Browsing by Author "MacKenny, Virginia"
Now showing 1 - 12 of 12
Results Per Page
Sort Options
- ItemOpen AccessA deeper kind of nothing(2019) Abraham, Catherine; MacKenny, Virginia; Zaayman, Carine'Nothing’1 is frequently associated with insignificance. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, 'to reduce to nothing is to consider or treat as worthless or unimportant’. This project aims to reveal that this form of nothing is, essentially, something. As a child, I was told that my struggle with breath, with asthma, was nothing but psychosomatic. The heart of this project is a physical manifestation of a psychosomatic nothing, and the sense of personal insignificance implied by repetitive, unacknowledged housework. The overarching title, A Deeper Kind of Nothing, was garnered from theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss’s A Universe from Nothing: Why there Is Something Rather than Nothing (2012) in which he explores the origins of our universe. In this book, he refers to nothing as the space that exists where something once was, an absence. He explains that 'all signs suggest a universe that could and plausibly did arise from a deeper nothing - involving the absence of space itself - and which may one day return to nothing’ (2012: 183). Krauss asserts that 'nothing is every bit as physical as something’, and this idea of a 'deeper nothing’ stirred my thinking. Nothing is one thing, but a deeper nothing, one that the universe may have arisen from, is quite another. Relating this to the impact of seemingly insignificant objects, events and feelings, nothing becomes something physical that is understood to be both tangible and generative of something new. It is this 'something new’, the outcome of what is considered 'nothing’, which is the deeper kind of nothing that this project presents. My reflections on generative nothingness have produced a series of performative processes: 1. Collecting - breaths, eggshells (the main materials of this body of work) and words 2. Working with breath, eggshells and words, on my own and with others 3. Conversing while painting eggshells. These methodologies are made manifest here in a book that is a record of the transcribed texts, short films, balloons, painted eggshells and boxes, bronzes and residue from a 'banquet’. Discarded eggshells and exhaled breaths are traces of the everyday that are typically overlooked. The dispensability inherent in both provides a basis from which to express real and imagined subjugation experienced by 'the good child’, 'the good wife’ and 'the good mother’: the child who felt shame for causing a fuss over her struggle to breathe and the wife who walked on eggshells.
- ItemOpen AccessDesperate whispers : empathy in the context of an ecological crisis(2015) Gauld, Quanta; MacKenny, Virginia; Van der Schijff, JohannIn his text Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino (1974) describes the fictional city of Baucis, a land suspended in the clouds, in which humans maintain a purposeful and mysterious physical detachment from the earth. Calvino’s imagining of Baucis visualises a conceptualisation of humans as divorced from nature1; a lingering residue of the post-Enlightenment obsession with reason and progress that casts nature as separate from and inferior to humans. In the context of the current ecological crisis, in which the perpetual abuse of human and natural resources threatens the sustainability of the planet and all earthly life, reconsideration of the relationship between humans and the non-human natural world becomes profoundly relevant. An overview of contemporary environmental theory, undertaken in the first section of this text, suggests that the widespread understanding of nature as an inferior realm that lacks the full degree of human rationality or culture, is giving way to conceptualisations of the relationship between humans and nature that highlight the interdependence and interrelatedness of all living organisms and systems. Sustainability scholar Stacy Alaimo ( 2010: 15-16) states: At this point in time, with global climate change proceeding even more rapidly than was projected, we hardly have the luxury of imagining any expanse of land or sea as beyond the reach of humanly-induced harm. Matters of environmental concern and wonder are always “here,” as well as “there,” simultaneously local and global, personal and political, practical and philosophical. This concept of the interrelatedness of global economic, technological, social, cultural and ecological systems, is significant in conceptualising the role that humans play in ecological degradation and exploitation.
- ItemOpen AccessErratum : an exploration of language, the fragmentary, and the gaps in the narrative of the everyday(2008) Holleman, Renée; MacKenny, VirginiaIn 2010, the Negative Alphabet was devised by an advertising agency as a brainstorming tool for new logos and cartoon mascots. After the Language Saturation Shift of the 2030's, when the traditional alphabet could no longer support the density of meaning packed into each word, these symbols were adopted to allow for a greater range of nuance to be presented within and alongside our positive sentences. (Brian McMullen, 2004:190)
- ItemOpen AccessThe gloaming : narrative in contemporary painting(2007) Nowicki, Andrzej Jan; MacKenny, VirginiaThe key to understanding my project lies in the assumption that the task of representation for contemporary painting is different from that of newer media such as photography and film. I see the role of painting as being the representation of the past; an engagement with history. Many of the painters who have inspired my way of seeing are artists who re-imagined the role of pre-modernist narrative painting and re-asserted it in contemporary practice. Contemporary narrative painting occupies a different role from that of its pre-modernist predecessors, such as Romantic painting. It also occupies a different role in relation to dominant narrative media of photography and film.
- ItemOpen AccessGrowing Things: An Investigation in the ways that plant-growth may inform the process of painting(2019) Kruger, Maria; MacKenny, VirginiaMy project interrogates traditional Western landscape painting in light of the contemporary understanding that ‘nature’ has been rearticulated, even plasticised and hence rendered malleable, through human action. The idea of a plasticised natural environment is concomitant with the age of the Anthropocene which has brought with it a tremendous rise in the use of plastic since the 1950s, and the consequent polluting effect it has had on the ‘natural’ environment. In recent years evidence indicates that traces of plastic are now in the earth, which suggests a need to rethink what exactly the ‘natural’ environment is comprised of. With reference to traditional Western landscape painting, my work explores the idea of a socially and materially constructed landscape. Utilising the medium of acrylic paint, I reimagine the landscape by using a material that embodies plastic. Removing the dried and solidified acrylic paint from its ground, the landscape painting is liberated from its supporting canvas and frame in an attempt to deconstruct traditional Western landscape painting. My project aims to rearticulate the language and meaning that is associated with landscapes and the natural environment.
- ItemOpen AccessLeisure Island: An Investigation of Suburban Landscapes and Domestic Spaces in South Africa(2017) Lilford, Kirsten Lee; MacKenny, Virginia; Lamprecht, AndrewMedia and communications analyst, Roger Silverstone (1997) brings our attention to the negative elements of the suburban landscape, a space more often associated with the comfortable life – one filled with luscious garden lawns, large crystal blue swimming pools, double garages and domestic workers' quarters. That this domestic space has ‘protected' itself from the stress of the city through the use of high walls, electric fences and wrought iron gates, is an irony worth commenting on. As Silverstone notes, this constructed paradise is not without its complications.
- ItemOpen AccessMalundeness, personal memory and the diaspora : politics of the skin(2006) Kasibe, Wandile Goozen; MacKenny, Virginia; Van der Schijff, JohannIncludes bibliographical references (p. 78-79).
- ItemOpen AccessMeeting and merging: painting animal/human encounters with medicine(2014) Voysey, Jo; Siopis, Penny; MacKenny, VirginiaMy work focuses on the expressive potential of medicinal remedies as a medium for painting. My exploration is concentrated on aspects of the human relationship to animals in captivity and stems from a relationship I had with a caged bear when I was living in Georgia, Eastern Europe in 2011. The story of my encounter with the bear is important in this respect and I begin my text with that narrative, written in the third person so that the story has a wider resonance. My time with the bear affected me profoundly and prompted me to think more deeply about human relationships with animals and how they are expressed in contemporary art.
- ItemOpen AccessOut of sight : re-imagining Graaff's pool(2009) Brett, Justin; MacKenny, VirginiaThis paper attempts to set out the parameters for a discussion of my Masters exhibition, entitled Out of Sight. It traces out the progress of this exhibition over the course of two years, attempting to account for the parallel development of my work across the media of sculpture, drawing and figure painting. As such the paper traces out my engagement with the two major thematic concerns of my masters exhibition: the representation of the gay male body and architectural space and site. The latter concerns both my strategies for the re-modelling of the gallery space, and my approach to the representation of the specific site of Graaff's Pool, on the Sea Point Promenade in Cape Town. I set out to explain how this site, located in a liminal space, geologically, architecturally and historically, becomes a nodal point for the concerns of my masters project. As such, I begin to trace out the .themes that intersect in my sculptural re-presentations of the site of Graaff's pool operating within zones of visibility and invisibility. My translation of this site into a site-specific installation in the gallery space intentionally disturbs the viewer's ability to see, in its treatment of scale and surface, as well as obstructs and directs their movement through the space. This discussion of visibility lin visibility extends to my treatment of the figure in drawings and watercolours, paying particular attention to my working of the surface in order to trouble the act of looking, hence the visibility or presence of the figure. This enables me to introduce ideas around the difficulties of representation in general, but particularly of the gay male body and the expression of a gay male subjectivity. I introduce into my discussion, if cautiously, the ideas of Michel Foucault and Mikhael Bakhtin. I do not in any way present a synthesis of these ideas, but begin to introduce their thinking as a way of reading specific works in the exhibition. As such, I trace out a possible connection between Foucault's idea of powerlknowledge and the invisible operation of disciplinary power as placing limits on the representation of the gay male body, and as such on its visibility.
- ItemOpen AccessThe paradox of uncertainty(2016) Shaer, Nicole; Siopis, Penny; MacKenny, VirginiaThis work represents my engagement with uncertainty, as I have defined and contained it. As an artist, my research strategy has been to work with uncertainty in a felt sense, using my hands as a way to access a different sort of thinking. To this end, I have allowed, created, sustained and magnified the presence of uncertainty in my studio, as a focused, experiential study within the practice of making art. Uncertainty might be understood in many ways, so I will begin with the common definition as that which is ‘not able to be relied on; not known or definite’ (OED, 2016). Psychology professor Michael Smithson characterises the Western perception of uncertainty as a predominantly negative anticipation of what cannot be known (Bammer and Smithson, 2008: 18).Such a perception of uncertainty as a threat, may encourage the use of control as a means to contain the unknown. Smithson’s description reflects the prevailing attitude of my upbringing and this project represents the exploration of a different paradigm. The Paradox of Uncertainty alludes to the coexistence of two apparently opposing views of uncertainty, which I have sought to integrate through my art practice. My interest in uncertainty originates in years of effort to overcome anxiety, which I understand as the physiological manifestation of a fearful relationship with uncertainty that results in a habitual psychological struggle to out-plan the future. In contrast with the prevailing medical conception of anxiety as a form of mentalillness, philosopher Martin Heidegger considers anxiety to be an ‘irreducible, existential state of being[...] aris[ing] from the self-reflexive awareness of our own“potentiality-for-being”’ (Gordon, 2013: 106). The existential psychologist, Rollo May (1977: 38) offers a functional link between uncertainty and anxiety, noting that ‘whenever possibility is visualised by an individual, anxiety is potentially present in the same experience.’ Developing May’s concept of anxiety as a normal part of lived experience, psychologist Kerry Gordon (2013: 107) expands on the relationship between anxiety and creativity, saying: Creativity, authenticity, uncertainty, anxiety—these cannot be separated. To live a creative existence means to live with uncertainty. To live an authentic existence means to live with anxiety.
- ItemOpen AccessTracing the passion of a black Christ: critical reflections on the iconographic revision and symbolic redeployment of the Stations of the Cross and Passion cycle by South African artists Sydney Kumalo, Sokhaya Charles Nkosi and Azaria Mbatha(2016) Macdonald, James; Skotnes, Pippa; MacKenny, Virginia; Bogues, AnthonyIn this research I consider ways in which black South African artists working during and after apartheid have both revised and symbolically redeployed the Stations of the Cross - and more broadly, the iconographic tradition of the Passion cycle. In so doing, I demonstrate the strategic application of Christ's episodic sufferings as a means of both analogously chronicling situations of historical trauma, as well as articulating more aspirant narratives of political resistance, selfliberation and reconciliation. Concentrating initially on church-commissioned projects realised in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I trace the reinterpretation (or 'Africanisation') of the Stations of the Cross by artists such as Bernard Gcwensa, Ruben Xulu and Sydney Kumalo. Noting the emergence of a black Christ and a localised Passion, I emphasise the complex cultural and political implications of this iconographic transformation - arguing that its hybrid realisation undermined the cultural bias of a European-styled Christianity, and the racial hierarchies of colonialism and apartheid. Following this, considered in more detail are the secular reimaginings of Sokhaya Charles Nkosi's Crucifixion (1976) and Azaria Mbatha's Stations of the Cross for Africa (1995) - as series wherein the episodes of Christ's Passion are consciously and symbolically redeployed. In the case of Nkosi's Crucifixion, I show as covertly documented in a black Christ's sufferings the incarceration and torture of political activists in apartheid South Africa. On a more ideological level, I demonstrate also, as embodied in the series, the aspirant directives of Black Consciousness and Black Theology. Turning to Mbatha's Stations of the Cross for Africa, I present its visual narrative as analogously envisioning, as well as critically rethinking, the mutually embedded traumas of slavery, colonialism and apartheid. Significant to my analysis is the future vision of reconciliation posited by Mbatha, and the extent to which it both reflects and challenges that maintained within the 'transformative' programme of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Demonstrated in my evaluation of these appropriative projects is the way in which a traditionally European iconographic tradition is critically redeployed - in chronicling situations of historical trauma, as well as in the envisioning of alternative futures. As such, I hope to afford a more nuanced and challenging appreciation of these reimagined Passion narratives, as significant projects of cultural and postcolonial memory. In keeping with this, I advance in conclusion a 'rethinking of pilgrimage'. Recalling the culture of participative witness associated with devotional programmes like the Stations of the Cross, I propose that in the case of both Nkosi's Crucifixion and Mbatha's Stations of the Cross for Africa, extended to viewers is a certain imperative: to imaginatively revisit, and rethink within the present, traumatic histories of black suffering and resistance.
- ItemOpen AccessA wounded surface : dissolving the human form(2011) Palte, Lauren; MacKenny, VirginiaThis text offers an exploration into painting and metaphysical states of being and provides a framework for the reception of my body of work submitted for an MFA degree. In this project I am concerned with the translation of personal experiences to a canvas marked with oil paint. The experiences engage memories and stories mined from my family photographs, while also located in an experience of illness in my own body. Rather than directly illustrate these events, I have engaged with associated emotional states, such as feelings of loss, fear and uncertainty. My concerns are expressed either through fragmented or dismembered painted figures, or are engaged through the medium's materiality, explored and evoked through the visual and visceral qualities of a painted surface. An important part of my reading on carefully posed groups in formal family photographs is Marianne Hirsch's Family Frames: Photography. Narrative and Post memory (1997). Gathered at symbolic rites of passage, the family photograph offers ideal images of certitude, of familial togetherness and of happiness. In this body of work I reject the appearance of stability and search my family photographs for traces of ambivalent and unsettled bodily or emotional experiences.