Making Waves with Louise Kyriakou April 09 2023

Louise Kyriakou is a Melbourne based painter and ceramic artist who playfully explores concepts around community and connection, and the patterns that arise from the repetitive nature of everyday life. Her current ceramic practice concentrates on the creation of contemporary figurative forms that combine the use of flat slab forms and sgrafitto decoration techniques. The stylised characters in all her work are a natural progression from her background in design and illustration. Bold colour palettes and strong geometric shapes intersect to create structured but lively compositions.

Aside from being a friendly hand gesture, WAVES has a host of other meanings that exude energy and activity. Through the use of recurring shapes and lines that tilt and build, the works I’ve created invite you to visually travel through and around the compositions and reflect the reality of life being so full of ups and downs.  The idea of cycles of momentum is one that interests me, and came through in the paintings I’ve created for this show.

Exploring themes in a playful way has always been a big part of my art practice, and I seek to find a balance of fun but substantive in the process. I do this by mixing up shapes and colour, and exploring how they interact 

visually to communicate bigger ideas. Themes of community and connections lie behind the broader body of my art and I develop compositions through the use of intersecting lines and blocks of geometric shapes pieced 

together. Using stylised characters is a way for me to portray the everyday individual and do so in a way that anyone could insert themselves into, and identify with.

- Louise Kyriakou, April 2023

Louise's solo show Waves opens on April 14.

Photos and video supplied by Louise Kyriakou.