JACKI MCINNES

(B. 1966 DURBAN, SOUTH AFRICA)

WORK:

Jacki McInnes’ primary artmaking materials and methods incorporate the use of beaten sheet-lead in the construction of small sculptural elements, together with a drawing/painting technique using the soot of burnt car tyres, oxides, and oil paint. She uses these materials metaphorically to suggest the damage to environment and future generations wrought by our current rampant consumption. Her work also explores ideas around economic migrancy and the survival strategies such migrants are forced to adopt. Johannesburg’s informal recyclers have been central to this particular research for many years, as she reenvisages the plastic pallets on which they transport their bulk bags of trash in terms of their ‘safe haven’ or ‘life raft’.

Current creative work sees McInnes using lead in a thoroughly incongruous manner to craft objects that one would least imagine in lead: aeroplanes too heavy to fly, balloons that would go down, life rafts and rings that would immediately sink. In other works, lead ladders and staircases direct the viewer’s eye out of the picture frame, presumably to salvation in a better place. But although the boats, life rings and aeroplanes may seem to suggest escape, being rendered in lead they would sink, offering no escape at all. There is dark humour in this, of course, but the work also serves as a warning of some impending hazard.

BIOGRAPHY:

Jacki McInnes has practiced variously as an artist, arts writer and curator since obtaining her BA(FA) (with distinction) from UNISA in 2001. She won the UNISA Fine Art Faculty Medal in the same year and went on to complete an MFA at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, UCT in 2004. McInnes is currently a PhD candidate (Creative Research) at the Wits School of the Arts, University of Witwatersrand. McInnes lives in Cape Town and works between Cape Town and Johannesburg.

McInnes has received numerous awards including the Mixed Media category prize on the M-Web New Signatures Competition in 2000, a National Arts Council scholarship in 2003, and she was selected for the Pro Helvetia Arts Council of Switzerland Artist’s Residency programme in 2004. McInnes won the Sacatar-Spier Contemporary Fellowship Award 2010. In 2011, McInnes (in collaboration with film-maker Peter Goldsmid) was a finalist in the inaugural Johannesburg GoodPitch² Documentary Film-making Competition. McInnes was the Kunstraum Sylt Artist’s Residency award winner for 2012.  

EDUCATION:

2017 – 2019: McInnes is a PhD candidate (Creative Research) at Wits School of the Art, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa.

2004: Master of Fine Art, Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, South Africa.

2001: Bachelor of Fine Art (Distinction), University of South Africa.

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS:

• 2015: Mountains of the Moon, Tammen & Partner Galerie, Berlin
• 2014: The Argonauts, Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg
• 2012: de Magnete, University of Johannesburg Gallery, show travelled to North West University & University of Bloemfontein
• 2008: Strutting, Flying & Dying, ABSA Gallery, Johannesburg
• 2006: Patterns in Silence, Women’s Jail, Constitution Hill, Johannesburg
• 2004: The Vocabulary of Ambiguity: For Her, Bell-Roberts Contemporary, Cape Town
• 2002: Salt in the Wound, AVA Gallery, Cape Town

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

• 2017: Emerging Painters: The Graduate Show, The Forum Company, Turbine Art Fair
• 2017: Rethinking Kakotopia, University of Johannesburg Gallery
• 2016: When Tomorrow Comes, Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg & Michaelis Galleries, Cape Town
• 2015: Bronze, Steel, Stone, Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg
• 2014: 10 x 12 @ SA, Museo Bilotti, Rome, Italy
• 2014: 20 Years of Democracy, Appalachian State University, North Carolina, USA
• 2014: Deconstructing Dogma, University of Johannesburg Gallery
• 2009: Urban Animal, ABSA Gallery, Johannesburg
• 2004: Inside Out, Christoph Merian Stiftung, Basel, Switzerland
• 2004: Aids Art/South Africa, South African National Gallery, Cape Town
• 2000: Xoe!² Site Specific, Nieu Bethesda & Grahamstown Festival

AWARDS

• 2012: Kunst:raum Sylt Quelle Artist’s Residency Award
• 2011: Finalist: Johannesburg GoodPitch² Documentary Film-making Competition (in collaboration with film-maker Peter Goldsmid
• 2010: Sacatar-Spier Contemporary Fellowship Award (Residency in Bahia, Brazil)
• 2004: Pro Helvetia Arts Council of Switzerland Artist’s Residency Award
• 2003: National Arts Council Scholarship
• 2001: UNISA Fine Art Faculty Medal
• 2000: Mixed Media category prize on the M-Web New Signatures Competition

COLLECTIONS:

• 2012: Hollard Etana House Collection, Johannesburg
• 2012: Ellerman House Contemporary Art Collection, Cape Town
• 2010: Institut Sacatar Collection, Bahia, Brazil
• 2008: ABSA Corporate, Johannesburg
• 2006: Joburg Art Bank, Johannesburg
• 2004: Christof Merian Foundation Collection, Basel, Switzerland
• 2002: Wellesley College Collection, Massachusetts, USA
• 2001: ABSA Capital, Johannesburg
• 2001: City of Cape Town Collections, Cape Town

CURATORIAL PROJECTS:

• 2016: When Tomorrow Comes, Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg & Michaelis Galleries, Cape Town (co-curated with Michael Titlestad & Jyoti Mistry)
• 2010: Ecotopian States, University of Johannesburg Gallery
• 2009: Domestic, GoetheonMain, Johannesburg (co-curated with Melissa Goba)
• 2007: A Legacy of Men, Johannesburg Art Gallery