BEASTS OF BURDEN – 2013

“In these enigmatic ink and gouache works Denny blurs the margins between reality and fantasy to create an eerie domain of magical ambiguity, brimming with both the quotidian and the transcendent.”
Mail & Guardian – 1 November, 2013

This series of work deals with the shock, beauty and pathos of the biological contingency.  Violence and brutality compete with fragility and vulnerability. There is an unfolding from birth towards death, into decay and disintegration. Majestic dynamism takes the fatal strain of inner dissolution.

Vertiginous downward leaking of semi-transparent blacks and greys renders the solid physiognomy of these creatures ethereal and ghostly.  Intensely opaque crimson planes of blood feed and fuel the animals’ mechanics and behaviours.

The works resonate with a dark energy that runs under the liberated façade of South Africa’s democracy. They speak to the violence that is contorting and writhing at a physical level as well as in our collective unconscious.
(Text for the Association of Visual Arts exhibition 2013)