Eugenie Marais: Untitled, Inside

Beautifully atmospheric paintings of the everyday by Eugenie Marais

Words by Rebecca Fulleylove, Thursday 03 May 2012

Appreciating the beauty of an egg box, powder blue crockery and a bathroom sink is Eugenie Marais in her series of paintings titled, Inside. They’re intriguing because of the importance she’s given these everyday objects, making them surreal and ambiguous with a tense stillness filling each image. Simply created with oils on canvas, there’s a familiarity to her work but it’s the shadows hiding under the porcelain plates that I enjoy most – expectantly waiting for something to happen but it never does.

Eugenie Marais: A beautiful lie, Inside

Eugenie Marais: For reasons unknown, Inside

Eugenie Marais: Spin the world around, Inside

Eugenie Marais: What about love, Inside

Eugenie Marais: Gone for good, Inside

Eugenie Marais: I love it when you call me, Inside

Eugenie Marais: No surprises, Inside

Eugenie Marais: Wish you were here, Inside

Eugenie Marais: You know what I mean, Inside

Eugenie Marais: Be my enemy, Inside

Work / Art “Prayer paintings, manga and motivational images”: Gitte Maria Moller's cryptic artworks

Gitte Maria Moller’s artwork occupies the strange space between medieval tableaux, Japanese manga and David Lynch’s “weirder than weird”:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhkNA0mKmic commercials. Crammed to bursting with religious iconography and executed across mixed media from oil on tracing paper or Enduro Ice to digital print on perspex to site-specific installations, Gitte’s creations make a string of cryptic allusions to the future of mankind — until, that is, you spot the friendly-looking croissants.

Bryony Stone — 26 June 2017
Work / Art Natacha Paschal’s “deformed” interpretations of mag covers and fashion ads

Artist Natacha Paschal re-appropriates glossy magazine covers, fashion imagery and adverts by painting her own “deformed” versions with wonky faces and bemused expressions. After studying graphic design, Natacha took to painting for a different pace of making work.

Rebecca Fulleylove — 22 June 2017
Work / Art Brian Lotti celebrates the commonplace in his personable paintings

Brian Lotti is a name you may recognise from his skateboarding career in the 80s and 90s. However over the last number of years Brian has been painting in Los Angeles, using “varied swathes of vibrant colour, quick staccatos and heavy impasto strokes to create urban landscapes that capture the spontaneity of light and movement in his immediate environment”.

Lucy Bourton — 20 June 2017
Work / Art Artist Michaela Younge’s NSFW felt tableaux

“I started making my felt pieces about a year ago, and they came about from an idea I had been toying with while I was looking at flat colours of felt, and wanted to create ‘tapestry-type’ work,” Cape Town-based artist Michaela Younge explains. After graduating from Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2015, where she tells us she was working mainly with sculptural and print-based work, Michaela began experimenting with tapestry, using felt to tell elaborate stories via tableaux. “Working with wool fibre has allowed me to experiment with ideas that I have wanted to create but that I didn’t feel I had a medium through which to accurately portray them,” she notes.

Bryony Stone — 20 June 2017
Work / Art Christabel Forbes depicts the community, colours and bustle of Modinagar, India

As an artist inspired by the day-to-day goings-on of public space, Christabel Forbes found a wealth of new inspiration when on residency in India. Part of the Royal Drawing School and International Institute of Fine Arts programme that selected four artists for the residency in Modinagar, a small village near New Delhi, Christabel looked to soak up the atmosphere.

Jenny Brewer — 16 June 2017
Work / Art Anthony Gerace presents “And Another Thing …”: a new book of artworks and collages

Artist Anthony Gerace presents his new monograph And Another Thing… a collection of artworks and collages spanning the last seven years. The book, published by Ain’t Bad editions, contains 128 pages of work and is printed in a limited run of 700 copies. “What I wanted to do with this book was present where the work was going and the work I have been dealing with for a long time,” the artist explains. The book contains collages executed with precision and control, providing a wealth of information that can be interpreted at speed, or carefully picked apart and decoded. Each work is unified by a precision and depth that demands attention from the reader.

Owen Pritchard — 15 June 2017