Diverse range of media and themes at Carinus art show
[caption id="attachment_40275" align="alignright" width="300"] QUEEN OF ARTS: Matriarch Pat van Wyk is 'minding' the Wessels family art on show at the Carinus Centre. Picture: GILLIAN McAINSH[/caption]
CARINUS ART CENTRE, various artists, Beaufort Street, daily until Sunday July 13. Review by Gillian McAinsh
THE Carinus Art Centre has a lovely range of paintings, ceramics, prints and crafts on show this year, with some old and some new artists at the complex.
Charmaine and Martin Haines, formerly of Port Elizabeth but now part of the creative community of Nieu Bethesda, have their contrasting ceramic work on show.
Charmaine has an elegant collection of contemporary ceramic vessels this year, where she has worked in figurative clay, much of it representing the human form.
Martin's playful sculptures of hares are in the room next door, exploring their form and surface (Martin says he has gone mad in Nieu Bethesda, as mad as a March hare perhaps?) He uses texture and pattern to great effect in the delightful collection.
Bathurst artist Tori Stowe has brought her new collection of ink, pen and charcoal drawings, titled Migration, with three themed layers. Although building on the previous exhibition, Nest, there are lots of new ideas, such as The Suspended Forest, imaginatively displayed.
There are landscapes rooted in the Eastern Cape by Peter Midlane, or the linocuts by Lucas Bambo.
Another Bathurst creative, Richard Pullen, offers unique and functional ceramics at the back of Carinus – this is the place to stock up on beautiful artisanal domestic ware, as Pullen has long been using the soft jade shades so current in the decor world.
A trio of landscape painters - Gillian Maylam, Estelle Marais and Diane McLean – highlight the Karoo that they clearly love and know well. Their complementary work is classic in style and feel, with McLean's crystal-clear portraits adding diversity.
Don't miss a new group upstairs: Port Elizabeth's The Sead Collective in an exhibition titled Locus. I could not find it in the festival programme, but was lucky enough to be given a visual tour by Monique Wiffen Rorke, one of the six, explaining not only her layered photographic works but all of the group.
Part of the joy of the festival is meeting the artists and you are likely to find one of the six: Monique, Janice Mendelowitz, Dana Pullen, Michelle Fuller, Karen Flood and Bev de Lange on hand to talk about their work. Flood's giant plastic installation, for example, gains from this eye-opening interaction.
You may bump into Pat van Wyk upstairs, or her art-student granddaughter Tessa Wessels, 21, who at 16 used to take the train to and from school in Durban and started to paint the passengers she saw.
The result was a quirky "pack of cards" – 52 individuals plus a joker– which she has had printed into playing cards, for sale. Tessa's parents, Theresa Jo and CP Wessels, also are artists and have metal work and etchings on display.
At the Carinus Annex, one street up (just walk through the field with the donkey!) there is a mixed bag, with Port Alfred free-thread artist Molo Mimi offering gorgeous wearable art, and luminous paintings in "Fragment" by Solly Smook from Riebeek Kasteel. Mone Stander has endearing pencil drawings of little girls on show, capturing the innocent essence of childhood.
You have to hunt down the art at this venue but dig and you will find half a dozen exhibits, including "Life" by Sally Rumball, and an exhibition of prints "Old Cow, New Cow, Mad Cow" that did not seem to contain any cows at all.
