On the ball

May 27, 2005
Artist Nike Savvas: "I do a lot of my work here."

Photo: Eddie Jim

Nike Savvas' base in London means her art is on the world stage, writes Jo Roberts.

It's like walking into a room of giant hundreds and thousands. Or staring through the bubbles of an enormous glass of multi-coloured soda. As you move closer, your eyes play tricks, your sense of perspective abandons you. How close am I? Or far? Your hand involuntarily stretches out to stop yourself walking into the artwork. What was that about the brown acid?

"I'm up to my eyeballs in balls," jokes artist Nike Savvas. Enter the room at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, where she's preparing her latest installation, and you see what she means. Don't stop to count them, you'll be there a while - there's 100,000 of them.

The cherry-picker emits aching, drawn-out squeaks as it transports ACCA volunteers up and down the ceiling-high installation, as they thread the ping-pong-sized polystyrene coloured balls - which were designed for a far less glamorous life as fishing floats - into position. They've been assembling the piece since Tuesday, the hours growing longer each day as tonight's opening drew closer.

Once in place, the final touch to the artwork will be to turn on the fans that will blow through it, reverberating the balls to create a shimmering effect. Then you will see, in all its giddy glory, Atomic: full of love, full of wonder, the new Nike Savvas work commissioned by ACCA's artistic director, Juliana Engberg.

"You view it like a painting," says Savvas. "But it's nice to get up close for a different viewing position; it's very kind of galactical."

A Sydney College of the Arts painting graduate, Savvas has become one of Australia's most successful contemporary artists, her career having escalated in leaps and bounds since winning a prestigious Samstag scholarship in 1996. That award took her to London, which has since become her home and professional springboard. In 1998 she became the first Australian artist included in the UK's New Contemporaries touring exhibition. In 1999 she was asked to do an enormous installation, Glam Genie, in the atrium - "which is like 28 metres long" - and the windows of Selfridges department store in London. She now shows regularly throughout Europe and the United Kingdom, but this year also began showing in the United States; she's currently in a group showing called Visual Music at Los Angeles' Museum of Contemporary Art. Still, her most celebrated accolade has come from India, at this year's 11th Indian Triennale, where she snared the International Jury Award.

Photo:Eddie Jim

It's been so long since Savvas exhibited in Melbourne, she can't recall when it was. It was, in fact, more than 10 years ago - in 1994 at Gertrude Street, the same year she created Simple Division (now in the Auckland Art Gallery collection), one of two works from which Atomic has evolved. The other, 1998's Blue Division, was the work that secured her place in the New Contemporaries tour.

Born to Greek-Cypriot parents, the statuesque Savvas (whose first name is pronounced "Nicky" and has nothing to do with a sportswear "whoosh") has now lived in London for the past four-and-a-half years. She knows the only way to carve out an international career is to live in one of art's epicentres.

"We're very isolated (in Australia) in terms of where all the money is and where it's all happening," she says. "But I come home every year, and I do a lot of my work here; I'm very productive here."

Still, the price of spending most of her time in London has been homesickness; a longing for the Australian bushland she grew up in around Canberra.

"If you talk to a lot of Aussies who are abroad, the one thing that they really, desperately, passionately miss is the bush," she says. "You kind of start going stir-crazy; you miss it so much that you start imagining it, you start pretending you're in the bush and you'll imagine the sensations and the smells, and the feeling of the heat and the gum leaves - it's totally mad, but you really, really crave it."

An upside to Savvas' homesickness is that it was the inspiration for Atomic. The work represents an Australian landscape, stretching up from the red soil towards the blue sky.

"I wanted to do this sort of homage to the Australian landscape. I miss it so terribly," she says.

Luckily for Savvas - and Australian fans - she'll be returning in July for more shows. "I'm spending like about four months all up in Australia this year, which is terrific."

Here's hoping she has a ball . . .

Tommorw until July 24
WHERE ACCA, 111 Sturt Street, Southbank
DETAILS Tel: 9697 999; www.accaonline.org.au


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