Carwan Gallery, Piraeus, Athens

If you’ve ever island-hopped the Cyclades Islands in Greece, chances are you’ve spent time in the bustling port of Piraeus. Should you find yourself with an hour to spare, combine your ferry foray with a culture top-up as the port district of Piraeus cements itself as the city’s creative hub.

Carwan Gallery, located just a few streets back from the ferry terminal where you might be popping off to Serifos, Syros or Tinos, is a contemporary design gallery which showcases pieces curated from Greece, southwest Asia, also known as the Near East, among local artists. Relocating from Beirut after 10 years, owners and architects Nicolas Bellavance-Lecompte and Quentin Moyse saw the potential in Athens as a city in the midst of a creative revival. Perfectly placed to show designs, art, sculpture and furniture, Carwan is the place to admire cross-cultural pieces that hail from various influences.

This modern gallery stands out for its industrial-chic décor, creating a rough-luxe backdrop from its life as a former warehouse, where design pieces can hold their own ground, and for the casual observer, it makes a calm set up for inspiration, browsing or perhaps even purchasing. With large expanses of glazing at the front, light streams in right to the rear of the stone-walled property, inviting art aficionados to delve right in.

A relatively small space, exhibitions tend to veer on the side of unique and unusual. To open the gallery in 2020, Vancouver artist Omer Arbel showed his inimitable copper sculptures created by pouring copper into glass vessels which break away, leaving uniquely shapedstructures within. One of the more whimsical showings was Robert Stadler’s Vitamix collection which turns the organic into something functional, including three-pronged carrot light stands, fruit medley lighting and a very covetable watermelon stool.

We also liked the look of KYKLOS by Greek artist Polina Miliou, a brightly hued collection of chairs and seating in apricots, deep reds and sunshine yellow, inspired by the warming glow of Cycladic light, in particular the colour of the sky in the Cyclades…which may get you nicely excited for your own journey.

Be sure to make time for this bijou creative pitstop on your way to the islands or simply as part of your exploration of Athens and its cultural neighbourhoods.