Listing(s)

'Booty'

Julia Rosa Clark at Whatiftheworld/gallery

LISTEN, I JUST WANT TO SAY THANKS.
SO, THANKS.
THANKS FOR ALL THE PRESENTS. THANKS FOR INTRODUCING ME TO THE CHIEF.
THANKS FOR PUTTING ON THE FEEDBAG.
THANKS FOR GOING ALL OUT.
 
I WISH THAT I WAS BORN A THOUSAND YEARS AGO,
THAT I'D SAIL THE DARKENED SEAS, ON A GREAT BIG CLIPPER SHIP,
GOING FROM THIS LAND HERE, TO THAT, IN A SAILOR'S SUIT AND CAP.

THIS MUST BE THE DAY THAT ALL OF MY DREAMS COME TRUE. SO HAPPY JUST TO BE ALIVE, UNDERNEATH THIS SKY OF BLUE.

I WILL RAISE MY HAND UP INTO THE NIGHT TIME SKY
AND COUNT THE STARS SHINING IN YOUR EYES.
 
WHERE I COME FROM IT'S A LONG THIN THREAD, ACROSS AN OCEAN, DOWN A RIVER OF RED.
JESUS DIED FOR SOMEBODY'S SINS, BUT NOT MINE.
 
ON A GATHERING STORM COMES A TALL HANDSOME MAN, IN A DUSTY BLACK COAT, WITH A RED RIGHT HAND.
SICK DOWN TO MY HEART, THAT’S JUST THE WAY IT GOES. I’VE SEEN THE FUTURE, BABY, AND IT’S MURDER.
 
THE BLIZZARD OF THE WORLD, HAS CROSSED THE THRESHOLD
AND IT’S OVERTURNED THE ORDER OF THE SOUL.
STACCATO SIGNALS OF CONSTANT INFORMATION. A LOOSE AFFILIATION OF
MILLIONAIRES, AND BILLIONAIRES AND, BABY.
 
‘WAY, HAUL AWAY, A’HEAD FOR STORMY WEATHER...OH HAUL AWAY, JOE. YES THERE’S A FIRE DOWN BELOW. AND AWAY, MY JOHNNY BOYS, WE'RE ALL BOUND TO GO!
 
TAKE HEED OF THE WESTERN WIND, TAKE HEED OF THE STORMY WEATHER AND, YES, THERE'S SOMETHING YOU CAN SEND BACK TO ME: SPANISH BOOTS OF SPANISH LEATHER.
 
IT'S A SKY-BLUE SKY. SATELLITES ARE OUT TONIGHT.
THERE’S NOT EVEN ROOM ENOUGH TO BE ANYWHERE. IT’S NOT DARK YET, BUT IT’S GETTING THERE.
SAIL ON, SILVERGIRL, SAIL ON BY. SUNSET WOMAN.
MIDNIGHT RAMBLER.
 
YOU’RE BEAUTIFUL BEYOND WORDS -YOU’RE BEAUTIFUL TO ME. YOU CAN MAKE ME CRY, NEVER SAY GOODBYE. AND I MISS YOU SINCE THE PLACE GOT WRECKED.
AND I JUST DON'T CARE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT. LOOKS LIKE FREEDOM, BUT IT FEELS LIKE DEATH.
IT'S SOMETHING IN BETWEEN, I GUESS.
IT’S CLOSING TIME.
 
I DON'T KNOW JUST WHERE I'M GOING, BUT I'M GONNA TRY FOR THE KINGDOM, IF I CAN.
EVERY VALLEY (EVERY VALLEY) SHALL BE EXALTED,
AND EVERY MOUNTAIN AND HILL MADE LOW.
 
THERE’S A WHITE DIAMOND GLOOM, ON THE DARK SIDE OF THIS ROOM, AND A PATHWAY THAT LEADS UP TO THE STARS. IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE THERE’S A PRICE
FOR THIS SWEET PARADISE, REMIND ME TO SHOW YOU THE SCARS.
 
I BROKE INTO THE TOMB, BUT THE CASKET WAS EMPTY. THERE WERE NO JEWELS, NO NOTHING - I FELT I’D BEEN HAD. THERE THEY LAY -I DAMN ME EYES- A LOOKOUT'S CLAPPED ON PARADISE,
ALL SOULS BOUND JUST CONTRARY-WISE.
 
OH, TO BE NOT ANYONE. GONE THIS MAZE OF BEING.
OH, TO OWE NOT ANYONE, NOTHING.
 
WHY WON'T YOU LOVE ME FOR WHO I AM, WHERE I AM?
HE SAID: 'CAUSE THAT'S NOT THE WAY THE WORLD IS BABY.
THIS IS HOW I LOVE YOU, BABY.
THIS IS HOW I LOVE YOU, BABY.
 
WORLD WITHOUT END, REMEMBER ME.

CREDITS IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE:
Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Laurie Anderson, Patti Smith, Nick Cave, Morrissey, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon, Traditional Sea Shanty, Traditional /Nick Cave, Traditional Sea Shanty, Bob Dylan, Laurie Anderson, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Dave Loggins, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Robert Louis Stevenson/ Young Ewing Allison, Isaiah 40:4, Patti Smith/ Lenny Kaye, Paul Simon, Laurie Anderson.

Whatiftheworld is pleased to present BOOTY by Julia Rosa Clark. Featuring new drawings and installation, this is the artist's fifth solo exhibition and follows her critically acclaimed exhibition Paradise Apparatus hosted at Whatiftheworld in 2010.

19 April 2012 - 26 May 2012

'The Truth Lies Here'

Dan Halter at Whatiftheworld/gallery

'The Truth Lies Here' is Dan Halter’s fourth solo exhibition. The show engages with notions of transmigration, the construction of ‘truths’, and the way in which things hold together and fall apart – the integration and disintegration of the fabric of the Zimbabwean Diaspora.

fab•ri•cate (verb)

1.     to make, build, or construct

2.     to devise, invent, or concoct (a story, lie, etc.)

3.     to fake or forge

08 March 2012 - 14 April 2012

'N1'

Dave Southwood at Whatiftheworld/gallery

David Southwood's 'N1' project originated in 2007 and uses the National Road One as an alibi for photographing a series of events, personalities and traces of habitation encountered while traveling between Cape Town and Beit Bridge on the border of Zimbabwe in the North.

Although the N1 is fraught with political, social and historical associations ‘The Road’ is delivered in a very spare and controlled fashion which tends to avoid the spectacular or obvious. The effect of the works is cumulative and the pervasive atmosphere is disconcerting because the photographs present this essentially mute piece of civil engineering as an awkward, often empty, public stage.The exhibition is accompanied by a limited edition hardcover publication .

08 March 2012 - 22 April 2012

'Fucking Hell'

Cameron Platter at Whatiftheworld/gallery

"Ever more petit bourgeois, consumerist, fascistic, the tele-stupefied country has lost all awareness of culture and language. It has lost all memory of itself, its history, its identity.” Vincenzo Consolo

"In a society where the majority wants to be a celeb and even leaders act like shallow celebrities, what we lack is a counter culture. Money and cool are worshipped, developing from the chaps who kill for cellphones so that they achieve cool by being feared and ability to buy lots of booze incrementally succeeding to cool by having the flashiest cars, apparel, women and booze.”  William Sithonga.

Whatiftheworld presents Cameron Platter’s Fucking Hell, an exhibition of new drawings.

Exploring a reality stranger than fiction, through fantasy, satire and subculture, Platter fills the ordinary and the marginal, with incendiary new meaning. Working from everyday experience with subjects overlooked or considered delinquent, sordid and lowbrow, he reconnoiters notions and concepts on the outside fringes of South Africa’s popular culture.

Platter’s highly edited, transitive, violent, personal, cynical, and abstract vision is communicated through the carefully chosen mediums of Chicken Licken, military history, CNN, death, Isandlwana, chaos, activism, The Arab Spring, gospel singers, ATM’s, Wolf Blitzer, political sloganeering, enlargement, empty guarantees, empty promises, nzumbes, horror films, advertising, unemployment, destitution, debt, credit, Kendra, sex classifieds, shemales, erotique fantasy, red boots, tattoos, dildos, Brenda Fassie, big boobs, loneliness, pornography, privacy, psychedelic dream sequences, miracle healing sessions, the power of happiness, nights of destiny, metaphysics, rainbows, transcendence, dolphins, shoes, penises, visionary manifestos, alternate belief systems, advanced extenders, Viagra, self improvement, the 6th and 7th dimensions, mind control, and self help guides.

These seemingly disparate, absurd and irreverent thoughts are exactingly, and painstakingly woven together to create an inter-galactic bricolage of contemporary morality.

Platter has added a further layer of complexity to his drawing practice, having embarked on his Apocalypse series; a projected ten-year series of 100 large scale documentary drawings. Thinking of these pencil on paper works as “Nomadic Murals”, as Le Corbusier considered tapestries, these drawings are a series of interlinking thoughts/ meditations, capturing the most fleeting moment as well as the most expansive scene, linked together to form a singular metanarrative.

01 December 2011 - 28 January 2012

'Fold'

Maja Marx at Whatiftheworld/gallery

'In looking at an object, we reach out for it. With an invisible finger we move through the space around us.'
Rudolf Arnheim
 
For her first solo exhibition with Whatiftheworld / Gallery, Maja Marx presents Fold - a selection of new paintings, drawings, objects and monotype prints. Her latest body of work is a study of disrupted surfaces and comprises an examination into the properties of text, line, flatness and depth. In her work, notions of the fold are explored through a fundamental process of modification. Marx purposefully disrupts the flatness of inscribed surfaces - by crumpling paper or folding cloth the inherent flatness of the surfaces become topographical dimensional volumes.

Marx’s works are meticulous studies of these affected surfaces; by painting them, or by tracing the warped gridlines on a folded sheet of stationery paper with thread, she maps these new topographies into a renewed flatness. In the folding or crumpling of text the inscribed surface becomes object, and the text abstracted and fragmented as it folds over ridges, or disappears into the depth of a fold. Legibility is hidden in the facets of the crumpled surface, but still these constructed topographies, like mountainous landscapes, are haunted by the lost legibility of texts, which only an imagined return to flatness could restore. In this manner Marx forces the viewer’s gaze to fluctuate between looking (as one would look at a painting), and reading (as one would read a text).

Inspired by the Renaissance convention of the Cartellino, (Italian for ‘little paper’), a small creased or folded piece of paper bearing an inscription that is painted to appear like a real piece of paper that looks as if it has been pasted on the surface of the painting itself, Marx’s paintings exaggerate this subtle illusionism. The multiple texts that she collects; from carefully selected quotes to mundane statements found on discarded bits of paper, are rendered into works that are at once optically dynamic, abstract painting surfaces, but are also secretive still life objects; objects that withhold their contents as they fold in on themselves.

08 October 2011 - 19 November 2011