Dale Lawrence: Over the outwash plain
RESERVOIR presents Over the Outwash Plain, a solo exhibition by South African artist Dale Lawrence. Consisting of new works created in 2024, this body of work utilizes materials such as packaging tape, paper and epoxy, sound, animal fat, and ash. The opening event takes place on Sunday, 1 December 2024, and the exhibition runs until 17 January 2025.
At the second cutting of the hairpin bend on Ou Kaapse Weg鈥攁 mountain pass in the Cape Peninsula connecting the Southern Suburbs of Cape Town with the Fish Hoek Valley鈥攁n abrupt transition in the rockface goes unnoticed by passing traffic. Table Mountain sandstone at the top, the Graafwater Formation at the bottom. This change testifies to the existence of an inland sea that once covered the Karoo, back when a southern supercontinent still existed. At some point, Antarctica tore off, and the Falklands Plateau receded into the sea, only to come crashing back into the African continent and compress the Cape Fold mountains into being. Three hundred million years鈥攁 remarkably recent sequence of events in the excessively long geological timeline. When comparing the age of the universe to one year on Earth, this line of rock would have formed a mere eight Earth days ago. For those who can read it, this timeline is etched across the Cape, and the roadcut on Ou Kaapse Weg lies just a stone鈥檚 throw from where Lawrence lives and works.
While it is useful to think of supergroups and strata when encountering his work, what rises to the surface again and again throughout Lawrence鈥檚 practice are the underlying themes of sediment, erosion, and time. In 'Over the outwash plain', he returns to these teachings, reflecting on inevitability and incoherence and considering memory and language through the abstract fluidity of both geological and personal histories. When encountering a roadcut like the pass on Ou Kaapse Weg, there is a sense of modern technology meeting ancient history鈥攊ndustry and speed and commerce versus the passive formation of stone layers鈥攊n what feels like a permanent change to the landscape between opposing forces. However, if one liberates oneself from the short reach of our understanding of time鈥攑erhaps by considering the drift of continents or the rearrangement a glacier might achieve鈥攁 million years becomes a blink of an eye, and the current moment will leave its own sediment behind.
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RESERVOIR presents Over the Outwash Plain, a solo exhibition by South African artist Dale Lawrence. Consisting of new works created in 2024, this body of work utilizes materials such as packaging tape, paper and epoxy, sound, animal fat, and ash. The opening event takes place on Sunday, 1 December 2024, and the exhibition runs until 17 January 2025.
At the second cutting of the hairpin bend on Ou Kaapse Weg鈥攁 mountain pass in the Cape Peninsula connecting the Southern Suburbs of Cape Town with the Fish Hoek Valley鈥攁n abrupt transition in the rockface goes unnoticed by passing traffic. Table Mountain sandstone at the top, the Graafwater Formation at the bottom. This change testifies to the existence of an inland sea that once covered the Karoo, back when a southern supercontinent still existed. At some point, Antarctica tore off, and the Falklands Plateau receded into the sea, only to come crashing back into the African continent and compress the Cape Fold mountains into being. Three hundred million years鈥攁 remarkably recent sequence of events in the excessively long geological timeline. When comparing the age of the universe to one year on Earth, this line of rock would have formed a mere eight Earth days ago. For those who can read it, this timeline is etched across the Cape, and the roadcut on Ou Kaapse Weg lies just a stone鈥檚 throw from where Lawrence lives and works.
While it is useful to think of supergroups and strata when encountering his work, what rises to the surface again and again throughout Lawrence鈥檚 practice are the underlying themes of sediment, erosion, and time. In 'Over the outwash plain', he returns to these teachings, reflecting on inevitability and incoherence and considering memory and language through the abstract fluidity of both geological and personal histories. When encountering a roadcut like the pass on Ou Kaapse Weg, there is a sense of modern technology meeting ancient history鈥攊ndustry and speed and commerce versus the passive formation of stone layers鈥攊n what feels like a permanent change to the landscape between opposing forces. However, if one liberates oneself from the short reach of our understanding of time鈥攑erhaps by considering the drift of continents or the rearrangement a glacier might achieve鈥攁 million years becomes a blink of an eye, and the current moment will leave its own sediment behind.
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The first time I encountered Dale Lawrence was in the form of a bowl of Lays lightly salted at SMITH in 2019.
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