SELF-EXPLORATION MIXED-MEDIA ART WORKSHOPS:

SELF-EXPLORATION MIXED-MEDIA WORKSHOPS: Exploring basic art techniques through a variety of media, with the emphasis on developing art-making skills at your own pace. Acrylic and water-based paint and drawing materials, such as charcoal, pencil, ink, graphite and many other experimental and unconventional mixed media.

Aim of the workshop: We start by working with, and applying different media and doing a series of mixed-media exercises; then we create a mixed-media artwork, combining all or some of the media. In so doing, we learn, share and create together. Thus we push our own boundaries gently by exploring and awakening our inner creative world.

SELF-EXPLORATION PAINTING WORKSHOPS: This painting workshop is free and expressionistic, by exploring different painting techniques on canvas, with an open mindset. The application and combination of thick opaque bold paint, subtle layering and sensitive brushstrokes, using various brush sizes, sponges, spray bottles with water-based paint (acrylic), and/or different vehicles on a surface is a subtle but mindful approach to contemporary art making. The aim is to explore and push the media, and learn through the creation of an abstract work with some recognizable images or objects.

Dates: One Workshop monthly, during 2018 - 2019

5 September 2018 - Self-Exploration Mixed-Media Workshop

13 October 2018 - Self-Exploration Painting Workshop

Time: 10:00 - 15:00

Duration of Workshop: 5 hours including two half an hour tea and cake breaks.

Venue: Casa Labia, Muizenberg, Cape Town, South Africa.

Fee: R750.00 for 2018 (ZAR South African Rand) - excluding materials.

Please be so kind to deposit the fee of R750.00 one week before the workshop to the Casa Labia. Email proof of payment with your name as reference a.s.a.p. Deposit non-refundable.

For more information contact Tania at Casa Labia - tania@casalabia.co.za or Natasja de Wet - http://www.natasjadewet.com/contact/.

Catalogue

I am excited to announce that my catalogue for the body of work Melancholia is in progress!

Fun in Les Hammond's studio

Deconstruction

In this work titled Deconstruction, I address the concept of being mindful about consumerism. I investigate the belief that second-hand clothing, considered to be waste, to still be wearable.

I aim to illustrate the outcome of used clothing that is dumped or discarded, by deconstructing jackets and using them as found materials in the studio, and then recycling them through the process of making, into a work of conceptual art.

In my interpretation, leather and fabric in different weights are deconstructed (torn, scraped and cut), intuitively selected and placed close together, inverted into dense layering and suspended from a steel construction on wheels resembling a clothing rail. The fine fabric of the lining and thick textural insulation, contrasted with the leather are exposed in many areas, to evoke a sense of the inner private world of the consumer. If the physical weight of ‘clothing’ on the rail becomes too heavy, the seemingly sturdy steel construction could snap, symbolising the fragility of the consumer that can so easily become obsessive with consumerism, which is more often about filling the emotional emptiness of the buyer. 

This three-dimensional work represents how it mentally affects the way we act, think and feel, and the impact that waste has on the environment.

By rethinking consumerism, it opens up the possibilities of a new trend, therefore creating a market and need for second hand clothing as wearable or conceptual art.

The labour intensive process of making in the studio:

Artist Fabian Saptouw (2015) writes that labour intensive work seems mundane and repetitive but has a goal and purpose in mind. This awareness of the artist’s labour is presented in my work to articulate the fact that the process of making the work is part and parcel of that artwork. He notes that “there is an intensity in the crafting process that should not be undervalued, nor negated using terms like ‘obsessive’ or ‘absurd’.” He states that “regarding labour as ‘obsessive’ is problematic because it discounts that labour as a compulsion as opposed to an action taken with specific intent.”

Saptouw, F. 2015. Contemporary Materialities. International Science Index, 17(7): 1185-1195.

Melancholia

In my work, the layering of recycled paintings, found canvasses and offcuts transforms a seemingly two-dimensional surface into a three-dimensional form or painting. Layering not only occupies physical space but also ‘fills emotional gaps’ to add conceptual meaning to the work. Hidden layers appear and reveal themselves in between other layers. This intuitive process of layering reveals a secretive space of ‘hiding’ in between the layers; it challenges the viewer to look and find deeper meaning, and thereby relates to the mysterious, deep nature of the temperament.