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Journeys through space or time

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One can journey through time and space, or use your mind to make journeys of the imagination, and the use of a journey as a theme suggests various interesting metaphors. These ideas are explored in the latest exhibition of selected work from the Art Museum’s Permanent Collection.

A centrepiece of the exhibition is Andrieta Wentzel’s award-winning installation, Aspects of the dark other (2006). Viewers are invited to walk through a maze of wooden totems each representing one of the twelve tasks of Hercules, carried out by the Greek hero to atone for the slaying of his family.

Also on view are paintings, prints and watercolors that explore the theme from a multitude of perspectives.  Thomas Baines’s oil paintings of ships off the coast of Southern Africa illustrate 19th-century journeys of exploration.

Paintings by Cleone Cull and J A Opperman invite us to take a voyage into the metaphysical and explore how a journey can take place only in the imagination.

Fred Page’s melancholic acrylic of a train station is a reminder that the beginning of a journey can also mean sad goodbyes.

Henry Symonds and Anton Kannemeyer draw on their experiences of apartheid era South Africa.

Georgia PapaGeorge’s large multimedia canvas is a record of her travels from South Africa to South America in which she carried a giant ribbon to connect these two continents as a reminder that these were once part of a single continent.

Lien Botha’s take on ‘the family holiday’ as a safari adventure is full of ironic humour.

Stencil outlines of animals and activities, reminiscent of school textbooks, float over photographs of the South African landscape.

This exhibition opened at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum on 18 January and runs until 15 June 2014.

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Alan Straton

Chief Cook, Bottle Washer and Broom Mechanic at MyPE
Passionate about Port Elizabeth and definitely NOT packing for Perth. Alan's ethos is epitomised in the words of Nelson Mandela; "I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the idea of a democratic and free society. If need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." See more articles by Alan.