(Untitled
(Snare) by Tom Van Herrewege)
The KZNSA will host the opening of Tom van
Herrewege's solo exhibition Paradise Lost
on May 21.
“The title is ‘borrowed’ from the epic poem
by English poet John Milton which concerns the story of the fall of man, and of
(our) expulsion from Paradise. This new body of work by London-based artist Tom
Van Herrewege draws the viewer inexorably, beguilingly, into the beauty of the
animal kingdom…like a snare.
Van Herrewege is currently on a residency
with the KZNSA Gallery as part of the Gallery’s Social Art in Development
(SAID) Programme, supported by the National Lotteries Distribution Fund. The
artist undertook a similar residency in Cairns, Australia in early 2011. He
holds an MA in Fine Art and Painting from the Wimbledon School of Art, London
(2005/6). The artist’s previous exhibition titles - Collections, Are you Dead and Transfauna
- provide a telling glimpse into his abiding interest in the animal kingdom.
“My research is largely informed by the
history of animal representation within art and natural history,” says Van
Herrewege. “I look at the ways animals are presented through the media and
their display in collections and the various languages we invent and adopt to
understand them. I am drawn to the abstraction of information that occurs
through man’s translation and presentation of findings from natural history in
museums, Wunderkammern and collections of curiosities.
“The allure of 'the big 5' drew me briefly
to SA in 2002. But my main subject matter actually focuses more on the less
celebrated creatures of the world such as insects, reptiles and other lesser
known or admired fauna.”
Most notably, as the artist expressed in
casual conversation, “creepy-crawlies that can kill you…”
Van Herrewege’s interest in taxidermy led
him to investigate the dioramas at the Durban and Pietermaritzburg Natural
Science Museums. His work often depicts features from animal forms, juxtaposed
with man-made materials in order to highlight the beauty of the animal. With trepidation
the artist approached these institutions with a view to placing his sculptures
in the dioramas.
“It is the ways that animals are removed
from their environments and understood as both objects and living beings that
informs my artistic research and practise, within which no animals are ever
harmed or killed for the purpose of making art,” he says. “I choose to portray
animals in my work through a great admiration for them. I re-examine these
subjects using the animal’s physical form as an entry point for transformation
into a different physical form - placed in a reconsidered locale. These
reworked images act quite like my own solutions to the complexity of the animal
forms.”
KZNSA Gallery Curator Bren Brophy explains:
“In his Diorama series of acrylics on
canvas the artist treats the diorama diagrams as utopian colouring books.
Without the text that conventionally accompanies each diagram they become
mysterious and open to various interpretations, leaving one to wonder what is
happening in the scene. He includes paint and colour as a human interference,
mainly taking form as waste material that the animals are interacting with.”
“Protecting the object, attacking the
object, investigating the object…the proverbial hunted hunting the hunter
reveals itself as a powerful raison d'être in Van Herrewege’s work,” Brophy
continues. “Everyone Against The Fucking
Outback (Videography,10 mins) is a chilling take on the phobias that we
humans so commonly endure for venomous snakes and insects. Here the work
suggests that these phobias extend to the cultural prejudices that the
‘civilised’ citizens of urbanity feel toward the uncivilised outback or
‘wilderness’.”
There is a videography work of a venomous
snake resplendent and very much alive in a non-existent drawing of a box on the
Gallery wall.
“Whilst it seems that we may have been
expelled from paradise, as the title of this exhibition suggests, our
collective humanity is not quite out of the woods yet. A must see exhibition,”
adds Brophy.
Paradise
Lost opens on May 21 at 18h00 at the KZNSA Gallery at 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood, in
Durban. More information on 031 277 1703, fax 031 201 8051 or cell 082 220 0368
or visit www.kznsagallery.co.za
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