If you enjoy discovering new art and artists then you will want to make sure to pop in to visit The Mixed Reality Workshop (TMRW) which is located on the Keyes Art Mile and is presenting Old Masters / New Realities, an exhibition of works by J.H. Pierneef, Wayne Barker, Gerard Sekoto and Lady Skollie – open to the public until the end of November.
The exhibition marks the start of a series of uniquely curated conversations between early South African artists and their contemporary counterparts and features a pairing of Lady Skollie responding to the pioneering social realism work of Gerard Sekoto (1913 – 1993) while Wayne Barker responds to J.H. Pierneef (1886 – 1957), considered by many as the definitive South African landscape painter.
“Old Masters / New realities is a re-imagining of the past, present and future of artistic practice but a re-imagining that’s also keenly focused on the role of technology in the development of contemporary art,” says TMRW’s Ann Roberts.
The conversation is created by allowing local contemporary artists who are taking part in the series to have access to one of the ‘old masters such as Pierneef, and allowing them to respond to the work by creating new work that draws on both traditional media and the digital possibilities provided by virtual reality and augmented reality technology.
For the current Skollie x Sekoto and Barker x Pierneef exhibition, the artists worked with Eden, a company that acts as a catalyst for new technological approaches to artistic practice.
Old Masters / New Realities sees Lady Skollie make a simultaneously bold and vulnerable expression of the duality of the human experience as a response to Sekoto’s graceful and dignified portrayal of abstracted busts and portrait studies of African women, through his expressionistic style.
Wayne Barker’s ardently layered subversions of the commodification of “African identity” is a digital response to J.H. Pierneef’s stylistic ability to assure balance of form, colour and composition as a way of effectively evoking the atmosphere of the unspoilt African landscape.
The artworks of the masters will also be present for the public to view, which is a rare opportunity as the works of Seketo and Pierneef are not usually available for viewing.
Wayne Barker is presented in collaboration with Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg and Lady Skollie is presented in collaboration with Tyburn Gallery, London.
Find out more online here…
