September 01, 2005 - September 30, 2005
Forcefield
My contribution to Forcefield, a group exhibition with Sheila Flynn, Cheryl Gage, and Monique Rudman
[van Rooyen])
2005 Gordart Gallery Johannesburg
Exhibition catalogue with expanded artist's statement HERE
Artist’s statement
The
themes of this print narrative lie in the changing cycles of nature, the flow
and ebb of human relationships, and the awareness that intimacy takes on a
shifting shape rather than a fixed state. I visualised that the seven artworks
would be installed as a circular installation without a specific beginning or
end, to be entered into and engaged with at any point as a metaphor for the non-linear path that most
relationships follow.
Predominantly each image depicts a
rose which often symbolises romance in popular culture. Yet this symbol holds
an underlying tension due to the coexistence of the rose’s velvet petals with
the sharpness of its thorns. Before making the forcefield prints, I had planted and tended for a small new rose
garden, photographing and sketching the various stages in the roses’ life
cycles of growth and dying down. The most significant seven stages became
budding, the opening bloom then full bloom, the overblown rose followed by
decay on the stem, the pruning process, and then composting or the feeding for
new growth.
These stages have been reinforced in
the imagery by including fragments of text from seven readings of the humanist
philosophy of I Ching. These
parallel each depicted stage of the cycle of the rose garden: return/awaken;
expand/harmony; exuberant/harvest; sacrifice/decrease; exhaustion/disheartened;
stripping/cut away; waiting/preparation.
My intention was that this series of
works acknowledge the interrelationship of the cycles of life: the
inevitability of change, the certainty that one stage will follow another
regardless of our attempts at interference, and that we have no choice but to
live with this knowledge.
Acknowledgements
The
following sources were used to research my topic and provide quotes in the
artworks:
Beuster,
J. 1991. The Jungian Construct
Synchronicity, with special reference to The I Ching. Pretoria.
Blok,
F. 2000. The I Ching: Landscapes of the
Soul. Amsterdam: Blozo Products.
Karcher,
S. 2002. Symbols of Love. London:
Little, Brown and Company.
