Petra Ondrova aka Artep Avordno

Although, I graduated from Fine Art in 2013, my personal circumstances shifted my life away from my art career for almost 10 years. Nevertheless, I kept developing my art practice alongside my full-time job in which I worked mostly with disadvantaged individuals from the local community of Benwell in Newcastle upon Tyne. The year 2022 was for me a year of my rebirth as I was able to return to my art practice full time. Currently I have my studio based in the heart of Benwell at St. James church. I am supporting the creative development of over 20 local people who are coming to an art club that I lead here 3 times a week. I curated ‘A Mini Solo Exhibitions’ for all attendees, and I set up a foundrasing auction for all the produced artworks in September 2023. I also created new artworks in a collaboration with local people and I am developing a pop-up model for creative activities that I would like to bring directly on the local high street. All this work is feeding my desire to keep creating artworks that are reflecting my process of thinking.

I often find my inspiration in the indeterminacy and the impermanence of nature. I see the opportunity to be creative in all materials that I find lying around. I create mostly from recycled materials found in back lanes and local parks and create installations and artworks from those materials in the local community spaces, in places where people do not expect them. I change the artwork’s appearance often to emphasize the importance of the acceptance of change. Changes are for me positive motions even if I see them often initially in a very negative way. Changes destroy boredom that builds up when things become too static. I guess I am trying to wake up the observers’ interest and excitement, so they return to places where those objects are found. Sometimes I see my objects as a way to invite intrigue and interest in creativity, to ignite people’s lost desires for the actual act of creating rather than just observing created pieces. One could say that there are fluid boundaries between my own work, the people I work with, and the found materials I use. My work, the found objects, and the people, all seem to be totally intertwined without diminishing any of them but allow all to flourish in unexpected ways.

I create objects from found materials to bring back to life some of their lost energy, to point out environmental issues that we all are responsible for, but mainly to show that anyone can instantly create with free materials everywhere. Symbolically I also want to show that even broken and unwanted items can be saved and reborn just like people.

My latest artworks that were on display at the Baton of Hope exhibition (36 Lime Street Gallery, Ouseburn, Newcastle) have been inspired by recent conversations that I have had with people who are suicidal and people who are experiencing loneliness. I would like to continue exploring any connections that might exist between those two themes as I am recently made more aware about them. I feel that there is a need to create more opportunities for open conversations to ease suicide stigma that is  still alive amongst people but also to create stronger connections within communities to tackle loneliness that is a paradox happening in this overcrowded world where we can connect with people by pressing a button on our smart phones.