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22/7/2005

New works

Artspace Fine Art Gallery, Johannesburg

Keith Dietrich, Clementina van der Walt and Karin Preller

KEITH DIETRICH is Associate Professor in the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Stellenbosch. The Horizons of Babel project was framed against the background of a fascination with the topography of the country that dominated the interests of both amateur and professional artists from the colonial period to the present. Horizons of Babel is to a large degree informed by the concept of the disembodied panorama, and the particular relationship between the panorama and panopticon. The site of the project is located on a semicircle between Cape Columbine on the West Coast of the Cape, and Cape Agulhas, with the centre falling on the hill Babelonstoring in the vicinity of Paarl/Franschhoek/Stellenbosch. Seven co-ordinates were identified on this semicircle at thirty degree intervals, and each co-ordinate was systematically documented. The outcome of the project is a book object and a semicircular panorama installation of aquarelle paintings roughly six metres in diameter, broken into seven sections (Cape Columbine, Verlorenvlei, Hottentotsberg, Roosterberg, Anysberg, Napkei and Agulhas) corresponding to the above-mentioned co-ordinates. The project explores how images construct knowledge and investigates the relationship between the centre and periphery. In this respect the association between the centre (Babelonstoring or Tower of Babel) and the place names along the periphery (such as Hoedklip, Uitkomst, Duyker Eiland, Langfontein, Wittedrift, Matroozefontein, etc.), as well as the cultural, geographic, botanical and zoological diversity of the region acquire metaphorical significance.

Using ceramics and etching as mediums, CLEMENTINA VAN DER WALT , well-known ceramicist, says of her most recent work: “In the past year I have been working with the theme of masks as glowing shadows of people who are at once present but absent. This has been inspired largely by masking traditions in Africa and elsewhere. In this exhibition I am developing this theme further to incorporate the notion of unsung heroes, in this case, these being ordinary refugees, often economic refugees, depicted as mask-like ceramic faces.The sense of displacement, definitions of home, the presence of the symbolic in the ordinary, are explored in this body of work."

KARIN PRELLER, part time lecturer at Design Center, College of Design, argues that in general her works deal with issues around photography and the ‘recoding’ of photographs into paint. The works on this exhibition consist of paintings of frames from ‘popular’ black and white photocomic magazines published from approximately the 1960s to the 1980s. The paintings deal mainly with memory, with the representation of white identity of those times and the re-presentation of these identities through the recoding of images from popular culture into oil paint – traditionally a medium associated with ‘high’ art. The paintings are exact reproductions of images from these old photocomics but are, through the translation into oil paint, placed in a new context and given a new visibility. Humour, through the speech bubbles and exaggerated gestures, is an important factor. But although speech bubbles are included no particular narrative is intended and construction of any narrative is left to the viewer.

Image: Karin Preller, "Untitled"

Opening: Sunday, 24 July 2005 @ 16:30

Guest Speaker: Lisa Allan, Lecturer, Design Centre

Preview: Saturday, 23 July, 10h00 - 14h00

Artspace fine art gallery - jhb, 3 hetty
Gallery Hours:
Tuesday - Friday 10:00 - 16:00
Saturday 10:00 - 14:00
Closed Sunday/Monday

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