| The wolf that prowled the fairy-tales looking for victims, 2010, Gesso and oil on board, 10cm x 10cm, Price on request |
Rike Sitas states the following about Vaughan-Evans's work:
"When I was young, my parents read Der Struwelpeter to me. This is the collection of stories where the child who sucks his thumbs, has them chopped off. And the childwho played with matches, gets burnt into a pile of ash. This was no world of Disney princesses and happy endings. Very few fairy tales actually are. Societies across the globe have, throughout history, constructed tales and parables as a form of moral education for the young.
Bronwen Vaughan-Evans exhibition ‘Early Learning (Fairy Tales and Urban Myths)’, explores the intersection of fairy tales and childhood fear in contemporary early learning. Using her memory of the fairy tales from her upbringing, Vaughan-Evans’ exhibition reflects on the kinds of fear that are passed onto children. What she argues through her work is that the evil that lurks in all of these tales is not so much the wolf or the witch, but fear itself. The exhibition is a collection of moments from these stories."
Bronwen Vaughan-Evans
the little match girl’s first day in the city of gold, . Gesso and oil on board .
The little match girl’s first days in the city of gold depicts a young girl with a backdrop of the Johannesburg cityscape. Those that know this story are aware that the poor girl dies in the streets in mid winter, after burning the last of her matches. This juxtaposition makes reference to the migration of people to big cities, perceiving them as spaces of hope and prosperity.
a vicious game of leap frog
Year: 2010
Medium: Gesso and oil on board
Size: 20cm/20cm
Price: SOLD
the exile of Hansel and Gretel
Year: 2010
Medium: Gesso and oil on board
Size: 40cm/80cm
Price: SOLD
Collection: Private Collection
The exile of Hansel and Gretel looks at the spaces of fear that emerge in these stories, and that are also reflected in our everyday engagement with public spaces. In many of these stories, the characters have to move from safe into unsafe spaces; from spaces of the known into the unknown. Traditionally, fairy tales cast the unsafe space as the forest. In this particular story, Hansel and Gretel escape a protracted period of torture and servitude. In her work, Vaughan-Evans wonders what happened to them. They survived the forest and the cannibalistic hag. Where did they go to next, and where would they be in a contemporary context of middle-class paranoia?
Briar Rose had premonitions of a world to come
Year: 2010
Medium: Gesso and oil on board
Size: 40cm/40cm
Price: SOLD
Collection: Private Collection
Fairy tales are also riddled with curses. For Vaughan-Evans, the curse represents the aspects of everyday life we cannot control – the fearful situations that spill from the fairy tale into our lives. Briar Rose was on of these cursed women, but managed to negotiate her way out of death, with the compromise of being asleep for 100 years. Briar Rose had premonitions of a world to come wonders what world Briar Rose would wake up in today.
The girls were no longer certain they wanted to be princesses, 2010, Gesso and oil on board, 20cm x 20cm, Price on request
Although Disney has taken the inherited gendered roles of stories’ protagonists to their most sexist and stereotypical extremes, fairy tales have almost always been premised on constructing behavioural roles for girls and boys. The girls were no longer certain they wanted to be princesses, reflects on these roles. The princesses in many of the stories undergo torturous ordeals, from cursing, to hard labour, to pin pricks. This work offers a hint of an alternative.
the revenge of the four and twenty blackbirds
Year: 2010
Medium: Gesso and oil on board
Size: 40cm/80cm
Price: SOLD
Collection: Private Collection
The show is also punctuated with moments of humour. The revenge of the four-and-twenty blackbirdsshows a group of birds ominously circling in the sky. Vaughan-Evans imagines how angry the birds would have been, being destined to be ‘baked in a pie’, as the story goes. This work is about what they would do if they were to escape. Bambi also appears a few times as comical interludes in After the death of her mother Bambi eked a living by playing extras in fairy-tales (i&ii).
after the death of her mother Bambi eked a living by playing extras in fairy-tales (i)
Year: 2010
Medium: Gesso and oil on board
Size: 10cm/20cm
Price: SOLD
Collection: Private Collection
Vaughan-Evans is known for her signature style of contemporary painting, using layers of gesso, on which images are sanded and etched.
This technique enables Vaughan-Evans’ melancholic musings – the trees are appropriately haunting and the lone wolf that much more menacing (The wolf that prowled the fairy-tales looking for victims).
We sometimes forget that the seemingly innocuous fairy tales we pass from generation to generation have specific agendas connected to the socialisation of our children. Whereas other artists may attempt to tackle macro-economic, social and political issues, Vaughan-Evans is concerned with the everyday microcosmic practices that construct our values, behaviours and fears.
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http://www.artthrob.co.za/Reviews/2010/10/Rike-Sitas-reviews-Early-learning-(fairy-tales-and-myths)-by-Bronwen-VaughanEvans-at-artSPACE-durban.aspx
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