Enfolding
Pretoria Art Association, Mackie Street: 3 to 19 September 2020
Opening address Enfolding by Mandy Conidaris (Director of outoftheCUBE art platform)
Gallery press release (extract from the openingb y Mandy Conidaris)
The exhibition Enfolding is a visual echo of bittersweet memories and loss. Reflecting on sites and entities enveloped in experiences that are both traumatic and comforting, the works turn remembrances into tangible forms. Her creative process - working with multiple layers of ink or paint washes, rendering some images softly and others more precisely and specific - resembles her memory process.
Featuring drawings, prints and paintings, this exhibition contains two themes tied to the central idea of awareness of grief as enfolded in layers. One theme deals with experiences of melancholy caused by reflecting on familiar places and mundane objects - a dam, a rock, a hospital room. These transcend their ordinariness through association and rich mood. Another theme deals with a series titled Forest for my love, which originates from the physical site of a park where trees were planted as an act of remembrance. The artworks reflect on healing rituals and embrace life’s overwhelming ambiguities – the quiet value of care given in hope, the sense of desolation when faced with the reality of mortality, and the pensive meditation on the gravity of kindness.
Selected views of the installation in the gallery revealing sub-themes and groupings
Mourning and transcendence.These sketches and paintings captures fragments of places from weekend visits, ink drawings of hospital rooms and photographs of details of life-preserving equipment. They are images of sorrow, witnessing withering transient life, yet speak of particular care and devotion.
Pointing to the complexities of our lived experience, the exhibition title of “Enfolding” also finds an echo in Gilles Deleuze' (1993) writing on The fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. As such the abstraction within works becomes an attempt to grapple with enfolding meaning and searches for a measure of insight into the journey we travel in our bodies. Deleuze (1993: 86) describes the human being as "monad" (an indivisible entity), who is a full expression of the "world, but obscurely and dimly because it is finite and the world is infinite...It is as if the depths of every monad were made from an infinity of tiny folds (inflections) endlessly furling unfurling in every direction, so that the monad's spontaneity resembles that of agitated sleepers who twist and turn on their mattresses." Apart from the literal reference to folds and its implied complexity that relates to the theme of this exhibition, the works find resonance in the tone of dissonance as expressed in the fragmentation and sombre greys. Works such as Sorrow, Reading Harari: 21 lessons, and At the foot of the bed relate closely to deep-felt movement of shifting , seen in the organic shapes of the compositions and tension of layered spaces. The thread of all sorrows is compiled of cropped details from Renaissance paintings which portray lamentation, recognising the experience of bereavement as an expression through history.
Memories are further captured in objects that tell stories of embedded time. Painterly marks and stains in this last series, express the nature of memory to be detailed at times and blurred, murky or entirely cast in darkness at other times. The phrases We know how to build a dam and To stop a river from flowing, used as two titles of small paintings again refers to Yuval Harari’s (2018) influence, which is an existential lament. In the text Harari follows to writes that for all our knowledge, we do not have the insight of how actions will impact on the future, much like a riverbed downstream from a dam. The unifying links with the fold can be found in layers of sediment, strata in rocks and the fading rhythms of structures.
Reading Harari. 21 lessons, 2020
Ink on acid-free paper,
37 x 28.5 cm
Detail of Reading Harari. 21 reasons, 2020
Sorrow, 2020
Acrylic and Quink ink on paper.
50 x 35 cm.
Collection of Pretoria Art Museum
Detail of Sorrow, 2020
Acrylic and Quinck ink on paper.
Collection of Pretoria Art Museum.
The thread of all sorrows, 2020
Ultrachrome inks on acid-free cotton paper, edition of 10 (8 available)
50 x 35cm
Edition 1/5 available framed.
At the foot of the bed. 2019
Ink on paper.
23 x 16 cm
Liquid life, 2020
Ink on collage on paper,
57 x 66.5 (with oak frame 73 x 93 cm)
Artist's collection
Detail of Liquid life, 2020
The Gift, 2020
Encaustic and oil on board,
39.5 x 80 cm (with Oak frame 42 x 83cm)
Available: Artist's collection
Jared's gifts, 2019
Ink and watercolour on paper.
41 cm x 29 cm (framed: 31 cm x 39 cm)
Private Collection of Mandy Conidaris
We knew how to build a dam, 2018 & 2020
Oil on canvas
25cm x 30 cm (with Oak frame 28cm x 33cm)
Available via artist.
To stop a river from flowing, 2018 & 2020
Oil on canvas
30cm x 40cm (with Oak frame 32.5cm 42.3cm)
Available via artist
Installation of We know how to build a dam, above To stop a river from flowing, 2020
Installation view emphasising layered nature in folds and rocks, 2020
Wine farm visits, 2018-2020
Ink and watercolour on paper. 41 cm x 59 cm (with Oak frame 52 cm x 69 cm).
Private Collection of Adelle van Zyl
Detail of Wine farm visits, 2018-2020
Ink and watercolour on paper, detail.
Private Collection of Adelle van Zyl
Swimming in the cold sea, 2018-2020
Ink and watercolour on paper.
41 cm x 59 cm (with Oak frame 52 cm x 69 cm).
Available via artist
Detail of Swimming in the cold sea, 2018 - 2020
Ink and watercolour on paper
Forest for my love
We walked the streets of cities, trails on mountains and in forests, and the routes of our neighbourhood, sitting for a while in Marula Park. I invited friends and family to plant trees in this park in Lynnwood Manor, allowing each to perform a personal ritual of commemoration. Tshwane Parks approved our trees, agreed on the sites of planting and city workers dug into the rocky soil to create 23 holes. In drawing followed as a contemplation of the ritual. Although not exhibited I include some documentation of the progress.
The act was influenced by readings done much earlier in my life on the empowering concepts of Joseph Beuys within the 7000 Oak project, which have always moved me as symbol of time and regeneration. Trauma incidents are markers of time and the Forest for my love project aims to continue as a psychogeography in the humble park in the neighbourhood.
Mountain Karee for Stefan. 2019-2020
Ink and watercolour on layered paper.
57 x 76 cm (framed: 67 x 86.5 cm)
Detail of Mountain Karee for Stefan 2019-2020
Ink and watercolour on paper.
Forest for my love. Uprooted tree. 2020
Ink on paper.
Image: 29.5 x 16 cm (framed: 62 x 49 cm)
Available
Forest for my love. Shatkovski's ode. 2020
Ink on layered paper. Image: 33 x 15 cm (framed: 62 x 49 cm)
Available
Forest for my love. Six months later. 2020
Ink on paper.
Image 29.5 x 17 cm (framed: 67 x 86.5 cm)
Available
Pressed Jasmine. That yearly ritual. 2020
Ink on layered paper.
Image 28 x 21 cm (framed: 52 x 43 cm)
Private Collection of Engela Claassen.
The Park The gravity of kindness, left side of diptych, (2020)
Indian and acrylic ink on Paper.
Full Diptych: 56 x 188 cm.
Private Collection (Prof Felix Dakora)
The Park The gravity of kindness, right side of diptych, (2020)
Indian and acrylic ink on Paper.
Full Diptych: 56 x 188 cm.
Private Collection (Prof Felix Dakora)
Detail of left side of The Park, 2020
Detail of The Park, showing the map of the park evoking a night sky, 2020
Forest for my love. Bear kisses for Mercia. 2020
Ink and watercolour on paper.
Image 21 x 29.5 cm (framed: 62 x 49 cm)
Private Collection of Philip Badenhorst
Forest for my love. Leonard's tree. 2020
Ink on paper.
Image 27 x 30 cm (framed: 60 x 60 cm)
Available
Forest for my love. The first tree. Oliver's Wisteria. 2020
Ink on paper.
Image 56 x 33.3 cm (framed: 72.5 x 50 cm).
Available via Curate.A.Space
Forest for my love. Thomas' Tree. 2020
Ink on paper.
Image 56 x 38 cm (framed: 72 x 55 cm).
Available via Curate.A.Space
Matthew's bowl. 2020
Ink on collaged paper.
Image 34.5 x 31 cm (framed: 53 x 49 cm)
Available
Art Talks advertised by Association of Arts, 2020 Pretoria, 2020
Art Talks demo of process, 2020
#artcozatakeover week, sharing works from Enfolding, 2020
Extract of the poem Kindness by Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore...
References:
Deleuze, G. 1993. The fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. Translated by Tom Conley. London: Athlone .
Harari, YN. 2018. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. New York: Spiegel and Grau..
Also see: Naidu-Hofmeester, R. 2020. The quiet of isolation transforms the creative process, in FOCUS Issue 12-13.
In the studio with artist Gwen Miller: Interview with art.co.za https://www.art.co.za/gwenmiller/enfolding/
Labutte, D. 2020. Gwen Miller – The exhibition Enfolding. Outdoorphoto, Art of print blog, 23 September 2020. ​https://www.outdoorphoto.co.za/blog/gwen-miller-the-exhibition-enfolding/