EASTCOAST GOLD – 2018

“If her work is centered on Africa, it is not however wholly informed by this particular continent. This is because Denny well understands the connectedness of geographies – and in particular the potent interconnectedness of land and sea, the coastal world, umland, and hinterland, and the fathomless encompassing ocean. Indeed, one could argue that Denny’s paintings are caught precisely at the littoral – the point between land and sea – and, therefore, are moved all the more profoundly by zones of contact which are equivocal and open-ended.”

~ Ashraf Jamal, excerpts from Human Ocean, catalogue essay, 2018

DESCRIPTION

In Eastcoast Gold Robyn Denny re-imagines historical fragments as an antidote to a received, evasive, history. Her paintings look at the last thousand years of the East African coast and its Indian Ocean trade as expounded by Ashraf Jamal in this (the first) video.

Long before the Portuguese, with guns blazing, rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, the East African coast was embedded with the presence of a rich cultural history. Archeological activity has unearthed traces of an 8th century mosque, as well as Persian and Chinese ceramics. Cross-continental trade here had proceeded in relative peace for hundreds of years. 

Atrocity and aggression were colonial Portuguese – and later Dutch and English – imports to this part of the world. The effect on this region’s peoples was irrevocably scarring and obliterating, despite enduring cross-cultural exchange. 

In these paintings, Denny grapples with our paradoxical ability to create and destroy. 

In the two artists’ fourth collaboration, the exhibition opening was accompanied by a live performance by Mamela Nyamza. Nyamza’s visceral response to the paintings’ subject matter, and their audience, can be witnessed in this (the second) video.

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