When Vangelis Tzolakis and Tanja Kapoglou began organising exhibitions in a temporary space in London in 2023, they chose a name that already placed the project in Athens. Upper Ankyle takes its name from Ankyle Kathyperthen, an ancient Athenian deme associated with the area around present-day Kolonaki. In November 2025, the two artists opened their gallery at Irodotou 5, beside the Museum of Cycladic Art. What had begun as a reference to a distant place became a way of looking more closely at their own neighbourhood.
Upper Ankyle is an independent, non-profit contemporary art gallery. Tzolakis and Kapoglou develop its programme together alongside their individual work as artists. Their time in London shaped the kind of gallery they wanted to run. They were drawn to smaller spaces where the directors worked closely with artists and were willing to give someone an exhibition early in their career. In Athens, that approach leaves room for both emerging and established artists, and for invitations to curators whose interests take the programme in a direction the founders might not have arrived at themselves.
Their choices often begin with something quite specific in a work: the handling of a material, an image they keep returning to, or an unexpected affinity between two artists whose work looks very different. Questions of place, memory and time recur across the programme. For Tzolakis and Kapoglou, part of the interest lies in seeing what happens to those questions when another artist or curator takes them up.
The Athens programme opened with Land Attunements, curated by Ioanna Gerakidi. Since then, the intimate space on Irodotou has accommodated quite different ways of making an exhibition. For his solo show BREAKING, Poka-Yio brought new paintings together with a performance centred on making and eating cookies. Visitors could take part in the very pleasures the exhibition explored, from the comfort of something sweet to the point at which pleasure tips into excess. For Syndromes of Synthetic Nevers, curator Evagoria Dapola brought together artists from Greece, Cyprus and Turkey.
In September 2026, Persistent Interval, curated by Vangelis Tzolakis, brought together works by seven artists around the idea of an interval that persists: a moment when a familiar order begins to give way and what might follow has yet to take shape. Across the exhibition, images and memories resurfaced in altered forms. Alongside its exhibitions, the gallery hosts live performances, guided tours and other events.
The accompanying photographs show Upper Ankyle during Tempo Rubato, Italian artist Lorenzo Conforti’s first solo exhibition in Greece. The installation moves in scale from a small pair of bronze works to a canvas nearly two and a half metres wide and a drawing made directly on the gallery wall. The exhibition runs from 22 October to 4 December 2026. During its run, Upper Ankyle will make its Art Athina debut with a solo presentation of Conforti’s work at Onassis Ready, from 12 to 16 November.
Tzolakis and Kapoglou hope to build on the relationships that begin with an exhibition. Some of their longer-term plans include establishing an artist residency and collaborating with artists from the gallery’s programme on a series of editions.
Tempo Rubato/ Lorenzo Conforti
Until 4 December 2026
Exhibition Photography: Stathis Mamalakis
Portrait Photography: Johnna Sachpazis
