PORTRA – AN EXHIBITION OF NEW PAINTINGS BY KILMANY-JO LIVERSAGE

A year after her last solo exhibition Kilmany-Jo Liversage is about to open the first of three solo shows scheduled for 2012 – one in Cape Town, then Singapore and finally Johannesburg.

As with her last exhibition, her latest paintings are inspired by street culture. But this time she sourced portraits from mass-media, social networks and from her personal photo files. The exhibition is titled Portra – named after a type of film by Kodak used mainly for portrait photography.

“Everything is so evanescent. Kodak does not exist anymore. Film eventually perishes. People? Memories? Painting is probably one of the more lasting mediums in this day and age,” she says. Art admirers often have the need to recognise and even know the subjects of an art work. Portra plays with the concept of familiar strangers. Liversage’s portraits aren’t about people, rather recognising common ground in those we don’t know.

Portra will show in Cape Town at the Worldart gallery from 7 May to 19 May, at Source 53 in Singapore in September and at Artspace in Johannesburg in November.