MULTI-DISCIPLINED. CONCEPTUAL. ARTIST.
Art is my passion. Since I was a girl I never had a question in my mind that the visual arts would be my life. After focusing on my career as a graphic designer for 17 years (with art as the hobby), my focus on art has intensified and developed since immigrating to the shores of the Gold Coast in 2019.
I am driven by the conceptual creative process. Expressing thoughts, ideas, emotions and experience through the experimentation of a variety of mediums, sounds and expressions.
Unavoidably, my biggest artistic influence is my father. Through our many explorative adventures, from the wild garden at our home in Kensington, Johannesburg, across some of the most beautifully obscure places in Southern Africa, he taught me to take care in viewing the world around me. His influence is obvious and unavoidable as an artist. Exposing me to truly seeing what society overlooks as insignificant. Seeing experiences in inanimate objects, all encompassing meaning in nothing and simultaneously, complete lack of meaning in everything.
My first camera was a Kodak Ektralite 10 pocket box camera I bought at the local chemist when I was 11 for $8. I saved all my pocket money to get it. After dropping off the 24 image 110 fujifilm at the store to get developed, to my mother’s horror, the resulting images were of the floor, the walls, some weird objects, a pot, my cousin’s angry scowl and a blurry sheep or two. It was clear, my mother would pay no more for these photographic “duds”.
My Kodak progressed to my mother’s Nikon f90x, to a Nicon Coolpix, to a Canon 450D, to a Canon 20D with a couple of lenses, followed by rentals of cameras I could only dream of owning. My Nikon F90x followed me to university where I got a crash course in black and white photography and dark room developing. I think I passed by the skin of my nose. I wanted to do things my own way and was never very good at following the recipe of rules set out for ‘professional’ photographers.
Red Tape Riots (Suburban Entrapment) is a 2 year photographic project (now ongoing) that exclusively involves the capture of suburban elements in a graphic manner.
Frustrated with processes and requirements involved in immigration and starting a new life in a new place, I took to the streets snapping the “ugly” mistakes of a perfect society trapped in the wonderland that is the Gold Coast suburbia.
These unsightly ‘mistakes’ or ‘accidents’ are generally unseen by the long time residents of the area.
A splash of paint in error, an incomplete line, the correction of a road marking, an exposed construction guideline, a missing rumble strip or an unknown council symbol.
Each of these images became the photographic canvas for a rant of thoughts and questioning related to the red tape and adjoining emotions required to live in such a utopia.
THE RED TAPE RULES
- Straight on shots only, no angles
- On the ground, or on a wall only
- No people
- No flora or fauna
- No photoshopping
(Cropping & Colour Correction permitted)
Each image is taken with my Huawei P30 Pro mobile phone. When I arrived on the Gold Coast, I had used almost all of my funds to pay the fees required to get my permanent residency visa. Unable to bring my camera with me from South Africa, there would be no fancy, professional cameras on the horison for some time to come.
At the time, this cloud based suburban connection to society was the most affordable, photographically ranked device to fullfil my creative communication needs.
The medium itself lends itself to the theme of the exhibition of Suburban Entrapment. The device exposes us to an infinite world of true, fake and imaginitive information and at the same time physically isolates us from the immediate physical interaction with the community around us.
When COVID19 emerged and restricted us to our homes in the early hours of 2020, this concept of Suburban Entrapment became amplified by the sounds of suburbia. The sounds of people ‘trapped’ in their homes, afixed to their devices, and enraptured by every digital app as a desperate prisoner might cling to a tiny window in his cell.
Well into my documented journey with Red Tape Riots, the images on my device began to animate in meaning and expand. This feeling of forced isolation echoed the original rants attached to the graphic visuals.
So I walked. I revisited many of landmarks I captured previously. The new silence of this era came with muffled tones from locked down homes. Sounds that were previously white noise became booming echoes. The gutteral ramblings became a soundtrack to these landmarks that I passed on my daily walks. It is has become enigmatic.
