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Exhibition Preface

by brenton maart
There are many possible routes to writing an The exhibition title is composed of two words: granite – and the physical location of origin of this objects are grouped together, each of the groupings –
essay on Situated Making, an exhibition curated by Situated denotes a particular location, place, space work is literally the landscape. Presented in a white each tile – becomes a short story that might be loosely
Eugene Hön with recent work from the staff of the or position; Making signifies the act or process of cube gallery, the rocks are objects found by chance based on fact (say, for example, if all the broken shards
Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture at the University forming, causing, doing, advancement, success or and here elevated to forms of art. of ceramic collected in one place are grouped together
of Johannesburg. One approach might be to analyse coming into being. Taken together, Situated Making Edwards engages these forms of serendipity on one tile). However, an altogether more intruiging
the exhibition as evidence of FADA’s rather avant-garde might be understood as an examination of place and and gives value to the seemingly worthless; he invention begins to emerge when random, unrelated
encouragement of practice-based research, a relatively process, and the relationships between them, and this collects and groups small, slight acts (walking, objects find themselves together on a tile. It is here
new phenomenon in South African academia where essay makes brief commentary on each contribution, finding, rinsing) and elevates them into installations of where fact becomes blurred into fiction, and where
creative work – artworks, exhibitions, catalogues – are in that regard, in alphabetical order. significance: where repetition becomes noteworthy, truth is as much subjective as objective. This is where a
now accepted as legitimate forms of research outputs. Derivatives – the work by Marc Edwards – the subconscious becomes conscious, meditation life starts getting its meaning through the placements of
A second thread might be to locate the work within a uses landscape as conceptual and physical location, becomes mediation, and where – Edwards writes truths – of memories – into readings and interpretation.
curatorial delimitation – say new forms of materiality, and chance as its process of production. There are in his exhibition text – “the landscape becomes an In many ways, then, the process of Groenewald’s
or perhaps the enduring application of collage. A third two key bodies of work on exhibition. In the first, imaginarium.” artwork is an embodiment Proust’s philosophy – “How
tack might be a convoluted polemical dense with Edwards presents the residues of paint left in the Lizè Groenewald’s Azulejaria II is a tight grid paradoxical it is to seek in reality for the pictures that are
dusty theory. However, lets dispense with these and paper cups originally used to hold the coffee for his of “tiles” of collaged objects arranged into various stored in one’s memory,” and a manifestation that life,
use instead the exhibition’s title – Situated Making – morning walks, and later used to wash his watercolour ensembles. Postcards, notes, shells, bottles, bits of itself, is a subjective process of collage.
because who doesn’t love the structuring pathfinder of brushes. When sliced open, and presented on the metal, ceramic shards, dental impressions, cutlery, Eugene Hön’s Fragmented fragments and
the heading? This pointer, instead of imposing a rigidity, gallery wall, the cups and their palimpsests of striated off-cuts of wood, computer memory boards, and fractals: A progeny of shards operates from a mercurial
leads the way to explore multiple paths, and is generous residues of paint become inadvertent landscapes so forth – objects that the artist has been collecting position, a shifting point of reference that might be
and open and malleable to each of the research formed, not by premeditation, but spontaneously – by (hoarding?) here finds a second (a new) life in the termed the transitional. The starting point for his body
questions and hypotheses, forms and concerns of the chance. The second key installation is composed of installation. In many ways, each of the items serves of work is the ballpoint pen drawing – an analogue
very different bodies of work that compose this group small rocks and pebbles Edwards finds on his walks as memory of a place or an experience and becomes approach to image crafting, which he then applies
exhibition. Lets assemble this essay as variations on the – shards of rose quartz, some hardened building evidence – a kind of “fact”; a kind of “truth” – of the to his ceramic shards through digital transfers, digital
Derivatives The Museum Under Erasure
fugue of the title, and lets begin with a definition. material, composites, conglomerates, pieces of Marc Edwards. Alison Kearney. location of this work: Groenewald’s life. When these animation and digital projection. This, in effect, straddles

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