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ART EXHIBIT
Pigment on Paper
Venue: UCA Gallery, 46 Lower Main Rd, Observatory. Tel: (021)
447 4132.
Gallery Hours: Mon - Fri: 10:00am - 5:00pm; Sat: 9:00am - 1:00pm
Duration: 28 Jan - 28 Feb 2009
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Pigment on Paper presents work by five
local artists, the commonality being the paper on which the images appear.
To start at the conceptual beginning:
think sketchbook, pencil, charcoal, ink. The work on paper is, perhaps,
the foundation of the artwork; the line drawn on the page as a means of
artistic exploration, which may (or may not) lead to other media. Pushing
the idea further, one finds printmaking, watercolour painting,
photography. Possibly the most recent development in this conceptual
constellation of works on paper is a relationship to graphic design and
illustration, with which the traditional perception of “fine art” is
becoming increasingly comfortable. What results is an inclusive creative
display, beginning and ending with pigment on paper.
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Each of the artists showcased has their
own take:
Michael Taylor,
artist-illustrator, has contributed a series of large-scale charcoal
drawings – unpopulated scenes that verge on the abstract and evoke a
strong sense of the uncanny.
In her series of drawings, Accidental
Species, Nicola Grobler focuses attention on ‘tyre blow-out debris’
collected on a road trip spanning seven provinces. Appearing without
ceremony on the roadside and de-contextualised on Grobler’s pages, the
ubiquitous frayed articles are as mystifying as Taylor’s vast emptiness.
Ilene Jacobs’ previously un-shown
Vestiges are fragments of a more personal nature. These intimate enamel
paintings were once family snapshots; now only the figures remain. A
sensitive exploration of memory, Jacobs’ technique compliments her view of
multifariously layered identities: coats of white enamel paint are applied
onto the figure painted in black enamel on baking paper. Once dry, the
baking paper is peeled away leaving a trace of the original image.
Adrienne Van Eeden’s Fall and
Untitled Christmas Gift series explore the fragile (and dispensable)
qualities of paper itself. The Untitled Christmas Gifts consist of
delicate skeletons of intricately broken paper surfaces, achieved by
hand-perforating discarded Christmas wrapping paper to remove patterns and
images. In Fall – a series of cyanotype impressions of leaves from foreign
trees – fragile leaf forms are used to comment on the influences of
colonial enterprises in South Africa.
Close to contemporary connotations of
work on paper, Jacqui Stecher’s drawings refer obliquely to graphic
design. Experienced in animation, Stecher reveals the influence of
illustration in her images, which explore teeth as symbols of the
authority of ancestry in the process of identity formation.
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