Rich Associations Inform and Test : Art Review by Prof. Terrence King. The Natal Witness, Monday, July, 24, 1995, pp. 11
RICH in associations and puzzling metaphors, these twin exhibitions will reward the visitor who wishes to ask questions. These questions will not, however, always be answered very directly by the works, for much of the purpose of the exhibitions is to encourage viewers to understand that they, too, bring some meaning to a work of art; that meaning is not all embedded in the work, waiting to be sprung free by an act of interpretation.
The Dasartists, young South African artists with a recent American addition, work in a robust, confident way in a variety of media and materials. Their work is stylistically individual, and each member's work has clearly recognisable qualities. But there are also features which bind their work and justify the frequency with which they exhibit together. Chief among these linking features are their attitudes to materials and the uncompromising physicality of their constructions.
Their materials, which range from conventional paints to sheets of discarded metal and salvaged pieces of planking, frequently have a history of previous use, often in an industrial context. And this provides one of the clues to the provocative and perplexing juxtaposition of thundering, brash constructions with well behaved Victorian paintings, which is what characterises the upstairs installation component of the exhibition
By purposefully leaving in place several of the paintings from the Tatham's Victorian Collection, reflective comparisons are invited with the large, dramatic Dasartist works which occupy and command much of the central floor space. Some of the points made by the juxtaposition will be obvious. The Victorian paintings encourage comfortable contemplations, whereas the substantial floor-bound sculptures require real participation by the spectator. The Victorian paintings have a sense of placement and order about them; the sculptures appear coarse, transient and precarious in their construction. Victorian painting suggests the permanence of all things, especially the social order; yet here the Dasartists tell us how unstable familiar things are and how rapidly our understandings of material culture can be subverted.
There are also some subtler points of comparison in the installation, and these are areas in which greater individual response and inventiveness on the part of the viewer is likely to play a part in teasing out the works' import.
Industrialization, the use, reuse and abuse of standardised materials and the complex sociologies of new urban communities were all matters of great moment in Victorian times, and yet the painting of the period is, by and large, quite detached from such concerns. The Dasart sculpture does, however, engage issues such as these and, at the same time, suggests strikingly sensory alternatives to the dryly narrative ways of evoking mental images which many of the Victorians favoured. Heat, movement, sound, tensile relationships and the colour of light are some of the raw materials employed by the Dasart group in addition to the range traditionally available to the sculptor. The scope of the metaphors used in the work is equally expansive, stretching as it does from problems of the provision of basic shelter to the accumulated debris of advanced technology. In this way too, the Dasartists' Victorian installation interacts tellingly with its objects of reference, 19th century English academic painting.
Familiarity with the conventions of representational painting will, ironically, probably make the Victorian work more immediately accessible for many visitors. But some inquisitiveness should soon show how the Dasart installation is rooted in current, thorny debates about art and its interdependence with social structures.
If the Victorian paintings provide a generalised lever toward understanding the upstairs installations, the works in the lower gallery need to be rather differently considered as there are fewer points of connection here and consequently a greater emphasis on the individual authority of each work. Focusing on single pieces in this way reveals perhaps inevitably, some unevenness in the works. But the overarching impression is again of an admirable consistency of aim and seriousness of inquiry.
Many of the inquiries undertaken centre on the idea of barriers, or shields, and ways in which they may be penetrated. This is sometimes conveyed by images of hands. As well as the associations which things fractured and fragmented conjure up. The means to answering these inquiries are via the long established routes of constructed and assembled sculpture and more or less three-dimensional wall-hung pieces.
Particularly arresting in the downstairs gallery are some of David Andrew's rawly painted domestic images and Michael Matthews' rudely fashioned containers. Michael Moloney's drawn in steel works, Ashley Johnson's stress on suspension, fragility and the temporality of synthetic and natural materials alike, add sympathetically to the cohesiveness of the whole exhibition. Greg Steele's formally organised grids demonstrate an alert sense of surface and detailing, and Stephen Burn's corner installation plays intriguingly on the process of transmitting and reflecting light and colour.
What this adds up to is a collective contribution by the Dasartists to an exhibition which coheres excellently, informs and tests our sensibilities and demonstrates once more how receptive are the generous spaces of the Tatham to an astonishing variety of artworks.
