04.11 - 28.11.2020
A solo exhibition of new paintings by Kirsten Sims
In response to being confined to a small space with a tiny newborn, this body of work is a reflection on the early lockdown months of 2020. I started reading an old classic, Goodnight Moon (Margaret Wise Brown) to my son every night at around the same time as our one bedroom flat became our entire universe. The act of reading the same story out loud every night, over and over again, became a meditative ritual. The story is poetically simple and its words have a way of gently lulling one to sleep as the bunny says goodnight, one by one, to all the familiar things in the room. The story started to reflect my relationship to our flat and the way it became our whole world and the way the plant in the corner and the light fittings and the paintings on the walls became these objects of total fascination to my one-month old baby. We weren’t allowed outside, and outside wasn’t allowed inside. The book is both comforting and strangely unsettling and I think that reflects my experience of being a new mother in these weird times: cozy and lonely at the same time.
- Kirsten Sims; Cape Town, September 2020
This exhibition features a combination of mixed media paintings on Italian cotton and board. Sims' subject matter for Goodnight Moon ranges from vistas, portraits, landscapes, nightscapes, animated crowd scenes, to intimate domestic moments; with images drawn from the Artist's new life as a mother, themes from the book, familiar landscapes, as well as narratives both real and imagined. Each highly unique piece has been brought to life by the Artist's extremely vivid imagination and much-loved sense of humour; for which her work has become so renowned.
