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MEDIA RELEASE
14 JULY 2021
Mandela: A life’s journey by artist John Meyer
Made locally and internationally accessible by RMB
To honour Mandela Day celebrations on Sunday 18 July, RMB’s collaboration with artist John Meyer and Everard Read/Circa gallery has facilitated a virtual tour of Meyer’s poignantly magnificent exhibition, Mandela: A life’s journey.
Join cultural analyst and art critic Ashraf Jamal on the virtual tour, which includes an interview with the artist: https://www.rmb.co.za/page/mandela-a-lifes-journey
Meyer’s reputation as South Africa’s most renowned realist painter is unimpeachable. He has exhibited all over the world, and is regarded as a modern–day ‘court painter’, commissioned to paint many official subjects and occasion works internationally. His immaculately composed painted narratives exhibit the vignette and cinematic form he has favoured more recently, in the grand historical narratives his canvases depict.
His impactful work for this landmark exhibition bears all the hallmarks of being skilled in the painterly photorealism for which his work is celebrated. Most importantly, it celebrates the life and major turning points in the career of the most important statesman South Africa, and perhaps the world, has ever seen.
Says RMB’s arts and creative custodian Carolynne Waterhouse: “We feel privileged to be involved in giving our clients, staff and country online access to this collection of sixteen important works that contributes towards communicating the legacy of Madiba, together with showcasing the limitless possibilities of art as an enabler of learning, debate and social transformation.”
Meyer says he sees his work much like the cinematographer of a major film would – as a series of opportunities to frame people, incidents and contexts at crucial moments in time. This cinematographic approach is beautifully realised in the monumental sixteen canvases which comprise the Mandela exhibition.
Originally shown in the elliptical, oval space of the Circa gallery in Rosebank, Johannesburg, this body of work has the circularity of a biographical journey, starting and ending in the same place, Mandela’s homeland in the Eastern Cape. These two paintings – the young boy Mandela bounding joyfully towards the viewer out of the majestic landscape, and the aged statesman ambling gently into the frame, towards the horizon in the distance – perfectly sum up the exhibition, and demonstrate Meyer’s skill as a story teller.
In between these bookend canvases, fourteen others depict key moments in the great man’s life. Here is Mandela as a young vital lawyer, debating with partners Kathrada and Sisulu, there he is ringside at a boxing match and engaged in happy conversation at a jazz club. Here too is Meyer’s state portrait of the great man as South Africa’s President, alongside canvases of Mandela with other world leaders – in quiet conversation under Cape Town oaks with President Bill Clinton, and riding with the Queen of England in her state carriage.
End
Contact:
Carolynne Waterhouse l Rand Merchant Bank l carolynne.waterhouse@rmb.co.za l 083 633 3888
