“Good-Night” art exhibition

It’s been a long time coming but is going to be well worth the wait. Established South African artist Heike Davies will hold her first solo exhibition since 2005 at the Barnard Gallery in Newlands, Cape Town, from 2 February. Entitled “Good-Night”, the show will feature bold, figurative mixed-media paintings that explore the power of female sexuality.

This exhibition explores the contradictory perceptions of women as objects of desire, abuse and fear. “The work talks about female sexuality as one of the most powerful forces, yet it is the very thing that renders women completely vulnerable,” says Heike. 

The artist’s emotive work combines elements from traditional portraiture with an edge of the uncomfortable and raw. Her subjects are a cross-section of female subjects, including images of women taken from commercial mass-media images, pictures of women from the sex industry, and images of the artist’s friends. The differences between them are blurred; it is difficult to tell which are prostitutes, fashion models or friends.

The works juxtapose vulnerability and assertiveness. Many of the subjects shut their eyes to escape from the viewer’s gaze, to evade the onlooker’s questions and judgments, but at the same time are very present. Others are painted in a formal frontal perspective and challenge the viewer directly with their own confrontational stares. What all the subjects have in common is their ability to present themselves naked before you – vulnerable, defiant and beautiful.

These portraits present women in unadulterated honesty, contrasting virtue with a common and underlying primal sense of allure. The over-riding feeling of the works is beauty and the complexity that surrounds it – the blessing and the curse of being female.

“Heike’s latest body of work is a powerful and thought-provoking – a must-view for those seeking inspiration,“ says Chris Barnard, owner of the Barnard Gallery.

The exhibition opens on 2 February and will run until 7 March 2012.

More information: www.barnardgallery.com