Alison Kearney and Emily Stainer @ Goodman
We forgot to let you know about this bewitching expo earlier this month – it’s running for another two weeks so get there!
The Goodman Gallery is pleased to host a new body of work by two young South African artists from the 19th January to 9th of February 2008. This exhibition comprising new works in various media by Alison Kearney and Emily Stainer opens at noon on Saturday 19th January, on this day the gallery will have extended hours from 09h30 to 17h00.
Alison Kearney is a South African artist interested in issues to do with the contexts of art production and display, as well as issues to do with how value is determined in culture. Within Kearney’s current art production, she explores the role of the audience in making meaning and contributing to the creative process when engaging with conceptual artworks, using a combination of mixed media, installation, and photography.
In her most recent exhibition titled About Context, An exploration of Value in Four Parts [November 2006], Kearney asked audience members to participate in a performance work by bringing objects to exchange with her ad other participating audience members. The purpose of this public exchange was so that she would ultimately have a collection of objects to work with that she did not choose. The starting point for this exhibition is an engagement with, and documentation of the objects Kearney received.
Kearney’s current interest is informed by her early works, which interrogate the institutions of art as institutions that to a large extent determine cultural value and influence cultural production, through parody of some museum practices. Included in this interrogation is an engagement with theories around public art through the construction of monuments which challenge the conventions around monuments through their subject matter, and also through the scale and the materials used.
Emily Stainer is a South African artist and art historian, working in watercolour, mixed media and installation. Stainer was educated at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. The body of work that Stainer has created for this exhibition entitled Cautionary Tales, alludes to those popular nineteenth century children’s tales that sought to warn children about the perils inherent in life. In ‘Struwwelpeter’ (1845) by H. Hoffman there is a contradiction between the comic verses and the abhorrent punishments meted out to the characters. There is something paradoxical about the rhymes’ delight in cruelty and in their concern for the welfare of the child. The fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm include many stories of young people abandoned, kidnapped and sometimes even murdered. The perpetuation of this abuse is apparent in current newspaper articles, and this is why a book such as ‘Struwwelpeter’ still resonates with us today. Emily Stainer’s latest work is structured to display these elements of contradictions and ambiguous shifts: the world of childhood games and fantasy play versus the domain of adult knowledge and sexual corruption. The mechanical cages suggest the security of the Victorian nursery disturbed by shadows and taboos.
Stainer’s watercolours depicting meat / eyes / dolls’ limbs on platters play on the tension between predator and prey, eating and being eaten. The consumption of food and the taboos associated with that consumption have always been a topic of popular stories. In the original Charles Perrault’s ‘Little Red Ridding Hood’ the wolf really does gobble up the little girl. And the infamous London barber, Sweeney Todd actually turns his human victims into meat pies in popular mythology.
The works making up Cautionary Tales display curious items, including found and composed objects, which present contradictory ideas of the playful and sinister. Both the ceramic legs in the cages and the strange objects on the plates introduce strong aspects of the uncanny. And it is this aspect of the uncanny, which most defines Stainer’s work.
This exhibition will open on Saturday 19th January 2008 and closes on the 9th February 2008.
For further information please contact us on (Tel) 011 788 1113, (Fax) 011 788 9887, Email:editions@goodman-gallery.com or browse our website: www.goodman-gallery.com
Gallery hours: Tuesday – Friday 09h30 to 17h30; Saturday 09h30 to 16h00
