It was an artsy evening on 20 June at Guns and Rain Art – a contemporary African art gallery – surrounded by Jo Rogge’s artistic paintings.
The painter’s art represents intense emotive states, provoked by a world fraught with conflict.
In Rogge’s new collection, she showcased ships, boats and life rafts as the theme, dating back to nearly a decade. Its origins go back even further, to a childhood growing up on the coast of the Indian Ocean, and a father who taught her to sail and build boats.
The 55-year-old reflected on the international migrant crisis as well as imprints and patterns in her own personal history.
It is the first time she has exhibited in the new gallery space but it is not the first time she has exhibited with Guns and Rain Art.
Among others, she exhibited with Guns and Rain Art in Paris last year and previously at different venues in Johannesburg such as Arts on Main and the Turbine Art Fair. The act of drawing, layering and reworking older work is a fundamental part of Rogge’s artistic process.
“Because I am excavating usually strong emotional states, this provides continuity and a safe space on an emotional and physical level. I may reconnect to past experiences or states of being and choose to either allow them to continue to exist by carrying them into new work or to obliterate them.
“I paint experiences that I can’t rationalise in words. By rendering events non-verbally that have either fundamentally elevated or wounded me, I am able to contain them and make sense of them,” she explained.
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