Where are we exactly – are we near the island

Opening Night: Monday 24 October, 6–8pm
Venue: VANSA's Spin Street Gallery | 8 Spin Street, Cape Town

The exhibition runs until 25 November

From 24 October to 25 November 2011, Vansa's Spin Street Gallery will host the collective processes of Robyn Nesbitt and Nina Barnett, a collaborative duo from South Africa. The artists began working in a shared studio in Johannesburg six years ago, based on their mutual desire for a competitive and empathetic ‘co-existence’. This existential bond is born from dependence and affirmation, culminating in connections based on a history of dialogues, questioning the relationship’s facets and boundaries. Such parallelisms and dualisms have generated a shared global identity, outside the boundaries of space and time, documenting the remnants of their intuitive and residual process through dialogue on their blog [www.coexistent.net] where they have combined ideas, communicated events, recalled dreams and memories, and created networked islands.

Since its inception and continuing evolution the artists have changed their history as well as their geography. Barnett first relocated to New York and currently resides in Chicago, where she is in the process of completing her Masters Degree. Nesbitt relocated from Cape Town to Johannesburg after completing her master's degree at the Michaelis School of Fine Art. The distances between the duo create a tension based on re-measuring these ‘spaces’; a psychic, performative dialogue inspiring and validating each other’s existence through a subliminal umbilical cord of friendship, security and support, synchronized in moments of significance and permeated by each artists ambitious aspirations.

The blog consists of a virtual performance of thoughts and memories sent in pieces that are mailed back and forth, along with ideas that evolve during residencies where they meet periodically. Loosely based on the exploitation of the now traditional virtual realm, where corporeal concerns fall into secondary critical roles, the artists live out an ‘ideal’ existence – or rather, practice – that corresponds to the mundane state of day-to-day life. In a sense, this ensemble of sporadic information is akin to a curiosity box, in which one attempts to open Ali Baba’s treasure cave by looking at the world from an alternate perspective, much like Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass.

And so, Barnett and Nesbitt live and relate to each other at a metaphorical ‘scale’, until they meet once a year to share ideas, re-establish connections and push projects forward. During the duo’s residency at the Sober & Lonely Institute the pair described their exploration in Johannesburg’s suburbia as:

“A place of collective residential isolation, where the living environment becomes a site for production. The work that has come from this time deals with the act of conversation in an intimate environment and the physical realization of our online relationship on our website. As collaborators, we are interested in the dialogue that occurs between two artists and how this connection manifests – both as a competitive and a supportive force. We find that our work illustrates both of these qualities, and shows the bond that can come from knowing another’s work as well as your own. We approach our individual work in distinctive ways - one subjective and intimate, another cerebral and pragmatic. Together, these traits play off each other, forming a new space in which to create.”

Excerpt by Bronwen Shelwell from text written for Outlet Project Room, 2011

For further information call VANSA Western Cape at 021 465 7895 or email ruarc@vansa.co.za