(Pic: “Envelope for Tears” by Greg Streak)
AVA exhibition in Cape Town features work by Durban-based artists Greg Streak and Vaughn Sadie as well as former Durbanite Carol Gainer.
Social Pattern is an exhibition running at the AVA in Cape Town. Curated by Kirsty Cockerill and sponsored by the National Lottery Board, it features work by Durban-based artists Greg Streak and Vaughn Sadie as well as former Durbanite Carol Gainer.
Other artists are Lynette Bester, Cobus van Bosch, Kevin Brand, Paul Cooper, Paul Edmunds, Justin Fiske, Fabain Saptou, Browyn Lace, Fritha Langerman, Kim Lieberman and Rowan Smith.
“When one refers to a social pattern one is referring to the composite of traits, features, tendencies, characteristics, that form a consistent arrangement associated with an individual or group,” reads the publicity material. “A convention can be a social pattern; a custom can be a social pattern. The difference between a convention and custom, simplified, is that a convention is decided whereby a custom is habitual.”
Curator Kirsty Cockerill has drawn from works which utilize repetitive process and material but reflect, though rarely overtly, a social pattern/practice/dynamic.
Vaughn Sadie presents East Coast Customs a work about the need or the want to personalise objects or clothing, coming from a desire to assert one's individuality or make something unique. This work explores the way in which people alter and customise objects to personalise and ultimately claiming ownership and individuality within social environment. This of course is common practice, and often a judged in accordance to taste. Taste is subjective and often used as an eschewed indicator of class. This work takes the form of a “pimped” ladder customised with industrial lights the when installed is plugged directly into the lighting system of the AVA gallery
Completing his MFA at The Durban University of Technology, Vaughn Sadie has built up a body of work that investigates the systems we utilise to attach value and meaning to everyday objects and memory. It is through his own choice of materials, objects and seemingly disparate relationships that he constructs his narratives.
Greg Streak presents a number of works on Social Pattern. Envelopes for tears consists of tiny three-dimensional envelopes ingeniously constructed from white household insulation tape. Hundreds of these receptacles are randomly stuck onto a white plastic surface and boxed in behind a white wood and glass frame. There is barely enough space between the insulation tape envelopes and the glass front – inducing a sense of claustrophobia or suffocation. The wood and glass frame also references a museum case – a means of containing an object of value or historical significance. The envelopes themselves also look like small white sailing vessels or remind one of the beacons or markings on a map indicating conquests or victories. The envelopes are themselves empty, and Streak once again alludes to many possibilities of interpretation, but leaves the final meaning to be filled in." - Jose Ferreira (from essay Holding it together is a part of it)
Born in 1971, Greg Streak is the founder member of PULSE - an artists-run initiative linked to the RAIN artists' initiatives network. He is an interdisciplinary practitioner working in sculpture, video, installation and documentary filmmaker. His cool, aesthetic, even minimalist work is characterized by formalistic concerns and a preoccupation with the materiality of substance and things, but also space, both physical and psychological. “I am interested in turning things inside out and upside down; in producing visual incongruities and disparities,” he explains. “This conscious disruption is a device to counter balance the prosaic manner within which most of us accept the status quo as a given. The work is about questioning systems of hierarchy on a micro and macro level.”
Social Pattern runs at the AVA (Association for Visual Arts) at 35 Church Street, Cape Town, from March 23 to April 3. More information on 021 424 7436 or email: avaart@iafrica.com or visit www.ava.co.za
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