Last year, Greek Australian artist Eleanor Voterakis gave herself the challenge of posting a daily drawing to social media site Instagram for 150 consecutive days. As she began this venture, she noticed people began to like certain images over others, which got this artist thinking about an idea for an exhibition. She selected the top 40 most liked Instagram drawings for her exhibition.
The idea is her own style of a Top 40 to be launched next week at Melbourne’s Modern Times.
“It was actually just a way to keep me accountable to my drawing practice,” Eleanor tells Neos Kosmos.
“I thought if I had a few followers I would be more disciplined about drawing. At the beginning, I didn’t set out to do it for 150 days.”
Some of Eleanor’s personal favourites didn’t make the cut, leaving the curation – or as she calls them, the ‘instacurators’ – of this exhibition entirely up to her followers on the social media site.
“Once I started the daily drawing project I was interested in how some of my works were ‘liked’ a lot more than others. People would leave comments like ‘my favourite so far!’,” she says.
“Often, my favourites were totally different to most of my followers. The whole project was sustained and motivated by my Instagram followers so I thought that it was only appropriate to use them as the curators, or the ‘selection panel’, for the show. I love how the selection is a small but interesting reflection of taste and what visually appeals to people.”
Her drawings are mainly of everyday objects rendered quickly in black felt-tipped pen. Drawn on white paper, these objects become sparse, minimal and sometimes quirky still lifes.
Subject matter includes plant life, objects of clothing and accessories, items that reflect her own pastimes such as balls of wool, paintbrushes and pencils, to more mundane objects like cutlery and milk cartons.
And for her next venture, Eleanor is once again toying with the idea of using social media with her art, you will just have to stay tuned to see what this artist has up her sleeve.
The exhibition ‘Top 40’ opens on Thursday 27 June at 6.00 pm, Modern Times, 331 Smith Street, Collingwood, Victoria. The exhibition runs from Friday 28 June to Thursday 11 July. For more information on Eleanor visit www.eleanorvoterakis.com/