Carol-anne Gainer | Ground
In 2004 the artist excavated the earth of a suburban neighbourhood in Kwa-Zulu Natal for an installation entitled EmBedded, a symbolic way of inserting herself back into the soil of her hometown. The making of a private space, a bedroom — our safest and most intimate of spaces — left uncovered, exposed and revealing yet simultaneously reclaiming a very specific geographical territory. Through embodiment and ritual she inserts herself to the world and more importantly, to nature.
To home.
Moving forward 16 years: Ground, exhibited at Nel Gallery, Cape Town in 2021. The artist continues to explore the deep connections we have to the earth and those that inhabit it. The connections – physical, spiritual, emotional, energetic - are invisible, yet profoundly impactful and influential to all beings. These works explore the earth; they depict and evoke the complexity of the ground we walk on. They are visceral, emotional, layered artworks that force the viewer to look closer, to see deeper by lifting the veil. They conceal, while at the same time reveal. What at first glance appears to be the intertwined stems of twisted undergrowth reveal to be a hand, a limb; the gnarled root of a tree (both abstract and real) an exploration into the abstract reality we experience with the ever-spreading and deepening fracturing and fragility of our earth.
The ground we stand on.
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