Kitty’s Light House

The raw emotion of total exposure is evident in every aspect of this work.  The image is torn and reassembled and is almost unintelligible upon the initial viewing. It resembles  a flayed skin stretched across a board.  The tears cause great, gleaming white striations which dominate the composition.  Sutured between the tears the image lies scattered as casual wreckage.

Closer observation of the torn image reveals a lighthouse on top of a rock promontory.  No safe haven here – a beckoning light signifies a dangerous coast.  A lone figure at the bottom of the rocky promontory has found no shelter from an umbrella inverted by the storm. 

The tremulous charcoal lines of the destroyed image search the contours of the form.  Dense and meshed line feels out form and the tremours of the emotional space between the forms.  There imbues the work with a sense of confusion, an accidental arbitrariness as incident overlays incident interspersed by the occasional stark image – the  light house, the figure with an umbrella. Nature has intervened; something dreadful, unaccountable has happened.

This work is as terrifying as Evard Munch’s scream, or the sundered skies in  El Greco’s visionary rendition of the apocalyptic scene in the church in Toledo. It is a part of Kitty’s final work for her BA studying Fear in Public Spaces.

Gail Dörje

Exhibitions

July 2011
'Continuum', group solstice exhibition at Cape Gallery

May 2011
Exhibited a movie clip in the One Minute Exhibition at Greatmore Studios

April 2011
Exhibited a collaboration peice with Elgin Rusts exhibition 'Judgement 2011 Case No. 001/05/2008' at the AVA

December 2010
Michaelis School of Fine Art Graduation Exhibition

June 2010
Exhibited in the Greatmore Trust and Irma Stern Group Show. A special exhibition for winter

Collections

Irma Stern collection and has been bought by local and international buyers.

Interventions

July 2010
Jumping Castle Intervention on the corner of Greatmore and York Street – part of Greatmore Street Festival.

October 2009
Jumping Castle intervention on the corner of Church Square and Spin Street in Cape Town

In these installations I invite children from the surrounding area to play and interact in a public space.

June 2010
Mixed Tape Mobile Cinema at Grahams town festival

Mobile Cinema is a truck that travelled to 5 public locations in Grahamstown to screen a series of videos.

Workshops

May 2011
Ran a one week One minute Video workshop at Greatmore Studios

2011
Hosted reading groups at Greatmore Studios.

June 2009
One day Drawing movement workshop.