Only one month to go until the joyous reunion at MContemporary gallery in Sydney!

My solo exhibition is scheduled to open on the 21st of July 2022, and I can hardly wait!

Many of the original photographs that make up this body of work are found, sourced or donated by family and friends.

While many of the photographs were captured here, the scenarios in these rescued and reused images recreate a time and place seemingly devoid of a greater local South African context of that time – idyllic settings and or photo studios.  My adding masks from different cultures is perhaps a re-stitching of a historical narrative where these different cultures ‘meet’ each other in a new time and space/continent.  

With that said in mid-2021 when I started working towards this exhibition I noticed a hashtag on Twitter that caused much mayhem at the time (#familymeeting)

My own experience and expression as a family member is constantly a work in progress.  Working on this body of work, got me thinking about what the word ‘Family’ really means. I also feel that a body of work focussing on the notion of Family is quite relevant due to the fact that a lot of people from all over the world could not get to see their families in real life during 2020 and 2021.

So I started re-creating my own imaginary ‘family meeting’, removing the faces and historical identities from these vintage photographs and replacing them with a variety of cultural masks and colourful embroidered flowers, a new fantasy emerges.  A world clinging to the need to believe in the magic of innocent aspiration. 

Postscript:

Inspired by using only the titles of the works as inspiration, I started writing a short story of sorts. (The titles of the works that are going to be part of this exhibition are in bold italic):

Once upon a time, before the year was over, a great joy was announced as the nice friendly giant proudly walked into the forest, followed by the good fairies.  There was to be a family meeting; a joyous reunion between the artificial family and the nuclear family, even the family pet was there.  The nuclear family was playing with fire that caused them to be alienated, but at the end, what’s love got to do with it, if you can’t choose your family?  Thank you for coming said the wicked giants, the guests enjoyed watching you.  The end. 

I have a couple of friends that are going to play a game with me, by writing their own version of this story by using all the titles (in bold above). I will be posting the various interpretations during the weeks to come here on this blog. You are welcome to play along. Feel free to send me your version story.

Until then have fun and keep well. xxx