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Upcoming Exhibitions
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Upcoming Exhibitions
Green Pebble Magazine
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Articles> John Kiki
John Kiki will be exhibiting at Mandell’s Gallery on Elm Hill in Norwich, Norfolk, from 16 October to 14 November 2009. Mandell’s Gallery will also be showing a number of his larger and older works at the Stew Gallery, on Fishergate in Norwich. His paintings are priced from £650. His etchings will be available from £200. John Kiki can be contacted via his email or by visiting Mandell's Gallery.
In a warehouse in the centre of Great Yarmouth’s historic dockyards, John Kiki paints fastidiously; he has a new exhibition lined up and, with it, he has discovered his second wind.
A
large, square, 185cm canvas lies on the floor, its golden Christ figure lit
by dusty skylights set high into the industrial warehouse’s cavernous
roof. Together with banks of daylight simulation lights, they enable John
to work in all conditions: summer, winter, sunshine and overcast.
A knock on the giant double doors downstairs threatens to take John off-course.
When he paints, he works very intensely, in two-hour spurts, and when he has
an exhibition to prepare for he becomes particularly focused. He explains
to his visitor – an artist who has a studio in the neighbourhood –
that he can’t stop today and she promises to come back another time.
That’s one of the benefits of working in this area, he says; there are
half a dozen full-time artists and they’re all friends.
It reminds him a little of his days as an art student.
One of eleven children, John Kiki was born in 1943 in Eptakomi, Cyprus. At
the age of three he moved with his family to England and settled in London;
his accent today is more that of a Londoner than of a Greek. In the 1960s
he attended London’s Camberwell School of Art, followed by the Royal
Academy of Art, but his career as an artist was interrupted in 1968 when his
family needed him to help them with their restaurant business.
Ten years later, aware that he desperately wanted to return to his art, he
started painting once more, a few weeks at a time, in between working in the
restaurants. He left the family business in 1986 to recover lost time. In
the subsequent years he sold to Saatchi & Saatchi and today he has paintings
in various collections, including the National Gallery of Wales and Liverpool
University Gallery....
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