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2nd Floor, 138 Jan Smuts Avenue Parkwood Johannesburg South Africa, 2000

Johannesburg: 26.2041° S, 28.0473° E London: 51.5072° N, 0.1276°

Enquiries: info@counterspace-studio.com Press: comms@counterspace-studio.com

About

For human consumption there must be a dissection, a label, putting back together, calling it a thing, never another thing. Turning the stone over in our hands. Colour, shape, size, weight, name. What label is required before we will know that we are what we breathe.

The shape, colour and materiality of this work became through the Joburg sunset. When it is clear, the Joburg sky moves gracefully and soundlessly through shades of all the colours you have never known, as the sun drops behind the horizon line at the end of a day. It looks idyllic. You want to touch it, hold it, never let it go, breathe in all of the magnificence.

The amount of pollution, dust and chemical particles in Joburg’s air, produced by its legacy of mining, creates a colour scape of refracted light and inorganic pigments that can be considered visually beautiful.

Envisioned for Johannesburg mine dumps, and Installed at the Spier Wine Estate in Stellenbosch, this work collects in a drop, the atmospheric and the intangible. Its feminine silence veils the unspoken consequences of beauty – so often created by decentralized labour and resource extraction.

Interview