PAULA LOUW, Gently Does It: The R1
Mixed media, 56 x 148 cm
Since 2006, Paula Louw has been making art that is conceptual, much of which has to do the disassembling of machines, typewriters, guns, pianos and sewing machines. She also paints and draws. Her conceptual emphasis is on communication and peace.
Her 2016 exhibition, Gently does it, represented a new, more material direction for Louw. Here she has made ‘soft’ guns, sewn and created from fabric. Regarding these, she states: ‘The antithesis of all that one would normally consider a gun to be, the R5, revolver and R1 have been de-natured, are redemptive. Having been stitched together, they contradict any ideas we might have concerning these weapons in a traditional sense. Colour, texture, shape, lines and curves, they could be the same deadly objects, but they present a very different aspect. They’re loaded with hurt … wounds and tears have been stitched and mended, healing has been sought and rendered.
They can no longer be loaded, cocked, nor the trigger pulled. They have been silenced. Paradoxically, we sense the deadly layers of meaning whose legacy history has conferred, whose dark weight drags these objects deeply into the softness of the pillow.’
Louw has works in a number of private collections in South Africa as well as the UK, France, Australia and the USA.
