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Texturing Absence – Woodstock Beach exhibition tour
March 14 @ 5:15 pm - 7:15 pm
R400
This new, different kind of exhibition has been created by Molly Anderson. It is at 6 Spin Street in the heart of Cape Town.
Archival photographs, texts and art-objects gesture to the many histories of Woodstock Beach, and invite us to look more curiously at what is around us. What stories can we read from a fence or a grain of sand?
Woodstock Beach existed in various forms up until the 1960s, having been progressively ‘pushed back’ since the early 1850s.
It was a beach for fishing, kite flying, baptisms and bathing. There are pictures of children building sandcastles, Victorian bathing houses on wheels and fishing boats coming ashore. Oral histories from District Six speak of walking down to the beach, with buckets and spades, while the children turned “somersaults all the way down” (Jeppie & Soudien, 1990: 59).
The installation is an alternative curation of research undertaken by Molly for her Masters in Environmental Humanities at the University of Cape Town. Molly got a distinction marked by John Wiley and Cheryl McEwan and won the best paper award at the 2023 Memory Studies Association conference at Newcastle University, UK.
Experimental methodologies underlie this exhibition – both in its research and representation. For example Brown Watery Bodies is a series of 4m long fabric drops dyed using the photo-sensitive qualities of turmeric.
As part of our tour we will have a short walk in nearby Company’s Gardens. It will allow us to access different stories, at various levels, but relevant to Woodstock Beach. Perhaps we’ll think about the ‘textures’ of our environment and memories.
This is a last chance to see, as Texturing Absence closes on 15 March 2024, having opened 29 February.
6 Spin Street Restaurant Gallery
Church Square
Cape Town City Centre, 8001
Molly and I hope you’ll join us after the tour for a delicious vegetarian supper, created by 6 Spin Street’s Robert Mulders.
Thursday 14 March 2024, 17h15-19h15
Fee: R300 per person paying before Saturday 9 March, then R400 per person; two free places for full time students in a relevant field, or, Woodstock (ex) residents connected with the old Beach. Please add R250 for the supper (and state any food allergies – it will meat and wheat free!). There will be pay bar.
To book: kate@cultureconnectsa.com +27 (0)72 377 8014
This tour is a once-off
