Browsing by Author "Mackenny, Virginia"

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    BOGASATSWANA: redbuilding the boat while sailing
    (2020) Phetogo, Thebeyame; Mackenny, Virginia
    Bogasatswana: Rebuilding the Boat while Sailing, is an attempt to both transmit and disrupt a story-world whose make-up is based on my country of origin, Botswana. It is an exercise in worldbuilding through painting, wherein I establish post-colonial Botswana as a fictional place through the interrogation of gaps within the historicised national myths of the country and locate myself in said place and medium as a subject in the contemporary moment. Rather than the presentation of a fully realized fictional world, this project privileges the attempt at articulating a subjective world-version as informed by my positionality. As with solving a mathematical equation, I endeavour to show my working in the making visible of this space.
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    Filling in the gaps
    (2007) Sacks, Ruth; Alexander, Jane; Mackenny, Virginia
    In 2007, Brian O'Doherty's words still apply. The art object and its context are intrinsically intertwined. A variety of contexts make up the mechanisms of the contemporary art world. From established organizations to more informal platforms, each performs a necessary function. Representation in a national museum or a respected public collection bestows a measure of credibility on a piece. Outside of austere exhibition rooms and refined gallery spaces, more informal arenas have their own authority. An independent artistic intervention on a busy pavement or a remote beach can suggest an anti-institutionalist stance. The artist is not bound by the conventions of more traditional structures. Yet, a great deal of interventionist work ultimately makes its way into galleries and collections in the form of residue and documentation. These become marketable and collectable products. Similarly, reputed organizations sometimes orchestrate potentially disruptive insertions into the public sphere in the form of performances or temporary installations. Even when they appear to be at odds, the different forums in which artworks exist rely on each other.
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    THE SKY IS FALLING - Skyscapes and the anthropocene landscape
    (2022) Ocholla, Catherine; Mackenny, Virginia
    The practical component of this project comprises an installation of paintings exploring a narrative theme concerning the atmosphere (air, sky and space) in our future present. Alluding to Anthropogenic factors such as contamination, global warming, conflict, and neoliberal claims to the Commons of air and space, the premise of my project is speculative. [World] building on real life experiences that are rendered visually credible by the use of realist and photorealist painting techniques, the world that I create is familiar, partly autobiographic and recognisable, but centred around some unspecified catastrophe. Supporting the idea of a narrative still-in-progress, the painterly conceit of ‘non-finito' serves to undercut the visual certitudes of illusionism. Here the process of painting is visibly evident, rendering the works, or world they depict, as ‘in the making'. In support, the accompanying theoretical text: explores artists' creation of fictional/ imaginary worlds using landscapes and the role of science and speculative fiction; and traverses the visualisation of Anthropogenic concerns through landscapes, particularly in the use of skyscapes/ cloudscapes. Relative to the practical's presentation as an installation and execution as paintings, the text provides case studies of contemporary landscape painters who exploit the capacity of the conjunction of realism, photorealism and non-finito to convince viewers of their painted fictional and imaginary worlds while at the same time subverting such convictions. Mark Tansey's work, Action Painting II (1984) in particular, is examined in this regard. In the South African context, painters such as Luan Nel, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Ndikhumbule Ngqinambi, and MJ Lourens play with different visual registers to reflect the complexities of the future present. Others, such as Robyn Penn, raise real world Anthropogenic concerns by using diversely executed panels or installations of paintings. Penn's installations engage climate change through using the cloud as a major trope of uncertainty. ‘The sky is falling' thus attempts to reflect the unseen possibilities of visual narratives' engagement with ongoing global crises.