‘En Mesogeia’ — Nature through artists’ eyes at Pallini exhibition
It would be a pity if the Mesogeia plain, once a part of Athens’s countryside and now virtually a suburb, completely loses its character as the home of the Mesogeia retsina and kokkineli wines. The vineyards are fast being turned into expensive plots of land, particularly since the airport came to Spata and the Attiki Odos highway opened. The image of farmland seen from our car windows is now a thing of the past. Only art remains to reproduce the region’s original character as a settlement that originated back in the Neolithic period. The wealth of natural monuments includes caves, fossils, and paleontological treasures, all a source of inspiration for the works of man since antiquity. The idea of holding an exhibition of the work of 60 artists who have chosen to live and work in the area, in what is the jewel in the area’s crown – the Vorres Museum at Paiania – was not only a good one but the forerunner of more to come. Pallini’s mayor, Theodoros Gotsopoulos, said in his address at the exhibition launch, «The exhibition is the beginning of a series of events aimed at creating a hospitable space, the Center for Modern Culture – Visual and Applied Arts, to be housed in the old Kambas warehouses, once used to store cognac and wine, in Kantza.» The exhibition, being held under the aegis of the Eastern Attica Prefecture, the Municipality of Pallini and with the kind participation of the Vorres Museum, is titled in Greek (for readers of Homer): «En Mesogeia.»
