Ambassador to Austria and UK Permanent Representative to the United Nations and other International Organisations in Vienna
Part of UK in Ukraine
6th July 2011
Mr Gold in Kyiv
Four mighty slabs of gold hang on a wall. Nearby, a jacket gleams dully. A man’s head, twisted backwards, screams through golden lips.
I’m at the “Ya Gallery”( ) in central Kyiv for the opening of a new exhibition, Mr Gold, curated by Pavlo Gudimov, whose Gudimov Art Project is always coming up with interesting ideas (googling turns up, inter alia, the fact that Pavlo used to be in the excellent Ukrainian rock band Okean Elzy and is also part of something called the Ya Design Group). I won’t try and summarise the gold-themed exhibition, except to note that Pavlo tells me gold is “both sacred and glamorous”. Several of the artists are there including Tiberii Silvashi, author of the gold slabs, who tells me his work is inspired in part by Mark Rothko; and Alevtina Kakhidze, who I last met at the “Online Kyiv Offline” event at the residence last November (reported in my blog “Cyberpunks and the Matrix“).
A great show, to which these photos from my phone don’t really do justice.