'Sweet Nothings' and 'Rugby vs. Soccer' at Bell-Roberts
By Kim Gurney
Romance is a theme that begs a tongue-in-cheek response and the four artists invited to participate in 'Sweet Nothings' do not disappoint. They all have something to say about how romance is privately disclosed, publicly presented, satirised, disregarded or indulged in.
Curator Sanell Aggenbach leads the way by extending her comfort zones into the photographic terrain using herself and her partner as models. The clichéd, ironic shots that she directs are based on a 1970s sunset-and-silhouette genre, which she combines with classical romantic poses. A large image of the couple walking on a beach, La Vie en Rose, is accompanied by smaller circular close-up shots, Le Sans Espoir.
The works are ironic and humorous. Aggenbach says the idea for the show came about while on residency in Paris, 'the city of love'. She was there alone among its romancing couples.
Aggenbach's lovelorn sentiments are reflected in Dorothee Kreutzfeldt's blown-up image of a single chair, which is plastered across one wall of the gallery. Kreutzfeldt also photographed single Love Chairs around Johannesburg that appear in the show's small accompanying catalogue.
Jillian Lochner, well known in the commercial industry for her photography, has produced a series of three photographs of a nude Barbie doll cavorting with an old-fashioned table leg in a harshly lit hotel lobby, called I LOVE YOU!.
The images are hallmark Lochner: confrontational, odd, funny and brazenly sexual. She describes herself as a purist who fights to keep things real - in her personal and commercial work - in a world increasingly embracing the fake. Her images are often confrontational. Reactions merely indicate what society does not want to face, she says.
Jean Brundrit's polaroid shadowgrams hang coupled in diptychs in the room next door. She has shot various objects - some instantly recognisable, others more obscure - inscribed as Sweet Somethings. The aim is to suggest deeper resonance on issues related to romance, yet the shadowgrams seem rather to revel in their attractive couplings.
Svea Josephy exhibits two very different series that combine image and text. Her polaroid emulsion lifts onto gold and silver leaf are smaller and more effeminate with their embossing and pencilled text in contrast to the three large prints alongside. Love, Sex, and Nature are almost repulsive in their slimy, organic fleshiness.
Upstairs, Pieter Badenhorst exhibits a series of photographs in his show called 'Rugby vs. Soccer', its theme a striking counterpoint to 'Sweet Nothings'.
The exhibition refreshingly lacks in testosterone-fuelled bravado. There are in fact no action photographs at all. Most of the images are either portraits of players before or after a game, sports fans, or landscapes that happen to include rugby or soccer poles, sometimes both.
An exhibition along such a defined theme can become quite trite. On the whole, Badenhorst rescues it from this danger through a sharp eye and surprising details that create a second, more complex, narrative.
Badenhorst says he found evidence as his two-year photographic project progressed, that both sports were the glue that held certain communities together. In the Western Cape in particular, rugby brought together groups that previously held each other at a distance.
One certainly gets a sense of the importance of rugby and soccer. The fields, empty of play, take on a ritualistic quality. They are generally in good condition, even in poor areas, with rubbish tolerated only up to their boundaries as in Bo-kaap Quarry. The hallowed field is a sacred ground. Only animals occasionally cross it - Nguni cattle graze on a field between Butterworth and Umtata while horses, donkeys, pigs and cows make separate appearances.
Images like Philadelphia, WC show combination soccer and rugby poles on a middle-ground field while a house with washing line dominates the foreground. Small details, like shoes drying on top of a water-tank, show intimate signs of life, though no actual people are visible.
Badenhorst uses perspective in interesting ways. The sky alone can take up two thirds of the image. And photographs like Outside Port St John's, where a meandering path leads up through grass and under soccer posts, have a lovely poetic quality to them.
The images are often powerful enough to make grand statements in the way of a stand-alone billboard. Yet the intense colour can at times appear too heightened, as in Green Mosque N2.
But that is the only technical distraction. Overall, 'Rugby vs. Soccer' is an intriguing glimpse into the lay of the land through the lens of sport.
Opens: February 9
Closes: March 5 ('Sweet Nothings'); March 14 ('Rugby vs. Soccer')
Bell-Roberts Gallery, 89 Bree Street, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 422 1100
Fax: (021) 423 3135
Email: suzette@bell-roberts.com
www.bell-roberts.com
