Review: Smudged Red-Eye in Durbs
Thanks to Durban D-Va yet again for filling us in on what’s happening in Durbs – if the photo looks blurred that’s coz it’s REPRESENTING D-Va’s state on the night! Sounds like they need to cast those nets a bit wider… :
Friday’s are often rather festive (and sometimes also a little fractious)&this Friday past was even more so, it being the Friday before the first of Octobe…
r – the month associated with festivities of all kinds, from ancient harvest festivals to Thanksgiving and Halloween, the month we become aware of approaching summer and the final quarter of the year.
So my Friday at Red Eye was a bit of a blur…a glorious haze of city lights, AV projections, fashionistas and subcultures.
This month’s Red Eye was (mostly) back in the gallery this time, so it was up the carpeted stairs, face-to-face with the stuffed giraffe, then face-to-face with female nudity on the landing in the form of Brigitta Gaylard’s final series in her Boudoir board trilogy of photographic art. It was amusing to see how uncomforable people were with being confronted with nudity in a confined space and people were less interactive with these boards as they were the the two previous series, which were displayed on the pavement outside.
For this, The Glamour Series, Brigitta styled herself in reference to works of art by Gustav Klimt and Schiele, “sexual voyeurs of the female body”. Images of the artist reclining on luxurious fabrics, the colour gold predominating, had the artist’s own poetry stencilled onto the larger-than-life photo-boards. The series is all about the female subject in art, the male gaze, the productive channelling of sexual energy, sex as a form of spiritualism, motherhood and the process of self-acceptance as a sexual being. Read more about Brigitta and the motivation for her work here.
A very large screen displaying a visual piece by Roger Miller towered above the top of the stairs. One of the gallery rooms had been transformed into an unstructured jamming venue, with musicians from various backgrounds jamming in front of a screen of visuals by Rike Sitas, fast becoming on of the hottest names in the local art scene. This was like peeping into a private party, lots of bopping going on.
(Musicians included: Quincy Fynn, David and Elbi (?)from the Big Idea who pleased the crowds at this year’s Splashy; Ngeza and Sazi Dlamini; Richard Ellis; Portia Malunga from Rouge; Sam and Daniel Sheldon and a Dlamini brother who turned up with a flute…)
Fashion by the students graduating from the Linea Fashion Academy was on show, and models strutted their stuff to a very thin crowd outside…
Another tediously symbolic but mildly visually appealing performance piece included two dancers, one in all black clothes, body paint and wig, the other in all white clothes, body paint and wig moving on a chessboard of sorts.
This did not attract nearly the same interest as …The Ants Room!!!!
What fun. A room with a maze-like entrance made out of boxes. Bowls filled with sugar and plastic ants and three screens with visuals devoted to the theme of ants: drawn animations by Sinead and kaleidescopic images by I don’t yet know who!
Truly mesmerising. A comic performance piece gave the work a refreshingly light touch.
The crowd were contained better at this Red Eye, with people either acting as town criers or subtly spreading the word of the next performance by moving from group to group.
A drama piece made up of three monologues by a drama student and two graduates from the University of KZN looked at life as a SAFFA in London. The crowd seemed to enjoy this; a change from the usual dance pieces.
Then the real party began, with Deluxe up first, followed by Big Idea; Rouge; Habit to and DJ Scissorhands.
Well done to the artists who curated this Red Eye, which had a younger, edgier feel and moved away from what was becoming a bit of a ‘Red Eye formula’. I still feel that there could be a little more advertising of the event, though.
