New Exhibition: Bitches Brew

WORDS Michaela Stehr IMAGES Supplied

Everard Read Johannesburg is proud to announce Bitches Brew, a group exhibition by Lucinda Mudge, Lady Skollie and Sanell Aggenbach.

Curated by Sanell Aggenbach, this provocative and powerful exhibition explores the concept of “Mother Nature’s Wrath mixed with Bad Feminism”.

Highlighting the idea that South Africa is a battlefield for women, the artworks in this exhibition use dark humour to explore this topic and how women face daily struggles and threats in this country. Mixing personal and political views, Bitches Brew expresses three women’s experiences and takes on society – as individuals and as a collective of women.

Lady Skollie’s work brings together elements of popular culture, history, violence, sex, sexuality and indigeneity.“(Her) work goes beyond artistic commentary on sex, politics and racial identity as a coloured womxn in post-apartheid South Africa. Instead, her multimodal body of work reaches into uncomfortable realms, so that it is a site of protest and a means of education,” writes Danielle Bowler. Lady Skollie uses ink, watercolour and crayon in her large-scale works to break taboos and talk openly about issues of sex, pleasure, consent, human connection, violence and abuse. “That’s part of being the bitch, we’re all just doing what we want”, says Skollie of the trio.

Lucinda Mudge asks serious and authentic questions using humour, irony and mockery, some of which may be experienced by the viewer as uncomfortable. She describes her work as unruly pottery art: “I may have a dark view of the world because I have life experience here. However, everyone has something that sent him or her reeling, so I like to make work that is honest about heaviness. My work actually embraces difficulty. It is not in denial but is ultimately beautiful and uplifting.” The paintings she has made for ‘Bitches Brew’ are an extension of her work as a ceramic artist.

Like the other artists in the exhibition, Sanell Aggenbach uses humour and visual layering in both her paintings and her sculpture. In 2017 Anna Stielau wrote: “Sanell Aggenbach practices a kind of feminist mycology. She excavates dark things in dark places, submits them to study, turns them inside out and pulls them apart.” Her pieces in ‘Bitches Brew’ expand on themes introduced in previous exhibitions ‘Atopia’ (2015) and ‘Bend to Her Will’ (2017), foremost among these a concern with the social and subjective experience of rootlessness.

Bitches Brew is on at Everard Read Johannesburg until 7 May 2023.

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