guerilla gallery: Finissage: APPEAL 2012

Thank you to everyone who helped round off this three-week project, APPEAL 2012, which came to a close last night in Doornfontein.

This inaugural project for guerilla gallery is a long-running research exploration by Elgin Rust around the notion of judicial versus aesthetic redress and takes the form of a ficitional trial. Rust opened this process up to a jury of participants artists for its Johannesburg iteration: Catherine Dickerson, Amber-Jade Geldenhuys, Ansie Greyling, Kadromatt, Ikram Lakhdhar, Kai Lossgott, Leroye Malaton, Agnes Marton, Naadira Patel, Sandile Radebe, Pauline Theart, Mma Tseleng and Marguerite Visser.

The exhibition continually shapeshifted over its run, as the artists responded to a core installation of 'evidence' by Rust as well as the industrial exhibition space, and these were fully evident at the finissage event on Monday 24 September.

Some of the works were performative and ephemeral. These included a performance piece by Kai Lossgott, including a typewriter, legal statute book and magnetic tape. This relates to another work of his on exhibition entitled truth addicts anonymous where Lossgott has effectively destroyed the page of a legal statute book by overtyping variations on the oath to sworn testimony and presented it on the surface of an LED lightbox. The finissage also included a performance by Pauline Theart, currently completing her MA in Interactive Media at University of the Witwatersrand, who sang a lullaby into the exhibition space in response to perceived trauma in the work as part of a broader artistic exploration of voice and song in sound art. She repeated this performance at the artists' walkabout and the vernissage.

The opening night also featured two performance works: Agnes Marton's unnanounced poetry readings around the exhibition space; and a unique kwaito set by Kadromatt and Mma Tseleng that referenced a legal dispute regarding royalties and copyright issues rendered together with courtroom audio evidence provided by Rust.

Other works were site-specific, such as Sandile Radebe's cardboard column that responded to notions of architectural redress, and Ansie Greyling's 'Gogga' installation that climbed two adjacent walls as well as Amber-Jade Geldenhuys' installation of obsolete surveillance cameras from an existing perforation in the ceiling. Some were collaborative, such as Leroye Malaton's reconfiguration of Elgin Rust's 'The Ship of Fools' into a kind of pscyhogeography of how it feels to be inside a courtroom scenario. Catherine Dickerson's inflatable sculptures also took a cue from the venue, more in form than content, with their materials reflecting a new method of working in stitched refuse bags powered by eletric fans in the first installation and hairdryers in the second. All were set to automated timers that inflated and deflated the sculptures at intervals. Naadira Patel installed a video and sound work projected onto the back wall of a vault-like room and Ikram Lakhdhar participated long-distance from the US with a visual response to the artworks in progress.

Herewith some photos from the closing event: