Notes

Penny Siopis started working with oil pastels during her sojourn in Paris in 1986 as winner of the Volkskas Atelier Award. These works featured in an exhibition entitled Pictures within Pictures at Goodman Gallery in 1987. Imaging developed out of this show. The drawing reflects her interest in representations of women in art and history and her attempts to re-inscribe these representations with contemporary significance. The subject here is a young black girl, who is also the reference for the figure in Piling Wreckage upon Wreckage, a major painting in the permanent collection of Iziko South African National Gallery that has featured on important local and international exhibitions.

Evoking art historical precedents from The Arnolfini Wedding by Jan van Eyck to Picasso’s Girl before a Mirror as well as a host of still life paintings, Imaging also draws on specific sources. The image fragment in the mirror is taken from Anthony van Dyck’s Princess Henrietta attended by a Page, in which the aristocratic royal lays her elegant white hand on the shoulder of a black page. Siopis explores ideas of the mirror and self-reflection in relation to conceptions of tradition and culture, wealth and excess. A gilt-framed mirror is held up to reflect the key players in this domestic space crowded with objects such as a Venus de Milo, Wedgwood, silver candlesticks and jewelled boxes, to raise questions about relationships of power as well as notions of self, identity and knowledge.