset ‘closed circuit’ and in exceeding personal limits. Art, in contrast, suggests an ‘open’ system, setting its own rules and acting ‘in greatest freedom’.

In this exhibition the artists challenge our preconceptions by inventing new sports, without any particular performance goal or required force.
From an alternative perspective they also look at the extents we will go to win, how far we can push ourselves both mentally and physically. The rituallistic and organised processes carried out in sport are depicted in this show through the spiritual and creative eyes of the artists and presented in a series of images, mainly using photography and video, that invites us to question the meaning of ‘sport’ in a contemporary 2004 context.

The artists:
Vince Briffa- Malta
Veronika Bromova- Czech Republic
Melita Couta- Cyprus
Tom Dale- United Kingdom
Miguel Egana- France
Yula Hadjigeorgiou- Cyprus
Honoré d’O- Belgium
Zuzanna Janin- Poland
Phanos Kyriacou- Cyprus
Peter Land- Denmark
Antal Lakner- Hungary
Gijs Muller- The Netherlands
Fanni Niemi-Junkola- Finland
Christodoulos Panayiotou- Cyprus
Maria Papademetriou- Greece
Polys Peslikas- Cyprus
Alexandros Psychoulis- Greece
Tobias Putrih- Slovenia
Constantinos Rigos- Greece
Simge Uygur- Cyprus
Socrates Socratous – Cyprus
Grazia Toderi- Italy
Jaan Toomik- Estonia
Muriel Toulemonde- France
Sonya Horn & Tina Schneider- Germany