https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/27329 2026-05-12T23:01:38Z 2026-05-12T23:01:38Z Miller, Gwenneth https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/32158 2026-02-16T20:19:20Z 2024-09-14T00:00:00Z

The Measure of Matter Miller, Gwenneth The travelling solo exhibition “The Measure of Matter” consists of 21 new works reimagining spines and objects to consider being bound by time and matter. The first installation was in the two front rooms of the Tina Skukan Gallery and the second installation took place at the White River Art Gallery, where the narrative flow was reconceptualised. The research was triggered by the physical problem of struggling to walk due to Spondylitis. In the months before the pending operation, the artist studied the anatomy and contemplated frailty. Images of the skeleton and the spine transmuted into an interest in the spines of old books, existential mapping devices and objects associated with mortality and the interrogation of what really matters. The artworks address a shared reality: we are all bound by time and matter and the anxieties of an uncertain future. The preliminary research considered how the artist could extend personal experiences into works that would resonate with the audience, bringing its own history and realities to the exhibition. The painting “Platteland” was a reworking of the brush art created the previous year, but here the artist added water to suggest a journey of the object as ‘body’ on the way elsewhere. It was the work that triggered the association and link with weathered bones. Drawing the past into the present, alchemic yellow tones were applied in works such as “Map to nowhere (becoming something)" and the darkly humorous dancing “Salome I” and “Salome II”. Interestingly, the Biblical Salome is vilified by Jung in his Red Book (2009), although he equates her with the soul. Initially anatomy was approached as a mechanistic system of levels until the body’s incredible ability to grow new bone was experienced, restructuring the old into something new. Bridgman’s (1972) “The human machine” introduced the artist to the atlas bone that supports the human skull. It is named after the titan Atlas, who, in Greek mythology, supported the world on his shoulders. The painting "Atlas" was accompanied by “Load Bearing", depicting an overloaded truck – begging the question of burden – albeit with some sense of humour. Bridgman’s images of the human spine reminded of weathered books kept intact by a network of stubborn threads, like tendons binding muscle and bone. These inspired the creation of “All that matters” and “The spine study” series. At Skukan Art Gallery, the series was positioned to form a dialogue with the permanent sculptural works that related to objects of labour, but the installation was reformatted and retitled at White River Art Gallery, to “A library of time from Göttingen”, as the space seemed to demand a different reading. In high-resolution photography the books were treated as if they were portraits, commemorating time with subtitles such as “Becoming wood” and “Dictionary of the disappearing”. Conceptually, weather mapping was considered to contemplate fresh winds blowing life into matter. The chronicle flow was a method to renew thinking about illness as a cyclical part of life. Visual associations were layered until the medium and material began to communicate meaningful new associations. Torn layers of paper and thickly applied charcoal evidenced awareness as embodied thinking. Much like the atlas bone, our spiritual compass decides what matters and what does not, and how we measure its bearing and influence. These works form an interdisciplinary conversation with reflections on psychology, new-material culture and research on ‘falling upwards' in life, to borrow Richard Rohr’s words. In this sense the work contributes to new understanding, bridging the above fields in visualisation. “The Measure of Matter” exhibitions and several walkabouts were well attended at both Tina Skukan Gallery and White River Art Gallery. Opportunities for academic talks were optimised as the audience attended the solo and the solo of Elfriede Dreyer, which were presented alongside each other but as separate research. Both spaces have a good following and are well-established institutions. Bridgman, GB. 1972. The human machine. New York: Dover. Jung, CG. 2009. The Red Book: Liber Novus. Edited by S. Shamdasani. New York: Norton. See the link to the artist's website at the top of this page

2024-09-14T00:00:00Z Dreyer, Elfriede https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/32075 2025-02-03T08:12:26Z 2024-03-01T00:00:00Z

The Piano Dreyer, Elfriede The Piano (2024) entailed the production of 19 new works for a solo exhibition at IS Gallery in Stellenbosch. For this exhibition I also included two works – Song of the philosopher 1 and 2 – from my 2023 Song of the philosopher exhibition at Rust-en-Vrede Gallery in Durbanville, since in that series I already commenced my semiotic investigation into the relationship of word to image. These works contain sound wave imagery and were thus appropriate for the The Piano exhibition. The latter project also includes an online exhibition catalogue and the works remain permanently available for viewing at www.elfriededreyer.com/the-piano. In these works I approach my piano as a heterotopian object in the Foucauldian sense of functioning as a site of layered narrative, memory, and transformation. As a heterotopian object it exists in a layered conceptual space of blurring boundaries between past and present, personal and collective. It is simultaneously a material instrument and an emotional vessel, a site of disciplined practice and imaginative escape, a survivor of destruction and a symbol of continuity. I consider the piano as a vessel for memory and loss, resonating with the aftermath of the 2017 Knysna Great Fire in which I lost everything except my piano. I aimed to revive and recollect memories of childhood rituals of disciplined repetition—practicing scales, arpeggios, and other technical exercises. These acts of mechanical rigour have been a source for polyphonic imagery and narrative, where obsessive repetition, production, and remembrance accumulate into a layered sonic and conceptual landscape. My methodology of layering of materials, images and digital elements echoes the cumulative nature of memory and experience. The Piano (2024) entailed the production of 19 new works for a solo exhibition at IS Gallery in Stellenbosch. For this exhibition I also included two works – Song of the philosopher 1 and 2 – from my 2023 Song of the philosopher exhibition at Rust-en-Vrede Gallery in Durbanville, since in that series I already commenced my semiotic investigation into the relationship of word to image. These works contain sound wave imagery and were thus appropriate for the The Piano exhibition. The latter project also includes an online exhibition catalogue and the works remain permanently available for viewing at www.elfriededreyer.com/the-piano. In my theoretical research as well as my past creative practice, I investigate spaces, places, and worlds—whether natural, artificial, or invented. They are hypothesised as layered and complex, revealing the convolutions of human action and invention. I project theoretical frameworks of utopia, dystopia, and heterotopia onto the selected spaces and places; and again in the The Piano works I approached my piano as a heterotopian object in the Foucauldian sense of functioning as a site of layered narrative, memory, and transformation. My piano has been my companion for many decades, forming the conceptual and material foundation of my artistic inquiry. A pivotal moment in my relationship with the piano occurred in 2017, during the devastation of the Knysna Great Fire, which reduced all my earthly possessions to ash and clinker. My piano, however, survived—not by chance, but by absence. This absence transformed it into a metaphor of creative obsession, intensifying my emotional connection with the instrument and its role in my life. It now represents not only my girlhood but also my identity as a mother and an artist, forming an ontogenetic presence that reflects my journey toward maturity. In the works for The Piano, I considered the piano as a vessel for memory and loss, resonating with the aftermath of the fire. As a heterotopian object it exists in a layered conceptual space of blurring boundaries between past and present, personal and collective. It is simultaneously a material instrument and an emotional vessel, a site of disciplined practice and imaginative escape, a survivor of destruction and a symbol of continuity. I aimed to revive and recollect memories of childhood rituals of disciplined repetition—practicing scales, arpeggios, and other technical exercises. These acts of mechanical rigour have been a source for polyphonic imagery and narrative, where obsessive repetition, production, and remembrance accumulate into a layered sonic and conceptual landscape. My methodology of layering of materials, images, and digital elements echoes the cumulative nature of memory and experience. Beyond its physicality, the piano as a musical instrument conjures imaginative journeys. Its black-and-white keys, inner mechanical structure, hammers, and harp evoke both the rational precision of musical notation and the boundless creativity of improvisation. The juxtaposition of ebony and ivory not only produces tonal contrasts but also symbolises the interplay of light and dark, life and death—an ever-present theme in my work. The piano’s wooden cabinet, with its rounded contours, becomes a birthing locus of creation. It is both a container and a producer of worlds, a maternal presence that generates and recites sound. In this way, it mirrors the mothering body, which brings forth new life through biomorphic processes yet allows for genetic variation and improvisation. This maternal resonance extends to my broader artistic imagery, particularly the recurring motif of the withered angel trumpet flower. This flower, in its dried form, symbolises the cyclical nature of life and death, resonating with the themes of loss and regeneration embodied by the piano. In my visual practice, these flowers become dancers—flor de muertos—engaged in a ritual of remembrance and renewal. Their presence underscores the intertwining of past and present, decay and rebirth, silence and sound. As an artist working in both physical and digital media, my work embraces intermediality, enabling fluid dialogues between tangible materials and ephemeral digital realms. Ultimately, my piano is not just a musical instrument—it is a heterotopian micro-world that encapsulates my personal history, artistic practice, and conceptual preoccupations. It serves as a repository of loss, a medium of disciplined practice, and a generator of new creative forms.

2024-03-01T00:00:00Z Dreyer, Elfriede https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/32067 2025-02-02T19:01:20Z 2024-01-01T00:00:00Z

Moment Dreyer, Elfriede The Moment project (2024) consists of ten new artworks, each paired with a unique sound composition, culminating in two solo exhibitions: one at Tina Skukan Gallery in Pretoria and another at White River Gallery in Mpumalanga. As an invited artist at both venues, I developed these works specifically for this exhibition, building on my exploration of sound initiated with The Piano at the beginning of 2024. Thematically, Moment investigates the processes of transmuting sound into word, image into sound, and word into image. I collaborated with Seoul-based experimental visual and sound artist Johan van Huyssteen, composing sounds on my piano, which he then post-produced. In The Piano, my piano—both as an object and an instrument that survived the 2017 Knysna Great Fire—became a vehicle for exploring themes of loss and recollection. Selected works from that series were included in Moment, which further extends these inquiries by specifically examining the interplay between image, word, and sound. Each work is accompanied by a sound composition, accessible via QR codes displayed at the exhibitions.The visual language of Moment incorporates imagery of sound waves, comic-book conventions such as dialogue balloons, and mountain landscapes. A technique of layered polyphony—applied across physical and digital media—evokes a sense of consciousness extending across physical, mental, and virtual realms. The project also includes an online exhibition catalogue, three artist walkabouts, and international collaboration. The works remain permanently available for viewing at www.elfriededreyer.com/2024-moment. The newly produced works for this exhibition were inspired by my experimentation in 2024 with intermediality in my solo exhibition, The Piano. In Moment, I collaborated with Seoul-based experimental visual and sound artist Johan van Huyssteen to compose sounds on and within my piano, while he handled post-production after the paintings were completed. The Piano explored my instrument—my only possession to survive the 2017 Knysna Great Fire—not only as a sound-producing object but also in terms of themes of loss and remembrance.Twelve works from that series were selected to create sound compositions for and be included in the Moment exhibitions, to further extend the inquiry into the interplay between image, word, and sound. Initially, these works were presented without sound, but for Moment, they acquired a sonic dimension. Imagery of fire, sound waves, comic-book conventions such as dialogue balloons (Tonk, Moment, and Die trane die rol oor jou Bokkie), and mountain symbolism (Speak to the Mountain) are central to this body of work. A technique of layered polyphony—employed across physical and digital media in both image and sound—suggests consciousness extending across physical, mental, and virtual realms. Conceptually, this dialogical polyphony aligns with Heidegger’s ([1927] 1962) notion of Dasein, which describes the human condition as fundamentally situated within a world of relationality. Dasein is always Being-with-Others, an ontology of interconnectedness. Sound, with its vibrational materiality, embodies this interconnectivity, reinforcing the fluid boundaries between self and environment. Heidegger’s concept of Geworfenheit (being ‘thrown’ into existence) extends to all living beings, encompassing their relationship to temporality and death. In Moment, a pivotal work in the series, life is framed as an ephemeral instance—captured within a transparent dialogue balloon—expressing the existential condition of Being-in-Time. The new Moment works explore the connections of image and word to sound, and each work is accompanied by its own sound composition. The sounds are accessible via QR codes, shown during the exhibitions for the public to access. Some sounds simulate child-like simple consonant melodies and others are more dissonant and emotional, attempting to capture a particular existential moment. An existential scream materialises through image and sound in Ebony, narrating the trauma of the ebony tree’s felling—its wood repurposed into the black keys of the piano. In the moment of its ‘death,’ the inner heart of the wood reveals a vivid red, gradually darkening to black as it withers. Engaging in an intermedial idiom cultivates a dynamic interplay where meaning emerges through the interaction of media rather than within isolated forms. As Rajewsky (2005) posits, intermediality is a transformative process in which media actively reshape one another. The intermedial fusion of sound, word, and image in the exploration of fire and loss employs sensory layering, dissolving boundaries in a polyphonic dialogue. In works such as Fermata (‘Pause’), Saving Grace of Sound, and Boom! Ting!, physical burning was used as both process and metaphor, enacting a symbolic fusion of media. This intermedial approach operates through oscillation between forms, echoing the flickering nature of fire—a force that simultaneously consumes and creates. The inherent loss within fire’s destructive capacity extends beyond the visual into the sonic, contributing to what Voegelin (2010) describes as the “productive body of sound”, where sound is not merely an auditory phenomenon but a material force that shapes perception and meaning. In the Moment series intermediality becomes a methodology for articulating the existential condition of connectedness. These works exemplify the idea of ‘intermedia’, a space where traditional distinctions between artistic disciplines collapse, fostering new modalities of expression. Sources quoted Heidegger, M. [1927] 1962. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward. Available: https://altair.pw/pub/lib/Martin%20Heidegger%20-%20Being%20and%20Time%20(translated%20by%20Macquarrie%20&%20Robinson).pdf. Accessed 3 September 2024. Rajewsky, IO. 2005. Intermediality, Intertextuality, and Remediation: A Literary Perspective on Intermediality. Intermédialités 6: 43–64. Available: https://doi.org/10.7202/1005505ar. Accessed 3 September 2024. Voegelin, S. 2010. Listening to Noise and Silence: Towards a Philosophy of Sound Art. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

2024-01-01T00:00:00Z Miller, Gwenneth Miller, Gwenneth https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/31385 2024-08-06T10:34:43Z 2023-07-13T00:00:00Z

Domestic Matters Miller, Gwenneth; Miller, Gwenneth “Domestic matters” consisted of eight works presented on two group exhibitions. The works searched for expression of the often-conflictual context through which familial relationships are articulated. The shaped-format painting "Carry me softly" initiated the 2023 creative output research to investigate how everyday things trigger a reflection of the past. Acknowledging my previous mycelium research, small mushrooms grow from the carpet and under the table in this artwork as signs of degeneration. Reflecting on the comfort of objects belonging together being inadvertently separated through life circumstances (much like people in a household), a weathered table rises from a fluffy carpet suggesting an act of separation. Two photographic works, “The mother” and “The father”, are the outcome of a process involving the use of a discarded scrubbing brush. This process recalls a memory of my mother polishing red cement floors. Considering the interaction between the worn object and the gleaming polished floor, I captured the brush from various angles: looking down onto it, confronting the cracked brush head-on and documenting the same object laterally, suggesting that access is barred. These changing perspectives was my attempt to ‘think through’ the distress of the paradoxical emotions of shame, love, fear and exclusion. In these photographic works, the act of close looking was also a contemplation of gender roles experienced in my childhood. My mother’s debilitating and damaged life, alongside my father’s own fragility emersed in poverty and dyslexia, are narratives I’ve been rewriting through my life. In “Violence, Gender, and Subjectivity”, Veena Das (2008:283-299), reminds us that there are deep connections between our experiences of the everyday and understanding of emotional wounding. The cracks on my ‘rescued’ brush had debris embedded in its worn surface and reminded of the psychological scars caused by precarious relationships, a theme associated with artworks by, amongst others, Usha Seejarim and Louise Bourgeois. “The Mother” and “The Father” are contributions to the visual discourse of encoded gender constructs. An enlarged process-print of “The father”, opened the suggestion of a wooden boat-shaped structure. The mixed media works “The Pont I” and “Pont II”, along with “Farmhouse”, seek to draw links to environments that refers to specific childhood daydreaming of water and a wooden raft that will carry me away. “History /Herstory lessons in brushwork” and “Ode to all mothers” were created by scrubbing the paper using the discarded brush, thus allowing the object to physically ‘perform’ my memory in the artmaking process. The process-driven and object-bound way of drawing-through-scrubbing becomes a unique gestation of a trope of domesticity and women's work. “History /Herstory lessons in brushwork” started by rubbing charcoal dust into brown craft paper until the brush found its way onto the page. In “Ode to all mothers", I poured a puddle of ink and water onto curved Fabriano, then gently scrubbed it into the surface, allowing it to dry overnight. The drying process added its own movement, resulting in only traces of my actions with the brush – an inky patch reminiscent of a surreal landscape. On researching the idea of past experiences’ impact on an unfolding present, I found the terminology of "recasting and pastcasting" in the article "Looking backward to the future: On past-facing approaches to futuring", where Bendor, Eriksson and Pargman (2021) postulate that memory is more malleable than what we imagine. Instead of being bound by the past that is fixed in childhood, new ways of thinking can shift debilitating remembering. Though physically reenacting thought, my narrative moved to a measure of personal agency. These ideas are evoked in the collaged image of urchin-like brushes floating over the surreal landscape of “Ode to all mothers", where the detached object becomes a symbol that is both past-facing and future-facing. The contribution of this project lay in the reinventive power of art, and how its processes and materials can actively help to reexperience interpretations of contradiction, to build agency in a project of recasting the past as an approach to “futuring” (Bendor et al. 2021). "Carry me softly" was first exhibited at “Rhizome” (Latuvu Art Gallery, France, July 2023) and then again with the new artworks in the exhibition “Object” (George Museum, October 2023). Both exhibitions were curated by Elfriede Dreyer. For further reference see the link to the artist's website above https://www.gwennethmiller.com/domestic-matters

2023-07-13T00:00:00Z