Julia Rosa Clark by WHATIFTHEWORLD

Julia Rosa ClaRk

All rights reserved, no part of this publication maybe reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, electronic, photocopying, or other means without the prior permission of the copyright holders. ÂŠ Whatiftheworld 2012 ÂŠ Images and works: Julia Rosa Clark Julia Rosa Clark WhatiftheWorld / Gallery #1 arGyle street Woodstock cape toWn south africa 7925 info@WhatiftheWorld.com WWW.WhatiftheWorld.com Printed in South Africa Cover: Detail of Inheritance (Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea), 2012, found objects, paper and paint, 104 x 155 cm from Booty, at Whatiftheworld / Gallery

Julia Rosa ClaRk

Booty

Paradise Apparatus

Fever Jubilee

Hypocriteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lament

A Million Trillion Gazillion

An Archive of Accumulation: The Art of Julia Rosa Clark Text by Andrew J. Hennlich

“Fever Jubilee at BLANK Projects”, http://juliarosaclark.tumblr.com/ post/23371538203/fever-jubilee-atblank-projects (accessed May 26, 2012).

Email correspondence with the artist, May 27, 2012. The slippers refer to the 1948 Powell and Pressburger film The Red Shoes, where a ballet dancer is forced to choose between her love and her dream of being a dancer. It is a story within a story, as the ballet in the film is based on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Red Shoes”, which is about a girl whose red shoes take over her body, forcing her to dance.

Walter Benjamin, Berlin Childhood Around 1900, trans. Howard Eiland (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006), 154.

Benjamin, 156.

South African artist Julia Rosa Clark’s work appears as a childhood wonderland. Her 2007 installation Fever Jubilee is dominated by brightly coloured chains arcing from the ceiling, perfectly shaped azure raindrops, and rich green foliage crafted from construction paper. Stacked workbenches make improvised forts. The installation greets the viewer with the phrase “I fell for you like a child, ah but the fire went wild”, hailing the viewer to the obsessive and consumptive creativity associated with childhood. Indeed, the piece is intended to produce a space where one can grow; it is both an image of creativity as well as a space for creation that emerges from the bits of detritus Clark collects and reshapes.1 Paradise Apparatus (2010) is also produced from this swirling world of collected objects and the bright colours of stuffed animals, paper chains, jelly moulds, and cascades of paper cutouts. Here Clark turns her attention to an interest in the study of colour and the transformative capability of alchemy. Ribbons trailing from jars of pigment stream across the room to silk ballet slippers magically formed from these silk bands. This transformation reveals the natural resources necessary to produce these goods. Her handmade reworking of paper and the clutter that she culls these objects from highlight the relation between nature and the human intervention of production at the core of both science and artistic production. Its invocation of alchemy relates to a desire for the object and the potential to transform it into something new. As Clark describes it: “The obsession links back to the alchemists’ obsession with gold, the dangerous obsession of the artist to create without ceasing”. 2 Walter Benjamin’s Berlin Childhood Around 1900 reflects the transformative powers that play brought to the objects he obsessively collected as a child, storing them within a cabinet whose red, yellow, and green glass obfuscated the location of the contents inside.3 Benjamin writes: Whatever was stored away kept its newness longer. I, however, had something else in mind: not to retain the new but to renew the old. And to renew the old—in such a way that I myself, the newcomer, would make what was my own—was the task of the collection that filled my drawer. Every stone I discovered, every flower I picked, every butterfly I captured was for me the beginning of a collection, and, in my eyes, all that I owned made for one unique collection. ‘Tidying up’ would have meant demolishing an edifice full of prickly chestnuts that were spiked cudgels, tinfoil that was a hoard of silver, building blocks that were coffins, cactuses that were totem poles, and copper pennies that were shields. It was thus that the things of childhood multiplied and masked themselves in drawers, chests, and boxes.4 Collecting these random and seemingly valueless objects in Benjamin’s cabinet imbued them with a magical force. Through the creativity of play, discarded tinfoil and the seeds of a chestnut tree become mountains of silver (moving from being valueless to becoming a signifier of wealth) and weapons used in the imaginary battles, where pennies protect one whilst defending these hoards of silver. The process of collecting and amassing these small yet numerous trinkets renewed their vitality and use. They resist the overwhelming production of new things, creating a renewed sense of interest for the old. Clark’s work is similarly drawn to this process of remaking and reimagining. The title of an earlier body of work, A Million Trillion Gazillion (2004), recalls an accumulation, much like capitalism, that piles up at an almost nonsensical rate. Moreover, the process of reworking these found objects is at the core of Clark’s working process. She states:

Linda Stupart, “Julia Clark”, http:// www.artthrob.co.za/05july/artbio. html, (accessed May 12, 2012).

Ibid.

Email correspondence with the artist.

In Clark’s most recent body of work, Booty (2012), a series of collaged drawings composed of images selected of random chance function for Clark like paintings, adding and subtracting objects till satisfied.7 Booty, through this method, reworks this relationship between the accumulation of everyday life and our imagined historicity. The title Booty expresses a tension between the prizes and surprises of the trinkets held in Benjamin’s cabinet as a treasure and as a commodity. Booty also becomes a reward for exploration; it is an object to be taken by force. Booty includes an installation in the centre of the room where a series of trinkets—including a plastic flute, a loom, a wine rack, poker chips, and straw bowls—rest upon a laid-out blanket. The title of this installation, Exchange/Gift/Theft, highlights the dual nature of the collection’s title of Booty. This system of exchange is small treasure exchanged or given as a prize but also something to be taken. Clark’s “reference archive” for the project contains several images of colonial explorers trading with native peoples upon similar blankets, revealing the often-uneven structures of power at work in these systems of gift and exchange. The drawings hung on the walls have the appearance of early Rauschenberg collages and are also pulled from various fragments collected and repurposed through juxtaposition. Their presence in the work is often the result of random selection such as throwing the pieces or selecting them out of a bowl. 8 Clark appropriates photographs of skylines, stickers, construction paper cutouts, surveying maps, and record sleeves to construct these drawings; incorporating these fragments of culture into new relationships through montage. Coordinates of Gains & Sorrows uses a topographical map, with its key and ledger still visible on the boundaries of the image. Clark overlays a number of images on the map, including teardrops/raindrops; a compass; and various archaeological treasures such as Buddha’s head, geological cross sections, the Venus of Willendorf, coins, an Egyptian wall painting, and the image of a woman in a headdress. The image reveals “booty” as something to be taken and appropriated; it is evocative of the claims made through exploration, thusly referencing the gains evoked in the drawing’s title as well. The images overspill the map, like images of a coin-filled treasure chest that pervade popular images of piracy. In its random selection of images, the map provides a literal mapping of the processes of exploration, accumulation, appropriation, and dispersal that were at work in the anthropological explorations of the “Orient” that sought to unearth this booty to return it to European collections (themselves often organised in chaotic principles based on objects of interest). One can think of the tears upon the surface of Clark’s work not only as geographical markers of the sorrow the title evokes but also as the artefacts being torn away and removed from their original geography. 5

9 See Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978). 10 Email correspondence with the artist. 11 Adam Phillips, “Clutter: A Case History”, in Promises, Promises (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 60. 12

Ibid., 64.

Ibid., 65.

Ibid., 64, 70.

Clark’s Voyages Into Night (The Orientalist) expands this theme. The drawing’s backdrop of several small Persian or Turkish rugs is overlaid with a small collage and a series of chains strung with brightly coloured geometric shapes, photographs, a sailboat, a crown, syringes, and mouths that Clark selected at random. Her collecting invokes the colonial collecting at work in Orientalist discourse. The rugs or archaeological treasures in Coordinates of Gains & Sorrows become a form of booty that evokes a vague and unitary discourse about Arab and Asian cultures presumed to be Europe’s other.9 Clark’s collaged interventions in the chains and large blue collage placed atop the rugs break up this space, reworking and protecting against the overwhelming accusations of ahistorical otherness that come through the Orientalists’ collecting. Clark believes this process of collage makes the image strange, imbuing it with a sense of hostility towards collecting, whilst retaining a sense of that same process of appropriation found in Orientalism.10 The strangeness of flags appears in several places in Booty. Clark works with the image as a symbol of power between handcrafted Asafo flags, guerrilla and pirate flags, and the slick flags of nation-states. Midnight Flag (The Spoils) is composed of a city skyline backdrop; an orange triangle with skull and crossbones (evoking both poison and pirates); and a purple stripe where a number of astronomical images, money, and teardrops are collaged. White Flag (Squall) has a jumbled array of items on a map (many of them people on horseback, further giving a sense of exploration) that is bounded by two stripes, forming a tri-colour. These flags’ duality between white and black and the objects contained in them document the struggles between the city and the global or between the explorer and his object of conquest. Likewise, to make a flag is to imagine new systems of organisation; it is an act of play like Benjamin’s battles, to imagine resistances or new modes of power. Clark’s flags make the imagery of these forces appear strange whilst retaining a history of the struggles of colonialism, exploration, and mapping that these symbols represent. Through the clutter of history, Clark’s reworking not only protects from the chaos, it also makes a new critical narrative. British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips argues this reworking is the constituent feature of clutter, “to make meaning” from its absence of pattern.11 Clutter, Phillips argues, allows one to make meanings she may have not realised were there when she began her search through the clutter.12 In his “case history” of clutter, Phillips describes a patient who would select his clothes from a pile in his room, which eventually became so cluttered that the patient’s mother declared that one could not find anything. For the patient, this state of clutter was the point: He argued that the images, clothes, and other objects should find us out of the clutter.13 Clutter creates a new way of approaching and conceptualizing old objects. I am using clutter here not to suggest Clark’s work is cluttered, rather that her approach of selecting objects, adding and subtracting them from these drawings, out of a historical clutter of ideologies creates new historical narratives for the objects in her works. By working through the accumulation of images that Clark collects and placing them into new chains of association, the objects take on new meanings, associations, and contexts. It is through the process of working through the clutter, making one look for meanings that can reveal a new relationship between the objects.14

It is this notion of reworking the clutter of history, like Benjamin’s collecting as a means of transforming the old into something new, that Clark’s work is engaged in. As she declares in her statement, her work is, at once, a protection against the past—think of the accumulation of advertisements, junk, and money that capitalism demands in this postmodern era and the accumulation of histories of colonialism and nationalism—but it creates a new articulation of history. Clark’s play and reworking of these collected archives take the discarded images of history and remakes the old and forgotten into

something new; by doing so, she considers their implications in both the past and their emergence in the present. In Julia Rosa Clarkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s archive of accumulation, as in Benjaminâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cabinets, the works produced take on a life of their own, renewed with each viewing.

Right: Detail of Exchange / Gift / Theft Found objects, paper, paint 8

from Booty, Whatiftheworld Gallery, 2012

Booty

Text by Bielle Ross

Accumulo ergo sum. it seems silly to point out the obvious, but in today’s social terrain, where any sense of the fixity of meaning has long since been obliterated, there remain imaginary anchors which weight our selecting, discarding, borrowing, appropriating, layering, deconstructing of the visual. ‘Booty’, an exhibition of what can best be described as a cacophony of encrusted collages, employs and valorises such semiotic voyages – and in fact, adds a few to the fray for good measure. Julia Rosa Clark’s ensembles, presented in her recently opened solo show at Whatiftheworld Gallery, explore the realms of colonial appropriation, history, memory and representation. at the same time however, Clark manages to steer an idiosyncratic path, exhibiting her own agency and position when encountering these broad themes, using chance and contingency to unsettle such notions. The artist encapsulates these foci though a combination of pulsating constellations incorporating found and carefully produced imagery, blazes of colour, phosphenes, golden nuggets of imagination, bibelots, and recollections where, much like the recurring teardrop motif in Clark’s work, ideas cling to the picture surfaces while subject to the gravitational force of the other artworks in the gallery. Despite Clark’s titillating and almost scientific use of colour, shadows ooze from under the artist’s layers of card, net, cellophane and crumpled metallic paper. This is where the eye tends to rest: at the slightly curled corners, on the faintly buckled planes of colour, on the ripples in the picture surfaces which, unmediated by glass, call attention to the implicit artifice and fragility and assemblage in art and history. In terms of traversing the exhibition itself, the curatorial pull of a cyclical continuum is hard to resist, beginning with Inheritance (Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea) (2012). Clark’s process and primary medium, the conscientious collage, which could be read as dadaesque, is particularly well suited to her artistic gambit. Each composition’s sedimentary quality layers the continual reprocessing of information, materialising the ways in which knowledge and power, specifically within the colonial subtext, are inextricably interwoven. Clark pins, lifts, sticks, removes and replaces both consciously and more haphazardly, a tension reflected most aptly in The Orientalist (2012). Here, through the repetition and layering of images of oriental rugs, interrupted only by a fistful of phosphene-like shapes, a slab of sky blue and a putative chain of being, the artist creates a tapestry of assumptions essential to Western perceptions of ‘the Orient’ (in the broadest sense where meaning lies in a colonially contrived set of ideas and inferences). In Coordinates of Gains & Sorrows (2012), disks cropped from found images representing time, direction, history and chemistry, are mapped into place. Positioned within the confines of the cartographic precinct, the composition reflects other topographical makeups such as language and politics. Apprehend (2012), an apple green fishing net (or is it a butterfly net?) literally holds a cluster of paper cutouts. Poised against the wall, the net simultaneously offers its contents up and keeps them detained. The visitor is able to ascend for a brief sojourn onto the gallery mezzanine, where artworks such as The Stash (2012) – a cloud of collaged signifiers set on a lustrous scarlet plane – and Trade Routes (Redemption Song) (2012) are grouped. There is a strong sense that the power of Clark’s work is located in the interstices, between various visual nuggets of information. In that sense, Clark has deftly fashioned forces and tensions through the sometimes strategic and sometimes accidental placement, cropping, and re-contextualisation of images.

The exhibition ends with White Flag (Squall) (2012), which again (dis)orders people, cultures, history and time onto one planar composition. A sea of masculine faces and scenes cut from outmoded books vie for the spectator’s attention. The force of the work is capped by an orange slab, referencing apartheid’s Nationalist Party flag and its particular brand of social hierarchy. Wherever one stands in the exhibition, one feels the magnetic pull of Clark’s nucleus installation, Exchange/Gift/Theft (2012): a three-dimensional picnic composition of carefully selected and displayed objects. Clark combines typically ‘feminine’ objects, such as basketry, needlework, music and florid colours, with fake wounds, vampire teeth, a couple of token phallic bananas and a set of theatrical bulging eyeballs inter alia. Here, an analogy can be drawn between the oftentimes imperceptible and yet pervasive collections of ‘things’ guiding many social formations; and the sense of agency that Clark seems to advocate in which we curate ourselves through our collections of references and appropriations. As the eye pans in and out of Clark’s clusters, the artist’s very own form of pictorial and curatorial pointillism emerges. From the verve of colours and shadows, to the mythical and iconographical properties, it becomes apparent that Clark’s web of references lies betwixt and between the artworks. ‘Take heed,’ Clark’s text collage accompanying the exhibition warns us: pay attention to the ‘in betweens’, ‘the jewels’, ‘the scars’. The artist’s material and psychogeographic Journey (2012) indeed presents ‘The blizzard of the world…’ reminding us of where ‘we’re all bound to go.’ Bielle Ross is currently pursuing her Honours degree in Art History at the University of Cape Town.

overleaf: Journey

2012

Text collage / Julia Rosa Clark

LISTEN, I JUST WANT TO SAY THANKS. SO, THANKS. THANKS FOR ALL THE PRESENTS. THANKS FOR INTRODUCING ME TO THE CHIEF. THANKS FOR PUTTING ON THE FEEDBAG. THANKS FOR GOING ALL OUT. I WISH THAT I WAS BORN A THOUSAND YEARS AGO, THAT I’D SAIL THE DARKENED SEAS, ON A GREAT BIG CLIPPER SHIP, GOING FROM THIS LAND HERE, TO THAT, IN A SAILOR’S SUIT AND CAP. THIS MUST BE THE DAY THAT ALL OF MY DREAMS COME TRUE. SO HAPPY JUST TO BE ALIVE, UNDERNEATH THIS SKY OF BLUE. I WILL RAISE MY HAND UP INTO THE NIGHT TIME SKY AND COUNT THE STARS SHINING IN YOUR EYES. WHERE I COME FROM IT’S A LONG THIN THREAD, ACROSS AN OCEAN, DOWN A RIVER OF RED. JESUS DIED FOR SOMEBODY’S SINS, BUT NOT MINE. ON A GATHERING STORM COMES A TALL HANDSOME MAN, IN A DUSTY BLACK COAT, WITH A RED RIGHT HAND. SICK DOWN TO MY HEART, THAT’S JUST THE WAY IT GOES. I’VE SEEN THE FUTURE, BABY, AND IT’S MURDER. THE BLIZZARD OF THE WORLD, HAS CROSSED THE THRESHOLD AND IT’S OVERTURNED THE ORDER OF THE SOUL. STACCATO SIGNALS OF CONSTANT INFORMATION. A LOOSE AFFILIATION OF MILLIONAIRES, AND BILLIONAIRES AND, BABY. ‘WAY, HAUL AWAY, A’HEAD FOR STORMY WEATHER...OH HAUL AWAY, JOE. YES THERE’S A FIRE DOWN BELOW. AND AWAY, MY JOHNNY BOYS, WE’RE ALL BOUND TO GO! TAKE HEED OF THE WESTERN WIND, TAKE HEED OF THE STORMY WEATHER AND, YES, THERE’S SOMETHING YOU CAN SEND BACK TO ME: SPANISH BOOTS OF SPANISH LEATHER.

IT’S A SKY-BLUE SKY. SATELLITES ARE OUT TONIGHT. THERE’S NOT EVEN ROOM ENOUGH TO BE ANYWHERE. IT’S NOT DARK YET, BUT IT’S GETTING THERE. SAIL ON, SILVERGIRL, SAIL ON BY. SUNSET WOMAN. MIDNIGHT RAMBLER. YOU’RE BEAUTIFUL BEYOND WORDS – YOU’RE BEAUTIFUL TO ME. YOU CAN MAKE ME CRY, NEVER SAY GOODBYE. AND I MISS YOU SINCE THE PLACE GOT WRECKED. AND I JUST DON’T CARE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. LOOKS LIKE FREEDOM, BUT IT FEELS LIKE DEATH. IT’S SOMETHING IN BETWEEN, I GUESS. IT’S CLOSING TIME. I DON’T KNOW JUST WHERE I’M GOING, BUT I’M GONNA TRY FOR THE KINGDOM, IF I CAN. EVERY VALLEY (EVERY VALLEY) SHALL BE EXALTED, AND EVERY MOUNTAIN AND HILL MADE LOW. THERE’S A WHITE DIAMOND GLOOM, ON THE DARK SIDE OF THIS ROOM, AND A PATHWAY THAT LEADS UP TO THE STARS. IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE THERE’S A PRICE FOR THIS SWEET PARADISE, REMIND ME TO SHOW YOU THE SCARS. I BROKE INTO THE TOMB, BUT THE CASKET WAS EMPTY. THERE WERE NO JEWELS, NO NOTHING – I FELT I’D BEEN HAD. THERE THEY LAY – I DAMN MY EYES – A LOOKOUT’S CLAPPED ON PARADISE, ALL SOULS BOUND JUST CONTRARY-WISE. OH, TO BE NOT ANYONE. GONE THIS MAZE OF BEING. OH, TO OWE NOT ANYONE, NOTHING. WHY WON’T YOU LOVE ME FOR WHO I AM, WHERE I AM? HE SAID: ‘CAUSE THAT’S NOT THE WAY THE WORLD IS BABY. THIS IS HOW I LOVE YOU, BABY. THIS IS HOW I LOVE YOU, BABY. WORLD WITHOUT END, REMEMBER ME.

CREDITS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE: Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Laurie Anderson, Patti Smith, Nick Cave, Morrissey, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, Traditional Sea Shanty, Traditional/Nick Cave, Traditional Sea Shanty, Bob Dylan, Laurie Anderson, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Dave Loggins, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Robert Louis Stevenson/Young Ewing Allison, Isaiah 40:4, Patti Smith/Lenny Kaye, Paul Simon, Laurie Anderson. 13

Exchange / Gift / Theft

2012

Found objects, paper, paint Dimensions variable

Black Flag (Uhuru) 2012 Found objects, paper, paint, glitter 16

64 x 94 cm

White Flag (Squall)

2012

Paper, paint 84 x 118 cm

The Escape Plan (Love in the time of chemicals) 2012 Found objects, paper, paint 18

52 x 63 cm

Clever Addict (Haul Away Joe)

2012

Found objects, paper, paint 64 x 104 cm

Inheritance (Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea) Found objects, paper, paint 20

104 x 155 cm

2012

Cargo

2012

Found objects, paper, paint 87 x 73 cm

The Encounter

2012

Found objects, paper, paint 105 x 87 cm 22

Right: Detail of The Encounter

In arrears (Starless Night) 2012 Found objects, paper, paint 24

64.5 x 85 cm

Good Omen / Bad Luck

2012

Found objects, paper, paint 105 x 155 cm

Girl Aftermath 2012 Found objects, paper, paint 105 x 125 cm 26

Right: Detail of Girl Aftermath

Captain Swagger (Whitie)

2012

Found objects, paper, paint 28

82.5 x 72 cm

Buried 2012 Found objects, paper, paint 76 x 105 cm

Very Rich Hours

2012

Found objects, paper, paint 30

104 x 155 cm

Pillage & Plunder

2012

Found objects, paper, paint 88 x 107 cm

Voyages into Night (The Orientalist) Found objects, paper, paint 32

104 x 155 cm

2012

Field Notes from Solitude Island / No Place 2012 Found objects, paper, paint 81 x 107 cm

Midnight Flag (The Spoils) Found objects, paper, paint 34

80 x 102 cm

2012

After the party (White Glo) 2012 Found objects, paper, paint 90.5 x 107 cm

Trafficker

2012

Found objects, paper, paint 36

58 cm x 78 cm

Right: Untitled 2011, collage detail from Paradise Apparatus, 2010

PaRadise aPPaRatus

In Paradise Apparatus, Julia Rosa Clark explored the sensations and mysteries of chemistry, perception and colour as they relate to the search for fulfilment with references to aspects of science, alchemy, theatre-craft and art making. The final instalment of a trilogy of installations, Paradise Apparatus continued to explore our paradoxical relationship with Nature as well as the ephemeral qualities of knowledge systems established by Hypocrite’s Lament (2006), and continued in Fever Jubilee (2007/8).

Barthes, Roland (trans. Howard, R). 1985. The Responsibility of Forms: Critical essays on Music, Art, and Representation. University of California Press. Berkley & Los Angeles.

The work is intentionally overwhelming in parts and relies on a sense of experiential mystery. The installations are made up of two- and three-dimensional elements that spill and spread throughout the gallery space. Constructed of a universe of materials – from traditional to profane, including paper, found objects, light, fabric, papier-mâché, liquids, crystals, string and so on- the artworks reflect Clark’s continued processdriven experiments. The installation also includes the film The Red Shoes (by Powell & Pressburger) that hints at a type of possession – by colour and artmaking – and a conflict between the role of the selfish artist and that of the selfless lover/partner.

“Colour…is a kind of bliss…like a closing eyelid, a tiny fainting spell” — Roland Barthes

left: Installation view of Paradise Apparatus, 2010 Various materials and found objects

Paradise Lost and Found: Julia Rosa Clark’s Paradise Apparatus Text by Miles Keylock Published in Mail & Guardian (March 2010) and C-magazine Art Magazine

A recent visitor to Julia Rosa Clark’s Paradise Apparatus exhibition in Woodstock, Cape Town made the mistake of pushing his bicycle right into the gallery—no doubt to avoid would-be thieves on the notoriously dangerous street below. Little did he know that the gallery was an equally dangerous space. Within seconds, his handlebars were entwined with the tentacles of a large paper sculpture that stretched down from the ceiling and seemed to somehow ensnare them. The man was stuck. If he pulled away, surely he would tear the fragile work, but what was the alternative? Give up his bike to art? His experience sums up Clark’s new installation. At a first glance, the two-and threedimensional objects assembled might seem absurdly pretty and fragile, but be warned that they come with a witty, sometimes dangerous, bite. The final instalment in a trilogy of exhibitions, Paradise Apparatus continues Clark’s exploration into the ephemeral nature of knowledge systems she started in Hypocrite’s Lament (2006) and Fever Jubilee (2007–8). Like the previous exhibitions, the latest show is an explosion of sensations fired up by paradox and possibility, and in the thrall of mystery and desire. As always, Clark makes poignant use of her environment and is sensitive to atmospheres—the formalism and austerity of the gallery space contrasts the chaos of the street. In an age where physical artwork is still so emphasised, it is intriguing to see in her a performer and a maker, someone who deals very much with the process of producing art. In Paradise Apparatus, the space itself is structured as an experiment, a warren-like series of enclaves where science and alchemy, physics and metaphysics, philosophy and the art of transformation coalesce before the viewers’ eyes. Shapes and objects that reflect and refract light—cylinders, spheres, vials, beakers and flutes—are scattered throughout, creating a sly hall of mirrors that hints at projection, fantasy and alternate realities. Sculptures obsessively crafted from a collapsing trelliswork of loops embellished with strings of circles and zigzagging cut-outs hang from the ceiling like giant creepers or mutant squids. Like Deleuzian rhizomes, these works suggest a botanical metaphor that identifies a form of cultural production whose roots are not static and buried like those of a tree, but mobile and above ground like those of a creeper or ivy. Elsewhere in the gallery, herds of moulded papier-mâché and glass objects multiply and transmogrify before the viewer’s eyes. Here, Clark performs a kind of alchemy, transforming--at least momentarily--seemingly mundane material into wildly allusive subject matter. Are they mud pies or cupcakes? Seashells or miniature futuristic cities? There is no definitive answer, only more clues, puzzles and mysteries that split any reading of the work like a beam of light through a prism to see how it plays across a whole spectrum of viewpoints. Threading between the works, names and references taken from science, history and pop culture creates a maze-like taxonomic navigation system. At a glance, the motley crew of ideas and inspirations referenced might appear like an art historical lesson in colour theory, but Clark is quick to undermine such easy readings. Instead, she pulls the rug out from under our feet by including a ‘colourful’ list of band names—from Deep Purple to the White Stripes to James Brown.

Right: Installation view of Paradise Apparatus, 2010 Various materials including here: vinyl text; soft modules made from the artist’s collection of fabric and her old clothes, over-dyed with natural & synthetic dyes 42

Dimensions variable

This is the workplace of an iconoclast, where the detritus of semantics and semiotics are melted down and recast into 21st-century mental shapes in the red-hot, heartred retort of a present-day alchemist of minds. This slippage between history and the present, between high and low art, is reinforced by an array of small visual and tactile details—personal childhood ephemera that share the space with found scientific apparatus and old books. In these works, Clark seems to be coyly playing with the alchemical power of the artist and gallery in transmuting random objects into art. This process is itself fraught with danger, Clark reminds us, drawing on multiple references to Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Red Shoes to evoke the fetishistic power of art. In Andersen’s tale, an impoverished young woman puts on a pair of magical shoes and

almost dies when her feet won’t stop dancing. She is only saved when an executioner cuts off her feet with his axe. Her still-shod feet dance on. As pop philosopher Slavoj Žižek explains in his Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (2006), “These shoes stand for drive at its purest: an ‘undead’ partial object that functions as a kind of impersonal willing: ‘it wants’. ... it follows its path and exacts its satisfaction at any price, irrespective of the subject’s well-being.” So how to escape this path of certain self-destruction? According to Žižek, the lesson is clear: the only way to get rid of this autonomous partial object is to become this object. This is possibly Clark’s most profound and magical alchemical trick. By continually inserting herself into the exhibition, through small biographical traces and metacommentary that draws attention to the process of art-making itself, she shatters the traditional boundaries between production and consumption, art and life, and the artists and the art object. Even as it exposes the mechanics of signification, Clark’s brand of enigmatic scientific forensics does not lead to any predetermined conclusions. Rather her haul of ephemeral objects, assemblages and sculptures lure the viewer to set aside the complacency of looking and join in the investigation. Embedded in Clark’s experimentation is a reminder that, in interpreting the material world through systems, signs and artifacts, we are as reliant on creative processes as we are on those that are deductive. The ‘Paradise Apparatus’ to which the title refers are not just the devices of making art, but also the power of devising the devices we use to make meaning and with which the mundane details of everyday life are magically transformed into art.

Installation views of Paradise Apparatus, 2010 above: Various materials and found ibjects including, here: suspended glass disc, collection of glassware; light and shadow ± 160 cm diameter Right: Various materials and found objects including here: a found still life print, dyed string (natural & synthetic dyes), homemade crystals, glass flasks, liquids & vinyl text

Next: Various materials and found objects including: Vinyl text; papier-mâché objects moulded in the shape of everyday items (such as plastic food packaging), from pulped papers (consisting an accumulation of the artist’s personal documents) and coloured with synthetic & natural dyes, a collection of glassware, glass disc and so on

Installation view and details of Paradise Apparatus, 2010 48

Various materials, including, here: red pointe shoes, ribbon, marbles, lead, Venetian pigment

Right: Detail of Fever Jubilee at Blank Projects, Cape Town, December 2007 / January 2008

FeveR JuBilee

Fever Jubilee, was an installation and performance by Julia Rosa Clark exhibited at Blank projects Cape Town during December 2007 and January 2008. Fever Jubilee Facebook message to friends, November 2007: hello ___________ I am making a small new show, FEVER JUBILEE and while making it I have been thinking about music, dancing and sex… the Dionysian thread. There is something amazing about that feeling of a special song that makes one feel totally hot, totally alive… It strip away the barriers inside. I was thinking about that specific high of being at a house party, or any party for that matter, in some nook or sitting under a bush in a dark garden, kissing some relative stranger whilst loud music blares in the background. I was thinking about past lovers and specific songs we would listen to while making out. Or hits that came and went that will always remind me of the euphoria of a past season, like dancing wildly at Marvel to The White Stripes with Becky and George and Chad etc. during the summer of the Love Below. I was thinking about the moment on a dance floor when nothing else matters, a perfect equilibrium is reached between your body and the whole world around you. So… I am compiling the ultimate lovemusic mix: Think about it. and if you can, please send me a list of songs (as little as one is ok, up to ten max.) that for you are FEVER songs… x julia rosa Cape Town, November 2007

A massive playlist was then compiled from the submissions, called The Fever Mix, and was played continuously on repeat in the Blank project space during the month of the show/residency. One of the replies to the invite to submit top ten fever songs: Oh wow – uhm is it an overshare to say I am slightly turned on by ur descriptive writing? Oh well I said it already. Sorry only replying now – I’ve not been on the revolution that is Facebook in a while. The link to your (and others) art looks so so creative and liberating, well done on making a living off of your creativity outlet, well done indeed. Mmmm… the music. Immediately the first song sprang to mind – all inhibitions gone out the window with this one: ‘Girls just wanna have fun’ Cindy Lauper ‘Slave’ Britney Speares (Please don’t judge me this this is sooooo hot!!!!) ‘Buttons’ Pussy Cat Dolls ‘Fever’ Michael Buble ‘Poison’ Alice Cooper ‘Dolphin’s Cry’ Live ‘Sweetest Taboo’ Sade ‘Kiss of Life’ Sade ‘Sex and Candy’ Marcy’s Playground ‘Dancing in the moonlight’ Toploader

During this collaborative, evolving project the gallery was transformed into a recuperative grotto-like space. The audience was invited with the help of the artist to grow the installation over a period of weeks. Visitors were encouraged to engage with this immersive environment as a place of discussion, creativity and recuperation “2007 seemed like a long and difficult year for many people close to me. It is finally drawing to a close and it is time to take stock and clear out surplus. A jubilee marks the passing of a period of time, emancipation and a celebration. In this case, the artist celebrates sensuality, colour, music and a move away from sadness and fear.” —Julia Rosa Clark 2007 Fever Jubilee was intended as corollary to Clark’s previous exhibition Hypocrite’s Lament. Whereas Lament was, in part, driven by a response to cycles of addiction and destruction, Fever Jubilee was a celebration growth and restoration.

Installation view of Fever Jubilee, 2007/2008 Photographed by visitors to the show

above: Installation view of Fever Jubilee

2007/2008

Right: Visitors to Fever Jubilee at Blank Projects, Cape Town, December 2007 / January 2008

Visitors were invited (through the mailing list of the gallery space, as well as Facebook and digital texts) to join the artist for tea or a drink in the â&#x20AC;&#x153;grottoâ&#x20AC;? (Fever Jubilee). They were asked to make appointments, most of which were one-on-one. The colourful installation under construction, the busy hands and, at times, awkward chats, acted as a foil, or lead in, to moments of intimate discussion in the dense small spaces of the show.

above and bottom right: Installation views of Fever Jubilee 56

2007/2008

top right: I PUT A SPELL ON YOU, installation view of Fever Jubilee

2007/2008

Right: Detail of Hypocrite’s Lament (Modernist Poster: The Red Wedge)

2007

Collage and gouache on card, acid free glue, pencil, photocopies Dimensions variable 58

Hypocrite’s Lament, João Ferreira Gallery, Cape Town, 2007; Whatiftheworld / Gallery stand, Joburg Art Fair 2008 & Ferreira Projects London, 2008

HyPoCRiteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lameNt

Hypocrite’s Lament Exhibition text

I tried to stare into the bright light. The voice said ‘this is your future, all you need to do is give up everything you know and this will be yours’. I trembled. I wanted to do as the voice said – just to get rid of it – but I knew it would be impossible for me to quit. All I could do was wait for the end. In this room-sized installation, Clark romanticises and bemoans our millennial obsession with The End, nasty weather, happiness and Modernity. Using her usual mixture of found and reconstituted bits and pieces, the work acts as an evolving diagram, in part illustrating the artist’s desire to understand the moment between denial and surrender. The work exists on one level as residue: the production process began as a response to the end of a love affair, caught up in twenty first century overwhelmingness and overtones of apocalypse. It consists of various sculptural parts, found objects, furniture, and cut out images mainly sourced from junk markets and second hand book stores. The boundaries of the pieces are intentionally unclear, invading each other’s spaces, overlapping and seemingly evolving. The work is in parts literally stuck to the walls and floor of the gallery, and, in some parts, appears to be incomplete or in the process of being made. A sound piece can be heard through head phones. This consists of snippets of interviews carried out by the artist with a reformed heroin addict, a religious prophet and a climate change expert. There are also a number of text pieces that form part of the show. These exist in the form of emails and were originally sent to viewers on the guest list of the original gallery, one a week for the four weeks leading up to the show. They are now mailed to visitors of the installation on request and also appear on the World Wide Web.

Julia Rosa Clark’s installation Hypocrite’s Lament is on the surface far more comfortable with objects and representation. It is a panoply of images, colours, textures and things. Clark is a consummate collector, with a taste for the cheap, the mass produced, the unwanted and the kitsch, but with the eyes of a teenager. Bright colored stickers, googly eyes, pencils, hairclips, ballerinas and straws all are assimilated: the remnants of hypercapitalism. Like a collector, these object are not only visual, but contain information, even if that information sometimes only declares it’s own emptiness. Making sense of this information is where the collector in her ends and the artist begins. Hidden beneath the bright crust of objects, Clark, the artist, is a conspiracy theorist. Although conspiracies have existed throughout time, the conspiracy theorist is a thoroughly post-modern phenomenon. Faced with the incredible flow of information, a conspiracy theorist cannot map all the disparate threads, nor find logical connections between them, a thing that humans tend to do as part of normal social behaviour. Instead links and ties become tenuous and facts are twisted to fit a central thesis. It is this coping method that Clark wittingly uses, both visually and in tone. It works because there is a bit of that conspiracy theorist in all of us. Except the Masons.

An excerpt from The Dashboard Melted But We Still Had The Radio: Zander Blom and Julia Rosa Clark This essay appeared in a catalogue for Julia Rosa Clark and Zander Blom published by Whatiftheworld, 2008 Text by Chad Rassouw

In her installation old thrift store paintings weep neon string, images from children’s text books tangled up in them. A miniature Christmas tree spawns a line of presents, growing exponentially until the grotesque. A pillar composed of porcelain trinkets casts a dreadful and dark shadow, while the walls are lined with hundreds of food images, whirling into a hurricane. A collection of newspaper clippings forewarn of earth’s imminent doom. Like the conspiracy theorist the links between these things are rickety. The information the objects contain is saying different things, at the same time. To look is an assault, confusing and disorientating. It’s a schizophrenic experience, not in the voices-in-thehead sense, but in the disconnection between the signs and signifiers. However, like the conspiracy theorist there is a central axes, a paranoid edge, but here it is a terrible fear not of shadowy control but of images and objects, and what their profusion means in a world always on the brink of disaster. This is not a joyful show that the bright colours belie, but an ironic twist up between panic and desire. For, of course, Clark is the hypocrite of the title, lamenting the deadlock between her love for things and what that love implies in a saturated world. It is the collector and the artist facing off.

Prelude: Don’t write back. I will not read it. There’s nothing to say. I don’t want to see you, you have become grotesque to me. I need to get my things from your place, leave me a key and sms me when you are out. I am so bored. Even the end of love has turned boring. This fishing village brings no pleasure. It’s full of sleepwalkers, Markham’s Men, and arrogant strugglers. And the kids in black stovepipes listening to Morrissey and Joy Division think they are sooo original. Hell. I’m tired. “How I dearly wish I was not here”1. If I wait long enough perhaps something will happen. Something exciting, loud or bright. Something final… like the End of the World. Julia Rosa Clark / HYPOCRITE’S LAMENT / January 2007 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------1 Everyday is like Sunday, Morrissey, 1988

Above Emailer 1: Prelude and right, Emailer 2: Appendix A 62

These emails form part of Hypocrite’s Lament (2007/2008) and were sent to the artist’s mailing list two weeks prior to the first showing of the piece

Appendix A: At a birthday party a few months ago, I found myself sitting across from someone I vaguely knew but hadn’t seen for some time. Our conversation was jokey –perhaps flirty- but after a short while it turned. He had met angels, he told me, and seen signs. The end was near. I should be aware of this and take heed. I explained to him I was an atheist and didn’t believe such things. In a grave tone, with piercing eyes, he looked straight ahead and told me there would be no mercy for types like me. *** I went to a second hand bookshop. I was looking for a copy of Dante’s Inferno. I didn’t find it. There was a strange bundle that caught my eye, marked “Clipping, Energy and Environment 1973-1002 rather a miscellaneous collection R10”. I took it as an omen but bought it anyway. *** I was walking around the Reservoir, trying to get fit. My iPod was on shuffle and up came that Talking Heads song: ‘Hold tight Wait ‘til the party’s over Hold tight We’re in for nasty weather There has got to be a way Burning down the house.’ I suddenly heard the words very clearly. *** I drive to work to teach kids who might as well be the last alive. I leave my dvd and sound system on standby. I linger by the open fridges in supermarkets on hot days. I long to leave by jet plane. I always drive alone. Over the ridge of the mountain, the sun is starting to set. From the road at smoggy dunk the city looks tatty but cutely tiny too. I sing loudly, merrily while the exhaust fumes trail off behind me. Another day, another day. Julia Rosa Clark / HYPOCRITE’S LAMENT / February 2007 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Image: Dante and his work by Domenico di Mechelino, 1465

A transcription of the sound piece that forms part of the Hypocrite’s Lament installation:

This is a transcription of a sound piece can be heard through headphones. It is made up of snippets from interviews carried out by the artist in March 2007 with a reformed heroin addict (Anon.), a religious prophet (L.J-H.) and a climate change expert (A.W.). L.J-H.: We draw lines all the time, you know. We choose left or right all the time … neither of which is wrong … there’s no like wrong direction in life you see, either way you are still going along the road, the course. Anon.: The change for me came when I … realised that how I am feeling now … is just too sad and too painful and too lonely and the only way … for me … to make … the pain and loneliness go away – I used more drugs which just increased it and it just got to a point where it was just … way bigger than what I was, and that was for me the point of surrender, where I realised that the way I am doing things, the way I am thinking, the way I am behaving, the way I am feeling … it’s all fucked up. It’s wrong. A.W.: We have always been the victims, if you like, of the vagaries of the biosphere. We are now at the point when our species is so dominant over so many basic processes of life that we have totally changed it… L.J-H.: A change is coming, you know, it’s imminent and, you’ll see, it’s in everything – in industry, in nature, in creativity… Anon: In my case –and I know in other peoples cases- well you do get that realisation along the way and you do get moments where you a 100% – well not 100% – but you do get moments where you do see that whatever you doing is not working and that you have to change but it is not enough because … even though that moment feels real for you, then you so hyped up to now change your ways. It seems very real then but something else needs to happen for it to really … for you to change. A.W.: Our interventions have become very superficial. It is perhaps sufficient to have these superficial interventions if we are prepared to listen to other people who maybe have a deeper understanding … but I don’t think people are necessarily prepared yet to do that. L.J-H.: Some of those haves – you know who are so greedy – stand to loose everything, you know, in the long run. Maybe not them but their children will surely feel the effects. Anon: Those moments that you get … either when you are high or when something just happened that’s really not good … you’re like “ I’m never gonna touch this stuff again” or “ I can now see what it’s doing to me” and that kinda thing but that’s … a superficial, “on the outer” kind of decision … something needs to happen inside you but, like, way way inside you, for you to take a serious shot at a genuine (change). A.W.: What is interesting … is the psychological aspect of this whole “denial” thing and how a lot of denialists seem to be reacting exactly as Luckoff would predict somebody to react to clashing deep metaphors. The other aspect of it, of course, is that large numbers of the sceptic-denialist crowd are in fact paid to do exactly what they do because people understand the role of doubt and the importance of doubt in stopping any kind of useful action.

Anon.: And that was, for me, the point of surrender … when I realised the way I am doing things, the way I am thinking, the way I’m behaving, the way I am feeling is fucked up and … try to be comfortable with the fact that however I see the world and

however I see my place in the world is completely wrong. However I choose to cope with life or however I live life is completely a fuck up and it’s not right. A.W.: On some levels, people say “ oh why are we in denial? How do we move this on?”. On some level we must realise that denial is not always a bad thing. There are very good reasons for us not believing certain things. Anon: You know for me to change, I have to disregard everything that I believe in. I have to leave … I have to … completely …kind of ‘defrag’ myself. L.J-H.: I truly believe that this new age has already dawned. Anon: and I need to … I need to get help. I need somebody to show me how to live and how to … fit into this world and more than that I must be willing to listen and do. That’s the thing. You get to that point many times but it’s different … the difference is when you get to the point and you now decide: ‘you tell me … you guys tell me what to do’. A.W.: …and it’s fascinating that driving is far more dangerous that flying but far more people have a fear of flying for the simple reason that they’re not in control of the aeroplane and if we are in control of something we tend to be more able to be more able to be active about it and we tend to be more able to not panic and not go into that state of denial. Anon.: It’s just when it becomes too uncomfortable, it’s just when it too painful. I know with drugs and so forth people can go to jail, people can -you knowhave horrendous consequences, people can prostitute themselves, and they still don’t get to that point and each one’s rock bottom, if you want to call it that, each one’s point of return or point of change is different and it is not necessarily about what you do although that obviously contributes a lot but it is about, um, where you reach where you get to internally, where it becomes too painful … what you’re doing on the outside. A.W.: We have a different set of markers around what is good and what is bad, what is an improvement, what is a deterioration of a circumstance. We can say all these clichés about people becoming progressively distanced from nature – an understanding of nature – but they’re true actually. We can cast them away and pretend that they don’t exist but it is absolutely true and unless we develop some sort of new understanding, or refined old understandings, we’re not going to understand our situation well enough. Anon.: And I need to get help. I need somebody to show me how to live and how to …fit into this world. A.W.: The greatest constancy is Nature. We assume that Nature … the sun always rises … we have all these clichés about nature … “as the seasons follow one another” and all this kind of thing. And we need to start examining that, and we need to start saying that actually we’ve changed nature quite profoundly in many ways and we’ve not only changed nature but we have changed our relationship to nature and the way that we understand nature quite profoundly. Anon.: More than that I must be willing to listen and do. That’s the, that’s the thing … you get to that point many times but the difference is when you get to the point and you now decided ok “you tell me” “you guys tell me what to do”… and that was the deciding moment for me where I had the strength to say to myself, “I don’t have the strength”. When I was clever enough to say that I’m fucking stupid.

A.W.: And we have become so cynical or so sceptical of any kind of leader/ experts because of what we have seen through history, we face a real struggle in deciding whom to believe. Anon.: And say, and just be comfortable with the fact, or try to be comfortable with the fact that however I see the world and however I see my place in the world is completely wrong. However I choose to cope with life or however I live life is completely a fuck up. A.W.: There are very good reasons for us to hold off on action, I mean humans and pre-humans have been deceiving each other for millennia and we have quite highly evolved bullshit detectors and individual means of trying to figure out whether we are being lied to or lead into some course of negative action or not and so it becomes very very difficult for us to let go … to surrender in some sort of way, our authority. Anon.: …and that’s like an amazing liberating experience, it’s sounds very scary to get to that point and to think that you must disregard everything you have ever believed in … it’s a very very scary thing to do but when your world gets as scary because of that then something’s gotto happen, you know? Anon.: … and that was the deciding moment for me where I had the strength to say to myself. “I don’t have the strength”. When I was clever enough to say that I’m fucking stupid.

left: Hypocrite’s Lament (Part 9: Illness Process)

2007

Gouache on paper, acid free glue, contact vinyl, printed portrait of the artist mounted on Fome-Cor Dimensions variable above: Installation view of Hypocrite’s Lament, 2007, João Ferriera Gallery, Cape Town

Hypocriteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lament (Part 8: Utopian Catastrophe)

2007

Vintage tourist trinkets, gold paint, wooden shelves, carbon paper, old books including South Africa in Colour, Golden Heritage, South Africa Land of Sunshine and Land of the Future, Panoramic South Africa, This is South Africa and South Africa in Colour 70

Dimensions variable

Installation view of Hypocrite’s Lament, 2007, João Ferriera Gallery, Cape Town

Details of Hypocriteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lament (Part 3: Long Shadow)

2007

1950â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s style melamine coffee table, found ceramic and porcelain animals, glue and contact vinyl 72

Dimensions variable

XXX 73

above: Detail of Hypocrite’s Lament (Part 6: Presage)

2007

Nylon thread, cut out images from 1950’s Knowledge subscription encyclopaedias, magazine cut outs of cars, diamonds, buildings etc., acid free glue; wooden shelf containing serviette and ceramic serviette holder “Ngauruhoe in Angry mood, N.Z.”; PVA paint and found reproductions of Brook in Woods by Joh Bockmann, date unknown; Seascape by unknown artist, date unknown; Les Glaneuses (The Gleaners) 1857 & The Angelus (Evening Prayer) 1857–59 by François Millet; The Peasant Dance by Pieter Brueghel, c. 1567 and The Pilgrims Way also known as The Wide and Narrow Gates Dimensions variable top right: Installation view of Hypocrite’s Lament, 2007, João Ferriera Gallery, Cape Town Bottom right: Detail of Hypocrite’s Lament (Part 10: Staring into the Light)

2007

Includes sound piece (excerpts from three interviews, one with an environmentalist, one with a reformed drug addict and one with a religious prophet).

Found objects including headphones, trestle table and legs, wooden stool, French curves, plastic stencils, metal rulers, a craft knife, cutting mat, plastic crates, monster and horror masks, filing boxes, cardboard scraps, rolled up New York skyline posters and a plastic moulded image of New York at night (both pre9/11), photocopied/highlighted excerpts from Notes [on the Making of Apocalypse Now] by Eleanor Coppola (1987), bookshelf of books and posters

Hypocriteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lament (Modernist Poster: Boom!)

2007

Collage and gouache on card, acid free glue, pencil also, in print edition (archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper) 54.3 x 58.6 cm 76

Edition of 15 + 1AP

Hypocriteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lament (Modernist Poster: The Red Wedge)

2007

Collage and gouache on card, acid free glue, pencil also, in print edition (archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper) 54.3 x 58.6 cm Edition of 15 + 1AP

Hypocriteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lament (Modernist Poster: Fear! Hysteria!)

2007

Collage and gouache on card, acid free glue, pencil also, in print edition (archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper) 54.3 x 58.6 cm 78

Edition of 15 + 1AP

Hypocriteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lament (Modernist Poster: The Four Horses)

2007

Collage and gouache on card, acid free glue, pencil also, in print edition (archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper) 54.3 x 58.6 cm Edition of 15 + 1AP

Hypocriteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lament (Modernist Poster: Catastrophe)

2007

Collage and gouache on card, acid free glue, pencil also, in print edition (archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper) 54.3 x 58.6 cm 80

Edition of 15 + 1AP

Hypocriteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lament (Modernist Poster: Come Armageddon) 2007 Collage and gouache on card, acid free glue, pencil also, in print edition (archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper) 54.3 x 58.6 cm Edition of 15 + 1AP

Hypocriteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lament (Modernist Poster: The Jellyfish Explosion)

2007

Collage and gouache on card, acid free glue, pencil also, in print edition (archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper) 54.3 x 58.6 cm 82

Edition of 15 + 1AP

Hypocriteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Lament (Modernist Poster: London Calling)

2007

Collage and gouache on card, acid free glue, pencil also, in print edition (archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper) 54.3 x 58.6 cm Edition of 15 + 1AP

Right: Detail of Stage Diver, 2004 Paper cut-outs, stainless steel pins, polystyrene & found objects Âą 105 x 105 x 18 cm 84

A Million Trillion Gazillion, JoĂŁo Ferreira Gallery, Cape Town, 2004 and Liste 05, Basel 2005

a millioN tRillioN GazillioN

Artist statement 2005

The final pieces / spaces I make usually result from a lengthy process of collecting, shredding, sorting and altering of found objects and images. This process is a kind of protective filter, a device for coping with an overload of information or emotion. The timeliness and repetition of the action allows a rational distance to grow between the subject matter and myself. In earlier work, this device helped to overcome overwhelming sensations (such as lust or loss) and make visual analogies for these experiences. More recently, the process has opened up a way of navigating the world of information, and re-examining representations of the world. In A Million Trillion Gazillion I started to develop an understanding of the changing nature of knowledge systems. My introduction to information systems took place at school – a common experiencewhere ideas about the world were formed through interaction with idealised and seductive illustrated books as well as other types of learning material such as graphs, charts, diagrams, models and classroom displays (forms of representation that can essentially be described as ‘schemata’). By simplifying something – an idea, an object, a place, a system and so on- for communication purposes, schematic images belie the complexity of the ‘whole’ story. This is obvious. All educational material, for example, does it. However, some – driven by ideology and dogma – do this more than others. My work investigates, jokes around with and pokes at this tension between simple and complex representations. The work is usually made of cheap, dispensable materials that allows each piece to be made and remade a few times, creating a spontaneity as well as echoing the action of ‘figuring out’ that is associated with the learning experience of some classroom activities.

Right: Installation views of A Million Trillion Gazillion at Liste 05: The Young Art Fair in Basel, June 2005

top: Valley Girls (original 2003 / print 2008) Archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper 47.7 x 56 cm (unframed) Bottom: Valley Girls 2003 Found object (stickers & two copies of Valleys & Mountains) 88

Âą 30 x 110 x 30 cm

Spew (I)

2004/5

Paper cut-outs, stainless steel pins, polystyrene & laser print Âą 45 x 29 x 2 cm

Daze of Our Lives

2004/5

Paper cut-outs, stainless steel pins, polystyrene, acrylic paint, stickers, neon tape & plastic 90

Âą 200 x 150 x 80 cm

Take the Mickey

2003/5

Archival pigment ink print on cotton rag paper 89 x 112 cm

above: Detail of Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wrath: Halitosis Right: Detail of Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Wrath: Halitosis

2004/5 2004/5

Paper cut-outs, stainless steel pins, polystyrene, plastic, acrylic paint Installation dimensions variable overleaf: Crazy Bitch

2004

Tulle, paper cut-outs, stainless steel pins, ultra violet ink, fluorescent ultraviolet & tungsten lights 92

Installation dimensions variable