Exhibition
Nelmarie du Preez
7 Jun 2015 – 28 Jun 2015
Regular hours
- Sunday
- 13:00 – 18:00
- Tuesday
- 13:00 – 18:00
- Wednesday
- 13:00 – 18:00
- Thursday
- 13:00 – 18:00
- Friday
- 13:00 – 18:00
- Saturday
- 13:00 – 18:00
Address
- Java House
- 7 Botanic Square
- London
England - E14 0LG
- United Kingdom
arebyte gallery is pleased to announce that South African artist Nelmarie du Preez will take part in the last series of our gallery residencies and solo-shows for the Winter-Spring program. For the duration of the residency du Preez will spend time in the ‘lab’ where she will construct a new artwork following her previous work “Loops of relation” (2013), which explored the human-computer relationship by means of trust or performance ‘exercises’ performed by herself and her robot.
About
du Preez proposes to re-design, build and programme the robot to re-establish a trusting relationship, between man and machine. Together they will go about to create a re-interpretation of a scene from Charlie Chaplin’s film “Modern Times” (1936). The scene features the Billows feeding machine, which is used to feed Chaplin lunch. The ‘lab’ at arebyte will present a space for the (re)assembly line of the robot in response to the relation between Chaplin’s film, the post-digital age, immaterial labour and our fluctuating trust in technology.
During the residency period the (re)assembly line will be broadcast online, periodically, with pre-recorded traditional ‘trust exercises’ performed by du Preez as well as found footage inserted as adverts/interruptions to the live ‘performance’ stream. This will be showcased on the South African Online art platform www.outofthecube.co.za where du Preez will also share preliminary research and a behind the scenes look at her previous projects. Ultimately this project will culminate into a final documented performance video work that will form part of du Preez’s first solo-exhibition presented this October at arebyte, which will also include some of her previous works created in the past two years.
Nelmarie du Preez (b. 1985) is a South African artist based in London and Pretoria, working in the fields of performance, video and computational arts. She recently completed her MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she also received her MA in Computational Arts.
She has exhibited internationally in London, New York, Buenos Aires and Berlin as well as major cities in South Africa and in the past year she has been shortlisted for five significant international art awards. She also forms part of the collective wasis.today and FLAT 34, and currently holds a position as Visual Arts and New Media lecturer at the University of South Africa.
