I hope you all had a great National Braai Day, celebrating the only heritage that remains important: the vast consumption of meat. I must admit I had a great long weekend, rugby and brandycokespecials on Saturday, a wild birthday party at L/B's on Sunday, followed by a wedding with loads of fine and rare whisk(e)y on Monday. With all this consumption on the go, it comes as no surprise to me that I have not found the energy to review Jeremy Wafer's show at Goodman (Oh sir! It's only a tiny little thin one)(No. Fuck off - I'm full...)(Oh sir, it is only wafer thin)( Look - I couldn't eat another thing. I'm absolutely stuffed. Bugger off.)(Oh sir, just... just one...)(Oh all right. Just one.)

What struck me about this show, titled very minimally 'New Work', was it's modernity. I forgot that there are still artists working within modernist movements of art, this show being a largely minimalist formalist affair. Very strange, and my first reaction would be to be bored and go have a smoke. Which I did. But having gotten a ride to Goodman, I had to hang around while my lift schmoozed. On closer examination the work still refuses to reveal any content, it is still a meditation on form, shape, material and space. I enjoyed the time in the gallery, just wandering around, looking at the shapes. Recovering from a three-day consumption binge, it seems like an important thing to have this art that doesn't release it's energy with ease, a return to indigestible matter, steel, wax, card, bitumen, clay. With that said however, I am surprised that art in this manner can still exist, more purposeless than most art because the intellectual, cultural and theoretical modes it refers to have become stale.

Labels: Goodman Gallery, jeremy wafer