Stella Baraklianou is an artist who brings together the materials and processes of craft, textiles, photography and sculpture. She creates site-specific immersive installations that reflect the current post-digital era.
Born in Greece and brought up in Sydney, Australia, Baraklianou's practice is influenced by her personal experiences of travel and migration, and is often layered with multiple cultural references.
Recently returning to the material of clay, Baraklianou's sculptural forms and coiled vases pay homage to her Greek heritage. The recognisable classic Grecian shapes of her works are informed and updated by contemporary references to chance, precarity and invisible algorithms. Slanting, leaning, bulging, protruding, reflecting and hovering, the sculptures have textured and raw qualities– the result of adjustments made to new and rapidly shifting surroundings, both real and virtual.
The finished pieces pose as a comment on the ephemerality of our times.
“My method is based on intuition and using emotions when working with clay.
I prefer the freedom of gestural expressiveness to pre-designed sketches, allowing for the process and the material to guide me. This technique allows for a slower, less formal way of hand building. Each vase is created organically and patiently, out of layers of coils.”
Baraklianou holds a Practice-based PhD from Goldsmiths College London, and has taught Contemporary Art and Photography as a Senior Lecturer, holding academic posts at the University of Huddersfield, Leeds University for the Arts, Falmouth CEG, Goldsmiths College University of London, as well as OTIS College of Art, in Los Angeles, California.
She was awarded Arts Council England funding Developing your Creative Practice (2023) and an A–N Artists Bursary (2021).
Her work has been shortlisted for the Prix Contemporain Ceramique, Lieux Commune, Chaudfontaine, Belgium (2024).
She is a member of the YSI (Yorkshire Sculpture International) and has work in private art collections across Europe and the United States.
Link to full CV