JOHN WALTERS: After Baines
19 January - 16 February 2011
iArt Gallery, 71 Loop Street
iArt Gallery is pleased to present After Baines, John Walters’ long-awaited exhibition of Masters work, and his first solo exhibition outside of the university environment.
After Baines is, in a nutshell, an exhibition about contemporary history painting. But history painting is not and cannot be what it used to be. Therefore impetus has given over to attempting to answer a central question: ‘What does history painting look like today?’ The project is also focused on the idea of identity formation through history (and the learning of it), specifically in relation to the geographical setting of Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape.
All the works in this exhibition reference the life and work of Thomas Baines (1820-1875), artist-explorer who arrived in South Africa in the mid-1800s and is well-known for the records he kept – both in writing and painting – of colonial South Africa. Extensive research of the life and work of Thomas Baines (1820 – 1875) has provoked Walters to create the three series of artworks included in this exhibition.
Having been created between 2008 and 2010, they are obviously “after” Baines in the chronological sense, but are also “after” Baines in the sense used by engravers of masterpieces (those early producers of multiple copies). The works, however, are “after” Baines in even more complex senses in that they consciously and deliberately quote, play with, juxtapose and even reinvent both the works and the figure of Thomas Baines.
Walters’ investigation of the life and the working practice of Thomas Baines has been conducted in relation to the broader discourse of painting and the lived experience of being a young white artist of British descent, working in the Eastern Cape in the 21st century. He has also taken into account, in his reading of the history, his own personal complicity in the constructions of ‘the figure of Baines’ as he has framed him both visually and textually.
Through a complex layering of allegories and a very significant use of the colours black, white, grey and pink, Walters investigates colonial and post-colonial history in the Eastern Cape, as he sees it as a painter and a resident of Grahamstown.