CLINTON DE MENEZES
contemporary artist
index - current - location(s) - text
www.clintondemenezes.com | +44 (0) 7912 103167 | info@clintondemenezes.com
CLINTON DE MENEZES
contemporary artist
-De Menezes' real strength, however, lies in his drawing. Densely rendered layers of pastel, mud and paint are applied to surfaces with images referencing the elements of fire, water, air and earth. Photographs of the artist and a variety of objects are buried in surfaces. Alluding to an archaeology of self, half revealing and half concealing, the drawings provide a place for less prescriptive statements. Often beautifully evocative in their handling of light, it is here that the poetry that de Menezes is capable of is revealed (Artthrob review, Location(s), Virginia Mackenny, 2004).
The Location(s) Series is an ongoing series of works that engage with the politics and poetics of South African Space. In South Africa the landscape has been physically and conceptually shaped by history. It is charged with varying cultural ideologies and defined by geographic borders. The competition for land/space became synonymous with conflict, power and control. It is within this context that the colonial landscape was born. Since the first democratic elections in 1994, the conceptual and physical borders of South Africa were redrawn. The process began with land reform policies and with the remapping of the physical landscape from four colonial provinces into nine post-colonial provinces. With this new geography came a new awareness in understanding and redefining the politics of South African space. It is in this context that the post-colonial landscape in South Africa is still been defined.
Started in 2002, the works reference specific locations in the South African landscape; Anglo-Zulu and Anglo-Boer battlefields, industrialised and mined landscapes of the Witwatersrand to the expansive cultivated landscapes of the Free State. Divided into individual splices of paper, the works in the series represent separate views of the landscape which are then stuck back together to form the whole. From the representational view of the landscape at eye level to the sky and deep space down to foot level and into the strata of the earth. Clues are given as to the often conflicted histories of theses spaces by elements that are either stuck, embedded, engraved or drawn back into the work. Referencing everything from battlefield maps to biological organisms and UFO’s, the landscapes reference historical South African events and play with traditional notions of the sublime and beauty in South African landscape representation.
Since my relocation to the United Kingdom, the Location(s) Series has evolved to include landscapes sourced from the internet. Referencing current natural disasters the works examine how we view and experience the ‘sublime’ landscape in the 21st century. Incorporating the landscape image with cursors, dates, text or lines and pixels from the original source image, these landscapes reinforce the notion that our experience of space and events is often based on second hand information replayed through various media channels. Not wanting to be too prescriptive in the making or their reading they are also landscapes that engage in the physical and conceptual processes of regeneration and degeneration, material and working process. They read as metaphors for conflict, displacement, ecology, the sublime and mortality.
LOCATION(S) - text