North Gallery

Brent Record

Half a Snake
23 March to 13 April 2024

Brent Record was born in Grahamstown in 1944 and matriculated at Glenwood Boys' High in Durban in 1961.  He is a former Director of the School of Art and Design at the Vaal University of Technology.  He holds a BA (Hon) and a Master’s Diploma in Technology (painting) for which his thesis was 'The Changing Perception and Representation of Black People in South African Art`(1994).  He has an abiding interest in so-called Outsider art, child art and art activities used in therapy and he currently conducts a weekly art group at a clinic for bipolar depressives and other patients in Vanderbijlpark.
 
In his exhibition Half a Snake Brent Record shows a series of small collages which do not follow any fixed theme of any kind.  In fact there has been a consistent attempt to make them as different as possible from each other; they are light-hearted visual statements, often witty and humorous, with some visual and verbal pranks, as the titles often convey. The artist refers to these as pure collages – ‘pure’ in the sense that they consist entirely of the traditionally ‘found’ materials of collage, with almost no further embellishment or overworking of the surfaces.
 
The images are subjected to the discipline of working in a very small format – (although not quite miniatures) – where the traditional formal elements of composition, colour, shape and texture take on a greater importance in their relationships to each other, because of the diminished scale of the works.
 
Brent Record has a highly experimental approach to the use of mediums and techniques, resulting sometimes in the use of these different mediums and techniques even within in the same work or art.