Points of Departure at Solo Studios 2022
August 26, 2022 - August 28, 2022
Joint exhibition by conceptual artist Emma Willemse and photographer Rudolph Willemse, curated by Elizabeth Miller-Vermeulen
Exhibition as part of Solo Studios 2022
Hoofstraat Conceptual, 52 Main Street, Riebeek Kasteel
Read the short article by Laetitia Pole here
Background
Emma and Rudolph Willemse are the owners of Hoofstraat Conceptual, a creative venue in Riebeek Kasteel in the Swartland, Western Cape. Rudolph is a poet and photographer and Emma is a conceptual artist. During December 2021, they decided to use the space informally to exhibit their works for visiting friends and family to view. They then noticed that many of their works were in visual conversation with each other, and decided to take it further by engaging curator Elizabeth Miller-Vermeulen, who has a thorough understanding of their work, to curate a joint exhibition. The Points of Departure exhibition is the result of the collaboration between the three creatives.
Emma Willemse artist statement
Throughout my oeuvre my works have dealt with an attempt to make sense of the traumatic experience of loss. My point of departure in this enquiry is through the engagement with material – to touch material, to sense material in every way, to experiment with it and to manipulate it into a meaning-making agent. I use material that have a history and that refer to a place and the events that happened there. I use material as a metaphor, not only in a physical three-dimensional way in my installations, but also in a pictorial way in my printmaking, collages, drawing and painting.
On display at Points of Departure were a range of installations of various sizes in which I use ‘things that were left behind’, such as discarded parquet floor blocks that were ripped out of the foundations of demolished homes in Woodstock, Cape Town, as well as paint shards that were scraped off a decaying wall. Also on exhibition were printmaking works and digital collages in which I explore what I call ‘devices to make sense of loss’, such as archiving, listing, stacking and filing. My digital collages are constructed from a manipulation and combination of my own photographs taken during travels and images of my own installations.
A collection of books from my artist’s book installation called 101 Ways to Long for a Home was also be on display. It is in these small works that I combine three-dimensional bookmaking techniques with handmade and digital printmaking.
