"Doreen Southwood: Nothing Really Matters"
2002-09-18 until 2002-10-02
Bell-Roberts Art Gallery
Cape Town, , ZA South Africa

This exhibition titled, 'Nothing, really matters', will include audio visual work , as well as three dimensional installations. The central piece on show , depicts a washing powder storm, projected onto four walls of a floating cube structure . Southwood continues to work with an autobiographical theme, and uses various techniques to recontextualise the world she knows well.

Doreen is an Afrikaans speaking white female in her late twenties. Her work deals largely with issues of obsession and mental illness, striving to find the perfect balance between fear and love, order and chaos. She questions identity while dealing with discomfort and disease.

Southwood is completing her Master's degree at the University of Stellenbosch which she began in 1999. Recent Standard Bank Young Artist Award recipient and winner of FNB Vita Award winner Alan Alborough is one of her supervisors.

Southwood produced a work for "Homeport", the Public Eye-curated event which took place at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town last December. Her work comprised a series of phrases describing sensations and feelings infused with a sense of loss. These phrases were made from cutout letters which were attached to submerged scaffolding. At different times in the ebb and flow of the tide, some phrases emerged from the water, others stood just proud while the rest were obscured by the opacity of the surface. Like all of Southwood's work, this was extremely photogenic and featured on the cover of the catalogue.

Soon after this she partook in 'Eksie Perfeksie' with Antoinette Murdoch at Spark! in Johannesburg. She produced four incredibly ambitious works for the show but ended up exhibiting only three. The last piece, having been worked on some more will be seen for the first time at the Bell-Roberts this month.

- artthrobfeatured artist for September

IMAGE:
Doreen Southwood
Nothing really matters (detail), 2002
Cube shaped structure
Projected images on all four sides
(Film of glass container filling up with washing powder)

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for South Africa

Other Important Exhibitions in South Africa