Transcending wins the 2015 Merit Award at the Sasol New Signatures Art Competition

“Transcending” by Cape artist wins a 2015 Merit Award at the Sasol New Signatures art competition

It is widely accepted that art can and should challenge the way society sees itself. 2015 Sasol New Signatures merit award winner Cape Town artist Rory Emmett captures this belief in his piece, “Transcending”, which challenges the conventional way in which South Africans view the “Coloured Man”.

Established by the Association of Arts Pretoria, Sasol New Signatures is the longest running art competition of its kind in South Africa, and this year Sasol celebrates 26 years as the main sponsor. The competition has played a pivotal role in unearthing new talent and providing a platform from which emerging artists can launch their careers. Sasol New Signatures is open to South African artists above the age of 18, and these must be emerging artists who have never had a solo exhibition before. 

Rory’s illustration is set in District Six, a former inner-city residential area in Cape Town, which now remains a desolate space after the forced removal of residents in the 1970’s due to the Group Areas Act. 

In the piece, Emmett constructs an avatar against a 2.1m x 2.1m wall. The performance depicts the avatar clad in paint, literally and figuratively becoming ‘coloured’. 

‘Colourman’ – a title for traditional artisans in the history of painting – becomes a visual and textual pun, a play on the term “Coloured man.” The figure enters the frame and starts attacking the wall. Therefore the figure performs the painting process by deconstructing the colour field whilst remaining a painting himself. The video culminates with the ‘Colourman’ walking out of the frame after tearing the wall down, leaving only the rubble behind before the video fades to black. 

“‘Colourman’ is a personal contribution to broader ever-developing discourses. This work takes on the idiom of Coloured identity, a term nationally used in South Africa to refer to native South Africans of diverse racial origin,” explained Emmett.

“My work interrogates racial segregation stemming from past colonial ideology, and forms an attempt at bringing to the fore various issues in an effort to deconstruct colour.”

Aged 23, Emmett resides in his birth city of Cape Town. He completed his degree in Fine Arts at Michaelis School of Fine art at the University of Cape Town in 2014 where he majored in painting. In his final year, he was awarded the Judy Steinberg prize for painting and also received the Hoosein Mohamed Award that same year. 

Emmett has completed a number of public and private commissions and has participated in a number of group shows. 

Art lovers and enthusiasts are encouraged to visit the Pretoria Art Museum from 3 September to 4 October 2015 to view the Sasol New Signatures art exhibition. The exhibition will also include 2014 winner Elizabeth Balcomb’s solo exhibition titled ‘Auguries of Innocence’.

For more information visit www.sasolnewsignatures.co.za or contact Nandi Hilliard from the Association of Arts Pretoria on 012 346 3100 or artspta@mweb.co.za.