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Just a wall and windows

2018 Competition entry

Junior Mentz

Details:
Not Signed
Photograph
70 cm x 44 cm

Description:

The work is a photograph of the interior renovation of a derelict building in Bloemfontein’s CBD.  The work depicts a monotone painting in blue of the City’s skyline outside the building.  The scene depicts cars driving down Church Street, which is terminated by the Twin Spire Church.  In the top right corner, Naval Hill can be seen as it completes Bloemfontein’s relatively low skyline.

It is an installation art inadvertently bound to its particular location – a unique space in a specific place:  As the walls of the building envelops its occupants and censors the user’s experience of the city, the mural aims to draw the city into the interior.  Visitors entering the space are made aware of the city once more.  Bloemfontein, once a model Apartheid city, is one of the last large national cities to experience attempts at inner city rejuvenation.  This can be attributed to an array of problems, not least of which the public’s perception of the dangers of the inner city.

In the case of this work, the traditional perception of a “wall” and “windows” have been reversed, suggesting that traditional modes of perception no longer qualify when trying to extract a novel use for an old thing.