the inside that (this will be my monument III) by Yorgos Petrou

Yorgos Petrou
the inside that (this will be my monument III), 2019
Giclée print, steel nails, silicone, unframed
60 × 42 cm
Edition 1/5

Yorgos Petrou (b.1981) is a London based Cypriot/British artist. He trained at Chelsea College of Art & Design, BA (1st Class Hons) Fine Art, London, UK; and at the Royal College of Art, MA Photography, London, UK.

He works with photography, sculpture, moving image, and performance. His practice seeks to examine and analyse geological strata, political and historical events, and to “excavate” elements that it then manipulates, displaces, photographs, and re-photographs to compose imagery that both contributes and responds to the understanding of contemporary identity of a place. The juxtaposition of image and object aims to explore the appropriation of specific locations by personal, cultural, and political discourses. It deals with what connects individuals to those places and how they become sites of memory legend and trauma. In this conceptual context he looks at the human body mythologically, culturally, physically, and emotionally and how it relates to the land; how it can become a site of individuality, hybridisation, sacrifice, heroism, trauma, and dichotomy.

In 2019, his piece Unfamiliar was performed at the Barbican Centre, Arcola Theatre, and Battersea Arts Centre, London, UK. In 2017 his work Landmarks was exhibited in Planétes, the inaugural exhibition of Cultural Capital of Europe Pafos. In 2015 his video works My Brother, Copper, and Rough-cut were included in Identalterity at the 5th Biennale of Thessaloniki. In the year he graduated he showed work at Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2011, ICA London and he was commissioned to create work for the Royal Society Summer Exhibition Festival at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, supported by the Wellcome Trust.

Other group exhibitions include: (This) precious stone set in the silver sea, Copperfield London, UK (2020); occupy and echo (a stage), ReadingRoom, Melbourne, AU (2019); Pivo Research, Pivo, Sao Paulo, BR (2018); Electric Blue, Galeria Vermelho, Sao Paulo, BR (2017); A Real Job is to Make Something, AIR, London, UK (2018); A Million Love Songs, Korai Project Space, Nicosia, CY; Motherless Beautiful, The British Museum, London, UK (2015); Motherless Beautiful, The Breeder Gallery (online), Athens, GR (2015); Parlour Simbolique: Freud and Eros, Freud Museum, London, UK (2015); Jonny, Insitu Space for Contemporary Art, Berlin, DE (2015); Shorts at Oxford, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford, UK (2010), Album, Wolstenholme Creative Space, Independents Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool, UK (2010); Z-time, Era Gallery, Moscow Young Artist Biennial, Moscow, RU (2010).

Please note, this work will be sent from Melbourne.