Province by John-Michael Metelerkamp, a solo exhibition, opens on Thursday 6 May at Nel Gallery.
This artist hails from George and only recently relocated to Cape Town. His family is also from the same area and in this exhibition Metelerkamp looks at photographs of his family’s colonial past. This artist started painting late, he was already 32, this was in 2013, but when he took to painting it took to him like a fever.
Ashraf Jamal writes:
Metelerkamp makes no judgement on the past. Instead, he situates the viewer within a story which is as much about racial division and inequality as it is not. If the photographs are ethnographic records, then perhaps Metelerkamp’s take is autoethnographic, an intimate re-imagining of a historical record?
Unlike his other series of paintings Garden Route his palette does not lean toward a darker tonality but rather engages in bright colour fields. This might, in part, be because he is painting from black and white photographs, sepia images which leaves the filling in of the images with colour, to the imagination of the viewer. Metelerkamp is our ‘original viewer’ who, through paint, present us with colour and with a strangely distant yet familiar subjectivity toward these images.
“We wait to welcome you” – Luan and his beautiful and talented team at Nel.
WHAT: Province by John-Michael Metelerkamp
WHERE: Nel, 117 Long Street, Cape Town 8001
WHEN: Thursday the 6th of May for the opening from 5 pm to 8 pm. It is part of First Thursdays, the Cape Town edition. The exhibition closes on 20 May
INFO: T +27 (0)83 324 6512 | E info@nelart.co.za | Visit | facebook.com/117LongStreet | @nel.on.long
PHOTO:Â John-Michael Metelerkamp – Florence Feeding White Leghorns
Nel follow COVID 19 Protocols.
Please wear a mask, sanitize upon entry and follow generous social distancing throughout the evening. Our safety is in our own hands.
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