PRESS RELEASE
ERIN CHAPLIN: Red and green work
Sep 4 – Sep 25, 2024
Everard Read Cape Town is pleased to present Red and green work, a solo exhibition by Erin Chaplin.
The basics of colour theory propose that red and green paint mixed together create brown. This body of work by Cape Town artist Erin Chaplin reveals the true complexities of what seems at first a simple notion.
Beginning with the selection of colours to work with, for Chaplin ‘the movement of the brushes and the outcome of the paintings are an act of Nature.’ With the rich impasto and expansive looseness of her brush marks, Chaplin is capturing the energy of nature as it shifts from colour to movement. The result is that ‘a lot of the work becomes a muddy brown, which is where colours like red and green clashed.’ Something clear becomes something complicated, ambiguous, ‘devastatingly ugly and beautiful’.
At the heart of this work is the intense process of being truly present during the instant of making. The artist becomes fully absorbed in the materiality of her here and now – an extension of each colour, paint and thread.
There are moments of reprieve for artist and viewer alike, such as in ‘Cave Butterfly’ and ‘Ester’s Flower’. These milky works offer for Chaplin a lighter breath than the others – a safe space to rest within a cave or the folds of a petal. Shelter against the feeling of smallness and being overwhelmed.
The embroidered works further showcase the dualities of nature. Stitching is a slow, agonising and controlled mode of creation, while Chaplin’s painting is quick and spontaneous. These particular pieces are made from collaged references of old paintings: ‘I like something being reused and adapted to create something new.’ It helps to shift perspective.
The portraits, abstractions, still lifes and landscapes which make up the subject matter of this collection come together from the colour palette and energy in the cathartic working process, rather than a meaning-making decision. As Chaplin explains, ‘All these things are alike to me. They all started as nothing and will become nothing but God (as Nature) will continue renewing forever.’
Opening reception: Wednesday 4th September - 6pm
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Installation images by Michael Hall
