La fête du Feu de la Saint-Jean: Centre d'art contemporain - la synagogue de Delme

For his exhibition << Voyages dans la mer perdue >> Matteo Rubbi invited me to invent some costumes based on the fantastical animals that the children created during workshops. These animals come from that wild undiscovered ancient world that lives in the imagination.  

Photo credits: Voyages dans la mer perdue, CAC – la synagogue de Delme, 2017. Photo: O.H.Dancy.

Dancing Urchin

Illustrations: Birds

Southern Yellow-billed Hornbill. Watercolours and pen on paper. 20 x 20 cm

Crimson-breasted Shrike. Watercolours and pen on paper. 20 x 20 cm

Hoopoe. Watercolours and pen on paper. 20 x 20 cm

Pearl-spotted Owlet. Watercolours and pen on paper. 20 x 20 cm

The Vertical Jungle; Salon Orizzonti Occupati - Vienna Secession

Here are some details and a close-up of my drawing that was in exhibition during Isola Art Center's salon in Utopian Pulse – Flares in the Darkroom. The drawing is part of a series of drawings and a story I wrote all under the title The Vertical Jungle. The prototype of the storybook have been in several exhibitions with Isola Art Center such as the exhibition 1:1 at MSUM in  Ljubljana. The book is being revised and improved, so more about that in the future.

(The photographs are not exactly the best, if anyone has some tips on how to photograph big drawings).

Unclaimed Grass at Isola Pepe Verde

Books

History in the making - Something I forgot to post months ago

History in the making was a workshop we did with the Austrian artist Peter Friedl. Not aimed at being an exhibition but more a play with images and the histories we invent or associate with them. You can read an article he wrote on the topic of history with the same title on E-flux.

My poster for History in the making. I wanted to make something that draws on my personal history but then also within a European context is something exotic, so I created a poster that is a little bit like decorative  tourist postcard or print with a recipe on it.

  Edith Porier

 Wei-Ning Yang

Leah Messersmith

Jess Rucinque

The art buying game.

A new project of mine. It is game based on a Monopoly game but placed within the art market.The objective is to buy all the artist work and thus gain monopoly over the art world.  

Progress and development 2012)

 

The picnic- this romantic idea of eating together, a social gathering in nature -  was used in 19^th century English novels as a literary space for  romantic gestures, revealing social inadequacies and personal revelations (Emma by Jane Austen comes to mind). The picnic then could also serve for the perfect space to reveal our own desires and inadequacies.   In the absence of nature the action of a picnic remains the same, everyone can bring something, to sit down outside, with the the basket, the blanket and the food, yet it might almost seem sad. Though at the same time plotting down a space in the city, sitting down on the sidewalk on the cement becomes a defiant action against the movement, the progress that the capitalistic city promotes.  More pictures of the picnic here. And of the event  In Su I Praa here.

IN SU I PRÀA - Press Release.

IN SU I PRÀA  is an event that brings works made by the young artists of the collective Room 47 in the public space of the city, the neighbourhood Isola in Milan. These works will be set up and exhibited only for one day, Sunday 6 May 2012, running along with the annual neighbourhood festival organised by the association Isola Pepe Verde.


IN SU I PRÀA is an invite to the inhabitants of Isola and to everyone who wishes to participate, to reclaim the public space from its current state of uselessness and anonymity.

Room 47 is a group of  participants in the world of arts that shares the experience of the masters in Visual Arts and Curatorial studies at N A B A  -  Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti Milano.

IN SU I PRÀA /R47  with the contribution of Bert Theis

Event coordinators and press office:  Claudia Caldara, Martina Valla

Text  :  Curatorial Team

Graphics :  Federica Clerici

To view more information go to Room 47 or like our Facebook page. Click here to view the location on google maps.

Old work: Profile

To see more information on the work Profile also go to my portfolio archive in 2010. 

New work: Assemble

The end of the world

I only realised after the quilt was finished the the N was the wrong way around after a friend pointed it out to me. How did I miss it?

Barbeque # 6, Cures for nostalgia

So here are a few pages from Barbeque #6, a fanzine by  MEME arte contemporanea, a gallery in Cagliari, Sardinia. Every issue is done by  a different artist. I did the sixth issue which was launched with the exhibition Un infuso per guarire by Laura Fonsa. Infuso per guarire translates into Infusion for curing. I made a book which included three of my favourite South African recipes as a cure for nostalgia. The work is actually super nostalgic and simple and perhaps a little bit too sentimental, but I like it. I  also like the possibility that these recipes could now be made in Sardinia.

Holiday Sardine

I took a much needed break in December, returning home to  South Africa. It involved staying with my family at the beach, seeing old friends and doing a little as possible. The only thing I did was this tiny little painting for my mother.

Work in progress: Quilt

Little illustration

The Black Crow

"Monument" a few days later

The thing about making public sculpture is that you are sure that someone will vandalise it. In our case we expected it to last only day. So of course I felt delighted to see the sunglasses  a few days later lying there like an old carcass.  

'Monument'

 by Edna Gee, Leah Corra Messersmith and Edith Poirier.

So finally after a few months of trying to find dates to work and so forth we have managed to finish this work.

This idea came out of workshop done with Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas at NABA where we were asked to work within the neighbourhood Ticinese in Milano. We were confronted with the idea of public sculptures which relates to collective memories of neighbourhoods. Ticinese today however is more of a passersby street then a socially interactive neighbourhood, or at least that is how we as foreign students relate to it. We all live around this area which connects us with the centre.  One of the things one sees  when passing through this neighbourhood is not a strong political inclination, but trendy people and street vendors selling these colourful sunglasses.  A lot of people here wear sunglasses, even inside.

These sunglasses are more or less 3 x 2 metres (slightly smaller) and are made out of plastic, cardboard, scotch tape and some wooden sticks to reinforce the structure. The cardboard we got from the local supermarket for which we did not pay a cent. Our biggest expenditure was the scotch tape. So here we have it a new monument for the neighbourhood, one which is held together by scotch tape. Come to think of it a lot of things here in Milano seem to be held together by scotch tape maybe that is why scotch tape is so expensive ;)

The process of us carrying the structure from NABA towards Piazza 24 Maggio, was almost for me the most wonderful part of the artwork. It turned out 2 people carrying one arm, the other arm by another 2, and 3 people carrying the big frame. We had to walk from Via Darwin all the way through Corso San Gottardo (which is quite a busy street) all the way to the piazza. So people saw first these two curious long arms coming by followed by the big frames – a kind of "what is this? Aha!" moment.

So the whole process was a little haphazard and sometimes difficult with us not having a space to work or money to buy materials (or a natural feel for structural complications) but I am quite happy with the result and the fleetingness of the end.

Thanks to Carlo Spiga, Jessica Rucinque, ZackWood and Mitch Wood for helping us carrying it and assembling it in the piazza.  And thanks to Edith and Leah for the collaboration, I would definitely do it again.

For more image click here.