Plastic Fences & Yellow Brick Houses, 2014. Installation. The Substation, Wits

Bars bars bars

The installation Plastic Fences and Yellow Brick Houses presented at the Substation, Wits University Cnr Station Street & Jorissen Street, in completion of Geldenhuys’ Masters Degree in fine art at the Wits School of Art encompass everyday objects re-imagined into an immersive, tactile experience. The viewer is invited to encounter sculptures that are simultaneously strange and familiar: replete with the ambient noises of suburbia in the background; dogs barking, dishes being washed; a siren going off in the distance. Surveillance cameras and security equipment are ubiquitous to this scenario gnawing at ones senses and insecurities. The uncanny living room presented unnerves the viewer: Couches are hard and uncomfortable; the carpet is grass – exposing the fragility of security.

The vulnerability of life despite the tightest security measures is personified in the camera installation art pieces, hanging mobiles with suspended surveillance cameras. Geldenhuys’s series of three multifunctional couch/bar sculptural works and key works critique and explore the habitual rituals of urban domestic security and comfort; proposing that despite extensive security measures taken, nothing and no one is ever truly secure.

Oh shit, did I close the gate!

http://witsvuvuzela.com/2014/03/15/the-art-of-hyper-security/