HARD TIMES / GREAT EXPECTATIONS BY CAMERON PLATTER
Solo Exhibition
02 June - 03 July 2010
Opening: Wednesday 02 June 18h00 - 21h00
An easy and convincing case could be made that my life has been short on successes, both financial and romantic, but no one could say with any conviction it has been uneventful. In fact, of late, it had been so full of events, I concluded I had outlived my allotment of outlandish moments, and now the law of averages was on my side for pursuing a relatively tame existence. At least until old age set in and I took up residence in a cardboard box beneath the overpass on Highway 59, taking a dump behind a bush and licking secret sauce off old Big Mac wrappers for sustenance. Joe. R. Lansdale, Rumble Tumble
Hard Times/Great Expectations is a presentation of new large-scale colour drawings, sculpture, and video by artist Cameron Platter.
His series of home-made drawings - each meticulously hand-worked and coloured in pencil crayon, are tapestries of a contemporary South African experience; they are simple stories drawn and appropriated from the media, TV, films, art history, pornography, battle scenes, politics, music, signs, imagination, adverts, and religion.
The drawings feature lions engaged in nefarious sexual activity in fishnet bodysuits and masks; a luridly psychedelic promise-to-cure-it-all pamphlet; Shakira in gold lame booty shorts; throbbing fluorescent neon city-sex-dreamscapes; secret hi-tech facility lairs; Transvestite Killer Zebras from Outer Space; a freedom charter cum sex shop advert cum fast food menu; herbalist detective crocodiles undercover in S&M; getup, and ad-hoc signage.
His sculptures, in wood, ceramic and bronze are 3D clues, drawn from his narratives - lightning bolts from heaven, golden crocodiles, enlarged walking sticks, tricked out rum bars, multi-purpose jet skis, dustbins and oil drums all form part of his stream-of-consciousness language.
A new video, The Old Fashion, is an adventure in humour, love, loss and longing for something more… a mélange of The Third Man, an advertisement for Prince Barrack Hussein’s sports water/ penis combo, strip club dance montages, a deranged cat (obviously bent on world domination), mysterious villains and co-conspirators, and a certain fast food restaurant on Asstropolis. It is pays homage to movie remakes and sequels, franchise food, dumbed-down politics, and mundane beauty. The soundtrack, directed by Platter, is the work of his good friend and frequent collaborator, Dean Henning.
Platter’s recent projects include: I Am Lonelyness, Hilger Contemporary, Vienna; The Old Fashion, VOLTA NY, New York; Black Up That White Ass II, YOUNG BLACKMAN, Cape Town; Dak’Art, Biennale de Dakar, 1910-2010: Pierneef to Gugulective, South African National Gallery, Rio Loco Festival, Toulouse, France; Clair-Obscur Film Festival, Basel Switzerland and Art 39 Basel, Switzerland.
