DATES:
25 JANUARY – 22 FEBRUARY 2020
ARTISTS
Walter Battiss, Robert Hodgins, William Kentridge, Fred Page, Welcome Koboka, Peter Clarke, John Muafangejo
“WALL presents works by South African artists who built the foundation for future aesthetic developments in the South African art.”
Domestic Scenes
A selection of artworks making the ordinary – extraordinary
‘Domestic’ derived from the Latin domus (home / house) is normally applied to describe an activity, task, job or environment confined to the private home. In the western tradition the “domestic” scene became a legitimate subject for artistic practice in the 17th century.
Abundantly so in Holland where the painting of daily life in the home, albeit often presented with a moralising tinge, enjoyed enormous popularity and support. By the 19th century domesticity becomes the mainstay of painting practice throughout Europe finding a climax in Impressionism which remains the most popular painting movement ever.
The domestic scene / subject in its many manifestations as still life, landscape or interior provides the artist with a diversity of possible approaches from realistic and deliberately banal representation of a household object as the focus of contemplation, the home as a surreal theatre with persons acting out personal allegories to dreamlike reconfiguration of the daily life of labour.
Kentridge’s Domestic Scenes … provides the title and impetus for this collection of works all of which transform the ordinary subject of domestic existence into an extraordinary works of art.