PRESS RELEASE
CUBICLE Series August 2024
Aug 5 – Aug 17, 2024
Cubicle is an ongoing platform at CIRCA Cape Town, giving artists scope to exhibit smaller bodies of artworks and site-specific installations for a two week period.
Featuring:
BOYTCHIE | BANG BANG
LEAH RACHEL HAWKER | SAFE SPACES
LEXI HIDE | SUGAR FOR THE PILL
WANDIE MESATYWA | SPECTACLE
MATTHEW MICHAEL | The Head and the Heart in the Heat
RICARDO NIEUWOUDT | THE PEOPLE
Artist walkabout & finissage: 10:30 Saturday 17th August
CLICK HERE TO REQUEST A PORTFOLIO
BOYTCHIE | BANG BANG
In BANG BANG, Boytchie (b. 2000, AKA Phillip Richard Jannecke-Newman) continues expanding on his Kash Out series. The ongoing body of work is a visual journey into a world of stark contrasts, where the hungry and greedy devour each other to survive. Each artwork from the series captures the relentless pursuit of profit at the expense of humanity.
Hustle culture sings the song of incessant productivity, ambition and the pursuit of success in both the form of upward social mobility and the accumulation of objects of desire. In the world of BANG BANG, everyone is greedy, fearful and anxious. Boytchie's paintings and sculptures are filled with twisted faces and angular shapes that serve as a reflection on how our contemporary world cages us into the system of capitalism. The subjects are in an eternal battle for “the bag”. They are only out for themselves and will stop at nothing to acquire what they desire, even if it belongs to someone else.
LEAH RACHEL HAWKER | SAFE SPACES
Leah Rachel Hawker (b. 1983) is interested in how events shape who we are and how we behave. This, in turn, shapes our society, one riddled with violence and loneliness. We have evidence of how art can mobilise audiences: it served theology for hundreds of years. We can do this again for contemporary needs by using it as a mechanism for empathy.
In Safe Spaces, she draws from psychology and anthropology in an interdisciplinary body of work that focuses on young women, just passing the cusp of adolescence into adulthood. The exhibition consists of portraits of the GenZ participants and handcrafted books; a diptych of a kind. The books share intimate stories. The portraits are visual translations of their contents.
The work speaks about stories of identity, our private internal world and the one we – consciously or not – portray to others. This external presentation of self is so often based on our (traumatic) lived experiences. Safe Spaces declares our vulnerability, a need for places of refuge, and the search for solace and community.
LEXI HIDE | SUGAR FOR THE PILL
‘Through photography,’ Lexi Hide (b. 1999) states, ‘I create fictional scenes provoked by my memories. Using my relationships and the relationships between my subjects as a source for study, I highlight the failure of memory to acknowledge the duality of pain and pleasure.’
The preservation of memory is innate within the medium of photography. People take pictures in order to remember. Often what spurs the photographer is the desire to embalm a moment forever. This is why most personal photographs show only positive scenes; we don’t want to remember the shadows. The reality is that pain and pleasure coexist, as do love and loss – though this is not generally represented in the family photo album, or on the Instagram feed. With a quality of introspection, Hide acknowledges that such dualisms are what make life interesting. ‘This phenomenon is present in my life as well as in my work,’ she comments.
MATTHEW MICHAEL | The Head and the Heart in the Heat
Matthew Michael (b. 2001) is an artist and curator known for their interdisciplinary practice through which they delicately explore the essence of objecthood – how everyday artefacts may assume a sacred quality by imbuing them with a sense of sentimental eroticism.
The exhibition assembles items under borrowed aesthetics, celebrating domesticity while exploring the complexities of object relations in familiar contexts. A pivotal aspect of Michael’s practice involves aesthetic appropriation through deliberate but minimal transformations. Things of practicality, such as garden gloves or safety pins, are subtly reconfigured through the quiet subversion of their symbolic language, becoming metaphorically charged bodies. A zipper comes to perform underlying actions which carry a hint of romantic and sexual longing. Through a meticulous selection and sensitive reworking, Michael explores how the curation of objects can evoke and challenge personal and societal narratives, offering a commentary on contemporary aesthetics and human relationships.
WANDIE MESATYWA | SPECTACLE
Years of reconstruction, discovery of self.
This is how this body of work was born.
A culmination of Self, Family & society.
A compulsory disclosure to self.
The passage to reconstruction and rediscovery of self.
What has been a constant and an ongoing fight of rediscovering self.
Fighting to always be above surface level and never beneath.
Concurrently, family & society can suffocate one into a confusion of identity.
Spectacle is a reconstruction of self, a reimagined self, to a realised self.
The essence of my being.
Yet, a spectacle, a fantasy, an object and
an expectation of a Body supposedly mine but not ours.
Indeed, a confusion of a Body that is mine and not ours but mine alone.
INYAMA YELALI (loosely translated “MEAT FOR THE VILLAGERS”)
Everyone under the notion that they deserve a piece of it
Or that they are entitled to dictate what it is or should be.
A Spectacle, the body supposedly mine but everyone owns a piece but me.
A Body reimagined, discovery of self, a beautiful spectacle.
Wandie Mesatywa is a Queer documentary photographer, as well as a teaching and exhibiting artist from Qumbu in the Eastern Cape.
RICARDO NIEUWOUDT | THE PEOPLE
Cape Town artist Ricardo Nieuwoudt (b. 1977) describes his miniature paintings as ‘a little bit of everything’. As a self-taught artist, his work draws inspiration from what he has exposed himself to throughout his life, such as comic books and the work of both local and historic European artists. ‘I cannot remember a time before I was painting,’ he comments. ‘I used to draw a lot, earlier in my life. Painting became a way for me to colour in my drawings.’
Through The People, Nieuwoudt uses each tiny board to depict the human condition: emotions, everyday scenes and a bit of social commentary, using metaphor, symbolism, realism and – often – surrealism. ‘My painting style,’ he explains, ‘takes me on an adventure. These small works are windows for me to view people: observing poses or movements and life itself.’
