“Mail Art Makes the World a Town”
An
exhibition of international Mail Art curated from the collection of Cheryl
Penn.
Exhibition curated by Cheryl Penn
and
“Re Imagining The Landscape
– Sites of Ambiguity”
Exhibition of collage and
watercolour by Anthea Martin
Main Gallery
“Mail Art Makes the World a Town”
An
exhibition of international Mail Art curated from the collection of Cheryl
Penn.
While some
consider the early avant-garde postal system experiments to be the first
stirrings of Mail Art, the New York Correspondence School established by Ray
Johnson in the early 1960’s appears to be the popular locus of practice for free
artistic exchange through the mailing system.
Mail Art
is considered an alternative art practice in continual flux – hence its ties to
the Fluxus art movement. Largely
unimpeded by pretentiousness, absence of hierarchy and commercialism, Mail Art
is an inclusive practice of trans-disciplinary tradition. Traded artworks can
range from music, sound, visual poetry, literature and letters to artist
stamps, postcards and chapbooks. In fact, if it can be delivered through the
postal system, there is the possibility it has been sent. Mail Art has as yet
remained a practice without academic critique.
Characteristically,
a mail artist may have hundreds of artists with whom they correspond, but most
tend to maintain a core group of preferred artists with which to exchange. The
collection Cheryl Penn has gathered over a two-year period includes Zines, letters,
postcards, lino/wood cuts, drawings, paintings, books, artifacts,
collaborations, chapbooks, poetry, artists trading cards and artists stamps..
The collection includes work from Latvia, Slovenia, Russia, China, Australia,
USA, UK, Spain, Portugal, France, Greece, Turkey, New Zealand, Japan and
Finland to name a few countries. Within this practice of free exchange, Penn
has coordinated a few collaborative artists book projects, some of which
involve upwards of 50 international artists. She has also had successful Mail
Art calls titled “Mona Lisa”, “Red”, and “Heart Matters”. In celebration of the
first Mail Art exhibition in South Africa she has organized the Zine Mail
Art Makes the World a Town – now in its third edition. This year alone
Penn has participated in exhibitions in over 7 countries.
This
artist uses the phraseology “the authentic massacre of the innocent image” to
title and describe her mail art practice of cutting up and posting pieces of
large paintings – some upwards of 5 meters long. Each mailed envelope s accompanied by text, a
photographic image of the original painting and a postcard sized piece of the
work, such ‘massacred’ works include “The Bridge” (Image 1) and “Shadows on the
Bridge” (Image 2). Penn is currently cutting up and posting her thirteenth
painting in two years.
Middle Gallery
“Re Imagining The Landscape
– Sites of Ambiguity”
Exhibition of collage and
watercolour by Anthea Martin
Opening
talk by Jenny Stretton, Curator of Collections, Durban
Art Gallery
Artist’s
Statement
I
have been interested in looking at The South African landscape and the question
of ownership, identity and
memory.
In its pre-colonial history, the land was occupied by people who had been there
for centuries but who had no concept of personal ownership or a written
language to enforce their claims. The exploration and colonization of
land was a question of establishing ownership. As is well known,
this led to war and conflicts that are still in process. It is the
mountainous areas that remain untouched by human settlement because of the
difficulties of inhabiting such areas but they also remain under dispute
according to heritage or conservation issues.
“Its recent history offers a means to reimagine
the South African landscape, not as a series of apparently stable, discrete,
areas of land, but rather as a connected site of complexity and ambiguity,
where the construction of stability is rejected in favour of the
uncovering of layered networks and meanings, which are embedded, one within (or
over or beneath) the next.”
Beningfield,
J. 2: 2006 The Frightened land, Land landscape and politics in South
Africa in the twentieth century. Routledge, New York.
I
dedicate this exhibition to Thomas Baines (1820-1875), who was an indefatigable
explorer and recorder in Southern Africa of the flora, fauna, mapmaker,
landscape and its indigenous people.
In
his letters he often complained that he had shoot game for food, repair wagons,
cut wood, build shelters, tend sick animals and people on the expedition,
as well as find time for his first love which was drawing and painting.
