Notes

'The use of text and language is critical for Seiler's work, often poetic, religious and sentimental like a confessional. Dealing with ideas of romantic gestures and sexual interactions, Seiler's works dive into historical gay modes of communication and conduct. Bringing forward a collective memory of gay rights movements and focusing on the sexual oppression of gay men. This draws in feelings of longing, distance and nostalgia'¹

Brett Seiler is best known for his casual yet emotionally resonant graphic style of rendering male figures, alone or in tangled groups, occupying sparsely detailed interior environments. Commenting on Seiler’s “unique and carefully honed” painterly style in his interior scenes, Khanya Mashabela points to how the void-like backgrounds add an enticing ambiguity to the works: “They become otherworldly. In some cases, they offer a vision of an untouched heaven, but more often they have the texture of a dream … The domestic space is destabilised by what appears to be an apocalyptic event.”²

Seiler had no clear intention to be a painter when he entered the Ruth Prowse School of Art. His earliest expression took the form of photographs, notably portraiture, but following his introduction to conceptual art his output became more sculptural and experimental. For his graduate exhibition in 2015, Seiler produced an installation featuring two crossed flagpoles, each with a monochromatic replica of the Zimbabwean flag. He also transcribed clauses relating to the legal status of homosexuality in the 54 countries of Africa onto an A2 sheet of paper.

Seiler pivoted to painting around the time of his debut solo exhibition in 2017. His early paintings featured either defined subjects or fragments of text floated on a mostly empty ground. The characteristic black-brown colour of these compositions derived from his use of affordable paint materials like roof paint and bitumen. Over time he has, however, developed a richer palette of greys and greens to enrich his more complicated depictions of figures in interior settings with domestic objects. His treatment of painterly space also became more multifaceted.

Similar to Swamp (I dreamt I was a cricket player) (2021), a contemporaneous work depicting two figures in a flooded domestic space, this work includes a picture within the composition. Seiler frequently quotes his practice; the floating 'Coke' bottle in this work is another instance of such quotation. It references a sculptural multiple made by the artist and gifted to friends and patrons. Books, like words, are recurring subjects in Seiler’s work. Queer artists and writers have long been important to his self-conception. The title of the painting invokes a pejorative phrase used to stigmatize non-binary advocacy, although in recent years activists have appropriated it to assert queer power.

^1. The Fourth (no date) Brett Charles Seiler, online, https://thefourth.co.za/Brett-Charles-Seiler, accessed 29 July 2024.

^2. Khanya Mashabela, artist biography, Everard Read London, online,https://www.everardlondon.com/artist/BRETT%20CHARLES%20_SEILER/biography/, accessed 12 August 2024.

Provenance

Acquired from the artist by the current owner.