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Gordon Froud

Johannesburg

AGASTOPIA (2017)

Type of book work: Editioned / printed work
Dimensions: 200 x 4000 variable
Media: Digital print on paper or aluminium

Artist's / designer's statements

Agastopia: The desire of a particular part of the body.

In keeping with my use of found objects as material for my practice, I have used images of friends, colleagues and others to construct an artist's book. The back of the book is printed with words related to desire and the front has close-up images of the skin of the various subjects - honing in on sites of interest like scars, moles and blemishes. These become abstracted to the point of non-recognisability. Ambiguity leaves the viewer uncertain as to the body parts being photographed, becoming suggestive rather than purely recognisable.

For the artist's book "Agastopia", I took close-up images of friends and colleagues and others, honing in on sites of interest like scars, moles, blemishes, in short the things that make them particular or individual. By going in close, the details become almost abstracted and anonymous. The closeness also becomes ambiguous where details suggest other perhaps more intimate body parts, but are in fact not at all. The suggestiveness is heightened in the mind of the viewer according to their own proclivities. The aluminium book has texts related to desire, appreciation, longing and lust printed on the back of the images further suggesting possible readings of the images.

Artist / Curator / Academic

Gordon Froud has been actively involved in the South African and international art world as artist, educator, curator and gallerist for more than 30 years. He has shown on hundreds of solo and group shows. Froud graduated with a BA (FA) Hons from the University of Witwatersrand, and a master's degree from the University of Johannesburg, where he runs the Sculpture department as a senior lecturer. He has curated numerous group exhibitions that have traveled the country. He regularly shows on more than 20 exhibitions a year including showing in Washington, Holland and Paris 3 years ago. He was selected as the first Site - Specific artist in Residence at Plettenberg Bay for 2012 and again for 2013 as a participating artist in the Site - Specific land art Biennale. Three sculptures were selected for an exhibition of South African Sculpture in The Hague in May 2012, one of which was acquired by the SA Embassy there. He showed at Nirox Sculpture Park and at Stellenbosch Botanical Gardens as part of the 'Heavy Metal' outdoor Sculpture exhibition in 2013 and 2014. He is represented in many public and private collections. Froud recently curated 2 shows of SA contemporary Art to Appalachian State University, North Carolina and the Beijing Bienalle 2015 which were also shown at Pretoria Art Museum and University of Johannesburg Art gallery. His Solo show at standard Bank Gallery will open in January 2018.