Gina van der Ploeg Portfolio

Gina van der Ploeg, Portfolio 2022 Cape Town, South Africa Gina.vdploeg@gmail.com

Contents 1. Recent selected works 1.1.

Dressing a rock loom in the wind, site specific textile installation, Tankwa Artscape Residency, 2022 1.2.

Finding the horizontal, performance, Tankwa Artscape Residency, 2022 1.3.

Ndabeni Maitland off-ramp, photograph, 2021 1.4.

Sticks for structure, photograph, 2021 1.5.

I have a hunch, group show, Interlude, 196 Victoria, Cape Town, 2021 (selected works) 1.6.

Holding sinew, entry shortlisted for SASOL New Signatures, 2021 1.7.

Root drawing I, group show, The Liminal Space, Berman Contemporary, Johannesburg, 2021 1.8.

Air bladders, group show, The Liminal Space, Berman Contemporary, Johannesburg, 2021 1.9. wear | we’re, graduate solo exhibition, Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town, 2017 (selected works) 1.10. Excerpts from a book submitted in lieu of a report to the Elizabeth Clough bursary committee, University of Cape Town, 2020 2. Collaborations 2.1.

Something’s Moving, collaboration with Lee van der Merwe (2021, ongoing) 2.2.

Making an Upcycled Plastic Light Installation, with Our Workshop, Museum Night, 2018 2.3.

Unstable, with Our Workshop, 2018 2.4.

Phinda Kwakhona (Repeat Again), with Our Workshop and the African Center for Cities, 2018 3. Documentation of materials, tools, processes 3.1.

Water hyacinth 3.2.

Flax 3.3.

Banana pod leaf 3.4.

Japanese backstrap loom 4.

CV

1. Recent selected works

Forming part of my work for the Tankwa Artscape Residency, I used natural sedimentary rock as a base to lay down a warp and weave various significant rocks together in series of pieces spanning roughly 20m. This site-specific installation focused on the horizontal plane, giving respect to indigenous San belief systems of the Karoo, and identifying connections in the landscape.

Dressing a rock loom in the wind Hemp, wool, fabric waste, mohair, cotton, fabric dyed with rust 20m x 5m (dimensions variable)

I performed this piece in the Tankwa Karoo, a search for the horizontal which asks: Does the horizon start at my feet? The audience was invited to lie, ear to the ground to watch the movement piece in which I focused on certain points of contact between my body and the ground.

Finding the horizontal Performance Duration: 5 minutes

A gravel road veers off from a highway offramp in an industrial area in Cape Town. The gravel road has been created by cars, buses, and trucks carrying people to fish, be baptised, or simply to rest during peak traffic. Every year the city clears the invasive hyacinth from the Black River, leaving it to rot next to the highway and a labourer to guard the crane and shuffle the hyacinths.

Ndabeni Maitland off ramp Film photograph Dimensions variable

An anthill in the Karoo, South Africa. I am building a series of photographs of anthills as part of an ongoing project initiated by my Religious Studies post-graduate thesis, “Making the spiritual: Materiality of the Anthill Pilgrimage and Ritual in South Africa.”

Sticks for structure Film photograph Dimensions variable

This series consisted of six sculptural pieces, woven on my backstrap loom, that investigated the hunched shape my body assumes while weaving and harvesting, speaking to labour and theories of kinaesthetic empathy.

Left: Installation shot of selected works from the series I have a hunch Above: Leg stretches, back works Hemp warp, wool, fabric waste, mohair, cotton 80cm x 50cm x 40cm (dimensions variable)

Hyacinth hunch (I have a hunch) Handmade hyacinth paper 120cm x 100cm x 40cm (dimensions variable)

Holding Sinew is driven by materiality and touch. In a time when touch is forbidden and I have craved tactile connection and intimacy, novel materials have elicited my embodied involvement. The dried hyacinth and cotton expand, holding the space in an installation reminiscent of a stretched, sinewed body. The materials, with their evidence of being handled, begin to take the place of actual touch, caress, and squeezing, creating a cocoon of sensorial appendages and spongy webs.

Holding Sinew Hyacinth stems (harvested from the Black River, Cape Town), cotton (waste pulled from industrial looms in Observatory, Cape Town), wire 250cm x 200cm x 170cm

Root Drawing I came to be from my explorations of the hyacinth, an invasive plant found in many waterways in Cape Town. It hangs as a doorway, its dimensions familiar, creating a transitional “gateway”.

While roots usually “anchor and entrench” (Baird, 2001), hyacinth roots navigate an edge between settling and moving. At once they establish themselves firmly, completely covering water surfaces and remain uprooted, ready to flow downriver with the current at any moment.

Root Drawing I Dried hyacinth roots, mull cloth 205 cm x 78 cm

I am interested in the somewhat grotesque bulging, pulling, squishing, knotting, and rubbery nature of the hyacinth. In its dried, woven, and sculptural state, it retains its presence as a matting alien organism that spreads and constricts. As the hyacinth in the river grows endlessly, so the hanging and twisting dried hyacinth sculptures expand and hold the space in an installation reminiscent of a hyacinth forest.

Air bladders Dried hyacinth stems 350 cm x 200 cm x 200 cm (dimensions variable)

My graduate body of work focused on elements of comfort and textiles/knitting/sewing to foster curious engagement that simultaneously acknowledged the making process and found value in the way the materials feel to touch/hug/hold/wear/lie in/walk on and share intimate space with. It also investigated how the clothing we wear on the outside might begin to reference our fleshy insides and potentially elicit an embodied response from the viewer.

Left: Held (wear| we’re) mutton cloth, wool, dacron dimensions variable Above: Sleeve (wear| we’re) wool, dacron, scrim, thread 240cm x 130cm x 300cm

Unrolled (wear| we’re) mutton cloth, foam chips, fabric, dacron, unicurl, wool, waste cotton 200cm x 160cm x 35cm

Pelt (wear| we’re) cotton waste, wool, glue, mutton cloth, foam chips dimensions variable

Excerpts from concertina book In 2020, I submitted a book in place of a written report to the Elizabeth Clough Bursary committee after my travels to Japan.

I included film photographs, written reflections, and watercolour drawings to map the month I spent hiking The Kumano Kodo.

2. Collaborations

Something’s Moving, collaboration with Lee van der Merwe Something’s Moving navigates the edge between performance/installation art, theatre, and dance. A collaboration between a textile artist and a choreographer, it explores how a woven installation and 4-dancer choreographed piece can become synthesized through movement. The audience is invited to interact with the installation, encouraging deep, embodied, and tactile engagement questioning where the performance “ends” and where it “begins”.

These images are process images showing Lee’s movement interactions with an initial woven piece. The final textile installation will be 3 meters tall.

A note on Our Workshop: Our Workshop is a non-profit free workspace based in the township of Langa, Cape Town. Its principals center on building social bridges through making by using upcycled, found, and waste objects. I worked for Our Workshop for two years, playing both a project management and creative direction role.

Right: Making an Upcycled Plastic Light Installation People attending open and free Museum Night in Cape Town were encouraged to join and make a light installation from milk bottles. We provided tools and clean milk bottles and helped people cut shapes and attach them to the wire frame. The light installation was on display for several months at The Watershed at the V&A Waterfront.

Unstable Our Workshop took-over the bespoke design shop Stable and turned it into a workspace for First Thursdays (an open gallery evening held monthly in Cape Town). The public could stop by and make something. We continued with our existing upcycling projects and started new projects. We questioned what a shop is/should/could be, the materials that our consumables are made from, and the relationship we have with the people who make what we buy.

Phinda Kwakhona After a series of print-making workshops with Bella Knemeyer from the African Center for Cities (ACC), we created this installation at Guga S’Thebe in Langa, Cape Town for the ACC’s Integration Syndicate. These pieces were all made with waste sail fabric and hand-made foam prints. We looked at repetition and making together, with shapes and objects inspired by Langa, as a way to bond and think critically about communityembedded creative practices.

3. Documentation of materials, tools, processes, and works-in-progress

Water Hyacinth The hyacinth is an aggressively invasive aquatic plant originally from the Amazon which was introduced as an exotic pond plant in South Africa in the early 1900s. It can now be found blocking almost every Cape Town waterway, deoxygenating the water and devastating local fauna and flora. I harvest hyacinth from several waterways around Cape Town, drying it for weaving or boiling and pulping it for paper.

Flax/linen I have been growing my own flax for just over a year on the sidewalk outside my home and on a small-holding organic farm in Cape Town. Through this, I endeavour to become more connected to the fiber, my Dutch heritage, and investigate new challenges of sustainable cloth-making through labour and contemporary art.

Banana pod leaves I have done several small experiments with banana pod leaves. Many innovators worldwide are finding new ways to use the parts of the banana tree as fibers, papers, and stuffing.

Japanese Backstrap Loom I am deeply interested in intricate actions and ways in which our bodies respond to objects and making. I have found an intimate connection with movement and embodiment through backstrap weaving, an act that uses your entire body weight to separate the warp and create space for the weft, a rhythm of cloth making that responds directly to your body. During lockdown, my dad and I used my scribbled sketches and measurements to recreate a loom that I fell in love with in Kanagawa, Japan from repurposed and scrap wood. Japanese backstrap looms, historically, produce rag weaves through a tabby weave from old kimonos and cloth.

Following a practice that seeks to re-use and re-create, I use found cloth scraps, industrial cotton waste, mixtures of discarded wool, and hyacinth plant matter, echoing this tradition of using what is immediately at hand.

CV: Solo Graduate Exhibition 2017 wear | we’re, Michaelis School of Fine Art, Cape Town Duo Exhibition 2022 Work in Progress with Chrisel Attewel, Berman Contemporary, curated by Els van Mourik, Johannesburg Group Exhibitions 2021 Sasol New Signatures Art Competition Exhibition, Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria 2021 Do You See What I See? group show, Berman Contemporary, curated by Els van Mourik, Johannesburg 2021 Interlude, 196 Victoria, curated by Dominique Edwards, Cape Town 2021 The Liminal Space, Berman contemporary, curated by Morgan Kunhardt, Johannesburg 2020 Home is where the Heart is, Zeitz Mocaa, Cape Town 2020 Labyrinthine group show, Berman Contemporary, curated by Els van Mourik, Johannesburg 2018 N.U.D.E #5, Gravitron, Cape Town 2018 Unstable, Stable Design Shop, Cape Town (in collaboration with Our Workshop) 2017 Phinda Kwakhona, Guga S’thebe, Cape Town (in collaboration with Our Workshop) 2017 Johannesburg Design Indaba, Lisof School of Fashion Design, Johannesburg Art Fairs 2020 RMB Turbine Art Fair, virtual fair 2018 Cape Town Art Fair, Cape Town Competitions 2021 29th Ube International Sculpture Biennale, sculpture featured as part of group exhibition, Ube, Japan 2021 Finalist for the SASOL New Signatures Competition, Pretoria Awards 2019 Elizabeth Clough Bursary (to spend 3 months in Japan) 2018 Inter-departmental Arnold Wynne Essay price for the best Honours project on a subject in the field of social and/or political relations in the South African context (for thesis Making the Spiritual: Materiality of the Anthill Pilgrimage and Ritual in South Africa) 2017 Simon Gerson Prize for an outstanding body of work (Michaelis School of Fine Art) Residencies 2022 OPEN FIELDS Residency/Competition, Styria, Austria, Institute for Art in Public Space Styria (July) 2022 Tankwa Artscape Residency, Stonehenge Nature Reserve, The Karoo, South Africa

Media 2021 Silvergrain Classics, interview by Amy van Veen, Winter 2021, Issue #13, print 2021 Seeing what I saw on exhibition this week, Edward Tsumele https://citylifearts.co.za/seeing-what-i-saw-on-exhibition-this-week/ 2021 Femmroom, https://www.femmroom.com/gina-van-der-ploeg-visual-artist/ 2020 New Vanguard artists steaming ahead at RMB Turbine Art Fair, Edward Tsumele https://citylifearts.co.za/new-vanguard-of-artistssteaming-ahead-at-rmb-turbine-art-fair/ 2019 The photographer capturing the beauty of the natural world, Marcia Elizabeth, https://bubblegumclub.co.za/photography/thephotographer-capturing-the-beauty-of-the-natural-world/ 2018 Interview, Gina van der Ploeg, DeadTown, https://deadtownzine.wordpress.com/2018/10/23/gina-van-der-ploeg/ Catalogues 2021 Interlude Exhibition catalogue, https://issuu.com/sessions2021/docs/sessions-cat-draft-1_ 2017 Michaelis Graduate Exhibition catalogue, https://issuu.com/benjohnson52/docs/fordigitalsingles Education 2018 Honours degree in Religious Studies (with distinction from the University of Cape Town) 2017 Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art (graduate Cum Laude from Michaelis School of Fine Art)