Elena Papanikolakis lives and works in Eora/Sydney, and works across painting, collage, drawing and text. Her practice examines both inner worlds and external experiences to explore aspects of psyche and connection. Characterised by an inherent plurality, her practice is underpinned by engagement with a breadth of source material, paying equal attention to personal, cultural, and found fragments; and utilising both abstraction and figuration to at once reveal and conceal. Her practice considers cognitive processes, and formats/media that give content shape; exploring their function and capacity to document, describe and imagine, and their narrative, poetic, and material potential. Concerned with materiality, her work often retains evidence of the artist’s hand through tactile works containing trace of studio practice, via irregularly shaped canvases and supports, cut/torn edges, and handling marks.
She has been awarded the Ursula Hoff Institute Award for Postgraduate excellence in Visual Art and Music, as part of the National Works on Paper Prize (2018); the Art Gallery of New South Wales Paris Studio (2016); the Eva Breuer Travelling Art Scholarship (2016); and the NAVA’s NSW Artists’ Grant (2015). She has undertaken numerous residencies including the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris; Megalo Print Studio and Gallery, Canberra; and Parramatta Artist Studios, Sydney. Papanikolakis has been a finalist in the John Fries Award (2019); the Hazelhurst Art on Paper Award (2019); Fishers Ghost Prize (2016) and Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship (2007, 2008).
Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions including: Logos / Λογότυπα, Hazelhurst Arts Centre (2024); SLIPPERY WHEN WET at Olsen Annexe (2021); Light Matter at Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney (2019); There is Fiction in the Spaces Between, John Fries Award at UNSW Galleries, Sydney (2019); NEW SACRED, Mosman Art Gallery (2018), Sydney; Primavera 2017: Young Australian Artists at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (2017); and Parramatta Artist Studios at Artspace, Sydney (2015). Further exhibitions including Papanikolakis’ work have taken place at Firstdraft, Verge Gallery, Canberra Contemporary Art Space and Penrith Regional Gallery.

Papanikolakis’ practice has been featured in publications including Art Collector, Artist Profile, Art Guide Australia and Neos Kosmos.

Contact: elena.papanikolakis@gmail.com

Elena Papanikolakis in her studio, 2024.

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