Alexis Panayiotou

Alterations

Alexis Panayiotou is a painter who lives and works in London. He applies garment making techniques to the construction of an image. Pattern cutting, sewing and printing techniques are employed, along with the more traditional methods and materials of painting, to explore traditional painting subjects, primarily portraiture and the figure.

Drawing from the Venetian school of painting, Titian in particular, where the texture of paint and the surface of the image play an integral role in the final visual experience; the artist attempts an experiment using the literal surface/fabric of the canvas, which at times creeps across the traditional static pose of a portrait and at others portrays figures in the act of changing.

Addressing the idea of painting both as image and object, Alexi ‘dresses’ the figure in fabric and paint and in effect tailors the canvas to the stretcher. Fabric is draped and manipulated, disrupting the flat picture plane - and the canvas background, traditionally the passive receptacle of the painted image, is cut, draped, sewn and collaged so that it’s for-grounding becomes in itself the image.

In this new work for the m2 gallery, second hand garments and those from the artist’s own personal wardrobe are incorporated into the work, garments which have been hoarded for years, items which have been outgrown, and ill -fitting pieces abandoned by previous boyfriends, the residue of failed relationships. These ghost items, held onto well past their use, are now being synthesised and exorcised in a process satisfactory to a hoarder. The anxiety of ‘letting go’ is sidestepped into a process which is both transformative and regenerative.

 ‘Alexis’ Alteration Service’

Running concurrently with the exhibition via Instagram @alexipanayiotou

Facing the very real prospect of commercial failure as an artist Alexis has decided to apply his skills in a more practical way, opening ‘Alexis’ Alteration Service’ where for a nominal fee of £50, customers can bring a garment to be ‘Altered’. Garments which are subjected to the alteration process will lose their function and become in effect useless, having been transformed into artworks. Disclaimer: clients will have no say in the final outcome, but will receive a final product altered according to the artist’s singular vision. 

Alexis grew up in North London, a second generation Greek Cypriot. He spent his teenage years drawing, reading Fighting Fantasy game books, collecting Citadel Miniatures and working in his father’s clothes production factory, he later went on to study fashion design at Central St. Martin’s and The Royal College of Art. In the intervening years since college he continued to draw and paint, maintaining a studio from the age of 22, and has taught drawing on the BA fashion course at Central St. Martin’s for the last 15 years.