Our Eyes Will Dance
Courtney
24 July – 5 October 2024
Bethlem Gallery
Bethlem Gallery presents Our Eyes Will Dance, a retrospective of the work of Courtney (1964 – 2024).
Courtney’s art practice explored the human condition. He expressed the importance – and joy – of making work, and of making work with other people. Across drawings made painstakingly with pen on paper, with film, performance and also sculpture, Courtney’s wide-ranging practice poses questions about how we live and how we live together.
Partial bodies or features of bodies, or bodies bound up, explore a sense of being tethered and fragmented. They also explore a sense of fluid identities – not conforming to one gender or ethnic identity. Partially covered faces or eyes convey a sense of not being able to face a visual reality, preferring instead, at least initially, to use other senses.
Courtney didn’t use sketchbooks but instead developed an image over days and weeks before finally committing it to paper. With a wry smile he noted that the works may not turn out as he expected, and that he had to challenge himself to accept these changes. For Courtney, it was important to develop a good relationship with an artwork, to live with it, developing each work over time. He took huge enjoyment in colour, remarking seriously that he ‘fizzed with excitement with it’. The texture in his work was important too, ‘the cross hatching gave [my works] a more fabric texture so it was like the warp and weft of my own life’.
The darker photographic performance-based series of images saw him cover up his own face or body, distorting, hiding, and holding a mask to a darker reality beneath. Courtney’s work was very seductive and, at times, joyful yet there was always a controlled element to compositions across the paper surface. The photographic works’ aesthetic feels more sinister, with expressions of pain and acute sorrow in comparison to the pen and ink drawings. This work used projections of his drawings over his face and body to explore layers of protection, illustrating his armour to the world.
This exhibition will showcase the full range of Courtney’s work, including his drawings, video works and films of him discussing his practice. It was curated by Amanda Glynn and Josip Lizatovic with Sue Morgan.
Artist biography
Born in Zimbabwe and raised in South Africa, Courtney’s life was profoundly affected by the political situation and haunted by the injustice of apartheid. His childhood was quickly shattered when his family emigrated to different countries and continents due to difficult political times.
Courtney had a congenital birth defect which overshadowed much of his life, always feeling different, uncomfortable in his own body. He was self-conscious of his difference but would speak openly about his real and perceived flaws. The intense scrutiny of his deformity as a child led to brutal school bullying which shaped part of his personality and formed much of the content of the art he created.
He adopted the pseudonym of Courtney around 2018. Courtney was a way in which he could make a statement about his identity and become someone ‘other’: a way of recreating himself, which is echoed in the dissection and displaced elements of facial features within his drawings.
Courtney spent significant time in psychiatric hospitals and in the criminal justice system which may impact and complicate how viewers engage with his artistic output.Â