She is an image, a pen drawing; a doodle. She is an object and framed like one. She’s a feminist artwork. Inspired by the Emilie Autumn song “Thank God I’m pretty”. She’s faceless and provocative. She is placed in an area that her body will get scratched and worn down when you grind her. She is an exclamation mark or a commentary on how female bodies are represented in the media. Sex sells baby. – Monique Pelser
2018
2018
2018 I was awarded residency at the Cité des Arts Paris, where I had a studio next to Jakob Warmenbol rehearsing jazz percussion. Unbeknownst to him I started to draw to his music and made line drawings on panels. I was mapping the music.
I made a postcard on watercolour paper and began posting my drawings from the atelier to my friends. Simultaneously I was making a series of raptors which I was running through multiple printers. I was playing with the random ad hoc quality and outcome of old obsolete printers with troublesome heads and nozzles. I began joining the two works, using the line as a flight pattern and the music as a prompt.
Similarly to the clouds. The images were printed onto desktop paper and were put on the wall left to age. It was at this time that one of my works on newsprint were disqualified from an auction due the unstable archival quality of newsprint. This was ironic to me as I have an old newspaper article from the 1800s and it is a beautiful collectable item. I intentionally left the birds to age and change as paper is organic and will always shift. Ironically these works were thrown away by a gallery attendant and are no longer in existance.
A review by Monique Pelser
Charged and near to me. We are connected. I wake up with my phone next to me, I feel for it in my pocket or my bag. Always charged. Love online.
Title: Untitled
Year: 2016
Size: image: 40 x 50 cm
Medium: Photographic print on archival paper
Edition: 1/15
$2 000.00 (R 35 000.00) not including postage
“This is fantastic… Where else would animals learn the basic functions to create music?” CNN. 2014
Medium: Three-channel video installation
Duration: 05:08 (looped)
Screen One – an Orangutang playing a keyboard. Appropriated footage from CNN.
Screen Two – a screen recording of myself navigating the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/jimi.jim.718) repeatedly clicking to create a slideshow of the images from the album.
Screen Three – Asia Small Otters playing a keyboard. Appropriated footage from CNN.
For this on-going project I do a Google search for wildlife images looking predominantly through CNN and SKY News footage. I take a screen capture and then place the images into various categories such as; animals dressed up, animals being photographed, animals performing or animals inside. The images are then uploaded onto the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/jimi.jim.718) , which has been active for over two years.
The footage of these animals playing music was recontextualized into a gallery setting with the soundtracks overlapping each other creating a frenetic sound. The centre screen, displaying the slideshow, was created by repeated clicking on images from the Facebook album. The repetitive clicking starts to reflect the Orangutang and the Asia Small Otters hand and paws, respectively, hitting the musical instruments.
I am interested in how we how we look at and consume images. How this looking establishes ideas and normative thinking despite the content of the images being potentially problematic and/ or absurd. Recontextualising the images highlights how we as consumers look at animals and how animals, particularly wildlife, have become a spectacle commodity.
On exhibition at the Nelson Mandela Art Museum as part of the Eastern Cape Biennale which ended in February 2015.
