FEMALE FIRE HEATS A CREATIVE CAULDRON
‘Bitches Brew’ is a vivid and darkly amusing display of covetable and topical artworks from the coven of three leading South African artists
Bitches Brew, a group show by three of South Africa’s leading contemporary women artists Lucinda Mudge, Lady Skollie and Sanell Aggenbach is a sign of the times.
As the catalogue for this, Everard Read Joburg’s latest show, puts it: “South Africa is a battlefield, especially for women.”
The exhibition is on the frontline of this particular fight, and tackles issues including femicide and sexual violence, colonialism, race, patriarchy, the complexities of the female body, as well as lust and sexuality.
Yet Bitches Brew manages to not take itself too seriously (while not making light of serious issues, either). Aggenbach, who is also the show’s curator, describes it as “Mother Nature’s wrath meets bad feminism observing how, as a country, we use dark humour as a coping mechanism. This dark humour flashes throughout the exhibition’s subject matter and the droll titles of some of the works (think: Sex Drought).
The show is aesthetically beautiful and an electric fusion of colour ensuring that the striking sculptures, ceramics, photographs, and mixed media artworks are not just topical, they’re displayable too.
With 69 works on show, Bitches Brew is no small deal. Aggenbach had the idea for it a couple of years ago but was forced to stop and take time out during a bout of Covid.
It gave her the space to plan. “From the get-go it had to be Lucinda Mudge and Lady Skollie, because we all share a sense of humour and we all refer to women’s issues, but not in a head-on way. I think we all use metaphors quite strongly in our work to address societal problems.” While the three come from different upbringings, cultures and racial groups, a clear skein of unity runs through their work.
Jazz lovers would know Bitches Brew as the classic 1970 Miles Davis album; Aggenbach says she loves the word “brew”. Aptly so: the art is clear evidence of the trio’s creative, at times witchy, simmer.