Lisa Brice at the Goodman Gallery
by Michael Smith
The early 90s were heady times for SA art. The dire political and social circumstances in which the country found itself resulted in many young artists favouring issue-driven approaches over more personal lines of artistic exploration. For a while, preoccupations with identity politics, latter-day feminism, and the intrusion of violence into previously untouched social spheres were the order of the day. Occasionally an artist with a pointed sense of humour and satire showed up, allowing us to remember, amidst all the hand wringing, the inescapable absurdity of the situation we'd collectively created. Lisa Brice was such an artist.
Brice made something of a name for herself at that time with works that captured the emotional fallout and crime-fuelled paranoia of a disillusioned rainbow nation. This prolific young artist's work soon started cropping up in major collections around the country. The powerful topicality of her content made her audience sit up and take notice, and Brice's cool detachment from her highly emotive subjects lent her work authority and maturity. [The accuracy of her social observations first became clear to me through an incident in 1997, on a visit to the second Johannesburg Biennale. A group show in which she was partaking, called 'Smokkel' (Afrikaans for 'smuggle' or 'steal'), featured an installation by Brice that dealt extensively with crime and paranoia. The night after the show opened, its venue, an old shop situated about halfway between the Museum Africa and the Electric Workshop in Newtown, was broken into and relieved of its audio-visual equipment.]
Brice continued to work in an issue-based manner until the late 90s, when her work slowly began to evolve beyond the constraints that such directly didactic artmaking had imposed. Numerous workshops and residencies in Trinidad and a residential relocation to London immersed Brice in an altogether different paradigm, and enabled her to make contact with new groups of cultural practitioners who were to profoundly influence her development. In particular, she cites as influential her experiences of the Studio Film Club, a group that held film screenings, and which put her into contact with artists like Peter Doig and Che Lovelace. The advice of an older Trinidadian artist, Embah Bahaba, though, seems to have galvanised her most recent efforts into an articulate new visual language. This is as far away as possible from her so-called 'object paintings', as typified by 1997's Jetmaster Couple. Brice states that Bahaba insisted '(I) invade my own privacy somehow'. The results are startling.
Brice has returned to SA briefly to show a strong series of paintings called 'Night Vision'. This title is an obvious reference to the 'night vision' mode on a digital camera, from which her source material for this series is culled. The exhibition title contains a second level of meaning that becomes apparent as one wanders around the gallery. The works on show have a spectral quality, in places recalling El Greco's rendering of the count's soul in The Burial of Count Orgaz. The phrase 'night vision' begins to take on a quasi-religious tone, as if these could plausibly be paintings of apparitions.
Upon reading the blurb for the show in Art South Africa's listings last year, I expected paintings about pixels, works dealing with the mediated nature of the digital image, à la Dan Hays or Miha Strukelj. But instead, Brice has alchemised the digital images into paintings that are as ghostly as they are personal. Her recent visits to Trinidad stirred up memories of time spent there during childhood, and thus these images function as conduits to a past, with all the looseness and illegibility of recalled moments, remembered interactions.
For all the presence of technology in the realisation of these works, Brice never loses sight of the painterly process. Throughout, the physical properties of the medium are subtly explored, in a manner not unlike the way Doig uses the physical to reference the metaphysical and emotional. In particular, three large and compelling works, Wilderness (all works 2005), Garden and SFC, positively activate the main space of the gallery. The inclusion of many smaller, less finished works on the show points to Brice's desire to reveal and explain her working process. And while the show could have benefited from just a bit of editing, Brice's and Goodman's curatorial strategy certainly seems to have been financially sound.
As one leaves the show, the sheer volume of good work remains as a lasting impression. After a five-year hiatus from showing in SA, Brice certainly seems set to enrapture her local audience. I know it's early in the year to be making predictions, but for a show of new work by an artist under 40, this one's going to take some beating in 2006.
Opened: January 21
Closes: February 11
Goodman Gallery
163 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood
Tel: (011) 788 1113
Fax: (011) 788 9887
Email: goodman@iafrica.com
Hours: Tues - Fri 9.30am - 5.30pm, Sat 9.30am - 4pm
