Effie Milos - Odyssey 2024

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In 2019 Effie Milos travelled to Greece to spend time learning and making what she hoped would be a body of work that would focus on an odyssey, journeys involving more than travel to a predetermined destination.

People searching, looking for a purpose, and bring separation, loss and a longing that can last a lifetime.

She found myself on the island of Tinos. There she spent 3 weeks with a local sculptor Michalis Saltamanikas. She designed and sculptured a series of 42 marble boats, each individual in design and size. They represent journeyers from one homeland to a new one. Taking great courage to embark on the long and arduous trip, leaving behind everything familiar for a world unknown. The hand-made process of working with marble venerates the manual labour that most migrants embraced to survive economically both in Greece and Australia, revealing the firmness and durability of the faith each traveller exhibits when embarking on their journey.

Effie later travelled to Athens to continue this work as an artist in residence at The Phoenix Galley. She worked on how best to present the boats and create a supporting body of work to strengthen the story of Odyssey II. The marble works represent the solidity and enduring familiarity of ancient times and historical migration. Each boat was supported on a mild steel stand and positioned in a tessellated formation. Along with these boats, there are a series of paintings. Each painting represents a port from a destination which many people fled from. They are aerial viewpoints and are exhibited as a cluster to show the impact of global migration.

The mediums and techniques used for this body of work (marble, thread, paper, acrylic, aluminium, mild steel). There is a wall installation of many shapes cut and anodised each shape representing a home. These homes are reached by those who are courageous seeking refuge from war and poverty. We can imagine their desire to enjoin in prosperity, peacefulness and freedom.

Using familiar symbols of Hellenic pride, such as the eye, Athena's helmet, a traditional house, and the hull of a boat which are emblems of strength. These 4 pieces are cut from marble, along with mild steel sheet and wire and are table-size sculptures.

Now we see the next generation of immigrant Australians travelling to homelands that, at least to begin with, comprise little more than a list of remnant relatives, a set of stories repeated over decades, an abstraction. They are driven by a search for something familiar, innate and nourishing, embedded in them by the longing of their migrant parents. The odyssey of their parents continues with the quest to find ancestry and create shared experiences with a familiar dialogue, which needs a visual connection and purpose.