The three elements of water, metal and earth are the raw materials of Danae Stratou’s artworks whose inspiration has always come, largely, from the artist’s need, and practice, ceaselessly to traverse the planet’s oceans and landmasses. So, when she was commissioned to produce works for Almyra, her favourite elements came together with her penchant for the never-ending journey. The thought of Almyra crossing the oceans, cutting through the Big Blue, its wake washing upon the world’s landmasses, was the motivating force behind the works that she produced for the good ship, both its deck and its interior.
Works displayed in the interior expand on that overhead perspective. Taking a leaf from her large-scale installation Icesongs, two works adorning the interior (Ice Squared – pair) are based on a satellite snapshot of a patch of ice on the Antarctic below. The video art, on display on the ship’s TV screens, offer variations of the Icesongs theme as well as a video capture of a more recent installation, Concentric, where the main element, a lake, generated concentric waves that Stratou imagines extend, in a healing manner, across the planet. Lastly, the main wall-mounted sculpture work (Suspended Blue – Curved) combines a curved plane harking back to an earlier Stratou sculpture, where the curvature captured her sense of ‘rising above the plane’, with the steel sphere suspended over a deep blue – a metaphor for Almyra’s balancing act over the forces of Nature.