The Cult of Ugliness – a new exhibition of paintings and sculptures by Georgina Gratrix

The UCT Irma Stern Museum is delighted to host the celebrated painter Georgina Gratrix as its second artist in residence. As part of the museum’s 50th anniversary year, Gratrix is working in the museum residency-studio from July to September 2022. Artworks produced during this residency will be exhibited in the UCT Irma Stern Museum from 28 September 2022.

Born a century after the renown South African artist Irma Stern (1894 – 1966), contemporary artist Georgina Gratrix (1982) is likewise a dedicated colourist testing the limits of oil painting. Many of Stern’s works are reflected in Gratrix’s pieces – compositionally, in their colouration and in their subject matter – making both direct and indirect references to Stern’s work. 

Georgina Gratrix was born in Mexico City in 1982 and grew up in Durban, South Africa. She studied at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, and graduated in 2005, specialising in painting.

In 2018, Gratrix was awarded the Discovery Prize at the 50th Anniversary edition of Art Brussels, for her presentation with SMAC Gallery in Brussels, Belgium. Gratrix is a recipient of the Ampersand Fellowship Award and completed a residency at the Ampersand Foundation in New York City, USA in 2018. She completed a residency in Oaxaca, Mexico, in association with a Centro de las Artes Augustín (CASA) culminating in a group exhibition entitled Crossing Night in the same year.

In 2021, the Norval Foundation in Cape Town presented a major museum solo exhibition entitled Georgina Gratrix: The Reunion. Further solo exhibitions include: THIS MUST BE THE PLACE, at the KwaZulu-Natal Society of Arts in Durban, South Africa in 2021; The Pleasure is Mine and Nine Weeks, at Nicodim Gallery in Los Angeles, USA, in 2020; On Repeat, at SMAC Gallery in Johannesburg, in 2018; Puppy Love, at SMAC Gallery in Cape Town, in 2016; The Berlin Paintings at Die Tankstelle in association with Nolan Judin Gallery in Berlin, Germany, in 2013; My Show in 2012 at SMAC Gallery in Stellenbosch; and Everything Ecstatic, at Ten Haaf Projects in Amsterdam, Netherlands, in 2010.

In addition to her solo presentation at Art Brussels, Gratrix has presented solo booths at The Armory Show in New York City in 2020, artmonte-carlo in Monte Carlo, Monaco in 2019, and Miart in Milan, Italy in 2017. To date, SMAC Gallery has produced two publications on the artist, Georgina Gratrix (2016) and Some New Paintings by Georgina Gratrix (2018). Gratrix is represented in South Africa by SMAC Gallery and in the USA by the Nicodim Gallery.

Shortly after Stern’s first exhibition in South Africa a century ago in 1922, she was lambasted in the local media with one critic referring to her work as a “Freak Picture Exhibition” in a review titled “Art of Miss Irma Stern – Ugliness as a Cult”. 100 years later Gratrix takes this sentiment as her point of departure to examine the ways in which Modernism, and in particular German Expressionism has made an impact on her own work and whose historical influence continues to shape the various twists and turns of contemporary art today.  

The Cult of Ugliness has a long precedent beginning with the German philosopher Karl Rosenkranz who wrote “The Aesthetics of the Ugly” in 1853, whilst the poet Ezra Pound again used the phrase in 1913 to distinguish artwork that differed from what he described as belonging to the “Cult of Beauty”.

Most recently Umberto Eco deployed the phrase in his book “On Ugliness” in 2007, where he questions why through the centuries have there been so many theories of beauty but none devoted to what the public generally considers “ugly”.

“You can’t have one without the other” says Gratrix who has had similar accusations levelled at her own work. Interested in the gaudy, the obvious and the banal, her paintings playfully investigate the boundaries between desirability and the grotesque.

“All painting is a conversation with the history of painting” says Gratrix describing her intentions for her upcoming show at the Irma Stern Museum opening in September. 

During the residency Gratrix will spend time painting both her own collection of objects as well as the rich and varied archive of Stern’s personal trove which brought her endless inspiration. Coupled with these studies Gratrix will include previously unexhibited paintings from her own collection that will find new meaning in the context of the UCT Irma Stern Museum.

Walkabouts with Georgina Gratrix:

• 28 September 2022 from 3pm – 4pm
• 26 November 2022 from 11am – 12.30pm

Booking via irmastern@uct.ac.za is essential.

Discussion with Georgina Gratrix and Sean O’Toole:

5 November from 11am – 12pm

Booking via irmastern@uct.ac.za is essential.

Ugly/ Beautiful: practical art-making workshops with ISM Curator and Educator Nobukho Nqaba

Date to be confirmed

Booking via irmastern@uct.ac.za is essential and the cost is R200 per person which covers light refreshment and art materials. Limited sponsored bookings are available.

For more information and dates for walkabouts and events, visit the UCT Irma Stern Museum website and Instagram here.

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