Exhibition Irma Stern gallery, 12 December 2009 – 16 January 2010
In this exhibition I have drawn from work originating in previous series:
“No trace of vertigo”, “Affectionately yours”, “This is where we meet”, Series 3a, 3b and 3c.
In this work I stripped some of my woven drawings and some of my painted canvases and wove them or folded them into images of clothes. I made mixed media images on paper from some of them which led me to more and more images of clothing. These I refer to as Notions of being.
The images of clothing talk about what people do, who they are, how we dress ourselves, how the cloth is made, the spirit or intention of making and wearing….These images make figurative associations which may lead the imagination of the viewer into bigger pictures and memories (Perhaps of cut out dolls; or dress making; or a character described in a book….). They are not inhabited because I would like you to imagine who would wear them; I imagine some of them have been worn; I have seen them on friends or family or in books, rituals, dreams, in shop windows, ready to be bought and transformed by the new occupant. I am interested in the way they “talk” to each other.
A notional world is an interaction between the image I carry and its collision with events out there. These pieces, all made on the same format, are like postcards or pattern covers.
Included in this exhibition is a short video of Alexandra Learmont wearing 13 of the original clothing objects. It was made by Alex Learmont in the studio with the paintings that grew out of these notions. Alexandra is transforming the notions we have of the cloths and the notions she has of herself when wearing them. She is transforming the objects and the objects are transforming her. Some of the folded canvas images then became collaged canvases and the paper work is three dimensional.
The act of painting, mixing colour, the rhythm and the poetry are as important as the “things” painted. Painting is an image in itself; it has an objective existence of its own. It does not need to contain an object and does not need to represent any thing. As a painter I seek the inner life of the painting. It may simply be a place in time where the viewer if anything may attach a dream! The painting is the something not necessarily about something. The work of some abstract impressionists and some rock art have influences my practice and approach.
Virginia Woolf mentions “moments of being” in her autobiographical writing called “Sketch from the past”. She recalls some of her earliest memories and suggests that the sensations held by memory can be so strong that they are more real than the present. This can also happen in a dream. Sometimes the present seems so unimportant and is so easily forgotten, just a notion, but in reflection or recollection the images recalled are so powerful. (As if you have sent yourself a postcard and put it in a pocket, when you rediscover it you sense and feel and remember the place and time vividly.)
As colour moves on a format, a river running has a river bed: the eye resonates with the surface, colour, the rhythm and patterning. There is the natural changing, hardening and softening of the light, in time. This becomes the narrative for me. Light falls across surfaces and shows us half tones and spaces within various time frames and shadows.
The paintings, referred to as Moments of Being, ask the viewer to immerse the eyes with colour and surface, to swim lightly, in and out, up and down, back and forth in the line and tone, rhythms’ and poetry of the image. These are moments with feelings of resonance, the ability to reconcile the unexpected and familiar. The familiarities of the world around us are notions we have that are transformed by memory and imagination, time and place and suffused with the immanence of now against a backdrop of eternity.
Jill Trappler
Notions of being/Moments of being
12 December 2009 – 16 January 2010
Opening: Saturday 12 December 2009 at 11am
Opening Speaker: Marilyn Martin
Join us for a walkabout with Jill Trappler on Saturday the 19th of December at 11am and Saturday the 9th of January at 11am.
UCT Irma Stern Museum, Cecil Road, Rosebank
www.irmastern.co.za
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