Craft Magazine Feature

Madonna in the pinks and gold and purple, and neon green… Glass artist Yorgos Papadopoulos’s latest project has been six years in the making, and marks a turning point in his eclectic career, says Pamela Buxton.

For a Buddhist, Yorgos Papadopoulos has been spending an awful lot of time with the Madonna. Step inside the architectural glass artist’s north London home and you can barely move for her image – she’s on the walls, on his worktable, even hanging from the ceiling, as the subject of his new series of shattered, laminated glass panels.

They are a bravely contemporary take on Orthodox Greek icons, which traditionally have a very set iconography in terms of subject, composition and colours. But Papadopoulos’s Virgins are rebels – depicted in unconventional, sometimes luminous colours, including shocking pink and, most characteristically, created with shattered glass, giving an abstract and disquieting quality to the panels.

The icon series marks a turning point in Papadopoulos’s work. Until then, he’d been concerned purely with the aesthetics of the piece rather than a deeper meaning. The series originated some six years ago when Papadopoulos went on a retreat to Mount Athos, the centre of the Orthodox religion.

‘The New Icons’ was shown at Vessel until 17 May 2008. ‘Lamination’, by Yorgos Papadopoulos, was published by A&C Black, 2004.