(b 1997South Africa. )
Geena Wilkinson’s work is an exploration of the banality of domesticity. Making use of various traditional fine art media, she focuses on ordinary subjects like food as a way of accentuating their temporality. These works function as still lives and speak to both the passing of time and the deliberate act of creating space to preserve it.
Wilkinson draws from the nostalgia embedded within memory, breaking up the perceived linear projection of the past and entering the void between utopia and reality. There is a pervasive absence surrounding her archive of still lives: empty jelly moulds sparkle in the sunlight on the kitchen windowsill, devoid of colour; picnic spreads are laid out a little too neatly, emitting an eerie tension as they beg not to be disturbed; plastic ice-cream shaped floats bob around on the surface of swimming pools.
“This playful negation of our primary desire for art to be pleasing, provokes where it might placate. It reminds us as viewers that art is not there simply to give us what we want.”
