Pierre Fouché
Portraiture, the languorous gaze, domestic photography, and how these intersect with desire is central to the work of Cape Town based artist Pierre Fouche. His employment of these broad categories constitute an example of the subtle and poetic side of queer representation.
Fouche’s work consistently represents individuals, from close familiars to strangers whose likenesses are culled from the realm of domestic photography in all its guises: from scratchy old prints to digital downloads.
The portrait is subsequently crafted. It is woven with lace-bobbins, embroidered, written out, cut out of paper, knitted, letter-embossed in plastic, crocheted, assembled with dice or painted on a puzzle. The residues of these laborious construction techniques often become secondary portraits by default - aesthetically autonomous, yet reminding of the primary figuration and its creation.
Each instance of Fouche’s interpretation of an individual likeness involves a triadic narrative: the story of the individual represented, the story of the photographic likeness, and the history of the medium and technique used to reinterpret the photographic instant. These narratives are layered in the final portrait that monumentalizes the personal, the individual, the mundane.
The contrast between the lens based source material, the fraction of a second it took to expose the moment, and the months, years, to translate the image in thread, for instance, open up meanings from the specific and personal (the instant) to the broad and collective (history).
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2008
Convoluted involvement, Bell-Robers, Cape Town
Convoluted involvement, Absa Gallery, Johannesburg
2006
The distance between us, Bell-Roberts, Cape Town
2005
Excluded & Unsaid, blank projects, Cape Town
Selected Group Exhibitions
2011
Solo Presentation at Volta7, Basel, Switzerland
2010
Manet’s too tight to mention, Whatiftheworld / Gallery, Cape Town
The Menippean Uprising, blank projects, Cape Town
Ways of seeing, Ore gallery, Cape Town
Inverting the Pyramid, blank projects, Cape Town
1910-2010: From Pierneef to Gugulective, Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town Swallow My Pride, blank projects, Cape Town
2009
The gift (collaboration with Liza Grobler), Irma Stern Museum, Cape Town
Studio visit, AVA, Cape Town
Signs/Representation, 14-1 Gallerie, Stuttgart
Obsessie, KKNK- Oudshoorn
2008
The bijou burns again, UCA, Cape Town
2007
A Legacy of Men, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg
Selected projects 2005-2007, blank projects, Cape Town
Love & misery, BIJOU art studios, Cape Town (project)
Greenhouse, Bell-Roberts, Laurensford, Somerset West
Portrait/Landscape, Bell-Roberts,Laurensford, Somerset West
ABSA L’atelier regional finalists exhibitions, Art-B: Bellville & ABSA Gallery, Johannesburg
Fest, Rust & Vrede, Durbanville
2006
Take it like a man, blank projects, Cape Town
2005
Paper never lies, VEO, Cape Town
ABSA L’atelier regional finalists exhibitions, Art-B: Bellville & ABSA Gallery: Johannesburg
2004
Sex & Kultuur Queer Arts Festival, AMAC, Cape Town
LVJ+MJB XXX, Klein Karoo National Arts Festival, Oudtshoorn (as part of the D.I.E.N.S-collective)
ABSA L’atelier regional finalists exhibitions, Art-B, Bellville & ABSA Gallery: Johannesburg
2000
Softserve2: Art at play, National Gallery, Cape Town
1999
Softserve Multimedia art event, National Gallery, Cape Town
1997
District Six Public Sculpture Festival (as part of the Stellenbosch Paper Project), Cape Town
Residencies
2008
Cité Internationale des Arts: Paris, France
2007/9: BIJOU art studios: Observatory, Cape Town
2005/6 Greatmore Studios, Woodstock, Cape Town
