Friday the 27th of May 2022. Group exhibition in the foyer of the Bijou from 16:30 – 20:00.

Saturday the 28th of May 2022. Open studios and demos from 10:00 – 14:00.

On display will be an incredible array of art, including:

• Stunning leather goods by Wolf & Maiden.

• Beautiful and functional wooden creations for the kitchen and home by Kramer & Son.

• Mind-bending metal sculptures, pans and knives from Conrad Hicks.

• Sensational bespoke steel frame and bicycle maker Dave Mercer will be putting on some great demos.

• Find out how you can take part in some awesome art and printing workshops soon to be held by the Bijou's newest member, The Bijou Press.

• Paintings by Chris Denovan - some older and some fresh-off-the-easel, large and small.

Have you recently felt the cold isolation of four solitary walls? A blue cave can swallow you if you let it.

After what feels like an eternity of darkness a dream begins ― in this dream the cave walls begin to crumble, and an opening is revealed. You breathe in the expanse, taste salty sea air, and find the courage to step forward. As your eyes adjust to the light, you look out at the fresh horizon, and there, you see it - a pinpoint of light. What awaits in this new vista isn’t cold blue, but a welcoming blaze of warm orange. You know that you need to escape. Now or never.

In his 10th solo show, Chris Denovan invites you to search beyond your isolated cave, where X marks the spot on an imagined map. Escape Island Right Now! acts as a vessel on which Denovan asks you to climb aboard and set off on a voyage to a new world, a better world, a fantasy island paradise.

In this world, relics of antiquity mingle with familiar objects. Figures from ancient mythologies heroically rise out of the sea to greet you or find themselves submerged in swirling eddies of viridian green. Otherworldly flowers erupt from sculpted head vases and giant billboards emerge from a pthalo sea, promising an adventure close at hand. Horizon lines slice across tropical coloured canvases and a makeshift raft carries exotic figures searching through dark waters for a new beginning.

Carefree elements of nature invite you to relax with friends in lush fields, twirl around colossal ruins or linger in a plum stained moonlit lagoon.

In this body of work, Denovan demonstrates his skill as a painter, as the artist delicately pairs detailed figuration with intuitive abstraction. Illustrative lines are complemented by bold gestural brushstrokes and rich textural surfaces. But be warned! Through subtle use of symbolism, Denovan presents questions that contradict the appeal of this euphoric hideaway retreat. Suddenly, serpentine forms emerge from dark whirlpools. Figures wash ashore, tumbling into strangely disjointed shapes. Crawling insects scuttle from under textured brush marks, spawning yellow ochre worms into an inky puddle. Billboards in the sea???…As the sun sets, a flash of acid green skews a horizon floating with thick oily browns.

As the illusion clears you begin to realise that the island approaching in the distance is familiar somehow. The grass green silhouette of a local landmark suggests this ideal world could be exactly the same as the one you are trying to leave. Escape Island Right Now! is a sudden exclamation ― that asks you to jump into the unexpected, to face your dreams, and make sure they become your reality. Embark on the adventure to search for your island, but remember; it could be anywhere, it could be nowhere, it could be right here.

Chris Denovan (b. 1983) lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. Escape Island Right Now! is his 10th solo show.

Chris Denovan’s latest body of work is a celebration of his different styles, techniques and subject matter. Bodies, characters and group images take centre stage of WHERE TWO RIVERS MEET. “So often I’ve depicted individual characters. Now I’m wondering who these characters can interact with; I’m creating a story between them,” explains Denovan.

Over the years Denovan has played with various styles from realistic figurative work to more naive figurative work. He has worked with plexiglass since 2011 and wanted to return to the medium and merge his different explorations in paint to create unique images.

“During lockdown I had time to sit and think. I had a moment where I realised what I wanted to achieve with plexiglass – I had an epiphany about how I could bring it all together.” Denovan describes the process of working with plexiglass as unpredictable: “I’m working with many different layers of oil, acrylic, glass stain, permanent marker and even gold leaf. When I do something bold it can make or break a painting. I work on the front and the back of the plexiglass, and on the background it rests on – it’s three paintings in one. When all these elements come together and work, it’s a magical feeling.”

Denovan acknowledges this as a moment in his work where his influences, techniques and subject matter are flowing into one another, like the confluence in a river, where two rivers meet. As this body of water races toward the ocean, so too does the artist, bravely seeking a single voice, a resounding note.

Chris Denovan (b. 1983) lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. WHERE TWO RIVERS MEET is his ninth solo exhibition. 

Featured artwork: The Cute AF Gang, mixed media on plexiglass and board, 130 x 130 cm, 2020

In this exhibition of paintings, drawings and sculpture, Chris Denovan explores the variable symbolism of plants. His motifs of leaves and flowers find an unlikely pairing in those of hands and feet and disembodied limbs. Here, body parts become plants, the expected brushes up against the strange, the recognisable leans towards the unfamiliar.

In Denovan’s paintings, detailed figuration is set against abstract fields of colour. Muted greys and greens are punctuated by a brilliant red common to all his canvases. Working between such saturated colour and muddied hues, Denovan creates rich, textural surfaces. There are moments of impasto paint and transparent veiling, gestural brushmarks and bold geometric forms. There is to his work a distinct pleasure in process – the artist working quickly and intuitively from photographs, both taken and found, to create his vivid compositions. 

Denovan’s work pays homage to history painting and Symbolism, and to a classical idealisation of beauty in a contemporary guise. Arranged together in strange tableaux, the characters in his paintings appear as long-forgotten heroes or obscure figures of myth. Many wear wreaths or crowns of flowers, and all share the picture plane with fields of gold pigment, which lends to the works the weight of allegory. 

Where the figures in his paintings are reminiscent of Roman sculptures, Denovan’s drawings share the stark simplicity of Grecian urns. Letters of the alphabet appear as flowers, hands and feet as leaves. Vases and vessels coincide – a bowl becomes a boat, a boat a pot for plants. Snakes move between the stalks, limbs grow as fruit on stems. His mixed-media sculptures further explore and extend the imagery proposed by the show’s title, with the many-limbed Plant Monster as centrepiece. Plants, Denovan’s work suggests, gesture not only towards life and growth but to visual abundance and pictorial excess.

Chris Denovan (b. 1983) lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. BODY PLANTS is his seventh solo exhibition. 

In its 7th edition RMB Turbine Art Fair (RMB TAF) is on the move to a new and bigger venue. Proudly partnered for a second year with RMB and powered by the forum company, 2019 will see the most substantial Fair yet in a new location – 10 Fricker Rd, Illovo.  Galleries representing established and emerging artists, art organisations, collectives, and original projects will present their efforts side by side from 12 – 14 July with a preview evening on 11 July.

“South Africans have really embraced this fair since the beginning and we are delighted to be moving to a bigger venue in 2019. Visitors will be able to view exciting installations, larger gallery spaces and a more conceptually curated fair but in the relaxed environment that has always been the signature of Turbine Art Fair” says Fair Founder, Glynis Hyslop.

RMB TAF is a unique South African art fair that brings together exhibitors from around the country to present and sell works. The fair is the epicentre of emerging art in Africa, championing established and new talent in an accessible and inclusive environment.

Seemingly calling of a staged chaos, elements detonate outward from its centre, until reaching an a point of suspension. At the apex, the fragments hover. 

Revealing a fascination with comic books and the anti-hero, Chris Denovan’s sixth solo show, self-reflexively titled, Big Weirdo, exhibits a space in which the excessive and the impossible are held together through montage and paint. Iterating processes of transfiguration and translation, Denovan’s sitters and internet subjects become, perhaps, not quite themselves; a persona, each performing within a larger, non-prescriptive narrative. Violent gestures shift to the carnivalesque and comic. A painting which begins as a depiction of a man with an elaborate whip resembles and eventually becomes, “The Whipping Tree” (an interesting journey for a still-life).  

Oscillating between themes of sexuality, identity and belonging, Denovan employs colour and gesture to subliminally subvert recognisable symbols of heteronormative masculinity and authority. Possibly these mercurial, shape-shifting characters are extensions of the artist himself; portraits like mirrors held back to the one who looks out.