Caught
2021
David Krut Projects, Johannesburg, South Africa
Always Running Away, oil on canvas, 127 x 101.6 cm
We Created the Monsters We Live With, oil on canvas, 84.1 x 59.4 cm
An Ocean for you, oil on canvas, 84.1 x 59.4 cm
Caught, 2021, David Krut Projects, Johannesburg, South Africa
Caught in a thought, 2020, trace monotype
Hands Down, 2020, trace monotype, 43 x 31.8 cm
Caught in the wind, 2020, trace monotype on paper, 35.3 x 31.7 cm
Here I am standing in the wind, 2020 Trace monotype (Oil mono underneath chine), 40.5 x 29.6 cm
Caught Lost, 2020, trace monotype with hand painting on Alice Goldin, 22.8 x 12.1 cm
In the in between, 2020
Trace monotype on Alice Goldin paper chine collé on Hahnemuhle Natural 300gsm, 23.2 x 17.3 cm
Caught, 2021, David Krut Projects, Johannesburg, South Africa
It Was Never For You, oil on canvas, 84.1 x 59.4 cm
I Carried Your Secret On My Sleeve, oil on canvas, 84.1 x 59.4 cm
Underneath My Eyelids Lies An Image of You, oil on canvas, 84.1 x 59.4 cm
You Grew Quiet, oil on canvas, 84.1 x 59.4 cm
I Won’t Speak To You, If You Won’t Speak To Me, oil on canvas, 84.1 x 59.4 cm
When Will Your Bones Recognise The Wind? oil on canvas, 84.1 x 59.4 cm
We are pleased to present CAUGHT, an exhibition of paintings and unique print works by Olivia Botha. The artist is currently preparing to undertake a 12-month fellowship with the renowned DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program, as well as a 2-month residency for artists from Africa in France near Toulouse.
Botha is a multidisciplinary artist working in various media such as painting,
poetry, printmaking, installation, video and drawing. She is interested in unearthing how personal narratives, concepts of identity, and physical as well as imagined environments affect the present.
Botha’s process in image creation seems to lend itself to her stated intentions in art making, namely to explore notions of language and communication, particularly the difficulties thereof. The act of creating reveals a kind of discovery of a person, figure, gesture or expression.
Due to travel restrictions Botha’s international residencies were repeatedly delayed. She returned to Cape Town, the place where she grew up, and produced a body of paintings at The Fourth during a residency arranged for her by David Krut. CAUGHT brings together these paintings and works made at the David Krut Workshop over the past two years.
In her painting practice, Botha works fast and in an intrepid manner. Working from a reference image, Botha resists the urge to examine her marks too closely, which allows her to draw an intuitive representation out of her brush. In this way, she accepts all marks as part of the process.
Using the colour palette of a body of trace monotypes she created in 2020 as a starting point during her Cape Town residency, Botha worked towards producing paintings in conversation with the earlier works on paper.
Following a progression, which happens naturally over periods between making work, the colour palette evolved and so has emerged a collection of intriguing, emotive portraits – Botha’s typical choice of subject.
Where the images made in Johannesburg were characteristically dreamlike and almost monstrous, these paintings are more familiar in their humanness. They reflect a yearning for connection and understanding, but maintain the feeling that such desires remain elusive as we exist as separate beings and in a time when we are deliberately keeping a distance from each other.