Whatiftheworld / gallery

SOLO EXHIBITION

03 SEPTEMBER - 01 OCTOBER 2011

OPENING SATURDAY 03 SEPTEMBER 11H00 - 14H00

Whatiftheworld is pleased to present the first solo exhibition by Artist Renée Holleman titled A novel in parts. This will also mark the launch of the gallery’s new premises, housed over two floors of the historical Woodstock synagogue buildings on the corner of Argyle Street and Albert Roads.

Artist Statement

A novel in parts

“As I turned the corner I came upon a sight so curious I had to rub my eyes for fear that they were deceiving me.”

“As I turned the corner there appeared before me the same scene as before, down to the very last detail”

“As I turned the corner the page loosened and a note slipped out, falling to the floor.”

Inspired by my local neighbourhood, a certain Argentinian writer, and choose your own adventure stories, this new body of work employs the device of the novel to explore a collection of interweaving concerns that draw on history, locale, narratives of progress, abstract fable, visual conundrum and text.

In so doing, I allude to different spaces within and without the exhibition and gaps and dislocations in reading/viewing, while positioning the viewer as an interpretive agent in a diverse body of work that includes drawing, installation, sculpture and sound.

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A novel in parts takes as its point of departure the Woodstock environ, a place long on the brink of becoming something else. Suspended between a forgotten past and a promising future its current revival signals an important but not unproblematic shift within an area whose diversity marks it apart from any other in the city.

Through an inherently open construct and the lens of a mysterious event, the exhibition attempts to open up a space in which various story-lines oscillate between fact and fiction, drawing on the mythical nautical tale of the ‘Flying Dutchman’ as well as a legion of ships sunk off the Cape coastline. A series of sightings in the city streets at night are reported. Unverified, unlikely, they are connected to or re-iterated in a number of unreliable manifestations, none more probable than the other.

What is made visible and what is not, from Woodstock’s unseen shoreline to the gallery’s renovated premises, link to issues of representation that are explored in the exhibition on a narrative and conceptual level. Ideas of the staged and un-staged, and the space between production and presentation are key.

But this is just a beginning.

Graduating from the Michaelis school of Fine with her Masters degree in 2008, Renée Holleman has participated in numerous group exhibitions both independently and in her capacity as a member of the artist collective Doing it for Daddy. Established in 2007, Doing it for Daddy is comprised of Bettina Malcomess, Renée Holleman and Linda Stupart. Holleman is also a regular contributor to the online Arts forum Artthrob as well as the print publication Art South Africa.

View the exhibition catalogue: renee_holleman.pdf