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Jenny Pomeroy, Red Pill, Blue Pill, 2014.
Acrylic and
oil on canvas, 153 x 101 cm.
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There is so much
that can be said about this exhibition and the larger project behind it: I
could for instance focus on the underpinning thematics of Jenny’s study:
Locating what she
calls “the auratic” in certain paintings (that is, when they exhibit a presence
or aura), and especially in the work of Marlene Dumas which Jenny was able to experience
intimately in both Cape Town and Amsterdam.
Defining the
auratic in terms of a liminal space between an artwork’s proximity (what Jenny
terms “being-thereness”) and on the other hand, a distance or unattainability, (which
Walter Benjamin identifies as the conditions for an artwork’s auratic quality).
Today, ironically, such distance usually means that an artwork is often ubiquitously
available to us as a set of scaled-down images in books and on the web - where
they are unreliable, pixelated and often completely decontextualized, and thus without
aura.
Another thematic
with which Jenny grapples is in identifying the aura as a presence, especially in terms of what she calls a ‘certain
something’ about the internal personhood of her model. The abiding attraction of the portrait and its photographic source – a
source which, surprisingly, frees her from likeness, mimicry and, of course, flattery
(this is especially interesting in that her sources are all family and friends)
I could focus on the
tensions which lie at the heart of the location of auratic moments i.e. when
the iconicity of the photographic source has been transgressed and liberated, and
where transcending the source material occurs in interesting yet difficult-to-define
ways.
In her
dissertation, Jenny has forged a compelling and exhaustive argument for the
auratic in particular portrait paintings derived from photographic sources, an
argument requiring no less exhaustive investigation in the making of these paintings:
these phenomenological, haptic, embodied and dare-I-say auratic portraits in
which material embodiment, indexical traces of their making and the meatiness
of painting are evident in her quest to transcend mere likeness.
She unhinges the false iconic power which the
photograph claims in respect of resemblance and points our attention toward that
liminal moment where physical likeness collapses and folds into a representation
of the personhood of her sitter as only Jenny might know them.
This embodiment of
what the American figural painter Willem de Kooning calls “slipping and
glimpsing” results in a set of potently disconcerting - and in places,
difficult and seemingly ugly - surfaces which threaten not to hold and which clearly
deny likeness (the very convention upon which portrait painting builds is
foundation). But for Jenny, any painting of someone else is also a palpable and
indexical sign of her own existence, her “having-been hereness”, evidencing a
thinking mind which directs the often unruly liquidity and materiality of her
processes. In some fundamental way, these paintings then, are all, also,
self-portraits.
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Jenny Pomeroy, Disembodied Selfie,
2014. Acrylic and
oil on canvas, 180 x 127 cm.
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Any visit to
Jenny’s studio would evince a space of ordered frenzy, the large canvasses
moving between easel and floor where there is no longer a conventional top or
bottom, and around which Jenny prowls, pours, tilts, wipes off, reworks and circles
about some more.
In this sometimes frenzied process of painting, a degree of
control - along with preciousness and ego - disappear; the process of slipping
and glimpsing that “certain something” about the personhood she is trying to
paint, sometimes seems as elusive as the successful herding of cats. But it is
visceral and exciting ending only when liquidity has settled, a film forms on
the surface and calm is restored so that the painter can, at last, see what she
has painted, and in this aspect alone, she is the bravest of painters.
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Jenny Pomeroy. Mother, Brother, Me, 2013.
Acrylic and
oil on canvas, 121 x 153 cm each (triptych).
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Jenny does not want
a polite portrait which would - inevitably - only point back to the photograph
and the model: such an act would only deny and undermined the very act of
painting in the first place.
Instead, Jenny’s portraits point us in another
direction: towards the difficulty of liberating painting from mimicry, towards an
act of material and visual ‘archaeology’; slipping towards and glimpsing that
elusive relational aesthetic which underpins the physical and emotional relationships
we share with others, especially those we know well and love.
In this exhibition, the index of materiality,
mark and process is a brave and honest act, a revelation of selfhood, material
personhood and “having-been thereness” (as much as it embodies blood rising in
the veins, a hair-standing-up-on-end moment, the flush of excitement, a chill
up the spine, the bodily recognition of the tenor of a voice).
And so I appeal to
each of us here tonight, to read the exhibition as it is built. Below,
self-reflexive works explore the very foundations of her study, taking the idea
of the portrait (Jenny’s own in places) in multiple directions to see where
these paths may lead.
In other works downstairs, familiar faces provide an
opportunity to understand the gravity of the what, how and why of the study she
has undertaken and where video animations help unlock processes of
transgression and transcendence between starting and ending points (something
absent when only viewing the final congealed product) and that shifting
morphology which exists between photographic source and final painting. These
animations have proven as valuable a resource for Jenny as they are
entertaining and informative for the viewer.
Jenny, up here in
the white cube (FADA Gallery) in which your major work can breathe and provoke,
we are reminded of another protean idea expressed by de Kooning, that “... flesh was the reason why oil paint was
invented”; of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s suggestion that “expressive painting is better equipped to
reveal personhood than is photography” and finally, Marlene Dumas’
statement that “Paintings exist as the
traces of their makers and by the grace of these traces”.
David Paton
Supervisor of the Masters Candidate.
Senior Lecturer
Department of Visual Arts
FADA
Univesity of
Johannesburg
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| Artist studio shot. |
