Having spent several weeks in the city, engaging with Athenians, Landy agrees. “Seven or eight years into the Greek crisis,” he says, “there doesn’t seem to be any end to it, and people are disenchanted with politics. But there’s also a lot of energy.”

He pauses. “When you look out of the windows of the Diplarios School, you see all these dilapidated buildings.” Many of them, empty and derelict, are plastered with signs spelling out a single word: Enoikiazetai (for rent). “Even the school is dilapidated: paint is peeling, bits of plaster are falling off the ceiling,” he says. When I visited recently, Kountouri told me that the Diplarios – which looks impressive from the street, but, she says, is “rotten” within – is “representative of Athens”, which is why she chose it as the venue for Landy’s exhibition.

Poor but sexy

Yet, for Landy, the down-at-heel qualities of Athens are, paradoxically, what make the city so exciting. “In many ways, Athens reminds me of London 30, 40 years ago,” he says. “There are lots of empty buildings, and artists love empty industrial spaces, because they offer cheap central studios with potential exhibition spaces.”

As he traversed the city with his assistants, he noticed that they kept on bumping into people they knew. “In that sense, it’s quite small,” he tells me, “and I really like that. There’s a good atmosphere – it’s buzzy. I didn’t know until I’d arrived that all these younger foreign artists have been moving in, saying, ‘Athens is the new Berlin.’” This is a reference to the vibrant contemporary art scene that emerged in the German capital during the ‘90s, when rents were still low. “There is a hype around Athens, it’s true,” says Kountouri. “Athens is sexy now.”