Aleta Michaletos is an adventurer by heart and her eyes twinkle when a proposed trip is suggested or a past journey is recalled. Some of her travels include visiting her family but her two great passions, Art (including Architecture) and Nature are fully indulged whenever she packs her bags.
Although time is always at a premium, she is able to immerse herself fully in her subject and able to accurately portray the very essence of her observations once she returns to her Pretoria based studio.
Her first trip abroad (London) was in 1969 and since then this particular destination, has occupied several pages in as many passports.
2008 January 15 Cite Internationale des Arts
THE FACES/FAKES ‘Sizing up’
There is a lot of ‘sizing up’ in Paris. The faces say it all! Especially at the Cite. People look at each other just about as long as uncomfortable would be… They ‘know’ you must be exceptional to be admitted in the first place and they wonder (don’t creative souls just love to indulge themselves in wondering…?) what discipline you excel at, could you collaborate, are you famous? The list goes on… Sometimes you are stared at so hard, you simply feel like saying: ‘hello friend!’
Inquisitive, sparkling and lively artists eyes, set in refined faces, try to unravel the origin of every line, curve, bump or blemish on your face, touring and scanning your features rapidly and with intense interest. They size you up, calculating, wondering, planning…. are your expressions authentic or fake? Are you wearing a mask, are you counterfeit or are you an original? All of this is achieved in split seconds before you reach your ‘etage’ (the level on which you live) and abruptly exit the elevator. This ritual is also performed when you pass by the mailbox to collect each days ‘harvest’ of invitations and letters bearing foreign stamps.
The potential is not only hidden behind the doors that flank the dark corridors, but it is hidden in the eyes that meet ….an adventure can always begin….
‘Assembly’ is a sculpture made up of 16 hollow figures standing in a cluster in Woolwich’s historic Royal Arsenal. Created by the sculptor, Peter Burke, the cast-iron quarter-ton body moulds reflect the community, military and industrial history of the site, where munitions factories once employed thousands of workers. They are now being converted into thousands of homes. Assembly was commissioned by the London Development Agency as part of the regeneration of the area and assembled in 2005.
