Norval Foundation
22.05 - 15.09.2024
For its third iteration, Lady Skollie’s Groot Gat exhibition commanded the space of Norval Foundation’s upstairs gallery, and my undivided attention from the moment I walked into this new corner of the artist’s world. Lady Skollie’s signature visual of bold, curving linework, colour and deistic figurative focus embraced scale in a manner that aligned beautifully with the sentiment of this collection.
Groot Gat is titled as an homage to a freshwater cave in Kimberley, also known as Boesman’s Gat. In doing so, the artist contextualises her navigation of the liminal spaces of loss inherited by the lack of connection between generations of Black, Brown and Indigenous people, and their ancestors. “The cave was considered to be a sacred space for the indigenous community who used it as a fishing site and a space for rituals. Since being seized by colonialists, it has lost its original purpose,” read the Foundation’s exhibition statement, detailing the relentless aftermath of colonisation and white supremacy interrogated here in the form of the systemic erasure of these cultures and their communities … while acting as an obstruction to the power of their spiritual and creative expressions.
Installation View | GROOT GAT. 2024. Photography by Amber Alcock. Courtesy of Norval Foundation.
Along with this exhibition, Everard Read Gallery also made space for a complementary installation enclosing one of their Cape Town gallery spaces. There, additional wall features pushed forward as cave formations onto which related animations of the artist’s works were projected. The jagged facade added literal dimension to Groot Gat’s ongoing reimagining. Lady Skollie’s work offers a redefinition of what is deemed sacred by holding these ideas of divinity together with the brevity of human life in the conversation of her canvases —and the magnitude of each one’s nuances— with variations of humour, spirit and instinct. The immeasurable loss of knowledge and access to self-affirming insight destroyed through colonisation creates massive chasms across the matters of identity, inheritance, cultures and belief structures. Among these liminalities —and in the wake of their limitations— the artist created moments to sit with a variety of stories that have surfaced in the room left behind where many of us wait, yearning to know more. Using what is known to forge into the unknown, Lady Skollie’s work brings brio to the adventure of remembrance.
Lady Skollie, DADA COEX’AE QGAM GUARDING THE MOUTH OF THE CAVE WHILE PAINTING THE FUTURE, GROOT GAT. 2024. Photography by Amber Alcock. Courtesy of Norval Foundation.
Regarding who and what is known, a figure emerges to the foreground of the fantastical realm … the likeness of artist Coex’ae Qgam, also known as Dada. Qgam’s artworks were known to play a significant role in the representation of her community’s connection to their land, their lives and spirituality. Dada’s presence in Lady Skollie’s work, and especially the instance of this narrative that won the artist the 2022 Standard Bank Young Award for Visual Arts, is indicative of the importance of ‘alternative archives’ and their record keepers. In honouring Dada, Lady Skollie also honours herself, and audiences alike, encouraging a collective recollection. Having an authentic conversation about the archive means having a broader perception of the archivist, especially when they themselves are the artist, as well. I deeply appreciate the sense of self the present-day artist insists into her work at these critical junctures of historical relevance and conceptualisation, among the quips of titles like, LOOK DADDY! I’M A SNOEK!, and WAYLAYING BUCK DRINKING AT A POOL TO GEORGE STOW BUT TO ME IT’S ELAND JUMPING INTO A PUSSY PAINTING SITUATED ON THE WAKU RIVER NEAR WINDVOGELBERG.
Lady Skollie, DALA WAT JY MOET (DO WHAT YOU MUST), GROOT GAT. 2024. Photography by Amber Alcock. Courtesy of Norval Foundation.
Lady Skollie’s formwork of fire-toned hues of gold, red and orange make a collection of hairy bellies, and clawed limbs, serpentine swarms and congregations. Above the head of a curious candelabra-bearing seeker in DALA WAT JY MOET (DO WHAT YOU MUST) hung the titular words. In a rarer occurrence of monochromatic ink work on paper, the work’s composition included a levitating forearm with a fire-tipped finger at the entryway of the gallery space, and what one can assume is the mouth of the dark cave for its subject/seeker as they enter Lady Skollie’s fantasy, too. There is something underlying this moment of closeness in language between Kaapse colloquialisms and the spiritual guide that summarises the project’s contemporary and communal intention to me. The phrasing overlaying this connection and the innate understanding it communicates between seeker and guide feels precious, and right. We should be able to use today’s tongues to summon yesterday and tomorrow. Of course we should. On the opposite end of the exhibition entryway lay a tea-stained page containing the artist’s youthful cursive recounting an imagined arrival alongside the Dutch colonialist fleets, as instructed to her to be executed just so by her teacher in primary school. Even the spaces of our imagination are placed in jeopardy in instances such as these. The reach of the insidious, oppressive violence of white supremacy must be undone from all aspects. Ideating her journey of self-discovery in its broader context and political and historical configuration while confronting and refusing its limitations is a purpose that Lady Skollie’s works celebrate. Having fun, feeding her own fantasies is a vital part of this reclamation, too.
Lady Skollie, BAIT MIRROR, GROOT GAT. 2024. Photography by Amber Alcock. Courtesy of Norval Foundation.
Groot Gat and other such bodies of work provide us with alternative avenues to evade the way restrictive instincts, languages and their institutions have inhibited the identity formations of those of us who are still subjected to, and experience such erosive oppression tactics such as erasure and assimilation. It is also here where the audience to these works becomes the focal point: as the presenting space’s target audiences and the presentation’s target audience have the opportunity to meet one another … and explore these illuminations together, giving more life to the realm of the artist’s hand. The importance and evolution of such contemporary South African art archives lies in their role as a catalyst for future generations to determine and divine their histories for themselves. As such, I wish that this exhibition continues to travel and to cross the physical and mental borders of this country, and its people. Bringing us as an audience closer to our ancestors, and to ourselves.
Installation View | GROOT GAT. 2024. Photography by Amber Alcock. Courtesy of Norval Foundation.
