GALLERY AOP pays tribute to Robert Hodgins and Jan Neethling

Double Jeopardy, a short DVD based on Robert and Sam Nhlengethwa’s  collaboration at the gallery in 2007, will be launched at the opening

5 – 26 March 2011

Opening Saturday 5 March at 14:00

Preview by appointment

Robert Hodgins died on 15 March 2010, three months before his ninetieth birthday. A year later, GALLERY AOP pays tribute to the unique working relationship that they had with him and Jan Neethling.

Shortly after Art on Paper Gallery opened in Melville, Johannesburg in 2000, Robert and Jan Neethling paid a visit. It was 20 years since he and Jan mounted their Pretty Boy Floyd exhibition in 1980 at The Market Gallery, Johannesburg (their fourth two-person exhibition at the time), and they wanted to do a similar project. Over the Easter weekend the following year, they worked together in Rob’s studio, using silkscreen, spray paint, charcoal, pastel, etc. to create works for their One-Offs exhibition, which opened in May that year at Art on Paper. Two more two-person exhibitions followed (Two weeks in the country, 2005, and Young men in garage trousers, 2006).

The exhibition Rob I Rob & Jan I Rob & Sam includes some work from these exhibitions, as well as etchings from print projects with Robert in 2005, 2007 and from his critically acclaimed solo exhibition of etchings, Private faces in public places (2009) as well as some recent drawings by Jan Neethling. Robert Hodgins’s last exhibition before his death, Watercolours, took place in November 2009.

In 2007, Robert and Sam Nhlengethwa mounted their collaborative exhibition, Double Jeopardy, at GALLERY AOP. Apart from creating works on their own, they made thirteen collaborative works, both working on the same image. Two of these, Confrontation and Hold it there, man, were large-scale works and were created in the gallery during the week before the exhibition. Film footage taken of the artists working on these two artworks, was edited by Marcus Neustetter, and the DVD Double Jeopardy, will be launched on 5 March 2011 at the opening of the exhibition Rob I Rob & Jan I Rob & Sam.

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