An uncertain encounter outside a corner shop
April 2013, Parts & Labour, Johannesburg
A painting is made through a materially embedded thinking process. In this exhibition, however, I had some questions for myself: What can painting offer when we think about the everyday? If a painting does not really contain knowledge itself, does a painting offer something else when thinking about an interaction in the world? When paintings come together in an installation, can those built relationships make us re-evaluate an experience, or help us understand it more? Or does it create something far removed from the encounter that it is based on? An arrangement within different parameters, and with another set of possibilities.
This exhibition expanded an ordinary experience through a grouping of paintings. While working on this exhibition, I was thinking back to a moment in a street in Johannesburg. Ordinary moments, though, can be filled with quite a lot of things. This is what I remember: There was a small stream flowing over the pavement. It was making a puddle around a clogged drain. There was a TV which could be heard from inside a building. There was an excited voice, followed by people cheering. On the street some men in overalls were looking at the engine of an old Mercedes. The windows of the mechanical workshop were shuttered with metal plating painted blue. Behind the workshop, a building was visible reaching upwards. A couple of kids in school uniforms were walking. There were some road workers digging a hole in the road. Someone was selling some sweets, fruit, beads and cigarettes.
