Wounds And Relics, 2018, Gallery 2

Wounds and Relics A group show

Curated by Johan Conradie

Includes Artists: AD- Reflex, Christiaan Diedericks, Ella Cronje, Fredrick Eksteen, Mandy Coppes-Martin, Nkosikhona Ngcobo, Paul Emmanuel, Rivone Josie and Rory Klopper.

Gallery 2 is pleased to present the group exhibition Wounds and relics from 1-29 September, 2018. Conceived by artist and curator Johan Conradie, the exhibition reflects on art which has been made at either personal, social or political points of friction or pain, and which cut through the smooth, but also comforting surface of conventional culture.

In equal measure poetic and political, the artists that form part of the show explore the paradox of simultaneously forgetting and remembering the social scars of violent conflicts, whether as wounds, traces, or objects surviving from an earlier time.

Wounds are a rather thorny subject that has taken root in Western art, from classical depictions of vengeful gods, to the pious suffering of Christian saints, to modern art that grapples with more recent wars and injustices. The contemporary artists assembled for Wounds and relics are intended to show just how compelling the subject continues to be, even among artists who deliberately avoid its more traditional motifs.

Physical wounds manifest on our skin, advertising the past, its depravities and corruption. A physical scar/wound is a meeting place between inside and outside, a locus of memory, of bodily change. Like skin, a scar mediates between the outside and the inside, but it also materially produces, changes, and overwrites its site. However, a scar can also manifest itself as a psychological or emotional wound; an index of survival, it also marks the site of a deep-seated trauma. It may even be invisible, ghosting the psyche with its contradictions, at once a bottomless pit of sorrow and a potential wellspring of action.

AD-Reflex Nocturnal Shadows, Oil Paint and Digital Composition on museum paper on board, 127.6 x 200 cm, 2018

Nocturnal Shadows was prompted by a recent visit to Tokyo (Japan), in which AD-Reflex observed ‘transit psychology’ as manifested in the lives of ‘others’ on the metro, on the way to a visit to the Tokyo National Museum.

If something is nocturnal, it belongs to or is active at night. The subway - which keeps random people together in a contained, observable setting - is a perfect rolling ‘theatre’ for the study of human behaviour. Nocturnal Shadows speaks to the human condition, our passions, insecurities, challenges, triumphs and failures, and showcases the subtle shift of awareness, understanding and the social unease of ‘privacy shields’. Simultaneously, the work reveals what is unique and authentic in people.

The work alludes in a playful manner to the dual nature in each of us. Each character was secretly photographed and later on juxtaposed in a playful manner with masks from the Fourteenth century in the collection of the Tokyo National Museum.

In our contemporary culture, the prospect of communicating with, or even looking at a stranger is virtually unbearable (even more so in Japan). On a metro, people tend to fiddle with their phones, even without a signal underground and use technology as a universal armour to hide behind. Smartphones become our security blanket that protect us from what we perceive is going to be more dangerous

AD-Reflex , Siren, Oil paint and digital composition on museum paper on board, 1500 x 1500 mm,2018

The title of this work alludes to Greek mythology, where sirens were creatures which enticed sailers to their destruction with their irresistibly beautiful singing. Contrary to the traditional interpretations of sirens, the work by AD-Reflex, can instead be seen as an abstract and metaphorical ode to female energy and determination. The contemporary narrative and interpretation by AD-Reflex compose a very different melody, one that empowers, and that cannot be disrupted. Sirens, according to the collaborative duo, chant songs of survival and emancipation. The circle format, together with photographic traces of lava erupting, seductive textures and the reckless use of the colour red, further strengthen the inherent symbolism of the work.

AD-Reflex explore 'paint' as a medium (both in its traditional form and through digital painting), together with process-led abstraction as an approach. Through the use of various complex processes, mythological landscapes, drips and digital elements appear, then melt away in abstract compositions, which feels like abstract sculpture on canvas.

The work, SIREN, moves in the grey area between abstraction and representation and uses the strengths of both - the ability of representational imagery to communicate specific ideas via the object's inherent symbolism and the mood and feeling that abstract imagery creates. The apparent seamless integration of AD-Reflex's digitally engendered worlds and the more expressive, tactile qualities of the oil medium creates a tension that not only celebrates the illusionary achievements of the mimetic tradition of painting, but deliberately complicate the surface with unexpected disruptions / juxtapositions of meticulous composition and sensual recklessness.

AD-Reflex Transit - NYC, 2018, 50 x 50 cm, Oil Paint, Digital Composition on C-type print, face mount glossy plexi-glass all-dibond, floating in clear Perspex box

The more recent abstract works by AD-Reflex celebrate the mimetic qualities of 'paint' as a medium (both in its traditional form and through digital painting), together with process-led abstraction. Through the experimental nature of their processes, the works increasingly border on the ‘alchemical’. City scenes, drips and digital elements appear, then melt away in an endless mimicry, where no clear distinction can be drawn between the painterly and the digital.

Christiaan Diedericks Wounds & Relics I - Incipient Patriarch, Monotype on 300gsm Hahnemule etching paper, 102 x 97 cm (Framed Size)

In my most recent work I maintain the self-assigned role as devil’s advocate in order to stir emotions and pose visual questions, rather than to provide clear and absolute answers. Global racism, poverty and other similar pressing issues (gender, sexual orientation etc) cannot be deferred and/or ignored. In my opinion, the only way forward is for all people of all races to look each other in the eye and listen to one another, rather than to dictate or prescribe — in doing so, fitting the shoe on the other foot, creating a deeper understanding for one another.

My story is your story, you story is my story.

- Hannah Gadsby

As a white male South African artist, I am by birth a descendent and benefactor of the European Patriarchs who colonised my country and continent. I hence acknowledge my privilege and need to emphatically state that I personally believe that colonisation was the worst crime to ever have happened to the people, cultures, societies, land and economy of Africa.

In general, I personally do not believe that only one final explanation for any single work of art can ever exist. Any conversation about an artwork enriches its conceptual content and adds to the meaning and contextual intent of the work and may very well provide answers to these pressing issues in our beautiful diverse country.

Christiaan Diedericks, Wounds & Relics II - Incursion Monotype on 300gsm Hahnemule etching paper, 102 x 97 cm (Framed Size)

Ella Cronje The mother (Pasiphae), Ceramic sculpture in Perspex case, 33 x 33 x 47 cm, 2018

Pasiphae’s Seduction

In Greek mythology the god Poseidon had given a beautiful bull to King Minos with the expectation that Minos would sacrifice it to him. This bull indeed certified that Minos was the rightful king of Crete. But Minos could not bear to kill such a magnificent creature and kept it for himself. To punish Minos, Poseidon made Minos' wife, Pasiphae, fall passionately in love with the bull. . .

The resulting offspring which she bore was a monster called the Minotaur.

Reading Pasiphae’s story sparked the idea for my sculpture in the light of mothers, blinded by love, who allow their child/ren to be exposed to danger in order to keep a man.

Ella Cronje The invincible thread of sound, Ceramics and mixed media, 48 x 43 x 10 cm (boxed framed)

I rescued an injured bird from a cat a while ago. I pitied the frailty of this creature that sat so quietly between my hands. Not long after that, I encountered a racing flock of birds during a hike on the mountain. One swooped past my head with such a force and gave me a fright as I realized the damage it could cause. When put in motion of full flight, a vulnerable little bird can have the power of a bullet.

An awareness, of the applications of this principal to different aspects in life, came to my mind.

Silence can be broken, and the force of a sounding truth can set matters in powerful motion.

‘Cheerfully, almost gaily, the invincible thread of sound wound up in the air like smoke from a cottage chimney, winding up clean beech trees and issuing in a tuft of blue smoke among the topmost leaves.’ -Virginia Woolf

Frederik Eksteen Deleted Scene (2012-8), Oil, spray paint and inkjet print on canvas, 210 x 164 cm

Eksteen’s art is a blend of techniques and genres. Although often referred to as a painter, his work investigates the underlying and often hidden mechanisms of images by focusing on the interface between painting and computer imaging. It is at this boundary, where the handmade meets the computer generated, that materials / media show themselves most conspicuously. And it is often exactly because of their technical incompatibility that they can be made to speak to, and through each other as technologies of unique kinds of matter and meaning. This concern with material intersections is typical of the artist’s collision of the old with the new, and part of an ongoing experiment aimed at complicating our understanding of painting in an increasingly digital world.

One could argue that Eksteen’s practice frames painting as a relic of sorts: as a discipline from an earlier time that needs to rediscover its role, function and / or purpose in an image and technology saturated present. If painting is cast as a relic, portraiture would be the most obvious culprit. Portraiture is arguably more concerned with breathing life into the past than any other painting genre, and this commemorative aspect has been an intense focus in Eksteen’s art for some time. Art historian Paul Barlow, in a discussion of Victorian art, described an understanding of ‘portraiture as a sacramental act, involving a mysterious and complex transaction between artist and sitter’, where ‘the inner secret of the features’1 is extracted. Examples of this kind of creative magic abound in the mythology of painting.

Portraiture can give the semblance of life, but what is also frequently noted is its deathly hold over the sitter (think Dorian Gray). This double bind - where a picture can both preserve and wound - is another intersection which Eksteen’s work negotiates.

Deleted Scene (2012-8) is perhaps a descriptive example. It shows a sinister group of figures behind a curtain, gathering around a severed head. In this parable, portraiture and decapitation are conflated. Although painting someone's picture is often seen as a tribute of sorts, it is also a latent reminder of a moment that is forever lost. It becomes a symbol that stands for both the life and the death of the subject, as well as being a testament to our belief in pictures. It presents a view of portraiture which, while exposing unseen representational mechanisms, is also partial and obstructed. This selective screening of the image emphasizes seeing itself and by trying to fill in the gaps, the viewer is drawn into its ambiguous tragedy.

1

Barlow’s (1997: 219) comments are mentioned in the context of an analysis of a portrait of Thomas Carlyle by Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais. The second part of the quote is a direct quotation of James Froude, Carlyle’s biographer and friend. In Barlow, P. 1997. Facing the past and present: the National Gallery and the search for ‘authentic’ portraiture, in Portraiture: facing the subject. Edited by J Woodall. Manchester: Manchester University Press: 219-238.

Frederik Eksteen, Marginalia 5 (2018),Inkjet print on archival paper, oil on glass, 39.8 x 39.8 cm

Frederik Eksteen, Marginalia 6 (2018),Inkjet print on archival paper, oil on glass, 39.8 x 39.8 cm

Frederik Eksteen, Marginalia 7 (2018),Inkjet print on archival paper, oil on glass, 39.8 x 39.8 cm

Frederik Eksteen, Marginalia 8 (2018),Inkjet print on archival paper, oil on glass, 39.8 x 39.8 cm

Frederik Eksteen, Marginalia 9 (2018),Inkjet print on archival paper, oil on glass, 39.8 x 39.8 cm v

Frederik Eksteen, Marginalia 10 (2018),Inkjet print on archival paper, oil on glass, 39.8 x 39.8 cm

Frederik Eksteen, Marginalia 11 (2018),Inkjet print on archival paper, oil on glass, 39.8 x 39.8 cm

Frederik Eksteen, Marginalia 12 (2018),Inkjet print on archival paper, oil on glass, 39.8 x 39.8 cm

Frederik Eksteen, Marginalia 13 (2018),Inkjet print on archival paper, oil on glass, 39.8 x 39.8 cm

Frederik Eksteen, Marginalia 14 (2018),Inkjet print on archival paper, oil on glass, 39.8 x 39.8 cm

Frederik Eksteen, Marginalia 15 (2018),Inkjet print on archival paper, oil on glass, 39.8 x 39.8 cm

Frederik Eksteen, Marginalia 16 (2018),Inkjet print on archival paper, oil on glass, 39.8 x 39.8 cm

Mandy Coppes-Martin, Dead Zone, Plastic casted figurines and perspex, 94 x 94 x 5 cm, 2018

"I am interested in the dissonant relationship with the natural environment and that little space inbetween where we find contradiction”. Mandy Coppes-Martin (2017)

In this series Mandy Coppes-Martin explores the surface of the earth, the layer that we see with the human eye via photography and media. Coppes-Martin immortalizes the scars found on the earths surface in an ever transient landscape. These seemingly abstract works are made from paper, hand spun paper thread and plastic figurines.

Frozen in time these works are reminiscent of aerial photographs of agricultural spills, open cast mining, coal mining, oil spills and coral reef formations.

“These images are based on collective stills captured in my mind of images thrown at us through the media of the earths surface”. The cutting away of land through layers creates a visual dialogue that is beautiful and yet disturbing.

The inclusion of rust can be seen as a reaction to injury, or some kind of human interaction through forced industrial intervention. This objectification of our land symbolizes the containment and control of nature.

“We need to find beauty in our surroundings and in order to find this beauty we need to be able to see”

Mandy Coppes-Martin Tunnelling, Burnt paper (Manila Hemp), 100 x 50 x 5 cm, 2018

Mandy Coppes-Martin Extraction, Burnt cotton rag paper, 65 x 50 x 5 cm, 2018

Mandy Coppes-Martin Overburden, paper, crocheted paper thread, rust paint and industria knitting needle waste, 94 x 94 x 5 cm, 2018

Mandy Coppes-Marti Run-off, Mixed media - Paper, crocheted paper thread and rust paint, 125 x 58 x 5 cm, 2018

Nkhosikhona Ngcobo S'khothane, Ed 1/5, Photographic print, 33.6 x 44.8 cm

Nkosikhona Ngcobo Sabakhotha, Ed 1/5, Photographic print, 33.6 x 44.8 cm

For years, Izikhothane have been described in many ways in the media. However, most of the descriptions have suggested that this subculture was a social ill. This exhibition emanates from work done while researching this group of ‘social misfits’, as some media personnel would have us believe. Ironically, all that these ‘misfits’ really want in practising their culture, is to ‘fit in’ somewhere. S’khothane is a culture of youth who insist that they are just expressing themselves with expensive clothes and their ‘custard art’, while entertaining themselves and others with music and dance.

Most of their activities and conduct have been described, as society may be oblivious to the fact that this is the reaction that the S’khothane sought. Izikhothane, during my investigation, indicated that they engage in their conduct in order to gain recognition and respect, amongst other things.

Describing youth subculture, Shaw & McKay (1942 & 2006) argue that delinquency ‘derives its impelling force in the [youth’s] life from the fact that it provides a means of securing economic gain, prestige, and other human satisfactions’. Therefore, in the case of Izikhothane, we can argue that Shaw & McKay were correct.

My study’s main objective was to establish the extent to which, and how S’khothane: Representation in, and influence on, contemporary visual arts practices are represented in the visual artworks produced by contemporary visual artists.

Furthermore, I wanted to investigate the presence of any misconceptions in society and the arts’ impression of what the S’khothane culture is and what Izikhothane epitomise.

This body of work documents the flair and conduct of Izikhothane, and addresses misconceptions about the group, as well as the elements that make them who and what they are.

Expensive footprints The S’khothane display their unique taste in expensive designer shoes by slightly raising their feet in the air. Some of them are wearing a non-matching pair of shoes, each with a huge price tag.

Paul Emmanuel The Lost Men Grahamstown I, Archival Pigment inks on 100 percent rag 300 gsm paper, 10.5 x 14.8 cm, Ed 15/20

This photograph was used in a once-off counter memorial temporarily installed adjacent to the 1820 Settlers' Monument, Grahamstown, South Africa in July 2004 on the 10th anniversary of South Africa's democracy. The installation formed part of the Grahamstown National Arts Festival's main programme. Sourced from public archives, the names and military ranks of men who had died in the 1820 – 50's Xhosa Wars fought in the Grahamstown area, were pressed into Emmanuel's skin. Xhosa names however, could only be sourced from the journals of white soldiers and were each recorded as a single name only.

Paul Emmanuel Scar, Hand printed Chine-colle, photogravure etching, 40 x 92 cm (Paper size

In 2012, 98 years after the end of World War One (1914–1918), Johannesburg-based South African artist Paul Emmanuel journeyed into the French countryside on a research trip for his counter-memorial, The Lost Men France (2014). Here he photographed “wounds” in the earth, left by the conflicts that took place along the Western Front. He visited battlefields of the Somme, Delville Wood and Verdun. Mounds created by explosives that churned the land and bodies into mud, and trenches where men huddled together bracing themselves against the chaos, are still visible in the undergrowth. These surfaces reminded Emmanuel of memories carried in the body and borne on the skin in the form of scar tissue and seeping lesions that never heal. Dismembered bodies are still scattered in these landscapes.

In the Battle of Delville Wood, white South African servicemen fell alongside the Allies fighting against the Germans.

Their black compatriots, who were not allowed to carry weapons, died as labourers in camps located on the English Channel at Le Havre and Dieppe. The names of these black servicemen were left off war memorials, and those who survived were denied medals to honour their risk and suffering.

In this hand-printed photogravure etching, the names of men from all nations who fell on the Western Front are imagined alongside each other as if they have been temporarily pressed into the earth, without reference to their ranks, nationalities or ethnicities. Emmanuel states: “I wanted to re-capture and re-imagine these impressions before they were completely reclaimed by the changing landscape and lost forever”.

Rivone Josie Modern Obsession II, digital print, 33.3 x 44.8 cm, 2018

Foucault (1978:77) in Williams (1999:2) describes the modern compulsion to speak about sex obsessively, to question it and to be curious of it. “Modern Obsession” chronicles my exploration of hard core film pornography.

This body of work is a process of discovery and evolution of my thoughts on the tropes and culture of hard core film pornography much like the chronicle of American Painter Zak Smith (or Zak Sabbath) in his book We Did Porn (2009).

I aim to playfully stylize elements observed from pornographic films and culture from a whimsical perspective as I draw visual inspiration from video games and Japanese manga. My video game entitled Skin Eater (2015) features characters trapped together, forced to continually repeat their actions over and over again which refers to obsession and compulsion. Latex materials and skin tones worn by characters depicted in Skin Eater (2015) were greatly inspired by the paraphilia often worn in bondage and sadomasochistic pornography (Williams 1999:195-201).

The style of the video game is greatly inspired by and refers to Masashi Tsuboyama’s Silent Hill 2 (2001). Tsuboyama states that the idea of simultaneous repulsion and attraction is something that served as a core tenant for the atmosphere of the game (Beuglet 2001) an idea which is rife within my own video game.

The aims of this body of work is twofold where its ultimate goal is to depict stylized representations of the modern compulsion of obsessiveness over sex while its secondary goal is to show my exploration of hard core film pornography.

Rivone Josie Modern Obsession V, digital print, 33.3 x 44.8 cm, 2018

Rory Klopper Phantom. Mixed media, (assemblage), 110 x 60 x 60 cm, 2015

Phantom engages my interest in materiality and material thinking. Working in collaboration with the material, I allow its primary component – expanding foam - to explore the skeleton structure that I have assembled, unrestricted. I am, thus, guided by the unpredictable nature of the foams expansion. In this way I am challenging my ego by relinquishing a certain amount of control to the foam. Phantom embodies my identity’s multiplicity as viewed through my queer lens. Created through the eyes of the other I reconstruct myself in terms of assemblage. Personal trauma has warped my self-image, as I interrogate these emotions my corporeal form is transformed into something unhuman, almost monstrous. This detachment from my physical form is allowing me to release myself from burdens of the body. Our bodies are political and reactionary and engaged in power struggles, we need to understand this so that we can address these inequalities, so that we can evolve.

Rory Klopper Jellyfish Series II, Photographic print, Ed 1 of 10, 40 x 51 cm, 2018

Rory Klopper Jellyfish Series I, Photographic print, Ed 1 of 10, 44 x 42 cm, 2018

Rory Klopper Jellyfish Series III, Photographic print, Ed 1 of 10, 36 x 28 cm, 2018

Rory Klopper Jellyfish Series IV, Photographic print, Ed 1 of 10, 36 x 28 cm, 2018

The Jellyfish series helped me process a nervous breakdown in 2014 which has taken a number of years to recover from. I spent time staring into ocean rock pools trying to make sense of “right” and “wrong”, and the other binaries that devalue people like me. The jellyfish expands to allow the world to filter through it, and contracts to expel the world. I was lost in the abyss, unable to function for a period of time. I felt like I wanted to re-enter the womb and remain there, protected, loved, nourished. This evolving body of work allows me to unpack feelings for the desired other – the black body, gender “norms” and the female body, and the gay body, and how this triad of bodies informs the politics of my identity.

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