Palimpsest of voices

Palimpsest of voices is participatory project developed for Glasgow International 2021 in partnership with Oakgrove Primary School, Queens Cross Housing Association and Glasgow Sculpture Studios.

Through a series of workshops at Glasgow Sculpture Studios, Leontios worked with the extended community of Oakgrove Primary School that included over 130 pupils, families and staff to explore the fragility and mutability of language by employing making as a collective learning process, beyond words or shared backgrounds. Together they produced bisque-fired ceramic pieces and invented the characters of a fictional language, following a method that the artist has developed and employed in his practice over the last few years as an indication of his long-term interest in matter and body correlations.

Reflecting on limitations as opportunities for further development and examining potentials of experiencing the project, Palimpsest of voices is presented in perpetual reconfiguration to suggest a mutable instance of online entanglement, referring to the project’s staged evolution. Viewing screens (smart phones, tablets and laptops) are treated as capturing apparatuses of this open-ended movement and light of certain wavelengths.

Palimpsest of voices is accompanied by a commissioned text by Kirsty Hendry, a podcast with Leontios Toumpouris, Kirsty Hendry and Alex Misick, two limited edition screen prints and a review by Andrés Valtierra.

Leontios Toumpouris

Leontios Toumpouris is an artist based in Nicosia. In 2009 he graduated from the Painting department of Athens School of Fine Arts and from Glasgow School of Art’s MLitt Sculpture in 2016. He exhibited his work in solo and group exhibitions and participated in residencies and workshops in Europe.

Recent solo exhibitions include: With mountains, and stars, and particles, eins gallery, Limassol, CY (2023), Briefly eternal, Art-o-rama, Marseille, FR (2022), Reconfiguring motions, Korai, Nicosia, CY (2022), Palimpsest of voices, with Oakgrove Primary School, Glasgow International, UK (2021), SOM, eins gallery, Limassol, CY (2020), Relations reversed, Thkio Ppalies, Nicosia, CY (2019) accompanied by two parallel events, Of particular images, Intermedia gallery, CCA, Glasgow, UK (2019) accompanied by three events, and Phyle, Custom Lane, Edinburgh, curated by Eoin Dara (2018).

Group exhibitions include: No Self Control, Space52, Athens, GR, curated by Dinos Chatzirafailidis (2023), Under|mining, Kalavasos, CY, curated by Gabriel Koureas, Herman Bashiron Mendolicchio and George Lazoglou (2022), Craftland, Anassa Hotel, Paphos, CY, curated by Christos Kyriakides (2022), It moves and it shouts, Haus N, Athens, GR, curated by Panos Giannikopoulos (2019), Hypersurfacing, NiMAC, Nicosia, CY, curated by Marina Christodoulidou (2019), Phase 2, Drive Drive, Nicosia, CY (2018), Home Of Multiple Occupancy, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, UK (2018).

Toumpouris has been awarded grants by the Cultural Services of Cyprus’ Ministry of Education, Culture, Sport and Youth (2022), Glasgow Connected Arts Network (2020), Creative Scotland (2020), the Eaton Fund (2018), the Hope Scott Trust (2017) and the AG Leventis Foundation (2015) amongst others.