WITH Colbert Mashile (Festival Artist) GALLERY Everard Read
Goats in jerseys, baboons lounging on couches and cackling hyenas smiling manically. For three decades Colbert Mashile’s work has been punctuated by a menagerie of animals. The pieces in this body of work are no exception. At times it seems they’re anthropomorphized characters that are there to give us a message about our world. In other instances, they’re simply elements in surreal compositions of items. Is the pig with a briefcase some kind of Orwellian symbol for big business, or just part of a fantastic, farcical scene? That’s for you, the viewer, to unravel.
“I wake up at 04:00 and have all these images in my head from sleeping. They’re what I try to make sense of, and what I paint. My art does not have a narrative”, Colbert explains. No doubt though, creations of all kinds permeate his psyche and dreamscapes. They’re certainly an undeniable influence on his art – even if they are there by way of intuition. “Farming, faunae and the natural world is a huge thing for me”, says Colbert. Wild and domestic beasts have crept across his youth in Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga, his current agricultural endeavours, and into his quintessentially rich realm of acrylic, Indian ink, pastel, and charcoal.
Visit this exhibition from 23 to 30 March until 18:00 and on 31 March until 14:00
