Group curated by Julia Meintjes
Image by Corné du Plessis
Anna Alcock’s tender image of two guardian angels cradling a child is a linocut. Each light mark is cut in from the surface of a block to avoid catching the black ink when the artist rolls ink across the block before pressing it onto the paper. There are only two tones available in linocut printing (the solid black – colour – and the cut-out light) and with these Alcock creates three-dimensions. The ‘two-tone challenge’ is perhaps more evident in Nthombembi Booi’s life-affirming linocut of a bulbous plant, in which Booi used a more limited range of mark–cutting and this gives the image a graphic quality. Black, however, is a colour – and James Olmesdahl layered it in many tones of thickly–applied paint, which glistens with the texture of the drying flowers and the changing light in the still life with shells. I’ve admired Clare Menck’s skill at painting light for many years – and the oval vignette of Eunice posed beside Clare’s first child’s bath (circa 2000) complemented the group, particularly because of its subject matter, and its connection to the objects I included, as well as to Polite Kambudzi’s mothers with children carrying water home. Just look at the face of the child on his mother’s back and how Kambudzi has shown that he is heavy!
There was February… and then, October! At JMFA we have missed our usual (pre–COVID) pace of putting works together to rub shoulders with one another. One of the most fulfilling aspects of our consultancy is telling stories and encouraging conversations by looking at art. We choose works which relate to the people who live with them, and support artists in whom we believe.
And so, in our bid to put us all in a positive place in the surreal year that is 2020 and bring you some stories, we have made our own groups:
- 8 groups of 8 works which we will release on our website, week by week, every Monday, for 8 weeks
- hung and photographed in friendly spaces to give you a sense of scale
- for the release week only, if you buy 2 or more, you will pay 8% less on the total cost of the works. You can, of course, purchase only one but you will be missing out on the discount.
Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us to enquire about the condition or to arrange to view the works at either our Cape Town or Johannesburg studio, depending on where they (and you!) are.