Emily Rae Smith Labuschagne opens her exhibition, Things Evaporate But Never Disappear, at DAOR Contemporary Art Gallery in Port of Cape Town on Thursday 23 June 2022 at 18:00.Â
Playing her pastel palette like the pied piper, Emily wanders into a world of nostalgia chasing the ephemeral sensations of childhood to wherever they lead. Dreamy recollections, that with every remembrance, have the potential to shape shift into the world of the reimagined, the reinvented.
An initial daubing of paint on the canvas, the blocking out of colours, set the scene for Emily to discover the details as she works, the images emerging like shapes taking form in the clouds. Deeply rooted within her work and intimated by her pastel tones (a reduction of saturated colour) lies the concept of echoes, of an impression left over from a moment in time, no longer in technicolour but indelible, nonetheless. And then come the words. The surface naiveté of her paintings: the playfulness of sprinklers in a garden on a summer’s day, a pastel inner tube floating in a pool, a pretty poodle, or a tumbling confectionery, hold beneath their innocent layer of frosting and delight, a deeper and sometimes darker sense of the world hinted at by the interplay of her images with their titles.
With each word comes the whisper of a story: tales of whimsy touched with sorrow, of innocence giving way to experience, of life walking hand in hand with death. The melancholy of moments that are lost and the anticipation of moments yet to come.
The things that disappear that are never truly gone and the things that remain that were never truly here. – Lindsay Klein
There is plenty of safe parking right outside the DAOR Contemporary Gallery in the Port. Please bring identification to enter the Port at the South Arm Entrance. International residents need to produce a passport to enter the Port.
WHAT: Emily Rae Smith Labuschagne – Things Evaporate But Never Disappear
WHERE: DAOR Contemporary Art Gallery, 4 Coodes Crescent, Port of Cape Town, Cape Town 8001
WHEN: Opening Thursday 23 June 2022 – 18:00 | Gallery hours Tues-Fri 9–5 and Sat: 10–2
INFO: T 071 624 7130 | E info@daor.co.za | Visit  | SOCIALS: Insta: @daor_contemporary | FB: @DaorContemporary | Artsy | Follow DAOR Contemporary on Instagram |  Linktree for all links in one place
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