FINE ART: Ruth Sack
SONGS and Monuments by Bongi Dhlomo is an exhibition of drawings, paintings and assemblages in which the central, recurring image is of an African headrest, standing alone and without context — as, of course, they now do in museums. Some of these paintings make it easy to think of headrests as monuments: they are indeed objects in which monumentality (of form and stature) and intimacy (in size, function and ownership) somehow marry.
Only a few of Dhlomo’s works convey these layers of expression, however. In most, one receives not much more than a half-felt gesture. There is more to be said about the titles of these works than of the works themselves.
Dhlomo’s expression of herself is located not only in art-making. She is an articulate and effective “consultant” in the art community — especially in community arts. She has been wielding visible influence for years in that difficult and fraught arena. And so it is not surprising that, given that the earlier works on this first solo show in Johannesburg date back to 1992, the output appears quite tiny. The problem is rather that the output is extremely young, still in its formative years.
In 1992 and 1993 Dhlomo was working in the Thupelo Workshops, which were then fully under the influence of American abstract-expressionism. Her works of this period could have been from the brush and spill of almost any member of the group. (For most participants it was an important but very experimental phase, from which a few later pushed on to much more personal, particular languages.) Exhibited here, these paintings appear curiously anachronistic.
In the more recent work, we find her seeking a route to her “origins” as an artist. The subjects of her sketches and paintings — the carved possessions that were removed long ago by missionaries and other sojourners to adorn mantelpieces in Europe — link her to her predecessors. In acknowledgement of these original hands, each work has the label “Artist Unknown/Bongi Dhlomo”: the result of a collaboration. Some of the titles are as if from a museum: Has No Title — Possibly Shona. Others have names with large implications: Feeding Scheme (a small drawing of a cup-sized calabash bowl). Or Alignment (actually, this one was drawn while she was waiting for her car to have its wheels balanced …).
This sense of irony is wonderful, and often sharp, when one finds it. But, with little to sustain one’s attention visually, one begins to wish that more urgency were translatable from her tirelessness as an arts activist into her artwork. In her “collaborative” works, one would have wanted her to play a more intense (or at least more interesting) role, and bring to the equation something that demands much more of us, and especially of herself.
Songs and Monuments runs at the Gallery on Tyrone, Parkview, until September
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