Artist Collaboration / 12
For our 12th Peer/Peer Collaboration, Leslie Thompson collaborated with Eleni Maragaki MRSS. Leslie works with the supported studio Venture Arts, Manchester. This collaboration was part of Art et al.’s partnership with the Royal Society of Sculptors.
Leslie Thompson
Leslie Thompson has a highly developed style, drawing both from memory and through live observational drawings. He depicts scenes from television and film from 1970–1990. His drawings are punctuated with fascinating anecdotes from film, music and TV and he also has a vast collection of superheroes, which he binds and protects as he incorporates them into selected artworks.
Thompson has been a regular artist at Venture Arts studios for over twenty years and through this has been able to extend his innate illustrative gifts into stitch, ceramics, animation and printmaking. He has shown his work widely regionally, nationally and internationally.
Venture Arts is an award-winning visual arts organisation working with learning-disabled artists. Through their studio programmes, exhibitions and collaborative projects, they remove barriers to the arts, put artists in the lead, champion neurodiversity and provide pathways for every individual to develop their creative identity.
Photograph credit Paul Moffat
Eleni Maragaki
Eleni Maragaki is a visual artist born in Athens, Greece. She studied Painting in the Athens School of Fine Arts (2013-2018) and MA Fine Art in Central Saint Martins, UAL (2020-2022), as a recipient of the Mona Hatoum Bursaries Award. Her work is focused towards bridging the dichotomy between urban construction and the natural environment. As a response to the densely manufactured cityscape, she is inspired by the delicacy found in the system of natural structures, including chemical elements and crystals.
She has taken part in numerous exhibitions including a screening in LUX Moving Image, a group show in the Art Station Dubulti in Latvia and the Shijiazhuang Youth Art Biennale in Hebei, China. In 2023, she was the winner of the TATE Christmas Card Competition and shortlisted for the First Plinth: Public Art Award. One of her latest projects was public commission for a light installation by Stavros Niarchos park in Athens, Greece, and she was a resident at the Muse Gallery, London. She has just completed an Art for the Environment Residency (UAL) at Mahler and Lewitt Studios in Spoleto, Italy.
Photograph credit Ruyi Ding
Artwork before the collaboration
Click on each image below for a larger view of each artist’s work before the collaboration. Caption details appear when you hover over the works.
Fantastic animals, jungles and mountains from Africa, Greece and beyond
Part of the Making Together exhibition at Royal Society of Sculptors, 2023
With a practice dedicated to drawing and ceramic making from his imagination and memories of popular culture over the years, Leslie Thompson has helped steer this collaboration into looking at and discussing African animals, their habitats, and landscapes more broadly. In contrast, Eleni Maragaki’s practice is rooted in the natural or urban environment, working delicately across drawing and sculptural objects in a myriad of materials and with precise detail. She has shared with Leslie cultural references related to her home country of Greece, and together they have created new worlds and learnt new techniques. Fantastic animals, jungles and mountains from Africa, Greece and beyond showcases drawings, ceramics, spring flower folded books and flag books, as well as an interactive puzzle made from linocut prints. A dinosaur even makes an appearance!
Connecting in real life!
For most of the Peer to Peer collaborations through Art et al., the artists only meet over Zoom or videos, but this partnership was able to meet twice in-person, which really added to their warm relationship and knowledge of each other. Zoom meetings still continued alongside these in-person meetings. Firstly, Leslie travelled to London to Eleni’s current studio, at first just sharing works she had been making on a recent residency. It was during this tour Leslie came across a puzzle that Eleni had made, that inspired their puzzle which you will read more about further on. In London, Eleni demonstrated to Leslie how to make a spring flower fold book, and also shared her linoprint techniques, with Leslie getting stuck into both.
Next, Eleni travelled to the Venture Arts studios in Manchester, even getting to take part in an afternoon dance break! Across the course of the day, Leslie demonstrated how he makes his ceramic animals, the chosen animal of the day being a puma. It was very much a watch and learn session, with Eleni finishing the day having made not only a puma but also an African tree.
Leslie and his drawings
Leslie is well-known for his drawings, more often than not from his memory. In this collaboration, after initially drawing African animals in their habitats, which is his go-to for his drawings, Leslie branched out. Over Zoom Eleni shared animals from her home country Greece, with Leslie doing further research into the animals she shared. He focused on these three animals: a Greek cat, a KriKri goat and a Greek tortoise… with each animal drawing having small annotation present.
Click on each work to see them larger in scale.
Folded Book Experimentation
In London, Eleni taught Leslie how to make a spring flower fold book, as can be seen across this series of photos. Using a copy of Leslie’s African Animals drawing as the paper backdrop for the work, Leslie was shown how to cut out squares, fold them to make the correct size for the book and then glue together with trusted PVA glue. The cover was cut out of greyboard, and Leslie chose purple cloth to be the outer cover of his book. A photograph here shows how pleased he is with the finished result, and he spent the whole train journey home filling the rest of the pages with drawings in black pen of other animals. Below the making photographs are photographs of Leslie’s finished spring flower fold books and flag books. If you click on each photograph you can see them larger - photos courtesy Martin Livesey.
Eleni and her processes
Eleni often uses large paper to document her processes and help her work out how to build/make things, but this one is something else. Using blue and red as accent colours, which can be seen throughout all the works, Eleni plans each work that she has made as part of this collaboration. This work can be read from each side, as the writing and images are sometimes sideways and upside down when you look at it from this viewpoint. To Eleni, this is quite messy, but we all find it a beautiful and skilled study drawing that really draws you in to explore what is happening. Below this large study drawing are some of the small circular drawings that were then used to make up 99 Landscapes, the very large flagbook that can be displayed in several different ways. Eleni has never made a flagbook with circular pages, so this was a first! Underneath that is a beautifully folded circular piece covered in red/blue landscapes titled The Fractured Landscape.
Eleni Maragaki, Landscape Study, 2023, Ink and pencil on paper, 150x100cm
African trees (Baobab and Acacia)
Eleni Maragaki, 99 Landscapes, 2023, Flag book made out of drawings (2nd view), Variable dimensions when open
Eleni Maragaki, The Fractured Landscape, 2023, Paper, coloured pencils and ink, 48cm diameter
Experimentation with Clay
Later in the collaboration, Eleni travelled upto Manchester for a day of clay experimentation with Leslie. Beforehand, Leslie had explained to Eleni he would like them to make a puma. Leslie normally works from memory when drawing or working with clay, but we felt it was a little harsh to make Eleni do this, so Leslie selected which puma image online she was able to look at. With Leslie it is very much a watch and learn with his process. He began with the legs, adding the fur and claw detail as he went. Next was the tail, followed by the head which took a while as he made eye sockets and then eyes and then built up around the eye area after. Finally he made the body and attached everything together using slip. Eleni followed suit, as these photographs show, and she even had time to make an African tree, this time from memory!
Clay Animals
Here are some of the final animals that feature in Fantastic animals, jungles and mountains from Africa, Greece and beyond. The first four are by Leslie, with the final two by Eleni, but Leslie glazed all the works. His glaze method is rather beautiful as he fully covers the animal with glaze and then wipes it back to unearth the orginal markings he made for the fur etc. If you click on each photograph you can see the titles and sizes of each animal. They are rather small, but each has a unique character!
Joint Drawings
As drawing is a big part of Leslie and Eleni’s practice, joint drawings seemed wise. Eleni initiated each joint drawing and sent it in the post for Leslie to open whilst they were together over Zoom, to see how he wanted to work on them. The long thin drawing here started with a mountainous landscape with different forms typical of Eleni’s sharp edged style. Leslie took straight to it, with all different animals travelling in a pack along the route, following each other. Look out for the penguin gliding down a slope on his stomach! The second drawing here titled Meteorite, has a red and blue meteorite in the centre, with an array on animals around the outside, again all following each other. Leslie included his own smaller meteorite too.
Eleni Maragaki and Leslie Thompson, Safari Desert Jungle, 2023, Ink pen pencil on paper, 150x22cm. Photo courtesy Venture Arts and Martin Livesey
Eleni Maragaki and Leslie Thompson, Meteorite, 2023, Ink pen and biro on paper, 42x30cm. Photo courtesy Venture Arts and Martin Livesey
Linoprinting Together
Eleni’s practice often features linoprints - either exhibited just as prints on the wall, or made into something else like a puzzle. Both artists seemed keen to collaborate on prints and make them into something that could be interacted with in the space. Many years ago Leslie had tried linoprinting in his studio, but was reintroduced to it in London and produced a small elephant whilst there. For this puzzle, it was decided that each artist would make one individual panel, and then two joint panels - Eleni producing the landscape part and Leslie drawing and carving his animals into the lino separately. The fluidity of Eleni’s landscapes paired beautifully with the more edgy marks of Leslie’s animals. Of course, a deep blue was selected by Leslie, and hand printing the lino adds a human touch to the prints. If you click on each print, you will be able to see who contributed to each one. The resulting puzzle features underneath.
The puzzle created from the four linoprints that can be played with whilst in the exhibition. The pieces can be stood up or laid down for display, with four different puzzles to complete.
Photograph by Mike Glide photography
London Exhibition at Royal Society of Sculptors
Installation photographs from the exhibition Making Together at the Royal Society of Sculptors 2023, where one room was dedicated to this particular collaboration.
Thanks to Mike Glide Photography for the installation photographs.
With thanks to Royal Society of Sculptors for support for this collaboration, as well as Hallett Independent and Sadie Sherman Gallery for the funding. Thanks to Venture Arts, the studio that supports Leslie, as well as ceramicist Sarah Crosby for working alongside Leslie for this collaboration.