Events — Talk
In Conversation: Christos Dikeakos and Emily Butler
Thursday 29 Oct 2026
This talk offers a journey through five decades of Christos Dikeakos’ artistic practice. In conversation with curator Emily Butler, Dikeakos will reflect on key works that marked his career, including the series Sites and Places: Athens (1986-1997). At once archival and conceptual, these works reflect on the layered nature of history, the continual movement of cultures, and the enduring, shape-shifting presence of Greek mythology within present day life. These investigations led to the series Sites and Places: Vancouver (1990-2015), a series that engages deeply with the pre-colonial histories of North America, while also probing the mythic and deep historical strata within a place.
In parallel, Dikeakos has a long–standing fascination with collecting. The Collectors comprises a series of insightful portraits of artists, patrons, curators, writers and art lovers, which reveal the inside world of collections, providing a close view of the relationships that people forge with objects that fascinate them. Whether expansive urban landscapes or intimate scenes from orchards in the Oakanagan Valley, Dikeakos’ photographs foreground the multi-layered nature of reality and examine the semiotics of image and language and the interplay between memory and place.
Additional information
Christos Dikeakos
Christos Dikeakos was born in Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1946. Dikeakos emigrated to Canada as a child and became a prominent figure in the Vancouver art scene from the 1970s onward. His work investigates the archaeological and historical through photography. Associated with the Vancouver photo-conceptual movement, Dikeakos is best known for his Sites and Place Names series developed in Athens, Berlin, Saskatoon and Vancouver, which trace the layered topographies of cities, revealing cultures in states of flux.
Dikeakos has exhibited extensively across Canada and internationally, including at: Griffin Art Projects, Vancouver; Thessaloniki Biennale: 8, MOMus-Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, Greece; Kelowna Art Gallery; Vancouver Art Gallery; McMaster Museum of Art; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. His work is represented in major public collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, the Vorres Museum, Peania, and the Benaki Museum, Athens, among others.
Emily Butler
Emily Butler is a curator, writer and editor. She teaches on the MA Curating programme at the Courtauld Institute of Art and is a PhD researcher in Curating at the University of Reading. Her doctoral research examines artists and curators as (mis)translators between languages, sign systems, cultures and worldviews.
She is Adjunct Curator at Griffin Art Projects, Vancouver. Previous roles include Head of Programmes at the Contemporary Art Society Vancouver, Platform Talks Curator at Art Toronto (2024), and Conversations Curator at Art Basel (2021–2023). From 2010 to 2022, she was a curator at Whitechapel Gallery, London. She also held positions with the British Council’s Visual Arts team, Antony Gormley Studio, and the Centre Pompidou. She contributes to international publications, including Artforum, Frieze and Art Monthly. She has also been a visiting lecturer at Emily Carr University of Art + Design, the Royal College of Art, OnCurating Academy, University of Reading, and London Metropolitan University.
Venue
The Hellenic Centre
Tickets
£5/£4 concession, free for members | Booking required via Humanitix or 020 7487 5060
Times
19:00