“I tried to capture this exasperating, fascinating city before it grows too regulated and orderly

“Athens has fallen from grace. Once it was the ‘violet-crowned, song-famed bulwark of Greece’. Now it is a byword for cronyism and corruption,” says artist Elspeth Geronimos, who moved to the Greek capital from WA a decade ago.
For the past five years Elspeth has painted the city and its idiosyncratic citizens, recording the changing and unchanging faces of Europe’s oldest capital in what she calls “the interesting years”.
The results are to be seen in 25 canvasses that make up the Reactions show which opens at Perth’s Nyistor Studio in the Melville Centre later this month.
“In these paintings I tried to capture this exasperating, fascinating city before it grows too regulated and orderly,” says Elspeth, whose works entice the viewer to journey with her through the great metropolis; to amble down its dusty back streets, clamber the marble paths, and peer across the plateias to better understand Athenians and their beloved, often beleaguered city.
Together with husband Nick (of Kastelorizon descent), before Elspeth had the time to set up her easel in earnest on the balcony of her Makrygianni apartment, she established a highly successful backpackers accommodation business.
Having handed the day to day management of the business to their children, in recent years Elspeth’s had more time to paint professionally, with her bread and butter being portraiture.
Painting was a vocation she first studied in London in the late-1960s. Inspired by the neo-realism of British painter David Hockney, who lectured at her college – Central Schools (which became the much-revered Central Saint Martins School of Art) – Elspeth began a lifelong obsession with figurative art.
The evocative canvasses and prints of realist artist Edward Hopper – whose images told insightful stories of modern America between the wars – became an equally powerful influence. Many of the paintings in the Reactions show have a moody Hopper-esque feel.
She says the Bulgarian artist Nicola Taneff (1921-1989), who set out to record the old Bulgaria before it was demolished by communism, is a more recent influence.
After college, Elspeth gained a BA in Fine Art and Literature before taking a Masters in Philosophy at Cambridge University. Soon after, her globe-trotting began.
She left the UK to work in Africa and the Middle East where she was employed by the British Arts Council and then raised a family.
Years later, having moved to Perth, she met and married Nick Geronimos. Their life-changing relocation to Athens ten years ago was spurred on by a shared dissatisfaction with the life-work balance offered in Australia when compared to Greece.
They set up home in downtown Makrygianni – a stone’s throw from Athens’ and arguably the world’s most famous edifice.
“For years, having nowhere else to work, I painted from the roof of our apartment facing the Acropolis, with a view of the whole city,” says Elspeth.
“Athens is not beautiful like Rome, powerful like Berlin and London, or even romantic like Paris and Prague. But it is more human. It has suffered and has soul.”
Her first paintings unsurprisingly focused on the looming Rock, then gradually her frame widened to include surrounding apartment blocks and their idiosyncratic residents.
“The concept of voyeurism is redundant in Athens,” she says. “Athenians eat on their balconies, hang out washing, shout over to each other, at each other.
“There is a constant chaotic kerfuffle. I enjoyed observing. Soon Athenians themselves became the subject.”
Reactions is a series of reflections not just of Athenians, but of Athenians at a particular moment in time.
As Elspeth’s painterly shutter opened on the last three years of uncertainty, anguish, and anticipation of deliverance from Greece’s economic meltdown – these are images that tell a specific story.
Elspeth is not shy of revealing more explicitly her take on what lies beneath the paintings’ neutrality. The artist’s comments for the exhibition catalogue reveal a robust interpretation of Greece’s recent history.
“In 2009, Greece was coming under close scrutiny for its rocketing debts and inability to reform,” she says.
“By 2010 the short-sellers of Wall Street were gambling on Greece failing. Germany came to our aid, but at a cost; clean out your corrupt bureaucracy, reduce salaries, reduce pensions, privatise, sell-off your assets, put an end to price fixing and cartels.
“In short, no more einai etsi and please, no more fakelakia (envelopes of cash). There was no one left to blame nor anyone left to borrow from.”
Elspeth’s interpretation of the events witnessed as an Athenian, and her ‘beginners guide’ to the Greek crisis, is aimed at positioning her paintings as a reflection of a society she loves deeply, wrestling with past bad habits.
“The choice was between the drachma (and third world poverty), or a complete overhaul of all our systems of government, all our ways of thinking and acting,” she says.
“A huge outcry accompanied the first slow steps towards adulthood in the winter of 2010. ‘What do you mean, I can’t retire on full pension at age 45. My father did!’ ‘Why should I pay tax on that house? My yaya gave it to me!’ ‘What! Pay for medicine? That is a human right!'”
Today, she says her fellow city-dwellers are more resilient and adaptable.
“By the summer of 2013 reforms passed in Parliament daily without comment. Athenians are beginning to accept change – in itself a profound change.”
Artists often paint uncomfortable truths, but her work doesn’t make judgments. The images steer well away from agit-prop, the apportioning of blame, and sensationalist depictions of social unrest.
These are pictures of everyday behaviours by ordinary Athenians – the great ‘silent’ majority of little interest to the world’s news channels in their coverage of Greece and the crisis.
Each story told is sensitive, multi-layered – with clues waiting to be unpicked and interpreted.
The exhibition is divided into four sections. The first – Under the Shadows – deals with Athenians living literally in the shadow of their classical past.
“That glorious heritage is often invoked to distract from current failures,” says Elspeth. “But the Parthenon is hard to escape.
“In the exhibition’s opening section I’ve looked at the shadows on the Parthenon, on the buildings, in the streets, the winter silhouettes, but I also look at other kinds of shadows – of uncertainty, austerity and fascism.
“After decades of easy money and political calm, the realities of the economic crisis are hard for Athenians to come to grips with. The good thing about shadows is that they pass and we find ourselves in the light again.”
Parea Mas (Our crowd) explores the overtly social nature of life in the capital.
“In a world where people spend more and more time in front of computers and glued to iPhones, Athenians are still essentially social animals. They crave a parea.
“The most insulting thing you can do to an Athenian is ignore him,” says Elspeth. “The saddest thing is to be alone.”
The third chapter of her quartet is The Church, which explores religion’s permeation of life in the capital.
“The Orthodox faith has been criticised for being out of date, too mystical and ‘unreformed’,” she says.
“When you live in Greece you see how much it is a part of life. To practise one’s religion in Greece is as natural as breathing.”
The fourth section – 2.00am any night in Athens – was painted as the result of her nocturnal wanderings through the city’s streets – streets that she takes pride in for their safety after dark, unlike most cities in the western world.
Despite a profound knowledge of her fellow citizens and their habits, she says she remains mystified as to how Athenians can sit up all night and make it to work the next day with only a frappe and pastry for sustenance.
Elspeth suggests part of her motivation for mounting Reactions is to entice those who have never visited Athens to go.
“It’s a city worth visiting before it changes into a regulated, orderly place. Maybe I can make Athens come to life for people who have never been,” she says.
“Enjoying life is the one thing that hasn’t changed in Athens and, I confidently predict, never will.”
Reactions – which includes recent work shot in Greece by Perth-based photographer Greg Woodward, runs from 30 September to 14 October at the Nyisztor Studio, (Melville Centre), 391 Canning Highway, Melville, WA. 10.00 am-5.00 pm daily. Admission is free.