Raymond Smith, Philip Barlow and Liza Grobler at the AVA
By Kim Gurney
Raymond Smith's 'Armchair Traveller' is the first installation to greet viewers in the Long gallery. Smith takes the riempie chair and repeats it several times in sandcast aluminium, the chairs positioned side-by-side in a long row. Each has the riempies replaced with a different medium: drum rope for the chair from Nairobi, brown leather for Harare and black neoprene for Paris.
The humble chair has been the subject of much intervention ever since Marcel Duchamp transformed the lot of the everyday object. This installation recalls strongly Joseph Kosuth's One and Three Chairs. Kosuth's display of an actual chair, a text definition of a chair and an image of a chair questioned art and representation.
'Armchair Traveller', while visually interesting and clearly skillfully created, stops short of a significant enough intervention. The chairs still allude strongly to their 100-year-old original, which is exhibited as part of the installation, and the alteration to their presence seems little more than cosmetic.
The concept is intriguing, however. Smith says the riempie chair is to an extent a symbol of his own culture or tribe, 'an object of craft or design which presents an opportunity to deconstruct, reinterpret and reassemble'. He says in this process of unraveling, there is an opportunity to reassess heritage. But the final artwork could perhaps go further in its reconstruction to achieve its own aims.
Space, place, indigenous idioms and context are considered central to Smith's practice as an interior architect and designer, and this exhibition once again displays those familiar concerns.
In the Main gallery, Philip Barlow returns to the AVA with his unique style of painting in 'Waiting for the Son'. His luscious canvases show a delight with experiments in rendering light and shadow through figures passing by in bustling street scenes. His visible brushstrokes in the foreground and creamy subdued tones interspersed with bright oranges and red hues are very seductive.
His paintings are all rendered slightly out of focus. The effect is at first quite disconcerting: leaving you feeling suddenly bereft of your glasses. But your eyes are forced to relax into a kind of stare, as if gazing out of a window. The forms take on an entirely different aspect, as if glimpsed from the window of a moving car.
Barlow says of his own work that his challenge lies in trying to paint an encounter that some have never experienced, '(A)bout One who surrounds me and dwells within me'. His technique is apt in the sense that it goes beyond the purely visual and forces the viewer someplace else to a brilliant world of hazy forms and reflections, drenched in illumination.
Upstairs, Liza Grobler exhibits a series of drawings in mixed media. A great sense of humour is evident throughout. This is achieved mostly through the juxtaposition of text that at times works well but is at other times incongruous.
Italian Visitors is a beautifully rendered female figure diving into a pool that conjures up an ethereal atmosphere without the superfluous text alongside: 'Passed it off as though it was not herself but an anonymous Italian visitor living a life of guilt-free excess'. Yet perhaps Grobler uses it ironically. In I may not be smart, Grobler writes: 'I hate it when so-called artists write on their drawing �'.
The existentialist angst evident in many of the works is something many viewers will be able to relate to. It is balanced with a playfulness and a kind of schoolground naiveté as in Play with Me. In Two Minds, where a scowling young girl stands in a puddle with a storm cloud brewing over her head, has a cartoon-like caricature appeal.
Grobler shows the same quirkiness, somewhat toned down, that was apparent in her first AVA solo last year, 'I can't see the wood for the trees, so I'm taking a line for a very long walk'.
A couple of Grobler's more minimalistic drawings, like A Pause, are very beautiful in their simplicity. The metatext of this entire series is partly about Grobler's relationship and subsequent marriage. Seen through that lens, such drawings are particularly eloquent.
Opens: January 24
Closes: February 12
AVA, 35 Church Street, Cape Town
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