Launched yesterday at Cape Town's Stevenson Gallery 'Picnic' is South African artist Deborah Poynton’s eighth solo exhibition with the gallery.
Through a series of both paintings and drawings, the artist uses the picnic as a metaphor for exploring concepts of 'pleasure, containment and also freedom'. According to the Stevenson's Sinazo Chiya, the 'verdant scenes in secluded settings oscillate between hyperrealism and abstraction, underpainting and the unpainted; exposing the logic of their making and pointing to the illusory nature of the painted image'.
Poynton says, 'I have painted this series of "picnic paintings" because I like the idea that both picnics and paintings are fantasies about pleasure. A picnic can be an allegory for a perfect, imaginary place where beauty and pleasure abound. A painting is the same; a self-conscious framework, a way of being contained, while also tasting a bit of freedom.
'We lay down a blanket, staking out a piece of ground, and nature becomes less formless and meaningless in our eyes; it starts making sense as a backdrop to human existence. The edges of the blanket are the borders of our territory. From within those borders we feel secure enough to admire the landscape,' Poynton explains. 'I feel like paintings do the same thing for us. Inside their four edges, formlessness becomes form. Paintings show us to ourselves, in relation to the world.'
Besides the show in Cape Town, the Stevenson Gallery will also be showing Poynton’s work at the FNB Joburg Art Fair from 9–11 September.
The renowned lansdcape artist diverges somewhat from her usual style, with nudes, sketches and abstract impressions. Pictured: Fête Galante 1, 2016
Poynton says, ’I have painted this series of "picnic paintings" because I like the idea that both picnics and paintings are fantasies about pleasure. A picnic can be an allegory for a perfect, imaginary place where beauty and pleasure abound.’ Pictured: By the Sea 4, 2016
INFORMATION
’Deborah Poynton: Picnic’ is on view until 8 October. For more information, visit the Stevenson Gallery website
ADDRESS
Stevenson Gallery
Buchanan Building
160 Sir Lowry Road
Woodstock 7925
Cape Town
-
Curtains up, Kid Harpoon rethinks the sound of Broadway production ‘Art’He’s crafted hits with Harry Styles and Miley Cyrus; now songwriter and producer Kid Harpoon (aka Tom Hull) tells us about composing the music for the new, all-star Broadway revival of Yasmina Reza’s play ‘Art’
-
Out of office: the Wallpaper* editors’ picks of the weekHere in the UK, summer seems to be fading fast. Moody skies and showers called for early-autumn rituals for the Wallpaper* team: retreating into the depths of the Tate Modern, slipping into shadowy cocktail bars, and curling up with a good book
-
To celebrate 50 years in business, Giorgio Armani is opening up his extraordinary archive to everybodyLaunched at the Venice Film Festival, Armani/Archivio is a digital archive charting 50 years of Giorgio Armani through the house’s most memorable designs
-
Rolf Sachs’ largest exhibition to date, ‘Be-rühren’, is a playful study of touchA collection of over 150 of Rolf Sachs’ works speaks to his preoccupation with transforming everyday objects to create art that is sensory – both emotionally and physically
-
After decades capturing the world’s fashion-set, photographer Johnny Rozsa picks up a paint brushIn his first exhibition of paintings, the New York-based artist celebrates the vibrancy of Tangier while rediscovering a familiar creative outlet
-
Leila Bartell’s cloudscapes are breezily distorted, a response to an evermore digital world‘Memory Fields’ is the London-based artist’s solo exhibition at Tristan Hoare Gallery (until 25 July 2025)
-
Marlene Dumas’ charged, exposed and intimate figures gather in AthensThe artist’s work from 1992 until the present day goes on show at Athens’ Museum of Cycladic Art (until 2 November)
-
Get lost in Megan Rooney’s abstract, emotional paintingsThe artist finds worlds in yellow and blue at Thaddaeus Ropac London
-
Kaari Upson’s unsettling, grotesque and seductive world in DenmarkThe Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark is staging the first comprehensive survey of late artist Kaari Upson’s work
-
Inside the brilliant and short career of Paul Thek: 'The goal was to live a creative existence as a maker – and he lived in a saint-like fashion'Paul Thek's paintings are now viewable at Thomas Dane Gallery in London, in an exhibition curated by Kenny Schacter and Jonathan Anderson.
-
Lubaina Himid and Magda Stawarska’s new show at Kettle’s Yard will uncover the missing narratives in everyday life storiesThe artists and partners in life are collaborating on an immersive takeover of Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, in an exhibition that delves into a lost literary legacy
