‘Bitches Brew: Fast, feminist and furious

“To see our works together like this without much planning, clearly shows that we are having the same thoughts”

In Bitches Brew, local artists Lady Skollie, Sanell Aggenbach and Lucinda Mudge parley with the bubbling anxieties experienced by women in South Africa. Until 6 May, these artists will turn Rosebank’s Everard Read into a gilded, provocative realm. 

The recipe for Bitches Brew is to: “Mix the toxicities of modern existence, the potent anxieties of living in South Africa, the hazards of being a woman, and what you get is a pungent cocktail … that’s starting to bubble over,” reads the catalogue. 

Bitches Brew is underpinned by the everyday realities of sexual violence and femicide in South Africa where, from 2020 to last year, 988 women were murdered in domestic violence situations. The lived experience of the female population exists within the country’s complex history of colonialism and society’s broader patriarchal pressures.  

“Yet we have a robust and active civil society, guided by a progressive Constitution, free speech and freedom of expression. In South Africa, humour (especially dark humour) is a coping mechanism; it’s a way of showing resilience and agency,” says Everard Read.  

‘Bad Feminist’

The exhibition is intrinsically feminist while pulling inspiration from author Roxanne Gay’s collection of essays Bad Feminist, which explores the messy contradictions of living the feminist way. 

“If I am, indeed, a feminist, I am a rather bad one … There are many ways in which I am doing feminism wrong, at least according to the way my perceptions of feminism have been warped by being a woman,” writes Gay.

These three artists are together, like witches, adding personal and political ingredients and stirring their brew — and cackling while they do it — showing the inherent rebellion of feminist messaging. 

Aggenbach, who curated the exhibition, says Bitches Brew has been a year in the making. 

Lady Skollie brings humour to the exhibition’s cauldron with her works, such as Punani Escapes Fire. 

Mudge’s beautiful vases, which glimmer under their glazed surfaces add a dash of irony to the brew and remind us of the precarious unpredictability and paranoia faced by women daily. 

“I really enjoyed seeing this exhibition unfold in the past year. The ceramic work of Lucinda Mudge and the painterly skill of Sanell Aggenbach has always enticed me,” says Lady Skollie. 

Lady Skollie adds that the Daily Sun headlines, such as “Punani Escapes Fire” in her work, are all real headlines. She says, as streetlight posters, they are artworks all by themselves.

Aggenbach’s botanical sculptures and paintings cut through feminine softness with a vibrant macabre vibe. Aggenbach contrasts Lady Skollie’s and Mudge’s work with monochromatic prints, Japanese ikebana-inspired paintings, and a life-size, bronze-casted pink panther. 

Gay writes, “I shouted ‘This is not right,’ knowing my words were useless. There’s no room for such distinctions in a country where too many people have to claw for what they need and still have nothing to hold.”

Gay’s words are seen (and heard) in Bitches Brew. Feminists in South Africa can noisily address injustices through art, activism and rebellion, but it’s a Sisyphean battle against these realities. This can be demotivating, but does not stop these three artists from navigating their lives by “giving the status quo the middle finger”, says Everard Read. 

“To see our works together like this, without much planning, clearly shows that we are having the same thoughts,” says Lady Skollie.

‘Sticky Icky’ 

Laura Windvogel, who practises as Lady Skollie, is known for her vivid and powerful crayon-and-ink work. The confrontational nature of her art, which she describes as “demented nursery school”, garnered her last year’s Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Arts. 

In Bitches Brew, Lady Skollie presents two new works, along with fan-favourites. Sticky Icky: Venus Fly Trap With a Bird in a Cage compares the allure of partnership, where a woman goes into it with a different mindset that prepares her to “get out” if needs be. But the constant pressure for partnership doubles as a shackled existence, like a kind of Stockholm Syndrome.

Lady Skollie says Bitches Brew is her last exhibition before she gives birth and her highly anticipated Standard Bank show in June for the National Arts Festival. 

“Following the bread or sugar syrup trail; thinking, ‘This time it will be different because I am different.’ But what if someone prepares you for the trap so that you only stay in it for a short time, meditating on what brought you here?” Lady Skollie told Everard Read.

The Venus fly traps share a vase with other blooming flowers and sit beside a bird in a cage, pointing to the complexity of a woman’s existence within and without domestic partnership. Women exist within this gilded cage, a signature theme in Lady Skollie’s work on the politics of lust.   

Mgodoyi Attack: In the Premonition I didn’t Have a Knife But I Have a Knife Now, shows a woman under attack by a Mgodoyi (literally a stray dog; figuratively a term used to describe a man as a “dirty dog”). 

She is equipped with a knife or the knowledge of how to protect herself from the attack. The artwork speaks to the traps of female existence, about which women have been warned for centuries, but find themselves in anyway. 

Fast, feminist and furious

In Bitches Brew, the artists’ works speak to each other. To many women and other visitors of marginalised groups in South Africa, the artworks’ dialogues are loud and clear — an unabashed contest against the harsh realities of South African women who live in constant fear. The works are laced with humour and mix absurdity with subjective social experiences to create the “bitches’ brew”, leaning into reclaiming what was once a slur for nasty women.

Mudge’s vibrant paintings and pottery are beautiful from afar, but upon closer inspection, the contrasting motifs that cover their surfaces carry a deeper message. It is this shift in perspective that reveals the harsh realities faced by women who live in society where femicide is common.

 Her vivid pottery and paintings bring a gilded touch to Bitches Brew. Her painting Hey, Hey, Hey speaks to the incessant cat-calling women experience while doing mundane things like crossing streets. Her lustrous vases, such as When The Lights Start to Dwindle, show the whirlwind of emotions women feel daily. 

There is a cross-pollinated work where Lady Skollie interprets Mudge’s pottery in A Stif f Cock Knows No Conscience. It shows one of Mudge’s vases that reads “A Stiff Cock Knows No Conscience” pouring its message into other vases, speaking to the widespread lack of conscience among perpetrators of sexual and domestic violence. 

Bitches Brew is both frenzied and dreamy, where the delicate alchemy of the brew gives humour to the political. Collectively, the artists’ works are fast, feminist, and furious. Ironically, the art sometimes feels otherworldly, but they are far from fantasy. These paintings, drawings and sculptures act as biographical mirrors of the realities shared by many. 

Bitches Brew is on at Everard Read Gallery in Rosebank until 6 May.