CLINTON DE MENEZES
contemporary artist
index - current - procession (exodus) - text
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CLINTON DE MENEZES
contemporary artist
- Clinton De Menezes's Procession renders this broad trek of history in numerous small figures that implacably track across the ash-covered walls of the gallery. The work's miniaturisation of form reminds one that the "pageant" of history enacts itself in both grand events and quotidian moments (Hearts and Minds Catalogue, Virginia Mackenny, 2010).
- Apocalyptic overtones are also evident in Clinton De Menezes’ Procession, which
evokes not only emigration and displacement, but zombie movies, with its swarm of mucky figurines marching across the walls (AN review: Vessel, Gabriella Hoad, 2011).
- Art South Africa feature, Sean O’Toole, 2010
Procession (Exodus) is a continuously evolving site-specific installation that is adapted to the physical and contextual space it inhabits.
The wall acts as the physical geography on which cast figures, scale 1:43 - 1:50, rally across. Each figure is worked individually and covered with a natural or synthetic material that alludes to their history. Ash, earth, pigments, charcoal, metallic compounds and oil paint remain as a residue on the figurines and are the physical manifestations of often-conflicted histories.
The shape of the installation is determined through the context of the show or through the process of installation and makes reference to shapes of land masses, patterns of migrating animals and birds or to an organic network of paths or crowds in urban space.
Initially, the installation referred to the mass migration of people from South Africa after the first democratic elections in 2004. Fearing a collapse of government and a disbelief in South Africa’s future these, mainly white immigrants, left their ‘homeland‘ in search of greener pastures in the Americas, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. With South Africa’s historical links to the United Kingdom many South Africans flooded into the UK having dual citizenship or on ancestry visas.
As the installation evolved I have become increasingly interested in global migration patterns and the mass movement of people, either through choice or through the effects of war or natural disaster, and in the contemporary global preoccupation with protest and human liberation. Personal and cultural identities and the regeneration and degeneration of communities, societies and nations are in constant flux due to this process of globalisation.
Procession (Exodus) also makes reference to patterns of migration through ‘metaphoric’ space. The physical and metaphoric qualities of light are essential to the presentation of the work. Light physically activates the work by casting shadows from the figures attached to the wall. It also activates an atmosphere in the work that resonates with the sublime landscape paintings of the 17th century, (notably Claude Lorrain, Salvator Rosa and and Poussin) and in the the Northern Romantic tradition. In this context the figures are contemplating their individual and collective existence as they move through space toward the 'unknown'.
PROCESSION (EXODUS) - text