Hard Times/Great Expectations is a solo presentation of new
large-scale colour drawings, sculpture, and video by artist Cameron
Platter. His series of home-made drawings - each meticulously hand-worked
and coloured in pencil crayon, are tapestries of a contemporary South
African experience; they are simple stories drawn and appropriated from
the media, TV, films, art history, pornography, battle scenes, politics,
music, signs, imagination, adverts, and religion.
The drawings feature lions engaged in nefarious sexual
activity in fishnet bodysuits and masks; a luridly psychedelic
promise-to-cure-it-all pamphlet; Shakira in gold lame booty shorts;
throbbing fluorescent neon city-sex-dreamscapes; secret hi-tech facility
lairs; Transvestite Killer Zebras from Outer Space; a freedom charter cum
sex shop advert cum fast food menu; herbalist detective crocodiles
undercover in S&M getup, and ad-hoc signage.
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His sculptures, in wood, ceramic and bronze are 3D clues,
drawn from his narratives - lightning bolts from heaven, golden
crocodiles, enlarged walking sticks, tricked out rum bars, multi-purpose
jet skis, dustbins and oil drums all form part of his
stream-of-consciousness language.
A new video, The Old Fashion, is an adventure in humour,
love, loss and longing for something more… a mélange of The Third Man, an
advertisement for Prince Barrack Hussein’s sports water/ penis combo,
strip club dance montages, a deranged cat (obviously bent on world
domination), mysterious villains and co-conspirators, and a certain fast
food restaurant on Asstropolis. It is pays homage to movie remakes and
sequels, franchise food, dumbed-down politics, and mundane beauty. The
soundtrack, directed by Platter, is the work of his good friend and
frequent collaborator, Dean Henning.
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