Mnemosyne Grove is the debut publication by Georgia Metaxas, an Australian artist based in London. This book visually connects two locations in Greece which are significant for the artist’s family. In unfolding chapters she guides readers through an intricate journey between an olive grove in Palairos—passed down through her maternal side, where each old tree is named after a woman in the family—and Ithaca, the island of her paternal heritage. The olive tree becomes a central symbol in her project, which delves into her family’s history and explores ties to the land, archives and memory. Below, we spoke to Georgia about the project and thoughts that went into weaving this narrative into a photobook.
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Christiane Monarchi: Holding your new publication in my hands, I am intrigued by the shape of the publication, it is a comfortable pocketbook size that invites me to expect a narrative about to unfold within. How have you decided on the physical format of this book, and what does the size, cover texture and overlapping photographs on the front signal to you?
Georgia Metaxas: The book relies entirely on images and materiality; form and structure play an integral part in order to elicit a dialogue with the reader. As such, all of the elements of the publication are considered and needed to come together in a way that aids and enables this conversation. The invitation you mention and pocketbook format that you have described is exactly what we were aiming for, so I am pleased to hear this has been noted : )
Scale has always been an important consideration in my work, as are the materials I choose to work with. When exhibiting work in a gallery context for example I enjoy playing with scale, it is employed to interact with the viewer, to entice and invite them to slow down and to suspend time. This alongside wanting to create a tension of sorts, between the wall, the space and the viewer. I was looking to create a similar tension with the book, so it is small, light in the hand, and has a rounded spine usually reserved for novels and for more traditional book formats. We wanted the book to echo and play with this format.
Amongst other things, Mnemosyne Grove points to regeneration and circularity, as such it was important to all of us that the book utilised, was encased in, and was made from materials that were sympathetic to the content. Therefore, an unbleached stock was used for the cover and the paper stock selected is extremely lightweight (90gsm) which worked well with the format & layering of the images, inside and out. This reduced outlay, as well as carbon footprint, also helping to keep the book affordable.
The overlapping / layering of images on the cover reflects the many stories within, and was initially suggested by Perimeter and Narelle Brewer, a designer who has collaborated with Perimeter on a number of publications. The concept fit very snugly, with Perimeters edition series as well as elegantly reflecting the chorus of voices and lenses that I employed in the book.
CM: Dark end papers and introductory full-bleed images of olive trees suggest a sombre start of a story, which gives way to a small bright image of a mediterranean looking house with a solitary figure. Where are we starting this journey, and whose story is this?
GM: The journey begins in an olive grove in Palairos, Greece, the village where my mother was born and raised, and where ancient trees each named after a woman in the maternal line have stood sedately, some for five hundred years. The grove was bequeathed to my family at the turn of the century; on finding this out I set about taking portraits of the trees. The portraits were taken in the dead of night; there was no moonlight when I chose to make the images and therefore no available light.
Photography is often thought of in relation to the light, these images however, respond to the dark. Black, a colour that often appears in my work, paradoxically symbolising absence, whilst exploring photography’s relationship to memory. These trees and the women they stand-in for are revealed momentarily by a single flash, also revealing photography’s ability to open a new realm of understanding and experience the “optical unconscious,’’ as Walter Benjamin would have it.
This very contained, seemingly complete series of portraits provided the impetus for a much longer journey, and the broader body of work that is comprised within Mnemosyne Grove.
The book connects to a second site, Ithaca, the island where my father’s family originated, before migrating to Australia on a British steamship in 1901. I drew upon multiple photographic languages, alongside snippets of Super-8 film stills, taken from a film that my father shot on his first and only trip to Greece in the late 1970s, where he tragically died. The olive tree becomes a central motif, exploring family lineage and tragedy, through connections between land, family archives, and storytelling, whilst reflecting on the photograph’s ability to provide a nexus for multiple personal histories.
So, to answer your question! The story is my own, but also my father’s and that of my families both maternal and paternal over a number of generations, which in my mind makes it a collective act, tending to the trees and as it happens recording them. It is also a broader universal story as it is one of migration, displacement, loss, and return, of which many experience.
CM: Moving through a linear read of the book, I am interested in the sequence of images – some full bleed, dark, monochrome, and others coloured, possibly vintage colour works, and definitely a sort of rhythm building in the flow of images, interrupted only by occasional words to mark section breaks, with grey squares on them. I’m interested to know whose words we are reading, and in what time or times we are travelling through?
GM: Memory is inherently porous and complex, as is memoriam. Our dealings with recollection and loss are personal, familial, and communal in their ambit. They shift and reshape with every conversation, image, and experience of place. As already mentioned, there are a number of stories, layered, and that stretch through time, as does a photograph, and the memories that they contain. Therefore, time is non-linear in Mnemosyne Grove.
In order to tell this circular narrative, the sequencing of the book invokes the structure of Homer’s original epic poem. The Odyssey was originally performed from memory, as such it incorporates many aide-mémoires, such as repeated descriptions for common elements, the sea is always “wine dark” the goddess Athena “bright-eyed” and so on. In Mnemosyne Atlas, by Aby Warburg visual elements are similarly repeated. The poem also uses a series of rhythmic structures (hexameters, dactyls and spondees) which I have created photographic correlates for, so that the book can be seen as visual representation of the formal elements of Homer’s poem. An aide-mémoire in and of itself.
The third ‘beat’ of each chapter has a ‘pause’, a caesura, represented by the grey square you ask about, which alludes to the back or trace of a photograph. And it is at this pause that the text appears. These excerpts are taken from a transcript of a conversation held with an elder of the community on Ithaca, who became a key guide and collaborator on my journey, as he knew my grandfather as a young man and as such also the locations of the olive trees on Ithaca.
Ithaca is the island of the ultimate return and where Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey originates, so it seemed fitting to borrow the structure. The site of Homer’s School is situated very close to the area that my grandfather’s olive trees stand in and that he points to in my father’s film. It all just fit together seamlessly.
CM: Could you tell me more about the colour works within the book, whose images are these and how do they relate to the monochrome photographs? In an analysis it could read as looking for traces in an aftermath of a significant event, yet the monochrome palette may also evoke an older investigation of place.
GM: The colour images are stills taken from my father’s Super 8mm film and the black and white images, images that I have made in response. I don’t consider them as separate, more as an opportunity to collaborate or with family past and present.
Images double up throughout the book, repetition is key to my work as I enjoy the schism that it creates. Plurality is a visual device I have continued to explore over a number of years, seeking to build a tension that encourages us to question the veracity of the image and to re-examine photography from a point of view that we are unaccustomed. As such images are repeated, sites re-visited and re-photographed questioning; how can a single image possibly manage to say it all?
Tone as well as the positioning of colour is also deliberate, the monochrome works get significantly lighter as the book continues, eventually getting so light the images signify renewal and regeneration. Cyclical in its intent from start to finish, the book doesn’t actually ever end.
CM: This feels like such an important story for you, your family, heritage, memory – pretty much as genuine to your person as it gets. How long has it taken you to want to create this visual project, and did the photobook version here have iterations along the way, in sequencing your own photographic work with your family’s archival material?
GM: I first heard about the olive trees in mum’s village, in 2017. It is not unusual for my projects to take a number of years; I revel in a slow process and in letting ideas brew. As such it wasn’t until the first ‘break’ in the pandemic, August 2020, that I was able to make the portraits of the ladies.
I knew that I wanted to employ the structure from Homer’s poem from early on, and once I felt I understood it well enough to have developed my own visual structure it became rather freeing and was quick to apply directly to the mountain of images I had gleaned. So, there were not that many iterations, it came together quite quickly. Over four years!
However, whilst working so closely in the grove and with the trees, I could not help but begin to question our relationship to the land, especially in the age of the Anthropocene. I began to consider how might I collaborate, like the many generations before me, with the land itself. Could the olive trees and the groves that they stand in also be considered my community? How might I activate the land? Until this point the focus had been on the cultural and familial overlays, but I wondered, what might aboreal time look like?
This line of enquiry is ongoing and continues to inform my practice. Broader themes of renewal, regrowth and regeneration, form the basis of works that I am currently producing utilising felled olive trees from these groves and the most stable of photographic processes, carbon printing.
CM: As I have learned about the many sub-layers of meaning, structure and visual significance hiding within this deceptively simple photobook. It now has, for me, an additional gravitas and the hauntology of what could have been, layered by a complicated poetic structure which no longer feels casual although the imagery seems playfully arranged. The weight of this little book has now increased exponentially for me. In this context, could I ask why the decision was taken to not include a text in the end revealing these complex ideas?
GM: Mnemosyne Grove is a visual poem and as such the images, structure, sequencing and decision to have text included within the ‘fabric’ of the book, seemed logical. A novel, after all has no pictures. I am interested in using the photobook as a medium. As mentioned earlier taking into account, materiality, size, form, pairing things right back and allowing the images speak for themselves, be they my own or someone else’s, from the present or past, this has always interested me. My hope was that it might invite the reader to begin their own journey on entry.
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Georgia Metaxas is an Australian artist and educator based in London. She explores the tension between ‘artistic’ intent and documentary practice, with a particular interest in examining cultural and social rituals through contemporary portraiture. Georgia has exhibited widely in both the United Kingdom and Australia, and has also shown her work in Spain, China, and Germany. She has undertaken a number of international residencies, including at the Fundacion Botin in Santander with Paul Graham, and was one of the FATHOM15 artists at Four Corners in London, and she has developed community engagement programs with institutions including Photoworks UK and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Georgia leads the Sustainable Strategies Module for Falmouth University’s MA Photography Program, and her work is held in several public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Victoria and the Museum of Australian Photography. Her publication Mmenosyne Grove was published by Perimeter in 2024.
