Olivepress-Art Factory

The Non-Profit  Cultural Organisation “Olivepress – Art Factory” was created in order to save  from desolation and ruin  the Old Olive Mill of Agricultural Cooperative at Zympragou in Hania, Crete. Its new aim is to accommodate on its premises various arts and cultural events, transforming it into a community centre and a place of memory in the inland of the island.
The building of the Old Olive Mill consists of a central building core, built with stone masonry in the 1920’s, with additional wings built in successive phases during the 1970’s. In 1980 it stopped functioning as an Olive Mill and was left to quickly deteriorate. During its reconstruction, the goal was to preserve the primary materials of the building along with the original technological equipment with the least possible interference.The machinery of the mill was made in Greece around the early 1960’s and was preserved as a point of reference, a memory of the initial operations of the space.
Today the “Olivepress – Art Factory” is a multi-cultural organization. It consists of the “Fine Arts Gallery”, a venue for periodic art exhibitions and educational programs, and the “Contemporary Art Museum”, dedicated to the preservation, presentation and promotion of the permanent collection of the “Olivepress” and the promotion, along with the study, of the interactive relations between Contemporary Art and the Human aspect.
The Old Olive Mill which was revived  as an ‘Olivepress  – Art Factory’, is situated at the village Dromonero, 33 km south-west of Hania (30 minutes by car), on the main road leading to the traditional fishing village of the Libyan Sea with its two beaches: Paleochora.