I am a painter and multimedia artist. I recently practise from a socio-alchemistic perspective. My art works focus on combining painting with analogue and digital interactivity, conceptual photography, drawing and/ or performance. I transport, cross-pollinate and revolutionise concepts that are rooted in science (for example rainbow-making) and social sciences (for example restorative justice and interactive analysis) to tackle issues such as illusive security, terms of engagement, spirituality and the politics of democracy. In these processes, I create painted images, objects and installations that can enable conscious and subconscious messages to be visually, bodily and spiritually processed, in order to successfully master social changes. My art is non-dogmatically grounded in the mysticist tradition and it is further linked to concepts and media such as transmutation, metaization (meta-referencing), oerfaber (natural pigments and semi precious stones as prima materia), chemically fabricated paints (metallics, light-sensitive and colour shifting paints).
... but you must wager.
Blaise Pascal, Thoughts, letters and minor works (1910: 85)
The brusher's genealogical mix derives from Irish, French, German, and Dutch ancestry. I am a sixth generation Allen family descendant living in South Africa. The first descendant was a Charles Allen who left Londonderry, Ireland during the potato famine and presumably joined the English military to travel to Batavia and then to Mauritius. In 1810 he left Port Louis by embarking on an English brig. Arriving in the Cape Colony he was appointed as secretary of the Drostdy (the Uitenhage district), and married the daughter of a Stellenbosch magistrate, Maria Mentz. But in an unexpected turn of events, he was accused of lending money to ex-slaves called the 'free blacks' and was subsequently fired by the Cape governor Lord Charles Somerset. The Cape government reclaimed his estate, after he was declared dead in 1822, but his death certificate was issued more than a decade later. Maria Mentz died alone in an ox wagon accident in the Eastern Cape. Their mysterious life may have caused the creation of the popular Allen family myth, that Charles Allen was a buccaneer. His descendants including the brusher's grandfather farmed in the district Upshire, Eastern Cape that later formed part of the previous homeland, Ciskei. The family spoke mainly Dutch and later Afrikaans. The brusher's great grandmother was a matriarch whose life was touched by the atrocities of the War of the Axe (The Amatola War). After the Ciskei land redistribution to the Xhosa peoples, the family moved to the neighbouring Katberg- Winterberg districts where the brusher's grandfather Hendrik Allen farmed as a sojourner on the farm Winterhoek. Hendrik Allen's Xhosa name is surprisingly a play metaphor, Siganga, meaning 'catch, and throw'. He was revered for his exceptionally strength, which permitted him to catch and throw bales easily. As payment, he was allowed to farm independently in an allocated section called Siganga's Camp.
During the Great Trek, the family dispersed, but the brusher's great grandfather stayed in Upshire. Some cousins joined the Great Trek for a short period, but began to farm in the southern Free State. During the Anglo-Boer (South African) war, all of Hendrik Allen's nieces and their daughters were incarcerated in the Aliwal-North concentration camp where they died of illness. His nephews and nieces' husbands were incarcerated on St Helena Island. Being a son of a sojourner, the brusher's father, Jan Allen grew up very poor, but Winterhoek's landlord loaned him money to study at Potchefstroom University (University of the North-West), the first student in the family. He became a wool merchant at the South African Wool Board in Port Elizabeth. His interest in the Katberg district prevailed and he assisted in the development of the homeland Ciskei via the Ciskei Development Bank. The brusher's mother, Freda Allen passed away after a harrowing illness at a young age. She was creative, fluent in Pitmanic shorthand and a keen reader. The brusher's father remarried, and the brusher was subsequently raised and educated by a second mother, Johanna Allen. The brusher partially grew up in a modest face-brick beach house in a village near Port Elizabeth called Kinibay. The brusher is the sixth daughter, born much later than the other siblings. The brusher's father motivated play and didn't allow children to earn personal income. Playing with flotsam and nature's objects on the beach and dunes was the major activity. Further, being partially responsible for the maintenance of the beach house now, a specific ludic-oceanic imagination endures. In 1983 during the height of apartheid, the brusher visited Robben Island on a school trip. Being on the island was a strange and awkwardly adventurous experience. The brusher's friend smuggled a camera into the Simon's town Naval Base and took photographs of us there, but the photographs mysteriously disappeared. All the brusher has to demonstrate presence on the island is a school project completed during the visit. On Robben Island the brusher crawled in the underground military barracks, visited the rocks where a leper once committed suicide, and were served lunch by the island's prison detainees. On that day, the brusher learnt that an important prisoner called Nelson Mandela was incarcerated there. The school trip was an unofficial visit, but surprisingly a Port Elizabeth boy-turned-soldier, known to us, and who was born without a hand, welcomed the pupils to the island at the docks. The brusher gained a heightened socio-political awareness through the Robben Island visit and ambivalent racialised childhood experiences, shaping the brusher's ethics. The brusher studied Fine Arts and Art History at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein with specialisation in painting, printmaking and art history. These specialisations lead to interests in pigments, geology, intermedia art and the philosophy of pictures. In the first year, a political visit to Nyanga and Crossroads, and a party with ex-Robben Island detainees further shaped personal perceptions. Lastly, serendipity led the brusher to other islands. In 1995-1996, the brusher lived and worked several low-income jobs in England and Scotland, for example being a postman, a photography shop manager, and a silver service waitress for Jewish catering companies. In 2002, The brusher did an artist's residency at the Sacatar Foundation on Itaparica Island near Salvador, Brazil. Thereafter the brusher piloted the Artist in Schools Project in the Free State Province. The aim was to develop exciting art projects for pupils in deep-rural and impoverished schools with the assistance of students and self-taught artists working in the province. During the project, the brusher playfully experimented with found art materials in under resourced areas, while developing applicable new media projects with the limited technological media available to township schools.
The island metaphor is in the brusher's view, best represented in the vertiginous web based work Exile Island, while a work, for example Imaginarium summarises the brusher's interest in serious play (Lat. serio ludere). In 2007 and 2014, the brusher visited New York – Manhattan is an island within the island called the Unites States. The visit to the United Nations main building influenced the creation of a semi-privately sponsored drawing project, Old Dog. The brusher is married to the new media artist, Jaco Spies and has two boys, Indigo and Ethan-River. Freedom in playing is central to our lives. The art-writing and artmaking of The Visionary Brusher Game are inspired by these experiences.
Born: 1971
Current position
Senior Lecturer in painting, drawing & multimedia art, Department of Fine Arts, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa Qualifications: M.A (F. A.), UFS (full dissertation & exhibition) 1996; BA.F.A. (distinction in painting),1992; Spahle Assessment in Higher Education (distinction), 2008. Field of specialisation: Painting, drawing, & multimedia art (analogue and digital interactivity, conceptual photography & painting installation) Areas of assigned teaching responsibility: Painting & drawing I to IV year (B.A.F.A students); (B.A.F.A. students); supervisor of M.A.F.A. students (two dimensional arts and related installation).
Solo Exhibitions (highlights)
2006 Solo exhibition, KZNSA Gallery, Durban
2005 Solo exhibition, Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Bloemfontein
2002 Solo exhibition, Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery, UFS, Bloemfontein
Group exhibitions (highlights)
2010
2010
2007
Current position
Senior Lecturer in painting, drawing & multimedia art, Department of Fine Arts, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa Qualifications: M.A (F. A.), UFS (full dissertation & exhibition) 1996; BA.F.A. (distinction in painting),1992; Spahle Assessment in Higher Education (distinction), 2008. Field of specialisation: Painting, drawing, & multimedia art (analogue and digital interactivity, conceptual photography & painting installation) Areas of assigned teaching responsibility: Painting & drawing I to IV year (B.A.F.A students); (B.A.F.A. students); supervisor of M.A.F.A. students (two dimensional arts and related installation).
Solo Exhibitions (highlights)
2006 Solo exhibition, KZNSA Gallery, Durban
2005 Solo exhibition, Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Bloemfontein
2002 Solo exhibition, Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery, UFS, Bloemfontein
Group exhibitions (highlights)
2010
- Winners exhibition, Spier Contemporary 2010, Port Elizabeth, Durban, Potchefstroom & Pretoria
- Finalist, Spier Contemporary Exhibition, Cape Town City Hall, Cape Town (two works selected)
- Allooi,- A collaborative exhibition of invited artists and poets, The Scaena Theatre Complex, National Symposium for Science & Art
- The Volksblad Art Festival, Bloemfontein & Wordfest
- Stellenbosch University Art Gallery, Stellenbosch
- Uit die palm van die land �a collaborative exhibition of invited artists and poets, The Scaena Theatre Complex, The Volksblad Art Festival, Bloemfontein
- Meditative Responses, Group exhibition, Potchefstroom University Art Gallery. Potchefstroom
- Wired - a selected new media group exhibition, UFS Centenary celebrations, Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery, Bloemfontein
- Finalist Brett Kebble Art Awards, International Convention Centre, Cape Town
- Finalist ABSA Atelier National Competition, ABSA Gallery, Johannesburg (two works selected)
- Grafinnova , International exhibition of new graphics and drawings (two works selected), Ostrobithnian Museum, Vaasa, Finland (The works were co-exhibited with a selection of drawings by William Kentridge)
- Work selected for Manuscript 3, Wordfest, Standard Bank National Arts Festival, Grahamstown. The Book House & The Paper Art Gallery, Johannesburg
2010
- Audience Choice Award, Spier Contemporary 2010, joint winner
- Review written by art education specialist Barthosa Nkurumeh, Ghana entitled Shaping Art Education in Africa: Face-to-Face Dialogues on Curriculum, Teaching- Learning and Assessment in Africa South Art Initiative (ASAI) (http://www.asai.co.za/about.php)
- Review written by painter and philosopher Andries Gouws (commissioned by Sean O�Toole) on the exhibition at the KZNSA, Art South Africa magazine, Winter 2006
- Laureate of the Unesco-Ashberg Bursaries for Artists- residency programme (two artists selected from Africa), Resident at Sacatar Foundation, Itaparica, Salvador, Brazil from October- December 2002
- NRF Scholarship awarded for M.A. (F.A.) degree
- Academic merit awarded for Painting & Art history , B.A. (F.A.) degree
- Telkom SA, ABSA Bank, Oliewenhuis Art Museum, UFS, Several Private Collections
2007
- ACASA Triennial Symposium of African Art, Gainesville, University of Florida, USA, March 2007 Title: Developmental strategies within the Artists in Schools Project: Free State Province
- 14th International Learning Conference, WITS University, June 26-29, 2007 Title: Developmental strategies within the Artists in Schools Project: Free State Province (presented by B. Botma)