Comprising a series of sculptures, two-dimensional works and an installation, the exhibition explores my sensory engagement with natural phenomena – light, shadow, form and gravity, using my signature techniques of cut-out, geometric patterns, weaving and linocut, and revisiting familiar objects such as weathered stones and skateboard wheels.
The works are stripped back to few variables, allowing an in-depth exploration and the registering of small changes. From this address of the particular, the universal is inferred and in this process, I examine my experience as a human animal held by gravity to a large orb, suspended in a near-vacuum, warmed by a star.
I had recently been introduced to the writing of David Abram and found myself drawn by this and my father’s recent death into a closer-than-normal engagement with the elements, animals and conditions I encountered daily in Cape Town.
You can view the catalogue online here, and you can read a review here.
Photos by Anthea Pokroy and Mario Todeschini, courtesy of Stevenson Gallery.
‘Season’, installation 2013
Season, 2013, skateboard wheels, brass, cable, 95 x 24.5 x 16cm
Two carved skateboard wheels, connected by a cable, fix each other’s position and orientation, analogous perhaps to an object and its shadow, or a planet and its satellite.
Moon, 1997, Stone, PVC-insulated copper wire, 9 x 13 x 12cm
The earliest of works in this show, this had been a gift to my father in the late 90s. Here I mapped the stone’s surface one stitch at a time, tracing the accumulated gestures which have given it this form. I had collected the stone on a beach, where the weathering of waves and tides – under influence of the moon – had slowly sculpted it.
Sole, 2012, stone, PVC-insulated copper wire, 12 x 14 x 16cm
This stone is covered in such a way that darker wires cover the top while lighter ones accumulate underneath. On an afternoon trip across Cape Town’s suburbs, I had seen a fisherman haul a barbel up a riverbank and, later, a freshly killed squirrel on the road. Both, I noted, had pale bellies and pigmented backs. This colouration has arisen in response to conditions where it camouflages and protects the animal from predators and elements, while the vulnerable, pale underbelly is held to the ground by gravity.
Season, 2012, stone, PVC-insulated copper wire, 14 x 15 x 13cm
The changing tones of the wires map light’s passage across the surface of the form, analogous to the daily passage of light around our home planet.
Flip, 2012, stone, PVC-insulated copper wire, 13 x 11 x 24cm
A flash of colour in a sea of black, like iridescence on bird’s wing. triangulating the passage of light from source to eye.
Orbit, 2012, polypropylene mesh, cable ties, PVC-insulated copper wire, stone, dimensions variable
Two objects – one large and porous, the other dense and impenetrable – pit their heft and volume against each other, establishing a relationship much like that described in relation to Season above.
Orbit (detail), 2012
Pole, Model, Season, Axis, Sole, 2013, skateboard wheels, brass, plywood, dimensions variable
Although I’d previously worked with skateboard wheels, it was here I first carved into their surfaces. This was initially inspired when I kicked an acorn and saw it sputter down the road ahead of me. While the marks I made – a knurl, which had long interested me – bore some relation to the textured acorn cup, I used them here to articulate an axis on each wheel, a clue to how it responds to gravity. The raised diamond motifs also serve to model light’s passage across the object’s surface.
Model, 2013, skateboard wheel, brass, 4.5 x 6.5cm
Pole 2013, skateboard wheel, brass, 6.7 x 4.8cm
Axis , 2013, skateboard wheel, brass, 4.6 x 7.5cm
Season , 2013, skateboard wheel, brass, 6.6 x 4.6cm
Model, 2013, polystyrene, 153 x 435cm
Tiles, both digitally- and hand-cut, wrap around the walls of the gallery, exploring the play of light across their surface. This was a simple interpretation of sun’s daily passage across Table Mountain’s surface which I often observed from the balcony of our apartment. This work was later realised in ceramic in Johannesburg.
Shade 1, 2012, linocut, 191 x 110cm
This series of large linocuts was based on my observation of tree shadows cast on the road’s surface. I had noted that despite our sense of shadows as simple two-dimensional silhouettes, on scrutiny they revealed a remarkable amount of information about their source. (I had been very taken with David Abram’s essay on shadow, reviewed here.) I was aware too of the metaphorical freight of shadows, especially during this time in my life while my father was dying. This casts a shadow – so to speak – across the whole body of work, as does the notion of ‘season’ in its title.
Shade 2, 2013, linocut, 191 x 110cm
Misregistered, shifting latticework initiates a complex play of light and dark, surface and depth.
Shift, 2013, pencil, 178 x 199.5cm
I had developed the tools and this method of drawing a few years previously but this was the first time I’d drawn on such a scale. The work bore some relation to the linocuts on the wall opposite, but I was more interested in the medium’s ephemeral nature, pitting this against the thousands of individual lines so carefully placed in realising it.
Surface, 2013, Tyvek, 177.5 x 101cm
Several layers of closely registered triangular cut-outs articulate a surface using tone and depth.
Surface (detail), 2013, Tyvek
Paul Edmunds 