Every Picture Tells a Story

Vigorous assertion of paint, autobiography, and self-reflexivity as her primary mode characterise Bronwen Findlay's work. Sentimentality and decoration are selected strategies of engagement, but their use is always edgy and ironic, overlaid by her insistence on the metaphoric power and resonance of the ordinary. Findlay's ongoing preoccupation with mortality is expressed in her probing of change and decay in an exuberant affirmation of life. Selecting subjects and methods often pejoratively associated with 'the female realm', she insists upon their power while overturning established hierarchical notions of what constitutes value. Every picture tells a story was held in March 2006 in Durban at the KZNSA gallery after a one night viewing at the Substation, Wits University, Johannesburg. The exhibition comprised paintings and prints inspired by facecloths, towels and blankets from downtown Johannesburg and Durban, textiles that are the latest expression of Findlay's longstanding interest in the adaptation of cloth as dress. The artworks were presented in a paper she gave in 2005 at 'Dress in South Africa', an international conference hosted by the Centre for Visual Art at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Pietermaritzburg.