KIKA PIERIDES, ART HOUSE WOMEN INTERVIEW
Kika Pierides is a collage artist who lives and works in London, UK. Following a 15 year break from the fine art world, Kika started creating again in 2019 and since this time has completed close to 300 collage-paper based images.
Tell us about your current work.
The last year has seen my artwork go through phases, flipping between semi representational images of nature and abstracts. However, I have started to find a renewed voice through my abstracts and this is what I am currently working on developing. The work itself focuses on colour, form, equilibrium and intuition. I have developed a love of complementary colours using neon and brightly coloured papers to bring them out, as well as the optical effects that are inherent to combining them together and the interplay of using a variety of forms. The development of my work is ongoing and I am enjoying rediscovering my Artist’s voice before committing to creating final products which will most likely be prints. Watch this space! 🙂
Describe your process.
Everything relating to my current process began with a project that takes place on Instagram every year, in which you create a project of your choosing and produce a piece of artwork everyday for 100 days a.k.a. ‘The 100 Day Project’. Here was the outline of the project that got my current work started.
The Story
If you scroll down my feed to an earlier post named ‘Covid Colour Therapy’ this is where it all began. I wanted some relief from my surroundings so decided that I would take the colourful contents of my cut-offs and create abstract collages with them. And yes, although this is not the first time I have done this, it got me thinking back to the start. My obsession for playing with cutoffs is influenced by the Dadaists and their process in making poems whereby they would take a newspaper article as long as the poem they would want to make, put the contents in a bag, shake it gently, pick the words out one by one and place them on to a piece of paper to form a poem. Abstract. Recently, I had so many cut-offs that I was forced to put them in a bag and it reminded me of the Dadaists and their automatic poem. I thought to myself, whether I work directly from the bag picking pieces blindly or if I empty the whole contents on to the table I am still working in an automatic state. And so was born the automatic abstract collage and my project.
The Project
My aim is to make an A5 abstract daily in 30 mins or less. The idea is to shake me out of my preferences and trust me I know what I like when it comes to abstracts. I just love filling up that page. I want to limit myself and make myself uncomfortable. I want to do things that I do not normally do or like.Following this project and 100 pieces later I continued with the momentum of it which had become geometrically inclined. I started to randomly pick colours to work with from my bag of cut-offs and just as randomly cut shapes and placed them into different coloured piles. From this point I would even more randomly place them on a piece of paper until they had formed some sort of equilibrium. And this is the point at which I currently find myself. Still playing and still enjoying the process.
What influences your work?
It becomes evident, scrolling lower down through my Instagram page, that I have a huge passion for nature and the influence behind my artwork is just this. I just love visiting national parks in any given country that I travel to. This is because I am passionate about surrounding myself with the serenity and harmonious equilibrium that I feel can only be reach within nature and whilst I cannot visit these places all the time, it is my habit when I do, to study the natural symmetries and colours that reveal themselves through it. This is something that I am increasingly translating through my abstract art work.
What would you tell your 10 year old self?
I would tell my 10 year old self that failure is a huge part of life and that in embracing it we can propel ourselves to being our own personal hero within any given scenario. For it is only really through failure and the persistence to overcome it, that we come to outgrow our pain and progress to increasingly higher levels in life, laughing at what we feared yesterday! Keep going and keep your chin up!
Tell us about a piece of artwork you have in your home.
The piece is very dear to me. My grandmother continued to create needlework characteristic of her village in Cyprus (post the invasion of 1974). In 2008 she had started working on a new tablecloth between preparing dinner and waiting for us to arrive from England before suffering a stroke. The tiny beginnings of a small flower with one petal and a bunch of thread attached to it lay on her living table for years whilst she was in care. And whilst she had created a large tablecloth for me, after she passed away I took this little remnant along with it’s attach thread and had it box framed. It now sits in my living room and serves as a constant reminder of this inspiring and compelling lady.
More of Kika’s work
Instagram @kikapierides
Shine a Light
Kika would love you to take a look at the work of Megan Rejman @shoeatewisewords – ‘For all that she does and for all of her encouragement to so many’
All Artwork and images on this page are copyright of Kika Pierides.