oil on canvas

Artwork date: 2005
Signature details: each canvas signed, dated and inscribed with the title and position on the reverse
Exhibited: Michael Stevenson, Cape Town, Safety and Security, 18 January to 18 February 2006.
Literature: Deborah Poynton: Safety and Security (2006). Catalogue 19. Cape Town: Michael Stevenson, illustrated in colour, unpaginated.

(2)

200 x 600 cm

Michael Stevenson Contemporary, Green Point, Cape Town.

Notes:

First exhibited in 2006, Safety and Security by Deborah Poynton formed part of one of four massive canvases comprising her third show at Michael Stevenson Gallery, in Cape Town. This diptych, measuring two by six metres in total, is the titular work from the show. Poynton is renowned for her hyper-realist painting style, often employed to realise startlingly non-realistic scenarios. Safety and Security hinges on its centrally positioned nude female character, elevated on a stage in the foreground and facing into the frame. Her provocative look over her shoulder is aimed directly at the viewers of the work, and implicates them in the scene. Poynton’s astonishing command of detail and texture in her brushwork is amply demonstrated in the cavernous background of the piece, which shows an exterior space under a brutalist concrete building, inside of which other spectators survey the scene.Three figures join the nude on the foregrounded stage: one figure, stage left, has his back to the viewer. Two others, 43 stage right, can’t face the apparent shame of the scene, and look out of the frame, away from any lines of sight. They appear to be perfectly painted, mortified middle-aged parents, whose daughter, conceivably, is appearing naked and on display. The cast of characters in mid-ground spectate the scene in different ways, from lasciviousness to shock, to boisterous appreciation. Some take smartphone pictures. Many of Poynton’s scenarios seduce the viewer with detail. For example, her paintings often feature painstakingly observed interiors behind a confrontationally realist figure study, or a terra nullius landscape overflowing with potentially allegorical visual cues. This immense, and immensely meticulous work, pushes the ealist conventions to their limits, presenting what is surely the brilliantly painted lucid quality of a dreamscape – one of those dreams where you appear naked in public and no one is quite sure how to react. Poynton’s talent is such that even the viewer, usually at a safe distance, becomes part of the dream.

James Sey