REDEFINED
2 JULY – 29 JULY 2022 at ArtB: The Arts Association of Bellville in the Western Cape
Artists‘ walkabout at Artb gallery on Thursday 21 July at 11am.
The exhibition will continue online until 29 August 2022
With introspection and humour the artists on REDEFINED consider surviving a pandemic with painted and drawn visions.
Here the artists present to us natural environments of isolation alongside dramatic liminal landscapes. They confront us with moods of foreboding, the irony of mundanity during times of turmoil, the everyday activities of childrearing and moments of leisure, juxtaposed with fantastical realities and those of armed conflict with its tragic aftermaths. Within these depictions of business as usual is the call towards re-evaluation.
Artistically, Redefined can also reflect on a shift from figurative to abstract painting.
Why the Cup? Apart from revealing the difference in treatment of the same subject by each artist, the cup serves as a progressively redefined device … as a philosophical vehicle seen as being half full or half empty … a symbol of containment or the feminine (in Jungian terms) …
a custom to commune…
a moment of pause, to take stock…
The REDEFINED artists welcome you to a co-reflection in this moment.
Exhibiting Artists
Charles van der Merwe, Christine Cherry Jones, Genevieve Rosochacki, Michael Tietz-Geldehuys, Odette Marais, Ros Molteno, Veronica Reid
Artworks are avalailable online at https://www.artb.co.za/redefined/
ROS MOLTENO
BIOGRAPHY
Private Art tuition: Ryno Swart, Greg Kerr, Judith Mason President: South African Society of Artists 1997 Hon. Life Member South African Society of Artists Cite Internationale des Arts, Paris Residencies in 2009 and 2013 Art exhibition curator : Art Portfolio Art exhibition curator: Original Cape Art Exhibitions: numerous
Statement:
The lockdown of the last two years brought profound changes in the way the world functions and drastically altered our ways of working and socialising. As an artist, I felt the need to explore other methods of painting and began experimenting with oil paint and cold wax medium. This redefined my approach to creating layered and textured semi-abstract paintings. A beachcomber at heart, I take my inspiration from the natural world and the beautiful South African landscape, especially the beaches and lagoon scenes of the Cape. I am delighted to be exhibiting with this diverse group of artists as we emerge from an extraordinary period of isolation into a more light-hearted and sociable way of living.

Ros Molteno | Princess Vlei, 2022

Ros Molteno | Red Cup with Proteas, 2022

Ros Molteno | Rocks at Kalk Bay, 2022

Ros Molteno | Sunlit Scene, 2021
Odette Marais
BIOGRAPHY
Odette Marias was born in Cape Town in 1964. Michaelis School of Fine Art (BAFA/Dip. Graphic Design)
Exhibitions: 2007 Solo | VEO Gallery, Cape Town. 2007 Solo | FREWIN, Cape Town. 2008 Solo | VEO Gallery, Cape Town. 2010 Solo | Penny Dobbie Gallery, Cape Town. 2012 Association of Visual Arts, Cape Town. 2014 Still Life | group show | JOHANNS BORMAN. 2018 For the Love of it | Group show at 42 Trill. 2019 Regroup | Michaelis Alumni show | Altona Gallery, Cape Town. 2019 Opening group show | Daor Gallery | V&A Waterfront, Cape Town. 2019 VULEKA finalist, ArtB, Cape Town
Statement:
I paint traditionally in oils and watercolour. My inspiration is in the observation of the domestic and nature. My practice is primarily driven by the alchemy of materials, marks, and time. My fascination is atmosphere. Solitary meditative moments, when dust settles and light touches. Time and it’s passing is a constant motif. The abstract quality of my recent paintings is the cumulative result of years working on figurative paintings in the genre of landscape and still-life. Exploration without direct reference to a literal subject has presented me with exciting and magical options and outcomes which has deepened my intuitive process. Conscious decisions lead by the reading of composition and colour values and using the evidence of palimpsest creates opportunity to build complex dynamics, layered tensions, and a suggested poetic language. These outcomes pose endless challenges and exciting unpredictable outcomes that eventually settle into a balanced resolution. The resulting narrative is thus open and expressive. I am presently ‘playing’ with the contradictory and opposing actions of construct and destruct, crossing over between the observed ‘actual’ and the implied abstract.

Odette Marias | Nocturnal 2

Odette Marias | And Ladders

Odette Marias | Notation 9 of Spades

Odette Marias | Playing My Hand
VERONICA REID
BIOGRAPHY
Veronica Reid is a Cape Town based artist. She studied Graphic design (1966-69) and worked in the field for a few years. Some years later she followed her desire to draw and paint, initially painting with watercolor, she now works primarily in pastel and oil. She paints scenes from nature, but her focus is on portraiture and figure studies. She attends weekly life drawing sessions and has enjoyed workshops with Greg Kerr. A Fellow of SASA( South African Society of Artists), she regularly exhibits in their Annual and Merit exhibitions. Also exhibits with Artb., Rust en Vrede Gallery and the Cape Gallery. Veronica achieved Top 100 finalist in the Sanlam Portrait Award in 2013 and 2015, Top 40 finalist in 2017 and 2019. 2021 she was awarded second place in the Vuleka Exhibition, at Artb.
Statement:
Although I often paint everyday subjects, the creative process takes me out of the familiar, to a place of escape and concentration. I try to express what captures or amuses me about what I see. I have no fixed formula, and in the end, the painting speaks for itself. Although my painting style has been described as painterly and naturalistic, my work evokes emotion without sitting firmly in the expressionist tenet. The response it evokes from the viewers varies greatly, veering from whimsy to tenderness. Thematically my works focus on the beautiful and good in everyday life, but how I interpret what I see may be seen differently by the viewer. Nothing is static, everything is constantly redefined.

Veronica Reid | Tick Tock, 2022

Veronica Reid | Aerial View, 2021

Veronica Reid | Call Of The Dove, 2020

Veronica Reid | Fragments of the Past, 2022
Michael Tietz-Geldenhuys
BIOGRAPHY
Michael Tietz – Geldenhuys currently lives and works in Cape Town and continues to focus on painting and drawing with an emphasis on classical realism in portraiture, figurative and still life subjects and abstraction. Born in Durban South Africa in 1976: Michael obtained a Degree in Fine Art at the University of Technology in 1999 majoring in painting and photography. After studying Michael spent three years in Mozambique, focusing on photography, culminating in a successful photographic exhibition at DIT Art Gallery in 2003. While traveling in 2002, Michael discovered the academic atelier tradition in Florence, Italy. He returned the following year to attend a course of figure, portrait and cast drawing, anatomy and art history at the Florence Academy of Art. Michael returned to Florence again in 2014 to complete a painting course focusing on classical realism, sight-size, and portraiture.
Statement:
What does it mean to redefine something and what does it mean in terms of visual art?
Both involve the process of altering or changing the meaning of something, or adding to its meaning.
When we redefine something, physically speaking the thing itself remains unaltered, but, our understanding and experience of it can be dramatically changed so that it can appear as something entirely new. What this implies is that the viewer becomes implicit in the artistic process.
As a viewer, when we experience a work of art, we are looking at the depicted subject in a new light. Through the artists’ lens we are offered a new vision. Our own point of view has the potential to be redefined through another’s personal perspective.
Art offers a dialogue and an interaction between artist, artwork and viewer. Context, intention and interpretation give art a transformative quality becoming alchemy. Through the artists interpretations and the viewers’ re-interpretation, meaning and experience are in a continuous state of being redefined.
In these paintings the landscape as subject is filtered to become a specific kind of landscape veering close to romanticism. They are a redefining of the visual experience of landscape as something emotive and suggestive of sensation. They are landscapes remembered, re-imagined and abstracted. They are the painted and layered surface, texture and value, atmosphere and shifting light.

Michael Tietz-Geldenhuys, Landscape (3)

Michael Tietz-Geldenhuys, Landscape (2)

Michael Tietz-Geldenhuys, Landscape (1)

Michael Tietz-Geldenhuys, Landscape (7)
Genevieve Rosochacki
BIOGRAPHY
Born in South Africa, she grew up between Gauteng and CapeTown.
After matric studied first year at Michaelis. Averse to conceptual art she went nursing instead, travelled extensively, drawing daily.
In SA, she developed a career in the textile industry, creating a specialized elastic printing business.
Her art continued alongside.
Once printing income established, she completed BAFA.
Summer school painting and drawing courses at New York Studio School
Joined the Artists’ Co-Op, been a member for decades.
Continued to travel widely, keeping sketchbooks and visual travelogues, which fed studio work back home.
She developed a genre ‘Inner Life’, paintings on a figurative basis, unearthing personal psychological metaphors and archetypes.
Exhibited solo at Dorp Street Gallery, AVA, various solo pop-ups
Group shows at Cape Gallery, Hermanus and SASA.
Her most recent 2 solo shows were at Chandler House in November 2019 and February 2021.
She lives and works in Cape Town.
Statement:
A sense of unsettling foreboding informs my images.
“Redefined” on a global and personal level refers to cognitive dissonance between human advancement and regression.
Global warming grows in spite of every warning.
Wars are as barbaric and predatory as ever.
Interdependent, we are precariously perched environmentally and economically. Illusions of independence and democracy reign, whilst autocracies ride on enmeshment and co-dependence.
Trade will have to simplify as global economies shrink; communities become isolated.
Famine and excess will coexist, floods and fires, too. Human interference tipping the scales of sustainability.
The Covid pandemic forced many of us to rediscover solitude,
both imposed and voluntary.
This invites recalibration of values and meaning, especially when stripped of what many of us took for granted. “Redefined” on a personal level, as impacting relationships and resources.
Night has descended, whilst the sun still shines.
The perpetual paradox between Flourish and Perish intensifies.”

Genevieve Rosochacki | Foreboding

Genevieve Rosochacki | Pink Towel

Genevieve Rosochacki | After The Fire

Genevieve Rosochacki | Circle of Foreboding
CHRISTINE CHERRY JONES
BIOGRAPHY
Christine grew up on a farm in Zambia and is now living in Cape Town.
She comes from a family of artists and is following in their footsteps. She is a self-taught artist. Christine has attended courses at the Ruth Prowse and Michael Pettit schools of art. She has attended workshops with well-known South African artists Greg Kerr, Nigel Mullins and Judith Mason. She is a Fellow and Honorary Member of the South African Society of Artists. As a member of SANAVA she has had the privilege of two sojourns at the Cite des Artes on the River Seine in Paris. The Vuleka Competition has regularly selected her work for exhibition.
Her paintings have found homes locally and in many other countries.
Statement:
The works on exhibition are mainly painted conceptually using memory.
They explore the theme of ‘Redefined’ in a fluid, diverse reality as portrayed in the following:
– the disconnectedness of life with the natural world and each other, as in the six piece ‘Out of Touch’ painting.
– the deepening love for the natural world, in ‘A Valentine for the Owls I hear in the night’
– the somber fairytale / fable world of the Red Bear where Big captures Small.
– and ‘Paris Memories’ reactivating all my senses.
– in a redefined world, there is always humour to carry the day.
The works ‘The Gift’ and ‘A Big Fat Fish’ lightly engage the viewer.
And to quote William Kentridge. ‘You can’t wait for an idea to start
working, you have to begin’.

Christine Cherry Jones | Paris Memories, 2022

Christine Cherry Jones | A Valentine of Owls, 2022

Christine Cherry Jones | Loadshedding! 2022

Christine Cherry Jones | A Big Fat Fish, 2022
CHARLES VAN DER MERWE
BIOGRAPHY
Charles van der Merwe retired from corporate life in the industrial financial management field in 2001 to concentrate on art. Studied/worked with well-known artists since the early 1980’s plus having 3 study/stay periods at the Cite` Internationale des Artes in Paris. Has held 4 solo, and taken part in many joint exhibitions in, amongst others, Johannesburg, Cape Town and London. A Fellow of the South African Society of Artists and awarded 12 ‘Best’ trophies for paintings in Pastel and Oil as well as for Drawing. Featured in ‘International Artists’ magazine (2005), 2 other sister publications and also in ‘Art of England’ magazine (2008). Travelled widely.
Statement:
Art, by its very nature, involves the redefining of ‘what is’ or ‘what was’ for both the artist and the viewer. Another way of looking and bringing to attention new points of view. This is my general aim.
For this exhibition, falling as it is in a world of renewed tensions I have chosen mainly to depict and confront, through the starkness of drawing, the horror that has and is still being visited upon the common man and his animals by the action of a despot and his power: A redefining of the living and life that had been wished for.
(The drawings are derived from generally available images and, where possible, permission for use thereof was requested.)

Charles van der Merwe | The Market That Was, 2022

Charles van der Merwe | Hands On, 2022

Charles van der Merwe | A Knot of Disconnections, 2018

Charles van der Merwe | The Neighbourhood That Was, 2022