https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/27488 2026-05-12T22:54:02Z 2026-05-12T22:54:02Z 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 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 Miller, Gwenneth Miller, Gwenneth https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/27901 2021-09-02T21:19:38Z 2020-01-01T00:00:00Z

Liquid life Miller, Gwenneth; Miller, Gwenneth The work is developed from photographs of details of life-preserving equipment, such a s IV drips, monitors, electric wiring and tubes. Indian ink drawing overlays a collaged print of a laboratory from the archives of Dr Leonhard Miller, the artist's father-in-law. The corridor of the laboratory is barely visible as the layered ink lines and painterly washes engulf the print. The concept of the work revolves around the the personal experience and fears of the sick being a laboratory speciman, available for random testing and trials. The technical execution of the art work involves both detailed observation and blotched stains to extend the meaning of the work.The work was first exhibited as part of the solo "Enfolding" as research into trauma, loss and the ethics of care. For more information, see the artist's website at the top of this page.

2020-01-01T00:00:00Z Luneburg, Nathani https://ir.unisa.ac.za/handle/10500/27856 2021-09-01T09:54:41Z 2020-11-01T00:00:00Z

Creatures of Home series Luneburg, Nathani Creatures of Home (2020) consists of eight framed pen and ink portrait drawings of my childhood dogs, dressed in human clothing and posing against patterned backgrounds. The backgrounds are drawn digitally with the Photoshop Liquify tool and present camouflaged plant and wildlife imagery observable in-between curved lines. It was exhibited as part of “Diaspora: Dispersed Artists of the Lowveld,” a group exhibition presented at White River Gallery. The exhibition aimed to address questions about how place defines us and how memories extend awareness of one’s present environment, which connects with South Africans’ diffusion through urbanisation, especially during the current economic crisis. White River Gallery showcases artworks relating to cultural history and contemporary South African topics, including artworks that portray the social and political climates of Mpumalanga. In Creatures of Home, recollections of Lowveld plant- and wildlife as observed in the Kruger National Park (KNP) merge with memories of my pet dogs, which two elements portray home. The latter signify my parental home on a farm near the KNP and the first refer to experiences in nature. The dogs embody safety, belonging, as well as familiarity and the KNP exemplifies territoriality and nature. Both aspects remind of home, depicting a place of safety, belonging, and exquisiteness. Creatures of Home captures the geographers David Seamon’s (1979) and Yi-Fu Tuan’s (1977) notion that home can be a midpoint of expressive meaning, familiarity, and belonging. I am a dispersed person, urbanised and removed from my childhood home, which is but a memory that creates a consciousness of my present city setting. My current dwelling is a place where I frequently experience isolation and even incarceration, especially for the duration of the COVID-19-lockdown, during which time I was also admitted to a hospital where I experienced and extended solitude. Bessel van der Kolk’s (1997:2) argument that memories are stored in, acted upon, and remembered within the brain were strengthened when I sketched my pets in the hospital. The artworks confirmed that events are most likely to be remembered as narratives that transform and fade over time. The dogs and nature captured in Creatures of Home reverberate Irene Cieraad’s (1994) theory of the childhood home: “Memories of the childhood home remain a primal point of reference, whether one loved it or hated it.” The quirky presentation of the dogs dressed in playful attire echoes the contentment I experienced as a child and becomes a metaphor for a pleasurable and happy period in my life. It further depicts the eternal longing for those special moments, knowing that it can never be relived and, therefore, signifies the loss of my childhood home. By longing for my childhood home, I feel internal pain similarly to Freud’s (1917) melancholia, which is the loss of a love object experienced both consciously and unconsciously. The naïve way in which the dogs are drawn is influenced by faux naïf art, with specific reference to the artworks of Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara, and reflects my inner world, which has developed since childhood. When a loss occurs, this inner world plunges into chaos. This is suggested through the muddled, child-like use of lines in the backgrounds of the drawings. The loss of my childhood home caused my identity to fracture, which relates to Godkin’s (1980) argument that some places provide “reflective foci” of meaning, which rest at the midpoint of a person’s logic and self-identity. Creatures of Home is an endeavour to keep memories alive by delving into childhood as well as an attempt to capture the KNP and my dogs the way I understood both during childhood. Technical originality is achieved by combining digital and traditional drawing methods. The Liquify tool facilitates and eases automatic drawing, which unlocks my childhood memories. The child-like background images are produced by multiple overlapping layers and with free association. By pulling and dragging pixels using liquefication, images recalling elements from home spontaneously emerge from the unconscious. Through layering each artwork, a process of revelation transpires, which could be interpreted as layers of memories and the traces of the past being unlocked and excavated by using free association. More information about the artist and this specific output can be viewed by clicking on the URIs provided. The first URI is the website of the artist and presents the Illustration page. The artworks can be viewed on this page.

2020-11-01T00:00:00Z