Box (1967/75, reconstruction 2009) is one of many strong works on Clark’s suggestively-titled ‘Sing into my Mouth’ show. Rejecting the traditional, monogamous curatorial theme for this show, Clark employed a process of free association in her choice of works. As such, the process of viewing the show is also one of discovery; a treasure hunt of sorts, in which one has to follow the clues laid out by Clark in her written notes, simultaneously untangling the complex web of relationships of the artists to curator.
In the case of Box, the relationship between artist and curator becomes central to its reading, in this context. The work, which Nankin explains, ‘was never about condoms’, but which did make use of their contradictory connotations of sterility and sensuality, becomes thoroughly ironic when one considers that Nankin is actually Clark’s father. The exhibition invitation is a photograph taken of Clark as a toddler, gazing up at the contraption, about which Clark has written to her father, ‘There was always a poignant irony in the image of me (small) gazing up lovingly at the condom-box. Perhaps if you had worn one, I wouldn’t have been here.’
Sterility and fecundity crop up again in Anja de Klerk’s Hoping for Quick Compost (2008), a glass vitrine, densely packed with rotting, perspiring leaves and somewhere, allegedly, a single ruby. At a walkabout given by Clark, a concerned Matthew Partridge points out a shongololo, crawling along the inside of the glass; a creature who, given the piece’s long-past production date, must have hatched, and will also probably die inside the closed system of ‘incubation and decay’ (Clark’s notes 2009).
Barend de Wet’s die regte piel vir thandi (2009) also mirrors this sylvan fecundity. Towering above head height, de Wet’s figure is constructed from a broad tree trunk, painted with flesh-toned enamel and sprouting broken bottles and an oversized, equally violent looking penis. The piece is a reproduction of one which Clark saw at de Wet’s opening in 1986, as an eleven year old. The new version is significantly larger than the original, ‘to mimic – says Barend – my childhood experience’ (Clark 2009). Re-exhibited through Clark’s eyes, the new work reads as a meditation on coming of age, and first contact with adult male sexuality; the original meaning obscured by the piece’s re-casting through the eyes of a Clark on the cusp of puberty.
Placed adjacent to de Wet’s work, Mandy Lee Jandrell’s naughty New Utopia (2007) works suggest a similar process of natural sexual exploration and deviance. Digitally collaged, the images of lush indoor parks, and exotic, but regulated parks are occupied by figures drawn from ‘dogging’ websites, showing individuals having sex in public places.
Elsewhere, Douglas Gimberg’s Plain Gold Ring (2009) offers the possibility of a similarly open sexual encounter. A wedding band cast with a gap in its structure, it constitutes Gimberg’s proposal for a commitment to a thoroughly open relationship; one which does not forbid any kind of behaviour, no matter how promiscuous, debauched or offensive. In accompanying texts, Gimberg postulates that given complete freedom, one would not feel the need to be unfaithful, thereby guaranteeing faithfulness, a twist which turns the work from blunt cynicism to just a hint of sentimentality.
Gimberg’s meditation is positioned adjacent to Pieter Hugo’s JULIA CLARK, CAPE TOWN, 2001 (created 2001, printed 2009) a nude portrait shot, of the curator, taken by her then-lover, the now-(in)famous Pieter Hugo. In her accompanying text, Clark reveals that she always felt somewhat aggrieved at her relinquishing of control of the images of her body, and was ‘vulnerable, grumpy and resistant’ to taking her top off. With the addition of these notes, Clark essentially changes the meaning of the work. What was once potentially exploitative - an easy-on-the-eye Clark, posing placidly - becomes a chance for the curator to expose the necessarily exploitative relationship between photographer and subject, and hence re-author Hugo’s work as her own.
Ultimately, all of the works have been altered by Clark’s re-showing and re-contextualising of them. Just as Barend de Wet’s piece has been physically altered - to re-create Clark’s apprehension of it as an eleven year old – all the works have been remade through Clark’s eyes.
This is something which actually occurs in all curated shows (albeit generally more subtly), and is not necessarily a criticism. Clark is also certainly conscious of it. Commenting on Jimmy Robert’s Painful Singularities (2007), she suggests that the book, which overwrites the original meanings of a series of found photographs with Robert’s own whimsical captions, actually mirrors her act as curator.
Ultimately, as many have commented, ‘Sing into my Mouth’ is less of a curatorial exercise, than a work in its own right. Clark has merely used art objects as her raw materials, building them up into a grand ‘relational model’ which demonstrate her long-standing concerns in relationships, nostalgia and sentimentality. As she admits in a walkabout of her show, despite her attempts to maintain an open process of curatorial decisions, relationships certainly emerged as the theme. Rather like Gimberg’s marriage to complete freedom perhaps, the result of the pledge to curatorial promiscuity ironically elicited faithfulness to, rather than deviance from, a theme.
Nevertheless, this is a strong show; filled with intriguing works, and revealing anecdotes; a far more rewarding curatorial jaunt than the many of the shows produced by ruthlessly objective, unimpeachable curators.
