Machine Gun Beauty, 2008, Hand-Stiched Collage of Original Vintage posters and Photos on Paper
Garage Sale, 2008, Hand-Stiched Flag Collage
Support Our Troops for Operation Freedom, 2008, Hand-Stiched Flag Collage
Kill Them All & Let God, 2008, Hand-Stiched Flad Collage
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by Petra Mason 9/29/2019 Walking in Miami's winter heat towards a slither of land between the beach and wealthy Indian Creek billionaire bunker 'La Gorce' is somewhat surreal. In the part of town known as mid-beach where you never know who lives in which condo canyon, and most big buildings have high security and are harder to get into than some small countries. At any moment Lil' Wayne could be speeding past en route to his sprawling bachelor pad (complete with a skate board park) or Iggy Pop could be cruising by in his big black Rolls Royce or YBA Tracey Emin could be escaping the London freeze by checking into her Miami apartment. Quizzically seeking out Eurydice at her low lying greenhouse resembling abode, the petit artist appeared like a water sprite, guarded by two yapping, bouncing teacup poodles who, once indoors, proceeded to wrap themselves around her bare feet, slipper style. Swopping notes on our mutual past lives in New York and getting hopped up on Greek coffee, Eury (as her friends call her) showed me around her sun lit, studio like living space (her actual studio is in Little River, the newest affordable artist zone). One wall brims with works the artist describes as 'too tough' to sell: pleasingly abstracted, distorted female forms in mixed mediums. Close by in the corridor, large scale soft art pieces whisper secret tales, hand-stitched onto unprimed canvas and vintage silk sourced in India some years before. Eurydice is a woman with a past, a present and a future whose story began (rather poetically) having been born on the isle of Lesbos. Miami has, ever since her clove cigarette smoking arrival in the 90's provided sanctuary. Particularly since the birth of her daughter (who now goes to Bard College). Miami has provided sanctuary well, since New York turned into 'a serpent eating its own tail'. Preferring not to pre-Google my subjects too much, knowing how scrappy online representations of interesting people can be I had no idea Eurydice was also the Eurydice, a writer with a cult following, whose written work I remember as part of New York's turn-of-the-century millennium underground. Her book, the highly original ground-breaking book F/32 considered by Brooklyn based culture guide Free Williamsburg as 'the most dangerous novel ever written by a woman' was followed by 1999's tour of America's contemporary sexual landscape Satyricon USA. Feeling more than just a pang of nostalgia for the halcyon days of the late 90's New York Girls era, when alt.culture underworld's revealed new frontiers and things were moving forward so fast, no one would have believed, by 2017, how backward things would become. While women, media myths and sexuality loom large as subject matter, Eurydice mulls on the constant integration and objectification of women, and on the female pleasure principle. There is a bait and switch aspect to her work: you get turned on and you get turned off. Large scale wall hangings of hand-stitched female forms, a nod to all the great images of bathers in art history are both seductive and confronting. Fellini cast members cut 'n pasted into punk-ed up collages of women viewed through heart throb Marcello's eyes, violently hacked at with scissors while the thread of feminine embroidery stitches it all together, providing the pulse to 'sexist pig' Fellini's broken narrative. Artwork by Eurydice can be viewed as part of the current and ongoing through February 2020 exhibition on at the Betsy Hotel in Miami Beach. Deborah Plutzik Briggs, Vice President for Marketing and Philanthropy curated the exhibition has “given over pretty much all of our spaces to artists” - answering a call to put Miami artists front and center on the beach during Art Basel and beyond. Ends. |
All that Glitters: Artist Frances Goodman
Titles of works:
Killing Time 2018 Hand-stitched Sequins on Canvas Ruby Stars 2018 Acrylic Nails, Silicone, Canvas, Frame Hooded Lady 2016 Acrylic Nails, Foam, Resin, Silicone Glue 65 x 90 x 66 cm |
by Petra Mason 10/10/2020 Artist Frances Goodman is based in eGoli, Johannesburg, Africa's City of Gold where she's been mining the rich landscape of 'femininity, costuming, and role playing' using acrylic nails, sequins and other unconventional materials. The Goldsmiths London educated artist was born in South Africa in 1974 and finds it the perfect place to work as an artist and to 'bounce in and out of'. Cultural Historian Petra Mason first met Goodman in Miami, Florida when she was in town for an artists residency at Kathryn Mikesell's The Fountainhead Residency. Downtown in New York’s once gritty (but still grubby) Lower East Side, champagne royalty Richard Taittinger opened a five-thousand-square-foot gallery space in a former music hall. While some of the miniature neighbouring gallery spaces resemble neat broom closets, Taittinger’s spot boasts twenty-foot ceilings and can accommodate monumental artworks. Where once-upon-a-time bawdy vaudeville acts with can-can girls kicked, Johannesburg-based Frances Goodman – then the only female artist on the gallery’s line-up – installed her first major U.S. show, ‘Rapaciously Yours,’ just days before The Armory Show opened far further uptown, on the West Side in 2016. Ever since she’s been attracting attention at home in South Africa and spreading her carefully manicured tentacles broadly internationally with exhibitions in Italy, Denmark and Texas. By reworking materials that typically signify a glossy version of her gender, for this exhibition Goodman works mostly with acrylic (false) nails as her medium and raids the beauty parlor for materials. The pair of giant ‘stiletto’ nail-shaped warrior shields remind me of Ndebele paintwork patterns and would fit perfectly in Nicki Minaj’s crib. The boys don’t escape her one-two punch either as she works over stereotypical masculine materials: car hoods and back seats embellished with gag-worthy misogynistic comments we’ve all heard too often and in too many languages. Her wedding installation The Dream (an edition of two) unfolds. The frothy, soft sculptural piece – comprising worn wedding dresses, beadwork, hand embroidery and sound installation – hangs from floor to ceiling: a pile of ruined expectations, haunted by the ghosts of modern-day Miss Havishams. The wedding gowns mushroom into a cloud of organza, eggshell whites and pale pinks, heavy with longing and broken dreams. Goodman explains: “During the course of our lives we are fed a lot of notions about love and marriage. Phrases like ‘dream man,’ ‘dream wedding,’ ‘dream dress’ and ‘dream day’ are channeled towards women in particular. So marriage and weddings are ‘The Dream’ we are taught to aspire to. I also wanted the installation itself to have a dreamlike quality: a haziness, a softness, a space of suspended belief and reality.” The sound installation for The Dream features recognisably South African accents – all women’s voices – speaking openly, echoing global sentiments and universal commentary on the state of the modern bride. The voices speak about how today’s cookie-cutter mythology of marriage eerily echoes what might have been said in the 1950s, at the height of the American Dream and before ‘Sex and the Single Girl,’ which is where the rest of the artist’s narrative takes off. While it’s hardly news that most media is viewed through the male perspective and largely written by men, nailing the ‘female gaze’ is a lot more complex. We battle visual debris and mixed messages daily via social media. A quick scan of my Instagram feed: South African artist Lady $kollie has Instagrammed her green ‘pro nails’ grabbing Jalapeño hot sauce (referencing Beyoncé’s Formation lyrics) and is, amusingly, also ‘honouring’ ex-stripper Blac Chyna for her engagement to a Kardashian. Elsewhere I read that Beyoncé is a feminist – because she kicks ass in short shorts – but I thought she told “Single Ladies (to) (Put A Ring On It)”? You get the picture. For Goodman, this confusion is her playground. She even gets to stick her tongue out at Miley Cyrus, who trotted past the New York gallery and snapped, then Instagrammed, a gigantic tongue made from false nails titled Lick It., Cyrus’ post racked up more than two hundred and fifty thousand ‘likes.’ As Goodman told me over bagels for breakfast in New York recently, “What I like about the story is that when I was thinking about the tongue piece (and getting inspiration for it) I referred to [Cyrus’] music videos and her iconic tongue pictures, so I guess she was looking at me looking at her.” Adding to the cartoonish appeal, Goodman even looks like Archie’s Veronica (from the Archie Comics book series), but in her case women are her best friends and she’s certainly not competing for Archie’s attention. She’s too busy in her studio and too busy being strategic – how else does one get a New York exhibition? “After doing a number of residencies in the New York area I built up a network of people who are supportive and appreciative of my work. While upstate at Art Omi I met a curator who really loved The Dream and thought it should be exhibited in New York. She introduced me to the Richard Taittinger Gallery.” As for its future, so far The Dream is fulfilling its promise of ‘happily ever after.’ The second edition was purchased by the 21st Century Museum in Louisville, Kentucky, and the first will soon travel to Angola. Represented by SMAC Gallery in South Africa, Goodman navigated the global uncertainty of 2020 by cooking up new work and working remotely with her salon style team (including a hairstylist and sequins stitchers) to produce her latest solo exhibition ‘Uneventful Days’ that opens at SMAC on 31 October to 5 December 2020. |
List of works in order:
1. Freedom to be - 2018, acrylic & pearl flake mica on canvas, 70x60” 2. Some are whispering that we are dangerous - 2020, graphite, acrylic & pearl flake mica on canvas, 28x24” 3. They ordered armed unaccountable men on her - 2020, graphite and oil on board, 6x6” 4. Black children are cute until a certain age, (I) - 2018, oil on wood, 8x6” 5. Calling the police is not your only option - 2020, acrylic & pearl flake mica on canvas, 16x12“ 6. The reality is that there is nothing black people can do to disarm the violence of white people- 2018 Acrylic & pearl flake mica on canvas, 36x72” (Photo in Header) |
by Petra Mason 12/10/2020 Jacqueline Gopie Freedom to Play Copper Door Gallery 439 NW 4th Ave, Miami, Florida. These ‘digital days’, like everywhere else in the world, Miami’s Art Week went online. As viewing rooms replace white cube galleries, in the Northwest of Miami downtown in Overtown, artist Jacqueline Gopie opened a real-time exhibition. Surfing the traffic on the expressways that once displaced many original Overtown residents while metaphorically riding the current ‘Corona Coaster’ Freedom to Play Gopie quietly makes her-story. Adding contemporary cultural volume to the area nicknamed ‘Southern Harlem’ where legends such as Billie Holiday once performed, and Derrick Adams recently exhibited, Gopie presents a selection of recent works on canvas. ‘My overall intention is to interrupt unconscious racial bias. I’m focused on diminishing the existing mountain of negative images of black and brown people by littering it with my images of children. The paintings are based on my own photographs and are children of color engaged in simple, universal forms of play. They are titled with quotes from a variety of sources: historical figures, historians, authors, filmmakers, politicians and victims of police violence. These quotes are intended to provoke the viewer to further consider the content of the paintings. The lively and colorful backgrounds coupled with gestural figures and unfinished areas invite the viewer to question further the work. To wonder whether or not it is finished and then perhaps to actively participate with the painting by filling in the missing parts in their minds. This deeper involvement with the work hopefully leads to a questioning of biased cultural concepts of beauty and inclusion.’ "I consider my style a fusion of realistic figuration and abstract expressionism, characterized by an exuberant use of color and motion with gestural brushwork. I stole that description from somewhere but I think it fits." Gopie’s paintings are refreshingly energetic, unpretentious, and wonderfully well-painted, ranging from over six feet to just under six inches. The artist thinks her work looks best when there are several pieces that present a cohesive narrative. Even so, those "under six inches" pack a punch, resonating with colorful, joyful energy. With several solo exhibitions under her belt, Gopie wasted no time joining artist ranks. Upon retiring from a 21-year military stint in the United States Army, the Coral Gables Miami-based, Kingston, Jamaica-born artist attended the University of Miami where, with military precision, she received her BFA in 2005 and her MFA in painting in 2012, and was a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation 2016 Emerging Artist Grant as well as attended, among others, the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans, Louisiana in 2018. Going beyond the obvious youthful joys of summer, with Freedom to Play Gopie makes a profound political statement with multilayered references to the racial injustices heaped on people of color and especially children in historic and contemporary American culture. Here are but a few:
‘Freedom to Play’ is also a play on words making reference to the 6 January, 1941 speech made by Franklin Delano Roosevelt called “The Four Freedoms.” Which were: Freedom of Speech Freedom of Worship Freedom from Want Freedom From Fear To which I think should be added – Freedom to Play. "By implanting images of black and brown children having a chill time onto your visual cortex I am intentionally contrasting the negative images we are constantly bombarded with by every form of media. The visual cortex learns from experience and self-organizes its structure to process visual input. We need to SEE that we are all the same. We ALL want to play in the sun.’ These days, we're more likely to wake up with a frown than a smile, so pleasing summertime images like Gopie's take on added heft. Her subjects are strangers, tweens, singularly focused children, dark-skinned Dads. The figures cavort in water, seen from the back, from the side, as they jump, play, dressed in canary yellow shorts and flip flops, wearing inner tubes, colorful swimsuits, with hands on hips, observing. As spectators, we're part of the action, taking part in the athletic splashing in fountains and constant movement that defines Freedom to Play. Jacqueline Gopie is highly eloquent and an engaging conversationalist. She speaks with honesty and insight, sings the praises of working at home in pajamas, and lovingly cites her mentor Professor, the late Walter Darby Bannard, the Color Field painter "whose elegant, severe abstract paintings of the late 1950s and '60s" were the springboard for a "lifetime's exploration of color, form and the physicality of paint" (as his New York Times obituary read in October 2016). What do you love about paint? The possibilities. When I'm in an art store I always wonder about all the amazing paintings that are waiting patiently inside the jars and tubes of paint on the shelves. Was Color Field painting an influence at all? Not specifically, but I think Darby's palette influenced me quite a bit. I took risks with colors I never would have arrived at on my own. Any wise words from Walter Darby Bannard on image-making you'd like to share? In my first year in graduate school, I was painting very small, dark oil landscapes and really struggling with just about every aspect of them. During a critique with my committee, of which Darby was the chair, I had some charcoal sketches from my figure drawing class in a corner of my studio. Darby went right over to them instead of the paintings and said, "You should paint figures and paint like you draw." That insight really freed me from this naive notion I had at the time -- which was that paintings shouldn't show line-work and had to be tight with every inch completed. But to be absolutely honest everything I needed to know about painting Darby taught in his undergraduate 102 class -- I just had not painted enough at the time to understand how to use the material. I still use his notes from that class when I'm stuck or I'm having a block about what to do. But his best advice has always been -- just paint. Besides the joyfulness of your work, there is a sense of longing. Can you elaborate? I'm so glad you were able to perceive that. I really want to talk more about this in my work, but I'm not quite sure how to explain it just yet. I had a very tough childhood in Jamaica and I think it is probably related to the feeling of never really belonging I had as a child. I am a mix of East Indian, African, and European descent, and in Jamaica that put me in the minority of not black/not white. So I never really fit in. That [feeling], coupled with being reunited with my family that I hadn't lived with since I was about two years old, and thrust into a rough junior high school in Brooklyn, New York in the 1972 really intensified the feeling of being an outsider--it made me wish for something I guess I never really had: that sense of belonging. You served in the military; where were you stationed? I was stationed in several places in the continental US (Missouri, Texas, Colorado, Georgia, and Washington DC) and my overseas assignments were Alaska and Hawaii. How has being in the military influenced your work and outlook, if at all? The discipline and work ethic I developed in the military definitely have an influence on my work. I excelled physically in the Army, and I think that drive to succeed certainly pushes me to work hard and not quit or accept failure. I try to learn from every experience and I want to be self-sustaining. I also think I developed a sense of confidence in taking risks and learning new skills--I got through a lot of difficult Army training by saying to myself, "if that guy can do it, I know I can too." What do you enjoy most about being a senior student? I absolutely hated being an older person attending undergraduate classes. Going from being a Master Sergeant at the Pentagon to listening to someone saying "when you get out in the real world" drove me insane! Graduate school was much less condescending, and having Darby was a lifesaver. Where is your Miami studio? I now have a studio at home. I am so happy! There is no commute, no extra cost, and I can work in my pajamas. How are you still connected to Jamaica? I have countless relatives there still--several that I have recently met for the first time. When I immigrated here in 1972, I was 12 years old, and I did not return to Jamaica until around 1995 when I was in my thirties. However, since moving to Miami in 2002, I have returned frequently. One of my secret desires is to spend several months there traveling about the island and painting the people and landscape. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. |