As you climb the stairs to Dineo Seshee Bopape’s exhibition in the Hayward’s project space, a fragmented audio can be heard. Cutout stickers of eyes and flowers have been placed across the walls. When you reach the top you’re confronted by a jarring kaleidoscopic mash-up of the virtual and real. The gallery floor has been covered in astroturf, upon which monitors of different sizes show footage of (living) grass. Purple-coloured gels used in photographic studios have been placed over the gallery’s ceiling lights, and the audio – which turns out to be a discordant medley of birdsong and radio static – plays from dismantled speakers. Centrally positioned is a haphazard sculptural assemblage comprised of wooden stands, mannequin hands, garden wire and electrical paraphernalia including a spy camera.
The South African artist likes to confuse elements of day-to-day life, leaving them (and maybe us) in a state of existential limbo. Playing on a projection screen, her video ‘why do you call me when you know i can’t answer the phone’ (2012) – titled after a Joan Armatrading lyric – collages random stock imagery of fluffy animals and giant tools including screws and spanners, which flash across the projection screen before dissolving into frenzied psychedelic patterns. The visuals are accompanied by a soundtrack that leaps between chiming church bells, drumbeats, crashing waves and painfully screeching white noise. It creates a sense of rapturous cataclysm.
Understanding the work isn’t really the point. Think about all the information you’re bombarded with on a daily basis: do you always take it all in? Instead, Bopape has created a deliriously heightened experience in which we try to connect the dots. Set your mind to overdrive.
Freire Barnes