PENNY SIOPIS LASSO
MICHAEL STEVENSON Hill House De Smidt Street Green Point 8005 PO Box 616 Green Point 8051 Cape Town tel +27 (0)21 421 2575 fax +27 (0)21 421 2578 info@michaelstevenson.com www.michaelstevenson.com
Cover Mate 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 25 x 17.5cm
PENNY SIOPIS LASSO
20 SEPTEMBER - 20 OCTOBER 2007
Title page Lasso 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 17.5 x 25cm This page Chill 2007 ink and watercolour on paper 25.4 x 25.4cm
L
asso speaks of the ‘poetics of vulnerability’. Ideas work
away from the image it shapes, but it can also give the image cogent form.
more by association than direct narration. In this, the
Colour is a seduction as much as the stain of experience, finding itself in
medium is as important as image or narrative.
the oddest of places.
A ‘lasso’ is commonly understood as a rope to capture
The associative qualities of the medium are perhaps less evident in
things, usually animals. It takes skill to handle. It speaks of entrapment.
the digital projection Pray. But for me, the artefact quality of the film has
A lasso can also be a noose, with equally menacing associations. But a
a strong emotional register. The celluloid of the old 8mm cine evokes a
lasso can offer something more protective. It can be a rope to rescue
missing human presence in its faded colour, flickering light, dust spots
someone or something from harm – from being stranded or drowning. In
and sprocket marks, a quality accentuated by the amateurish angles of
a completely different vein, in digital media a ‘lasso’ is a tool, a computer
the shots, the jerky camera movement and the fact that the film was
icon, to capture images to create new forms. These double-edged
literally abandoned – I found it in a charity shop. I don’t know who shot the
meanings of ‘lasso’ stimulate the way I try to figure vulnerability both
film, and whose life is reflected in it. It is the work and life of a complete
as painful and as a potentially transformative experience – it is often
stranger. But for all this I recognise things of my own in it.
only through the effects of our own vulnerability that we recognise the vulnerability of others. We live in turbulent times. The integrity of our bodies and souls
In making Pray I combined sequences of this found footage with found sound and found text. The sound is a fragment of deeply emotional Greek folk music. The text is shaped from lines from The Ultimate Safari, a short
seems challenged at every turn. We are prey to violence, disease, global
story by Nadine Gordimer. The story narrates the experience of a group of
conflicts. We are so thin-skinned. In Johannesburg, where I live, the
people crossing the Kruger Park to reach South Africa and fearing being
effects of violence weigh particularly heavily on too many of us. What we
eaten by lions. The narrator appears to be a young, vulnerable girl. I heard
don’t experience directly, we imagine. And imagination has its own way
Gordimer read this story in 1992 and it has stayed with me since. This
with horror, filling our minds with images that get under the skin of our
might be because the story is such a powerful evocation of the trials and
most intimate relationships. All these feelings lurk in Lasso, whether as
ordeals of forced migration generally. Indeed the group of Mozambicans
pure imagination or as references to the ‘real world’ through newspaper
in Gordimer’s story could be Zimbabweans today. But this could be almost
cuttings, medical journals and other media to which we might be exposed.
anywhere, and the lions could mutate into any number of mortal threats.
All reflect some kind of merging of personal and social vulnerability. The
I also have another association with this story that has helped keep
poetics to which I am devoted emphasises as much the materiality of the
it alive for me as an emblem of vulnerability. Not long after I heard
image as its content or concept. Viscous glue can drip in a way that makes
Gordimer read The Ultimate Safari, I discovered a lion had been killed in
the image – or person depicted – appear decomposing, coming apart.
the Kruger Park, and in its stomach was a little leather purse. The purse
Glue, tinged with ink, can completely create the image, bind it as idea, as
was empty.
in Mate, where Siamese twins are literally ‘glued’ together. Glue can also cover the image like a protective second skin, as in Cocoon. Paint can slip
Penny Siopis, Johannesburg, 2007
Bed 2007 oil on canvas 76 x 91cm
Monument 2007 oil and glue on canvas 200 x 350cm
Trouble 2007 oil and glue on canvas 150 x 200cm
Flush 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 27 x 36cm
Melt 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 50 x 70cm
Left Fever 2007 oil and glue on paper 23 x 27cm Right Pray 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 25.4 x 25.4cm
Rush 2007 oil and glue on paper 25 x 35cm
Wallow 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 25 x 36cm
Cling 2007 oil and glue on paper 14.7 x 21cm
Slings and arrows 2007 oil and glue on canvas 20 x 25cm
Submit 2007 oil and glue on canvas 118.5 x 88cm
Curl 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 57.5 x 76cm
Limbo 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 75.5 x 57cm
Left Flame 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 30.5 x 41.5cm Right Swaddle 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 25.4 x 25.4cm
Left Flood 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 14.7 x 21cm Right Lull 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 25 x 25cm
Left Smoulder 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 25 x 25cm Right Spell 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 25 x 35cm
Weep 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 75.5 x 57cm
Tremor 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 17.5 x 25cm
Left Head 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 14.7 x 21cm Right Cot 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 25 x 25cm
Cocoon 2007 ink and glue on paper 27 x 37cm
Break 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 23 x 29.5cm
Love 2007 oil on canvas 91 x 76cm
Strip 2007 oil on canvas 91 x 76cm
Mate 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 25 x 17.5cm
Left Slave 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 25.4 x 25.4cm Right Mask 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 14.7 x 21cm
Left Bound 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 21 x 14.7cm Right Woe 2007 ink, oil and glue on paper 29.5 x 23cm
Pray 2007 digital video projection, sound duration 2 min 48 sec edition of 5
penny siopis Born 1953 in Vryburg. Lives and works in Johannesburg Graduated with a Master’s degree in Fine Arts with distinction, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, 1976. Postgraduate course in Painting, Portsmouth Polytechnic, Portsmouth, England, 1979 SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2005 Three Essays on Shame, Freud Museum, London Passions and Panics, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg On Stains, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg 2003 Shame, Kappatos Gallery, Athens 2002 The Archive, Tropen Museum, Amsterdam Sympathetic Magic, Wits Art Galleries, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg Pinky Pinky and Other Xeni, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg 2000 Fleshcolour, Gasworks Studios, London Zombie, Gallery in the Round, Grahamstown 1998 Charmed Lives, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg 1990 History Paintings, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg 1987 Pictures within Pictures, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg 1984 New Works, Gallery International, Cape Town 1983 Cake Paintings, Market Theatre Gallery, Johannesburg 1982 Cakes, NSA Gallery, Durban SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2007 Apartheid: The South African Mirror, Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona, Spain Bound, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, UK 2006 Migrations, Belfast Exposed, Belfast, Northern Ireland Heimat als Idee/Homeland as Idea, Basis Gallery, Frankfurt Second to None, SA National Gallery, Cape Town 2005 Out of Place, FLACC Centrum voor Kunsten en Kultuur, Genk, Belgium Etchings, International Print Centre, New York 2004 Arts Unlimited, Basel International Art Fair, Basel New Identities, Museum Bochum, Bochum, Germany Mine(d)fields, Kunsthaus, Basel Staged Realities, Michael Stevenson, Cape Town 2002 Kwere-Kwere: Journey into Strangeness, Arti et Amicitae, Amsterdam Group Portrait South Africa, Tropen Museum, Amsterdam
2001
1999
1998 1997
1996
1995
1994 1993
1990 1987 1985
Lines of Sight, South African National Gallery, Cape Town Africas: The Artist and the City, Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona, Spain La Mémoire, Villa Medici, Rome Truth Veils: The TRC Commissioning the Past, Wits Art Galleries, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg Liberated Voices, Museum for African Art, New York Democracy’s Images, BildMuseet, Umea Discoveries and Collaborations, 7th Fotofest, Houston 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, Johannesburg 6th Havana Biennale, Havana Contemporary Art from South Africa, national touring exhibition, Oslo Don’t Mess with Mr In-between, Culturgest, Lisbon Earth and Everything: Recent art from South Africa, Arnolfini, Bristol Eight from South Africa, Center for the Arts, San Francisco Beyond the Borders, Kwangju Biennale, Kwangju, Korea Black Looks: White Myths, 1st Johannesburg Biennale Siyawela: Love, loss and liberation in art from South Africa, Birmingham City Museum and Art Galleries On the Road, Africa 95 festival, Delfina Studio Gallery, London 5th Havana Biennial, Havana Incroci Del Sud/Affinities: Contemporary South African Art, 45th Venice Biennale, Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, Fondazione Levi, Venice Southern Cross, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam Absent Bodies/Present Lives, Leeds City Art Gallery, Leeds Art from South Africa, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford Culture in Another South Africa, CASA Foundation and Anti-Apartheid Movement, Oosterkerk, Amsterdam Tributaries, Museum Africa, Johannesburg; toured West Germany
SELECTED AWARDS & RESIDENCIES 2006 Ampersand Foundation Fellowship Residency, New York 2001 Alexander S Onassis Foundation Fellowship, Greece 2000 Swedish Exchange Fellowship, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden International Visiting Artist Residency, Gasworks Studios, London Artist-in-Residence, Tropen Museum, Amsterdam 1998 Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, Umbria, Italy 1995 Delfina Studio Trust Residency, London
ACkNOWLEDGEmENTS Special thanks to the Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, for helping to facilitate this exhibition.
Catalogue no 30 October 2007 Editor Sophie Perryer Photography Mario Todeschini Image repro Ray du Toit Printing Hansa Print, Cape Town
MICHAEL STEVENSON www.michaelstevenson.com