'Land of Cockaigne'
Deborah Poynton at STEVENSON in JohannesburgDeborah Poynton's latest exhibition, her first at Stevenson's Johannesburg space, is titled 'Land of Cockaigne'.
The Land of Cockaigne was the medieval idea of a paradise of plenty. For Poynton, the act of painting is an attempt to enter this fantastical world - but in an unexpected way. As the artist writes:
'In the Land of Cockaigne every wish was granted. I have used this title not because I wanted to illustrate paradise, but because painting itself is that land of never-realised fulfillment. Every painting I do comes from the same need to inhabit this land, to create a sense of engulfment, of complete enclosure, to blind and deafen and numb myself through the senses in order to find some peace. I persist with the image until no uncertainty remains within it, and I am thus provided with the illusion of certainty.'
This exhibition consists of seven large paintings, each presenting a discrete world made up of different elements - figures, fabric, plants, objects. In each of the paintings, there is no horizon, no means of escaping the sensual detail which seems to engulf the onlooker.
04 April - 12 May
