Notes

Allsorts is a striking example of Penny Siopis' paintings from 1986, the year of her residency at the Cité des Arts in Paris. Many of these works reference her magnum opus Melancholia, the painting that won her the inaugural Atelier award and the chance to live in the French capital for six months. Visiting the famous Clignancourt flea market in Paris in search of curious objects to reference in her paintings and drawings, Siopis discovered an alluring figurine cast in a bronze-like metal. The form of the figurine and her gesture of picking petals from a flower, became imbued with personal significance. In the painting the figurine is presented with other objects on a floral tablecloth, a visual feast of colour and impasto paint, each daub constructing the pattern of the fabric in a masterful display of palette-knife technique. The bright blue and purple of the figurine stand in stark contrast to the warm reds and yellows of the cloth. The other objects - a tortoise shell, a Zoo Biscuit, liquorice allsorts sweets and seashells - are direct references to Melancholia. There are more correspondences with Melancholia. The tilted up perspective evokes the foreground table of the larger piece and accentuates a tension between illusionistic space and Modernist flatness. Then there is her signature treatment of the painted surface, in building up impasto form into high relief where the medium both serves its subject matter and maintains its independent physical properties.

Melancholia offers an interpretive frame for viewing Allsorts, but this arresting painting has a particular resonance in its bird's eye perspective of an intimate scene, the play of contrasting colour and the associative qualities of the objects which suggest there is another story which the artist is not divulging.

Provenance

Stephan Welz & Co in Association with Sotheby's, Johannesburg, 10 July 1989, lot 276