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| Opening speech - Dr Gary Minkley |
| Schultz @ Halcyon, 26 November 2008, East London, South Africa. |
We live in a modern world that has increasingly been defined as one of change and fluidity. By this it is meant that we live in a world of rapid flows, movement, change in ideas, practices, meanings, the things we see and do. Liquid modernity is a recent term to describe this. Now Halcyon is positioned to respond to these flows and advise you how to manage and secure them – to advise how and in what ways you make sense of the fluidity around money, investment, and financial security and channel it in ways that serve your interests best.
Greg’s work is also concerned with flows, with movement, with the fluid, and he invites us to think about the aesthetics of this moment, and also of how we imagine the future. Perhaps, though, from an aesthetic point of view, he suggests that the liquidity of our modernity has increasingly forgotten and lost touch with what was liquid in the first place – with the flows of rivers, seas, birds, the stars, time and space.
And with the Halcyon Group hosting this exhibition – the first time I can recall a private company signaling their own opening with an exhibition of a major artists work, at least here in East London – it is not out of line to signal the ways they wish to do business with these aesthetics and values in mind – hence the idea of ‘financial intelligence with heart’.
They are also to be congratulated on doing this, and appreciated, in a time when the arts seems to be relegated, ignored, and marginalized from all sides.
Let me turn to the exhibition. This new work carries forward work which first found its way into our visual memory in two recent shows – Mediators and Go-Betweens. Mediators (2007) and the Go Betweens (2008)
This show opens on the back of long-standing accomplishments, the most recent of which are the:
(a) sell out solo Go-Betweens at the National Arts Festival
(b) two paintings purchased for the Absa Bank corporate collection (one of the premier collections)
(c) three artworks on the 40th Summer Show of SA Art, in George
This show has:
21 paintings
8 drawings
Majority of it is new work – that has not been seen before.
As has become customary, Greg provides with a centre piece, a 270 x 160 cm canvas where, with regular precision, he opens the door to a reading of his work overall. In this exhibition, this piece is ‘Position of Anticipation’, Looking at this truly spectacular piece together with that of the recent work called the Go-Betweens mediating our looks in the background, I think, takes us into the worlds of flight, fluidity, movement – and yet it also anticipates us taking a position, finding a bearing, locating a place, mapping a space.
It is this in-between space and our relation to it; and the goings between worlds real and imagined, that seems to almost lap over the edges of the work. Standing in front of it, glancing down, a pool of water seems to form of the floor. Step forward and you are waist deep in flow and …; step back and you are submerged, fluidity in your body and your veins, immersed in a world beneath the surface of things. But what a surface if you hold your position – shimmering, gliding, sparkling – a moment of rare beauty and anticipation.
What is also so exciting about this exhibition is the opportunity to see one of South Africa’s leading landscape artists, and certainly the Eastern Cape’s premier landscape artist grow and develop - to see him get better and the works become even more filled with an anticipation of wonder and engagement. And the shift to the more liquid – to the movements of sea, river, water, birds and air – also marked with the liquid movement of fire and of burning, is a movement to be celebrated and cherished. It is almost as if Greg has found his medium – he paints water, sea, rivers and the skies that mirror these currents of movement like no one else I have ever seen. And I constantly find myself overwhelmed by them – they take me between worlds and make me want to go- between them.
There are of course many works to look at and to see and admire, and I do not want to hold you to a series of words when you can wander around and see them all for yourself and make your own minds up about ‘Yellows Left’ and ‘Current’, about ‘Southern Cross’ and ‘Surge’, or about ‘Constellation’, ‘Water V’ and “Fluidity’ and the many others on show. And look out for – in fact see if you can detect the unusual influences in his work: fire and bees usually feature in evolving textures between the planned and chance; between the natural and the ordered.
As a final set of comments I want, though, to just very briefly reflect on a way of seeing much of this work. Conventional landscape painting invites us to view landscapes in a very particular way, and I have suggested before that Greg paints against the plague of the picturesque to give meaning, locality and indeed, history and belonging to the landscapes of home and the Eastern Cape. But he has also done that from within the conventions of landscape art, and the sense of a prospect – a vantage point outside, above, overlooking and ‘mastering’ the landscape has also been a mark with which Greg constantly works with, and against – going between convention and innovation, stability and change and so on.
What strikes me though, is how Greg has now moved the lens and point of the prospect, and thus also moved us, in moving the site from which we view the land or sea represented in front of us. To me it now feels much more like the conventional prospect has become the periscope – itself an amazingly go-between or in-between looking device. It is this periscoped view that ‘Water V’, or ‘Position of Anticipation’ invites. As such it is a radical view, and one that invokes an imagination of fluidity, liquidity and flow that is unique. Go and stand in front of ‘Water V’: is this a rock over which the water flows? are we standing, sitting, lying on it? Could it be a whale? Are we on its back? Seeing with its eyes as it surfaces? Perhaps looking behind? A submarine? Seeing through a periscope? We go-between these possibilities and possible worlds.
Greg challenges us then, to think and constantly re-think nature and the natural, and our relationships to it and within and between its different spaces – water, air, light, fire, flight. It’s a fantastic journey to go in and be in and the world is a better place – a much better place for it.
And Halcyon has given us an opportunity to enter this space and to share it collectively and on the scale of an exhibition, rather than individually, digitally, or episodically.
Halcyon:
a term that originates from the Greek myth of Alcyone, is used most often to mean golden or marked by peace and prosperity.
Halcyon may refer to Birds (Halcyon (genus), a type of bird) and a Tree kingfisher, a family of birds (Halcyonidae) containing the above genus, amongst many other things including games, literature, music and ships.
The Halcyon Group, not surprisingly, shares many of the characteristics I’ve been talking about: a leading local, home based Eastern Cape Financial Group, yet solidly based in the traditions and worlds of finance more globally, while also innovating to local conditions and charting new financial, accounting, health, insurance and training possibilities. And this building marks their own further trajectory of this growth and development.
So, if you’re worried about the prices – don’t be. You probably couldn’t be in a better place: Apart from my continued insistence that Greg’s work is a bargain investment, Richard can advise you how much to invest, Leonard how you can get most of it back from SARS, Gary will make you feel better about it, and the other members of the Group all reassure you that you are demonstrating financial intelligence with heart. They are to be congratulated, and importantly recognized, that in a world that does not easily, or even regularly support the arts – they have chosen to mark the opening of their new building with this work. It’s extraordinary – and at least in recent times – it is a first. It not only shows financial intelligence with heart, but also creative intelligence with soul!
I wish them both every success they deserve. Congratulations |
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