05 Mar Promised Land – Arend Louw & Clare Menck
Promised Land
Arend Louw & Clare Menck
Opening Saturday 21 March @ 12pm
SPACE Modern
Harbour Road
Hermanus
On until 6 April 2026
Artists will be present at the opening and on Friday 3 April from 5-8pm (Art Walk)
Canapés and drinks will be served
Please RSVP at [email protected]
“PROMISED LAND”, invariably glances into the future. Beyond its evident religious theme, it evokes a longed-for state of ultimate bliss, a desire (“hunkering” in Afrikaans!) for a place to return to, to be safe in and at peace with oneself and one’s soul’s habitat. This ultimate platonic pool of water to drift off in, without effort or pain or care, thus also alludes to a state of redemption after life’s toil. Seen in this light, Clare’s swimmers furthermore become a metaphor for the welcome release from death’s shackles, to attain a state of spiritual well-being and bliss beyond.
It is hardly surprising that not a single landscape in this exhibition by painter Clare Menck does not have water as its dominant natural feature. Water in all forms, and in so many exhilarating places found in typical South African landscapes!
Besides a consistent output of nudes and self-portraiture, Clare Menck is particularly renowned for her much loved swimmers – effortlessly floating in water. These bathers become a visual metaphor for a sense of freedom, for being at peace with one’s body and in tune with one’s natural environment. Stepping into water, being surrounded by this marvelous, life-sustaining fluid, brings some welcome relief from a sense of gravity, and feeds the soul. There is invariably an element of sensual bliss and tactile pleasure too. This includes the existential state of being alone – of experiencing aloneness – often characterized by single figures in her works.
Arend takes us on a journey through his lens with a focus on the contrasts found in this beautiful country he calls home, a Promised Land. He captures the quiet poetry of ordinary places in South Africa, the dusty roads, modest homes church steeples and solitary palms that defines much of the country’s rural heartland.
Arend’s focus in his paintings is not just to replicate them photographically, but to distill the emotional essence of these places.
With these works, Arend invites viewers to pause and reconnect with the landscape that have shaped so many South Africans – places that may appear unremarkable at first glance but reveal profound beauty under the right light. In a fast-moving world, his paintings serve as reminders of slowness, roots and the subtle magic that lingers in the familiar horizons of home.
