ANTHOLOGIA VIII | Sophie Charalambous

Anthologia VIII
Sophie Charalambous
× Sappho’s Fragments from “If Not Winter”

These works draw on If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, Anne Carson’s spare and luminous translations of the surviving fragments of Sappho. The ancient Greek text holds a personal resonance for the artist, connecting them to their paternal family. Although they do not speak Greek, it was present throughout their childhood as a familiar yet mysterious spoken and written language.

Sappho herself remains similarly elusive. Only broken fragments of her poetry survive, preserved on papyrus and marked by gaps, silences, and time. These fragmentary texts share a visual and conceptual affinity with the artist’s monotypes, whose surfaces carry a layered, palimpsestic quality — a visual “noise” that echoes the incomplete and weathered materiality of the ancient sources.

Across the works, themes of love, loss, ritual, time, nature and celestial cycles emerge.

τις δ᾽ ἄμμες καὶ ὀπίσσω μνάσεσθαί τι φημι
“[someone] will remember us I say / even in another time”

— Sappho, Fragment 147
trans. Anne Carson, If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (2002)

The series began with drawings made through the winter season in the artist’s community garden and local square, grounding the work in a contemporary landscape while reflecting on seasonal rhythms and endurance.

Further inspiration comes from the delicate gold wreaths of the Mycenaean and later Greek world, held in collections such as the British Museum and the Benaki Museum. These ceremonial objects—once worn in festivals and ritual contexts—inform the symbolic language of the work. The figures within the compositions are also inspired by the quiet monumentality of Piero della Francesca’s fresco The Queen of Sheba Adoring the Holy Wood (1466).

Together, the works weave ancient fragments with contemporary observation, drawing connections between language, memory, landscape and the enduring human impulse toward ritual and meaning.

Prices are for unframed works and are subject to an additional £15 postage fee within the UK (£25 ROW) All works are available for sale online throughout the exhibition.