Nontsikelelo Veleko - Wonderland

Opening address for 2008 Standard Bank Young Artist Award winner – Nontsikelelo Veleko at the Durban Art Gallery 20th November 2008

When I first saw Lolo’s pictures at the Standard Bank Young Artist exhibition in Grahamstown there were a few things that struck me – one of these was the installation of the garden with its fake grass, artificial flowers and a swing which is remininiscent of the famous painting of the same name by French painter, Fragonard. Then I was told that someone had come into the exhibition and asked who had died – he thought the artificial; flowers, grass etc were a funeral memorial. This in itself was a question or a perception, which was quite significant in that the exhibition title “Wonderland” suggests the story of Alice whose world was turned upside down when she fell into a rabbit hole after following a white rabbit with a watch. The tale plays with logic and normal expectations and maybe the photograph of the European castle set up for a Christmas display in Durban’s nearby Gugu Dlamini Park sets this theme. She has created the set-up to read like a reflection in the water but look closer and you can see that that is not what it is. The people have morphed into different people, the clouds are in a different position so we are confused – what is real and what is not real? And maybe this says something about her work in general. What is fashion? Do we show our real selves or is a way to construct an identity? Those private spaces in offices, bedrooms, bathrooms – are they more revealing of the creator than how the person represents him/herself in public? And so – her boundaries – like the city backdrops, which sometimes fade into the distance – are fluid and the exhibition interrogates all this.




Gugu Dlamini Park, Durban, KwaZulu Natal,2007

I find her fashion photographs the most interesting and I was particularly struck with what I thought was some relationship with the photos taken in the late nineteen fifties and sixties by a Durban photographer working in the Grey Street area called Bobby Bobson. I will spend a few minutes talking about him. He had this little studio and many of the itinerant, mostly black urban workers used to frequent his business to have their portraits taken, mostly to send home to their families. His speciality was the studio portrait and he had a choice of backdrop – some were mountain scenes looking like the Swiss Alps – others were maybe forests or other exotic locales. He also had a set of props – these included telephones, artificial flowers, and a variety of costumes consisting mostly of traditional beaded aprons, belts and so forth from which the clients could choose to dress up and some wonderful combinations were put together. So the photo usually depicted someone dressed in traditional Zulu gear with a mix of their everyday modern clothes and looking as if they were in some foreign exotic paradise like the Alps.




Lindiwe Ntlebi, Kliptown, Johannesburg, Gauteng
2007

If we think about this, and start to unpack it, what it says is that urban people then were wishing themselves to be depicted as somewhere else – their rural outfits, with the symbols of modernity, like telephones, and then set against this foreign landscape, whilst all the time living and working in Durban. I am sure you see where I am heading in this. When we look at Lolo’s images of young, urban, trendy people there is a sense of their claiming the city spaces which were for so long as distant and unreachable as the Alps to them. The city centre of Durban, like the rest of the country, was set up by the white settlers in the early part of the 20th century and everyone else was banished to the outskirts of the city with curfews making sure they were not around after dark. The cafes, shops, etc. did not allow or welcome people of colour who felt excluded and uncomfortable and they became outcasts. And this is where Veleko’s work is making such a strong comment. Here we see young people of all colours in the most trendy fashions. Her grasp of style and fashion is part of what interests her however it is the situating of these people in the context of the major cities of the country that is important to her work. She selects and approaches her subjects, which is a different process from the commissioning of a photographer or the usual documentary style chronicling of events that have been so prevalent in South Africa. Her work is neither of these. There is a negotiation between subject and photographer. It is clear that they are all confident in their gaze and meet the photographer and ultimately the viewer on a direct and equal basis. These, mostly young, people are claiming their space – they are in fact triumphant in their sense of belonging. We just know there are no more curfews or ghettos. The artist has expressed, through these portraits, a sense of belonging and ownership particularly of the city.




Face of Darfur, Jan Smuts Avenue, Johannesburg, Gauteng
2007

This examination of city life also extends to her photographs of graffited walls, which are also symbolic of the claiming of public space. By photographing these impermanent and spontaneous marks on walls she is bringing them to a new status – they now become serious artworks which are viewed in the sequestered space of the gallery and become movable, tradable works of art instead of site-specific. What started off as a subversive act now becomes co-opted into the realm of serious gallery spaces. City officials may paint over the walls but she has preserved them for posterity. It could be considered to be another link in a chain of subversive acts.




Wafak’ingoma Phakathi Kwam, Umdloti, KwaZulu Natal
2007

There is a similar sensibility evident in her photographs of interiors – generally personal and private areas whose collection of objects and works are unselfconsciously created for a space not meant for public consumption. Now they are also part of a different context being viewed as something else and drawing attention to a different sort of process. The private now becomes public and so she inverts and subverts all expectations of what is public, what is private and where it is permissible to show what. The hallowed spaces of the gallery now become a showcase for what is usually shown in spaces not meant for this particular context.

It is indeed a Wonderland, which Veleko has opened up for us – a world which interrogates surfaces and expectations and where the miraculous now appears normal.

Carol Brown

Bronwen Vaughan-Evans - Memento Mori

On a visit to Bronwen Vaughan-Evans studio earlier this year I found her paused in the post-coital catharsis of her last exhibition home is where the heart is. She was sitting alone, in a now desolate studio, free of the imposing portraits and figures that had crowded the studio walls for the past eighteen-months. After so much time spent in their company, the sight of her, abandoned in that that Spartan white space, reminded me of a mother having just sent her grown kids off into the big wide world. Yet I recall how excited I felt at that moment, to catch the artist in that rare moment of solace, poised, catching breathe before commencing with her next journey/body of work which was to become Memento Mori (now on at Bank Gallery).

A handful of Vaughan-Evans' portraits in home is where the heart is re-emerge in Memento Mori and wandering between the two, both their synergy and difference is striking. The portraits from the former exhibition--contained in separate room within the gallery-- are far warmer in tone and temperament, at times intimidating in their scale and presence. Here we find each subject's essence exquisitely distilled, lovingly etched out: eyes alive with strength, weakness, curiosity, fear, insecurity and fragility.




home is where the heart is (Michael)
2008
Gesso and Oil on Board

"Each piece in this series" explains Vaughan-Evans, "is the exact dimension of the individual portrayed and therefore represents the physical space we occupy. Each work includes a portrait of the individual as well as an image of 'home', thus representing the emotional and geographic spaces we inhabit." In Vaughan-Evans' new show, Memento Mori, a different sort of contemplation is allowed for, focusing on notions of loss and death and the manner in which every day events begin to be archived in memory. 'Home' once again provides a motif, only this time as an intimate investigation of the artists’ own sense of time and place.

It has obviously been an intense and prolific year. So let's begin by chatting about the evolution between the two shows. How did this new body of work come into being? You mentioned in your opening night speech that the seeds from the last show (home is where the heart is) found a way in Memento Mori.

A: In the home is where the heart is body of work I included occasional inserts that geographically located the subjects. It was from these inserts that many of the Memento Mori pieces developed. When contemplating memory I realised that place / location plays an enormous part in how we remember an event, it can be as evocative as smell in conjuring a memory of a human interaction. So with the new body of work I focused on this idea of place (sans figure) to convey memory and loss.

In the home is where the heart is portraits these inserts were often the only horizontal aspects in the vertical formats. Horizontality alludes to narrative (due to our 'reading' of texts from left to right) so the inserts could be seen as the narrative backdrop to our reading of the figure. This idea of narrative and the idea that horizontality can indicate the death or repose of a figure was what inspired the move from the vertical formats in the portraits to the horizontal emphasis in the Memento Mori works.

The Title of the show Memento Mori came to my attention when listening to an album by The Bastard Fairies with the same title. At first I translated the phrase as a souvenir / remembrance of death, which is exactly what I wanted the new works to be. Later I learned that it is a Latin phrase that roughly translates as "remember that you are mortal" So in essence the new work is about our mortality, and our need to archive experience as memory in the face of this mortality.




home is where the heart is (Christine)
2008
Gesso and Oil on Board

How did the intensity of having four-months over eighteen to create a new body of work inform, shape, shift your process?

A: It was a bit of a shock having only four months to produce a new body of work, after working on the home is where the heart is portraits for over 18 months. Generally I would have a much longer gestation period for ideas. What it did allow me to realise is that just making, is a good way of processing ideas, and that often an 'unresolved' aspect of a work can be beautiful in its own right. I realised that the notion (that may come from lecturing in the fine art field) that an artist works through concepts by experimenting until that idea is refined, and what we present to the world is the "finished" selected product, is only one way of working.


Was it liberating to move away from portraiture into a more abstract set of paintings. I imagine painting subjects you know so well comes with a certain pressure/obligation that objects and landscapes simply don't carry with them? Or do they?

A: Yes it was a relief; there is so much expectation from both myself and the sitter when doing a portrait. For me painting a portrait is like having a very intense relationship with that person for the duration of making of the painting, and while this was really quite lovely, one very intense period after another was very draining. This is not to say that objects or landscapes do not carry a similar weight, it is just that the expectation placed on those objects came only from me and not from another involved human being as well. Also the intensity of the surface shifted between the portraits and the 'landscapes', there is a much more even sense of surface in the 'landscapes'. The making of the new works required repetitive (and often quite cathartic) mark-making.




back where I started
2008
Gesso and Oil on Board

In contrast to the previous show there is a noted absence of human- figures (bar the self- portrait in the work titled back where I started) in Memento Mori. I'm imagining dealing extensively with notions of loss, death, grief, the absence (in the wake of the last show) of a tangible flesh and bone figure/presence is crucial to our understanding of the work? By this I mean there is a strong sense that something or someone is missing from the paintings. Where the first show was weighted with presence, the second (and most recent) is notably marked by absence?

A: Yes, this was the intension, and the juxtaposition of figure and absence of figure was one of the reasons I decided to include some of the portraits from the home is where the heart is body of work into the new show.




the distance between us (i)
2008
Gesso and Oil on Board

It's a body of work that feels intimate yet at the same time encapsulates something bigger, something for the want of a better word-- 'universal'. When I revisited the show last week, it clicked, "That's it" I thought, "That's what 'loss' feels, looks, hurts like." The bareness, unmade beds, fuzzy borders, stark quality of light. I overheard someone on the opening of your show comparing the feeling that your work evokes to Edward Hopper's painting, which is interesting because you achieved this level of atmosphere/meditation in the abstract-not aided by a human figure, expression or posture.

A: The person that said that my works evoke a similar sense that Edward Hopper's paintings do, was too kind, but that was exactly what I wanted to achieve, so I thank them. I think it is the aim of most artists to create something universal out of specific and personal experience. The difficulty comes when trying to transcend the everyday experience, without using cliché.




the bed we made
2008
Gesso and Oil on Board

The unmade beds, open windows, birds cluttering a telephone wire in your paintings-- the seemingly insignificant details and close-ups that surround and often inform the grieving process. There's a strong sense of time having stopped in these works. A restlessness, insomnia, sleep-walking through days/nights. At the same time they demonstrate the rawness of perception or heightening of the senses that occurs during such a time. An open window, its curtain heaving in the breeze, a bare winter tree; strange omens, objects or moments that suddenly seem to carry meaning, memory or relevance for the individual. Moments/glimpses that may or may not have a direct bearing on the person lost. Is this show (particularly the works in the main gallery) perhaps a reflection on a world indifferent to ones passing or rather one more geared at exploring the interior emotional- landscape experienced by a person in mourning?

A: A little bit of both I suppose. With the advent of a death of someone close to you, the contrast between the fast functioning world and the slow incomprehensibility of loss that has become your reality is huge, and ordinary objects do take on new meaning, everything around you seems to look different. So in that way the objects / landscapes do become an exploration of an interior emotional landscape.

Often, to me, a "(person) is in the details" and a memory of an emotional connection can take the form of an object or landscape.

Also these objects can be symbolic of the fast functioning world from which you seem to be suddenly removed at the advent of a significant loss. Everyday objects and activities seem to become nonsensical and without purpose.




the distance between us (iii)
2008
Gesso and Oil on Board

In connection to the last question, you talked of memory becoming an accumulation of ideas and moments. In the main gallery there are paintings hung horizontally alongside one another, often echoing one another on opposite walls (a bed unmade on the one side, gives way to a close up of its bare mattress on the other). Can you talk about the hanging of this show? The selection and juxtaposition of these images and ideas? Were they painted as a combination or set with an idea of how they would collaborate, even form a narrative of sorts, or do you allow for certain discoveries to be made once you move into the gallery space?

A: The repetition of images such as the bed (unmade and then stripped to the bare mattress) and the tree (a summer shady tree and a bare winter tree) was an intentional dissection of the composite way memories can form. That is, a memory of a tree can be both shady (the actuality of the tree) and bare (the emotional / symbolic memory the tree carries). Obviously when making the works the intention was to set up a dialogue between these same yet contrasting repetitive images, the exact form that the dialogue would take was only resolved when the works were in the actual space.




the distance between us (ii)
2008
Gesso and Oil on Board

The upper and lower levels that the eye is made to travel when walking around the main gallery cause our sense of distance and space to continually shift. With the upper generally focusing on bird's eye view of a city corner, and in one painting, a distorted Google- earth map of your neighbourhood (lurking somewhere in the labyrinth-your own home). I experienced this on two levels: the one being that the effect achieved is that it tends to pull the viewer out of the smaller more intimate 'moments' (a cinematic long shot if you will), out of the plaintive domestic scenes of loss, and in the process, intensifying the isolation, insignificance even indifference issued by a broader context which goes about its day to day unchanged.

At the same time from such an elevation, I wondered whether this vantage point is perhaps occurring from/by something not confined to the shackles of the human body, quite possibly a bird (which feature strongly in your work and in many cultures are regarded as either omens of death or couriers of the departed) or even soul. Have I lost the plot entirely or is there a suggestion of such metaphysical optimism in your work? A suggestion of a release or catharsis/transcendence through death?

A: The contrast between the 'emotional' close-ups of our environment and the more distant bird's eye views was an intentional construct used to heighten the dichotomy of feeling incredibly detached and simultaneously unbearably present in the face of death / loss.

However, as you suggest, the contrast between the worldly environs and the removed, otherworldly bird's eye views do allude to transcendence from physicality to a different state of being, through death.

The initial decision to hang the paintings on two levels was a purely formal one. The Bank Gallery is an extremely horizontal space and this coupled with the horizontality of the works would have lead to a very flat reading of the show. I consulted Vaughn Sadie for curatorial help with the placement of the works in the space. We both decided that by hanging the work on two levels, this formal problem would be overcome and that the split-level would also aid in the intended conceptual reading of the work. So thanks go to Vaughn for his contribution in that discussion.




Installation view

Certainly your intensive sanded- gesso technique (sanding, erasing and what you term 'degrading' the image) brings further layers of meaning and intent to the work. In what way is this 'excavating' able to bring you closer to the themes/ideas you had set out to explore?

A: I think the formal materiality of all works of art should in some way reflect the conceptual underpinnings of the piece, so yes, the actual excavation of the surface by sanding down to layers below, does mirror my 'conceptual excavation'.


At times certain paintings seem to vary in focus (in this way, I again refer to this body of work as cinematic) from the crispness or fuzziness of the line work. Its feels at times as if we are looking at an object or image through teary or sleep deprived eyes, like having just woken up or trying to focus on something. Was this a conscious choice? I'm imagining it has much to do with what you termed: "The moment where the memory starts to degrade, the whole never survives and memory becomes an accumulation of details or moments."

A: The contrast between the blurred views and the crisp edges was created as an intentional exploration of the dichotomy of memory (being both unclear and in sharp focus simultaneously). The nature of a memory is a really difficult thing to communicate visually, and this was one device I was hoping would convey this duality.




trying to remember
2008
Gesso and Oil on Board

Could you discuss your use of the colour pink in the new show? I think Peter Machen nailed it in his review in 'The Witness' where he wrote: "This is the pink of a dying dusk—not dawn—which will shortly give way to darkness." As a colour, it's a congruous and subtle addition to your muted palate, never coming across as gaudy or garish. Was it an intimidating hue to work with? In fact, I think you may just be the first artist I have encountered who is able to extract from this colour, its melancholic properties.

A: Thank you, that is such a nice thing to say. I felt I needed to shift ever so slightly from the monochromatic use of 'colour' in my previous show, so I experimented with the introduction of subtly coloured Gessos. Somehow it was the pink experiments that resonated with the subject matter the best. I love what Peter said about my pink being the colour of dusk not dawn, he managed to verbalise what I would like to think was my subconscious intent.

I have been having an ongoing battle with my four year old son surrounding the stereotypes of pink; according to him pink is a girl's colour. In a way the pink I use does have a certain femininity to it, but I like the contrast between my 'feminine' pink and the more stark, 'masculine' black and white.

I really enjoy the playful pink lettering outside the gallery that announces the fairly moribund title of Memento Mori.




a still life (filled with death and possibility)
2008
Gesso and Oil on Board

The two smaller works in the vault titled a still life (filled with possibility and death). Can you talk about the Mexican ritual influences and European allegorical still lives of the 16th and 17th century and how they came to shape or influence these works and how they might (as you suggested in your speech) go on to inform your next body of work?

A: Can I answer this question when I have explored these themes in more depth? These works ARE however a precursor to what is next, in the scale, subject matter, colour and the use of inlayed gesso. Suffice to say I am fascinated with the genre of still life and intend to research and explore it in much more detail in works to come. What I like most about the concept of a still life – is that it refers to a whole genre / type of painting but it also refers to a life that still or in repose…


Lastly, I was amused to see a wishbone from a chicken carcass painted in one of these paintings in the vault at Bank. It made me recall the framed wishbone on your wall at home, with a sign below that reads 'break in case of an emergency'. Have you broken it yet?

A: God no, I have this idea that emergency is relative and I never feel that the emergency of the minute is biggest and most worthy of emergencies. Besides I don't think I can ever bring myself to destroy the whimsy of that little piece that was made by a friend of mine Alistair Mclachlan.

Neil Coppen

Andrew Verster - Odd Conversations

Thank you to Tony Starkey and Themba Shibase for allowing the Durban University of Technology, Third year Art Theory students to post their thoughts on Odd Conversations. This was done as an exercise to see how the art students would make sense of whether they see Verster as an artist who engages with contemporary discourse or not.

Thank you to the students.

Andrew Verster - Odd Conversations

CONTEMPORARY, CONCEPTUAL OR DECORATIVE

Now on exhibition at the KZNSA Gallery is work by Andrew Verster; it is a retrospective exhibition, which is touring all the national galleries. The title of the exhibition is Odd Conversations. The question being asked about Verster's work "is it contemporary, conceptual or just plan decorative?" Before going on to discuss the work, Andrew Verster was born in Johannesburg in 1937; he studied at Camberwell School of Art and Reading University. Verster lectured at the University of Durban Westville and the Durban University of Technology until 1976, Verster then became a full time artist. Verster’s forte seems to be collage, tapestry and painting.
(KZNSA gallery) (Verster, 2007)




From Notes on a Crucifixion (Red & Black)
2008
Oil on canvas
9 panels, each 120 x 30cm

I will discuss one of Verster’s painting an oil on canvas; the work is called Notes on a Crucifixion. Discussing the work formally, this piece is a one-piece work with nine panels each 120 x 25 cm, Installation dimensions variable. The panels have been positioned as a crucifixion. Images are of arms and legs. The arm panels are on the top and are facing each other and the bottom of the cross are the legs. The background colour is black and the arms and legs are red with bright decorative patterns painted on them. What is highlighted is the show is the 'visual language'. According to the KZNSA gallery

"It is here where Verster's love for and celebration of colour show his true mastery.Presented as patterned bodies, the inner thigh muscle of a Greek god jostles against a West-African fetish, the Phoenix with its feet in the ashes has its beak in the crook of a Roman armpit; an Indian deity vests its undulating inter costal muscle-bed with a meditative feverish glow; further along, past where the wrist meets the hand, a nebulous constellation spirals into a stigmatic wound: a point of trauma transformed into a point of beauty." (KZNSA gallery)

When looking at the exhibition as a whole Verster has appropriated religious icons of Hinduism as well as the Greek influence and African influence. What is interesting is that he appropriated all the traditional images of the above cultures. Not only does Verster use the traditional medium of paintings but he has used other mediums, which are digital prints, handmade paper, found objects, tapestry and collage. The collage pieces situated in the Nivea Gallery have deep hidden meanings to the works, when you add all the objects together, you can maybe tell a story about the artist himself. The use of found objects, tapestry and collage is a very contemporary and post modem approach. On the other hand, the paintings of Verster are very decorative; they are almost like Gustave Klimt's paintings in terms of the decorative values. These patterns could be a metaphor of scarification but turned into something beautiful. Yet in most of Verster's works I find that they are mostly decorative and lacking conceptually.

It is hard to say whether Verster's works are contemporary, conceptual or mainly decorative, I would personally say they are both. I find that Verster celebrates the medium rather than the concept. But, because I have to choose one, I would say they are contemporary because of the use of digital print, tapestry and collage, those mediums play a big role in what is contemporary and post modern. I really appreciated the execution and the amount of work that Verster had produced. I appreciate the use of detail and the obsession that has gone into producing this body of work.

References:
1. Verster, A 2007. Profile. [Online] Available from: http://www.andrewverster.co.zalevents.html [Accessed 2 September 2008].

2. KZNSA Gallery. 2008. Andrew Verster. [Online] Available from: http://www.nsagallery.co.zalcurrentmain.htm [Accessed 2 September 2008].

Katherine Symons

Andrew Verster - Odd Conversations

The work of Andrew Verster is currently on show at the KZNSA gallery in a solo exhibition titled Odd Conversations. The works boast stunning colour and pattern in Verster's decorative style. With a variety of pieces ranging from paintings on canvas to digital prints to collage, it is definitely interesting and worth taking a look at, but is it contemporary?

Odd Conversations l-Vll [Installation view]
2008
Wax, tissue paper, steel pins, pigment
120 x 80cm

Although Verster makes reference to art history throughout the works in the show, the strength of the works are the decorative and aesthetic qualities. I felt the strongest conceptual pieces to be the Notes on a crucifixion series displayed in the main gallery. Each series consisted of seven, oil on canvas panels each 120cm x 30 cm. Occupying each panel was an arm or leg painted in bright, bold complimentary colours and decorated with patterns of colour and historical images. The reference to art history in the images and Verster's careful consideration as to how to display these works suggested an underlying discourse in the work, although I felt that this particular series became too monotonous to prompt the viewer to engage in the work. Perhaps subtle differences in each series would promote dialogue between the works, but by using the same images in all the panels I was not challenged to look further.



Odd Conversations l-Vll [Installation view]
2008
Wax, tissue paper, steel pins, pigment
120 x 80cm

Throughout the show, the figures portrayed seem to be tattooed with pattern and design. I interpreted the tattooed images as commenting on how various ancient religions, cultures and beliefs are ultimately imprinted in history to influence the present. I also feel that Verster's choice to visually fuse various cultures and beliefs together comments on cultural hybridity.

Overall I felt that Verster's work is contemporary. The exhibition was visually stimulating, although pieces of the show became monotonous and works could have been pushed conceptually.

Nicole Erasmus

Andrew Verster - Odd Conversations

A CONTEMPORARY RETROSPECTIVE

An exhibition of veteran artist, Andrew Verster’s multi-disciplined work is on show at the KZNSA. On display are a number of paintings, collages and objects. They range from monumental paintings to small detailed studies. The first thing that hits you is the colourful and decorative nature of his work. It is beautiful and excellently produced and presented. The work may be decorative but it is by no means superficial.



Classical Graffiti l-Vll
2008
Digital prints on canvas
Each 60 x 40cm


Vester employs a number of post modern techniques thus the works start to speak on more than one level. In Classical Graffiti series (2008) he appropriates imagery from art history such as Pharaoh and Greek Statues. However he superimposes his trademark designs on to the nudes or portraits. This practice can be viewed as subverting the traditional depiction of the male nudes. The depiction of the male nude has been viewed as a Eurocentric or Western view but the appropriation of different cultures such as Japanese prints or African iconography. Verster makes commentary of the hierarchy that exists in the high art context and to a greater extent he comments on the discourse of the other.



Classical Graffiti Vl
2008
Digital print on canvas
60 x 40cm


It can be argued that his focus on aesthetics disqualifies him as a contemporary artist. One needs to ask himself if that is enough for such declassification. Verster’s work lends itself to a variety of readings and contemporary commentary. For example, his treatment of the figures is not traditional. In combining the nudes with different cultural aesthetics and iconography he not only speaks of an identity, but also the subverting of an aesthetic and stereotypes.

The work makes one question what he sees. He questions the way things are and becomes aware of the possibilities of varied viewpoints. That realisation in itself is post modern.

Sheryl N Msomi

Andrew Verster - Odd Conversations

The KZNSA hosted a show of works by Andrew Verster titled Odd Conversations. He is a veteran artist who lives and works in Durban. He has held over fifty solo exhibitions, which shows that he is experienced in the field of arts. His works explores cultural identity and history; he says, "In each work I write my own history which in turn is entangled with everyone else's" (http://www.andrewverster.co.za/profile.html). In his work he appropriates images from Western, Asian and African culture and these images form part of the human figure in that they are inscribed on the human figure and somehow become a part of it. His work varies from flat backgrounds to areas of focus where he pays special attention to detail.




Wrestle I & ll; Collector's Room l & ll [Installation view]
2008
Oil on canvas
Wrestle: 180 x 180cm
Collector's Room: 180 x 220 cm

In Wrestler I and II he uses a dark background where figures appear and there seems to be a struggle between the figures. He uses a very subjective colour orange, and within the figure he tattoos the form with imagery of recognisable symbols from western sculptures and uses imagery of Chinese geisha. He chooses to work in a more decorative and patterned style. In Wrestler II the forms become more abstract and there seem to be more intimacy between the two figures. I think the figures are both male because he has used a very masculine approach in portraying them.



Wrestle I [detail]
2008
Oil on canvas
180 x 180cm

One may ask if Andrew Vesters works challenge contemporary discourses, with its decorative patterns of cultural aesthetics. Many have argued that his works are too decorative and belong in the area of decorative art. When I first saw the works I must say that I shared these sentiments, but further investigations into the work I realise that the formal aspects of the work lead to conceptual arguments. I felt that the artist uses the decorative aspects to pull the viewer in, and in the body art that he layers into the isolated limbs he starts to appropriate imagery from many cultures i.e. western and Asian. He says, "Images from the beginning of time mingle, Africa and India, Europe and America, the serious and the trivial, things buried in my mind surface at a moment unexpectedly, and marry." (http://www.andrewverster.co.za/profile.html). In his works he tries to marry other cultures into his own life and at the same time he questions human relations. This leads me to questioning his choice to title the exhibition, Odd Conversation. A conversation is talk between two or more people; it is how human beings relate to each other. In Wrestler we see two 'men' in a very intimate conversation, a physical conversation. Whether they are in conflict or celebration that for the viewer to decide, but I think it a very celebratory conversation. Because of the happy orange that he uses and the flat black background does not give a sober feel to the image but enhances the celebratory mood. I think he is talking about the celebration of relationships, "odd..." relationships. The ones that society at large doesn’t accept and are cast out as being "not normal". It is still uncomfortable for many people to accept that a man can assume a very intimate conversation with another man. Society wants to see men taking a position of domination and being tough towards each other (wrestle) instead of cuddling with another man. So by appropriating and touching on human relations he does challenge a contemporary argument.

Another question that I want to raise is that does a work have to raise a contemporary issue in order for it to be valuable enough to be considered high art. Shouldn't the viewer be the one to decide the worthiness of the work and place it there?

Nomcebo Sithole

Dee Donaldson – Formation

I feel immensely privileged to have been part of this exhibition – to have engaged with 3 painters of this standard and integrity. The first word that comes to mind when reflecting on this show is: ‘honesty’. Honesty of intention, dedication to the process of art making and the striving to reflect or talk about a particular journey or experience. Revealing that to a public audience is, at the best of times, an often daunting and exposing experience. (I smile as I read Anet’s comment about the length of time it took me to unwrap my paintings for hanging)

last hour
oil on canvas
2008

Anet Norval’s work (speaking of unwrapping) is at first like the unpacking of memories and objects from a box kept since childhood. The kind that is kept and shared, seated cross-legged on a bedroom floor. On closer observation they are not random memories. They are indeed poetic, cohesive conversations. Highlighted memories and fragments of events framed or specifically noted. Comments on a childhood, a particular era with its prescribed norms laced together as a whole. Fairy princesses… wolves and cowboys. Unlike the other work on the show, Anet’s may take a little more time – those who have taken that time I know have come away as intrigued and rewarded as I was.

My first impression of Janet Solomon’s paintings was one of duality. I found myself utterly seduced as a painter yet strangely uncomfortable the longer I stood in front of the work. I believe both of these responses are merits of the work. Seduced by Janet’s skill, her understanding of light, the sheer exquisite feat of that forest… Then the discord: Figures centrally placed in beautiful, natural environments yet feeling they do not belong there. At once the realism of these spaces seems to transform into more of a psychological space in which the figures seem suspended or locked. Uncomfortable in their worlds. Naked, vulnerable.

rainlight
oil on canvas
2008

Grace Kotze’s attraction to light as an almost tangible element becomes more and more evident. Mark making and light fuse in many of the small works into a dream-like abstraction, hinting at the mundane through a visual veil. Roads travelled through the dark and through the rain... They reminded me of travelling at night as a child, lights forming shapes passing by through glass and half-sleep. Being removed consciously – being behind something, be that a camera or winds-screen. They are beautifully rendered split second moments of light and movement. The sense of noticing something extraordinary in very ordinary moments, just before it’s gone.

Dee Donaldson

Things fall apart

Greg Streak’s latest exhibition Accumulative Disintegration is a psychological snapshot of our times, writes Peter Machen.

If ever an exhibition title resonated with the spirit of the times, it is Accumulative Disintegration, from acclaimed Durban artist Greg Streak. As the first decade of the 21st century starts to draw to a close, it often seems that the world – the climate, the economy, society itself – is falling gradually apart. The show, currently installed at Bank Gallery in Florida Road, uses the cut and the blade as its central elements, accompanied by the implied bedfellow of blood, the work all the while clinging to the gallery surfaces as if it was skin.



Cloud
2007-2008
Stainless steel, razor blades (2000), steel wire cable, d-shackles
1300 x 500 x 300mm(variable in space)

The dominant work, or at least the one that I noticed first, is titled Cloud. A three dimensional arc of metal hangs from the ceiling, its bottom surface covered in regimented rows of razor blade. It is a remarkably visceral piece; standing underneath it is an experience of heightened reality, as an inverted vertigo seems to pull the viewer upwards towards the blades. Next to the cloud – although I imagine that most viewers would see it only after having circled the gallery – is a companion piece called Secrets (for those who don’t have) which consists of 2 000 paper envelopes for razor blades contained in a Perspex box.



Secrets (for those who don't have) [detail]
2007-2008
2000 sealed paper envelopes (for razor blades), perspex, powder-coated mild steel
200 x 140 x 35mm

At the end of the gallery, a large piece called For every time I wish you hadn’t bears countless cuts, marks that seem to suggest both self-flagellation and imposed violence. In another piece, Paper cuts on the skin (random but deliberate), the cuts have inverted, seemingly keloided into scars.

Accumulative Disintegration is full of lacerations. While it is no doubt an exploration of the artist’s own recent experiences, it also reflects our own individual and collective frustrations and pains, mental, emotional and physical. And to contain all the tears caused by the all the cuts, all the blood, all the pain, are hundreds of little Envelopes for tears constructed out of insulating tape and herded into the convention of the frame.



Envelopes for tears [detail]
2008
White insulation tape, ABS plastic, MDF, wood frame
1320 x 870mm

Taking all the pieces in the exhibition as a collective narrative, it is this work which offers, if not redemption or salvation, at least a place to cry, a place to acknowledge our pain. Despite the one-off emotional theatre of the TRC, this is not something we like to do in South Africa; repression is a more favoured option. The envelopes for tears are doubly moving because of their size. On the one hand, they are exactly the right size to hold real tears. On the other hand, they would be carried away in torrents if they invited the tears of the planet, the nation, or even the surrounding surburbs.

Despite all the repetitive brutality on show in Accumulative Disintegration, there is a strangely transcendent warmth to the exhibition which glows – barely – as if in a strangely metallic dusk. That glow might be the relief of catharsis, of shared experience. For in this new South Africa, as in the old, we are all brutalised in countless ways. That does not mean that we are not also warm and compassionate people. We are, after all, human, and capable of so much.
And somehow, engaging with the works in Accumulative Disintegration, their attempt at some kind of emotional precision, combined with Streak’s remarkable ability to pull abstraction into the concrete, ignites that feeling of being human, and suggests how much we have to lose if we choose not to let our scars heal.

Then there is the fact that these scars, these marks of experience – as well as the new life and fresh experience that also comes with the passing of time – are the marks of pain, and pain always has a lesson to learn. Pulling back from most of the works, moving the focus from the micro the macro, new forms reveal themselves. In many of the works, the repetition of small individual marks – made presumably at some kind of random – builds up to reveal a larger landscape.

And what I saw – and perhaps I am just a shiny, foolish optimist – was landmasses, continents, islands – a new world being forged in the darkness.

- Peter Machen
Weekend Witness (16 August 2008)

Critique on “Accumulative Disintegration”

It is not strange to the tradition of art that art has been used to document, in the various manners available to it, history and history in the making. For instance, the Romans, using a variety of media, represented events such as military triumphs, civic benefactions, revolutions, general culture and even religious sacrifices. It has then subsequently become the task of civil society to collect and protect these bits of documentation, premised on the notion that they are direct links, as opposed to retrospective links, to our past. The artist has, in this sense, also taken on the role of scribe. So, save the commonly perceived and often highly controversial roles which society already ascribes to the artist, the artist does frequently come to serve as a sort of archivist for the constantly evolving social and political history of human kind.

It is in the light of art sometimes serving this end that I comment on the latest exhibition by Greg Streak, titled Accumulative Disintegration.

The exhibition as a whole seems very easily interpreted as a comment on both a pervasive and also deeply felt sense of social and political disintegration. But it would be a mistake to see this commentary as only pertaining to a condition particular to South Africa. The complete lack of ethnicity, ensured by the careful choice of universal and entirely culture neutral symbols, is a signature property of this exhibition. It appears that Streak has, in a very measured and deliberate manner, created an experience which captures a global sense of uneasiness, instability and the apparent falling apart of the systems we deeply rely on. But all this is interspersed with little pieces of hope. And it is this fact which grounds it even further in reality. The dance of society and politics has always been a string of events, succeeding each other in a manner not dissimilar to the notion of thesis and anti-thesis. Streak’s articulation does not fail to take note of this pulse, which is history.

It is my view that the works of art which consist this exhibition hang on the walls like the portraits of famous war heroes, leaders, great intellectuals, martyrs and reformers of society. They stand in guard of human heritage in the same manner as the painted and sculpted scenes in our public spaces and archival halls, which have captured events such as famous battles, uprisings, executions, economic depressions and civic celebrations. But it is not within the nature of the modern man or woman to appreciate the literal interpretation of such goings on. Art has a new language, and Streak speaks it.

For every falsely justified war that ends, if it is true that The end always has a beginning, we must wait to see if it will be the beginning of a Penance in progress. If the world had Envelopes for tears and little bits of paper wrapping for all its Secrets, we would already have run out of space. And the fact that acts of violence are mostly random but deliberate and can, despite the fact that these are portrayed as nothing more serious than Paper cuts on the skin of humanity, still cause a Rush of Blood is a sign of our times. We are filled with contradiction; the grossest acts of disrespect can be redeemed by nothing more than excuses for survival and, simultaneously, the study of something as innocuous as the Anatomy of a captured snowflake can lead to bizarre revolutions about the basic rights of all things inanimate.

Since we live in strange times our history calls for documentation of a genius type. It seems to me as if it would be impossible to really capture these past few decades in any other language but the one which Accumulative Disintegration has appealed to. The times are those of a society purging itself on the monochromatic diet of notions about fairness and equality, while insidiously hating each other for being as varied as the textures of a thousand razor blades and the softness of a snowflake.

And, the suggestion is, that it is our responsibility to capture these pieces for future reference.

- Carin Goodwin

(Carin Goodwin has received a master’s degree in philosophy, specialising in the philosophy of language. She is currently pursuing her PhD in a similar field. Goodwin has a particular interest in art and literature and has recently started writing as a critic).

anet norval - Formation

From the word go I felt like the baby, not only in age but also in experience and exposure. Here I arrived with a bag full of golden toys and photographs that looked messy and disorganised in comparison with the sleek layouts done by Janet Solomon, the honest discussions logged by Dee Donaldson and the very considered imagery of Grace Kotze. But by stepping back it was clear that each painter’s process was a true reflection of their work and themselves. Diverse as we are there is a constant theme that runs through all four bodies of work; growth, change, loss, longing, and an emotional realisation of the past and what has been.

anet norval
Installation view

The long awaited work from Dee Donaldson, took my breath away when she finally decided to reveal the meticulously wrapped packages that tickled the curiosity of everyone in the gallery. A precisely planned process which revealed her loss, but in the same breath her bravery to expose her inner and most private emotions experienced during the last couple of months. Dee’s work is hauntingly honest and describes feelings few of us want to acknowledge.

All of Janet Solomon’s works feels like a self-portrait, they encapsulates her extraordinary sense of detail and watching her hang her work with meticulous precision left me in awe. The main thing that draws me into Janet’s work, is that all of the smaller areas are treated with such consideration, and when combined end up in one very finished piece. If I can compare it to a Zen garden, raked over and over until not one line is out of sync, this also comes across as Janet’s therapy, continually working up a surface until it is perfect.

anet norval
Installation view

When looking at Grace Kotze’s work, I get the impression she loves her medium and understands how to manipulate it to do exactly what she wants it to. I have always been a fan of Grace’s work; she spends time looking and captures something we all relate to, not only light on specific subjects but also some sort of nostalgia or emotion that shakes things up deep inside. I feel some sort of loss/ longing when I look at her work and ponder how some of us notice our surroundings in a more poetic way.

Being part of Formation made me reflect on the complexities every painter goes through to create a final piece that they willingly share with an audience, who usually cannot tap into the emotion or frustration of the ambiguous thoughts that are imbedded in every mark. Painting is an emotional and draining practise, which leaves one empty after a body of work is completed.

anet norval

Janet Solomon - Formation

I went back to the show on Friday to have some quiet time with the pieces, as during installation one is not properly focused. I came away from the show as if from a great tragic performance: - gutted and melancholic, with a sense that I had partaken in very private experiences in the lives of others.

Janet Solomon
Star of the Sea
Oil on Canvas
2008

Dee Donaldson’s work is very clearly represents a state of loss. Although her 4 diptyches worked as a stacked set, I would have preferred to have seen them individually, should space have allowed. The resonances from each piece needed surrounding space for one to absorb the full weight of their meaning. Two pieces I found harrowing in their aloneness, their grieving, were Rainlight and Last hour. Rainlight’s diptych depict the sheets and the impression of a head left on the pillow of an abandoned bed married to the beautifully rendered view of sheer crimson curtains holding back garden shadows and reflected “rainlight” from the window. One’s response to this piece is sensory, as it is whenever one walks into another’s home. One can imagine the still retained warmth in the sheets and the cold behind those red curtains. It is a snapshot of a moment of acceptance of loss.

Last Hour too is a snapshot; bare winter twigs twinned with rainheavy cloud bleaching and greying grassland spanned by pylons. This diptych has none of the human warmth of Rainlight. Instead it is wracked with aloneness and an icy cold. It is stripped, with nothing left to give. Because the landscape is so familiar, seen countless times from a moving vehicle, it provides a sense of journey, of moving through, but also the aloneness of private thought, and a small respite that the journey will end.

Dee’s emailed discussion with a most sympathetic friend is informative of the content of her pieces and fleshes out the context of her works being a dedication to her recently lost father.

Janet Solomon
Susannah
Oil on Canvas
2008

I enjoyed reading Grace Kotze’s description of her process and loved seeing the juicy informative pictures such as the one showing her palette growing like a coral all over a tabletop.

In Grace’s work isolation is strong. In her explanation of her process and influences she says that she uses ‘the familiar as a direct link to the emotive sense of self’. My interpretation of her use of everyday urban images of moving vehicles in low lighting conditions, like subterranean parking lots, is one of withdrawn emotion, removal and isolation. The mixture of self-portraits in flared light with these images seen through windscreens further enhances the dislocation. These portraits could be sensual but I don’t find them so, instead they are flat, as if only an eye saw them and not the other senses. I marvel at her technique, its abandon in early stages and wish that she might allow some of this to breathe more.

Experiencing Anet Norval’s part of the Formation show was like reading good poetry for me. The way she describes a scene and then unravels one’s preconceptions with a few well-chosen words is remarkable. Her 70’s soft focus family photos are barbed with cynicism and sometimes a dark foreboding. I told her I thought she should create books, as her work needs to be read as a whole. Each image quietly building on the next, each list

liefde

herinneringe

hartseer

verstaan

geduld

further building a family portrait, and developing the character of her chief protagonist – Anet herself.


I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Grace for curating this show. Her professionalism and adaptability allowed for a strong show and I’m honoured and proud to be a part of it.

Janet Solomon

Formation

Formation: an exhibition of paintings and supporting material by

Dee Donaldson
Grace Kotze
Anet Norval
Janet Solomon

Opening Speech by Bronwen Vaughan-Evans

Painting has been accused of being dead, “a ‘tainted’ arena sullied by patriarchal practice”, outmoded and unable to render the complexities of contemporary experience (Mackenny 2006:4). But, in our attempts to be truly contemporary / conceptual, I feel that we might have forgotten to be human, to respond first with intuition. So large is the contemporary chip on our shoulder that we choose rather to read the title, the statement, the text before we know how to respond to what is in front of us. I am not sure if I speak only for myself here but when asked about my practice I find myself whispering the word painter, as if it were taboo. And I heave a sigh of relief when the Saatchis launch an exhibition entitled “The TRIUMPH of Painting”.

Past and current debates around the life and death of painting aside, for me, the undeniable fact remains that I am in love with painting. The tactile experience of it, the intimate struggles with self and surface and the silent exhalation when standing in front of a body of work like Dee Donaldson’s and knowing what she means. I feel, for a moment, a connection with another human being.

What is so lovely about this show is the intent to foreground the process of painting. This, after all, is what we love about painting - the pure and basic fact that the surface is the site of making. The surface records simultaneously the thinking and the doing. It becomes a record of time, it becomes a witness to the life of a person for the period of its making. Despite the image that remains, or the meaning conveyed, it is the process itself which is intoxicating. Many contemporary forms of practice choose to skip this step – the artist goes from concept to product, farming out the process to machinery / artisans who remain un-credited (I do acknowledge that often this is an integral part of the meaning of the work.)

But at the beginning of the twenty first century we find ourselves in thrall to the meta experience of art, the ever present stepping back and viewing from afar, and a show like this reminds us about the joys of stepping forward to experience the ‘minor’ / unmediated surface.

Yesterday afternoon when I came to view the work I had the rare pleasure of seeing even more of the process of painting than we usually see. I saw the back of one of Janet Solomon’s paintings. A beautifully constructed and robust stretcher, the weave of really good quality canvas, the neat staples holding it taut. You may think it dismissive talking about the back of Solomon’s work first, when the front surface is so beautiful, and masterfully realised. But I think it is indicative of her seriousness of purpose. Painting is not something Janet stumbled upon; painting is something Janet has actively chosen, grappled with, loves and hates simultaneously. You don’t have to read about Solomon’s fascination with the History of Painting to contextualise her work. The surface tells all. It is “pregnant” with the weight of this history, of memory. This sophisticated image maker should be applauded for both her technical skill and conceptual underpinnings.




Janet Solomon
Star of the Sea
Oil on Canvas
2008

For me, one of the defining threads that runs through this show is that of memory, whether it be the memory of the surface, of the history of painting, of a South African childhood, or a memorial to the life and death of a specific person.

Anet Norval looks at popular, constructed memories and juxtaposes these with intimate, personal memories. For me, somehow her work holds a South African collective unconscious. For example, the image of the small blue and white school book label, holds an enormous unspoken history of both personal and collective repression. Her use of garish paint and popular imagery draws us in while the brutality of her intimate histories repels us, or is it the other way around? Either way the works resonate with the weight of a past.




anet norval
Installation view
2008

Grace Kotze’s work hits us with a familiarity which has not quite yet become a memory but holds the foreboding of one. Her surfaces some how record the process of remembering, both blurred and in sharp focus simultaneously. Her works convey an intimate personal response to neutral public spaces. These pieces are juxtaposed with flash frames from highly private spaces, the resulting emotional response being one of uncomfortable exposed fragility.




Grace Kotze
2008

And now at the end of this opening ramble, the easiest thing to say about the work of Dee Donaldson is that it leaves me speechless. And it does and yet I want to tell you why I have nothing to say. I have nothing to say because the work says it all, it speaks on a universal level to us about loss and our desperate human attempts to archive love. It speaks to us about the punctuation point at which experience becomes solidified as memory. It uses all of the relatively limited tools we have as painters to communicate humanity.




Dee Donaldson
2008

Thank you to Grace Kotze for curating this show and to the artists for sharing these works with me / with us – I know that there are many other things you could be doing to earn a much more decent financial living than this and I encourage any of you here who are earning a decent living to buy one of these pieces, you won’t remember the money in two months time.


Bronwen Vaughan-Evans

Mackenny, Virginia (2006) Painting Ourselves Out of a Corner, New Painting (a group exhibition of recent South African art) Kwazulu Natal Society of Arts, Durban South Africa.

Greg Streak - Accumulative Disintegration

Greg Streaks solo show Accumulative Disintegration, is currently on at Bank Gallery. The exhibition’s title creates an expectation of tension: a potentially fraught space created by a body of work that reflects “the battle of trying to pull things towards a whole whilst they disperse around us” (Streak, 2008).

The exhibition, in contrast to its title, is calm and considered, setting up the dichotomy that moves between works that appear to capture an accumulative essence and those that are disintegrated. Whilst few of the pieces demonstrate the tension between these two concepts Streak rather utilises the ambiguity and contradictions between the titles, the works and himself as a conceptual device to explore these elements. Marks left on the surfaces of the works are emotionally charged by the titles, drawing the viewer to find personal meaning in the abstracted self-reflection.The paired down aesthetic, suggests an ordering or making sense of his internal conflict. The simplicity at times makes the dialogue seem singular, with the contemplative and repetitive mark making in the works adding to an insular feeling. The works that do not hold this mark are implicated as causal possibilities in the process of scaring or excavating through their positioning to the other works.

As Streak suggests he was trying to find the poetry of life, extending a mark in an attempt to find visual equivalents of darkness, penance and difficulty. The exploration across paper, super wood and canvas allows for the understanding of the single mark to shift as it translates differently on the surfaces of the varied media. The physical act of marking is now imbedded in the surface. These surfaces not only denote the passing of time but also serve as a metaphor for personal growth, in its varied intensities.





Penance in progress [detail]
2007-2008
Canvas, cotton thread, wooden stretcher frame
760 x 380mm




Paper cuts on the skin (random but deliberate) [detail]
2008
MDF, pewter, filler
500 x 300mm

In Penance in progress and Paper cuts on the skin (random yet deliberate) 2008, the marks made with pewter “scars” and red thread are raised from the surface and these combined with the titles of the works, make a clear reference to martyrdom and the masochistic. This brings me to two questions; (1) Is this central to the audiences understanding of the show and (2) Are these works a reflection of the ritualised ways that society expects us to deal with and display pain?

A (1): I am not sure whether this is central to the audiences understanding of the show. These two works in particular (although others might also) do make reference to a self-flagellation - a personal underscoring. I do think that some of this work was a catharsis and a way of me working through some personal anguish and trauma. It was about an ending and new beginnings - about things falling apart and the human tendency to try and hold them together.

A (2): I am not sure whether there is any overt expectation of how we are to deal with pain. For me the works were most definitely a catharsis and a meditation and the process an exorcism of pain.




… a rush of blood [detail]
2007-2008
Print – archival ink on archival paper
600 x 400mm

… a rush of blood, Someday I will find you, The end always has a beginning 2007-2008, are a series of archival digital prints scanned from original ink drawings. They shift our attempts of looking from the macro to the micro focusing our attention on the intensely rendered details . The titles of the drawings allude to what these unseen emotive spaces might look like: a haemorrhaging reality, an optimism to one day transcend the human condition and our inability to comprehend our own mortality. What stood out in these pieces was the intensity of mark making. Is this then an attempt of you trying to make sense or find meaning through catharsis?

A: Perhaps on a sub-conscious level, but essentially the works were really attempts at looking at the inter-connectedness of things. The way in which isolated nodes remain just that unless co-joined to another. I find Someday I will find you and …a rush of blood quite corpuscular; of the inside of the body – almost as if magnified under a microscope. The end always has a beginning is more cosmological – of another world. I really think these works were more about reflecting on individual and collective connections – in what I see as a very disconnected world.

During the walk about you commented on the banality of your materials. My understanding is that these materials are ordinary and commonly used. Can you elaborate on the choice of these materials and what you are attempting to do?

A: I think what I was suggesting is that some of the materials be they insulation tape, scotch tape or merely cotton thread are materials of almost everyday use. They are things we have lying in a drawer at home or on our desk. For me it was about taking the ordinary and imbuing them with value; about taking their banal and focused function and creating something more poetic and suggestive.


During the walk about, you suggested that the work could be read through many lenses or contextual references and that your objective was to promote self-reflection and personal interaction. When questioned further, your response was that the work might relate to how our sense of things are impacted by a state of dis-ease: contradictions and the manipulations inherent in the media and political institutions. You recently curated Dis-ease, a new generation of video art from the Rijksakademie archives that questioned the notions of art practice and identity within the “global village”. This is one of several bigger projects that you have conceptualised that deal specifically with social issues. How would you contextualise your solo show Accumulative Disintegration in this broader body of work?

A: Firstly I am not sure whether the objective was to promote self-reflection and personal interaction – I just think the work maybe has that element to it. I think that my artistic practise has been, for some time, split between two realities. One that feels compelled to listen to my social conscience and construct projects and or debates around the impacts of living in an abnormal society that is South Africa, and more and more the global village we all find ourselves in. And then on the other hand the need to be more personally insular and reflect in a more acute way on that very same world. I think that Accumulative Disintegration was a long overdue body of work that allowed me some time in my own head for its own sake. I have spent the last few years focusing on the external and creating forums and opportunities for others to engage. It has been a much needed relief to go inward for a short while.


Thank you for your contribution and your time.

Vaughn Sadie