Addoley Dzegede at Fort Gondo

What are the bones, what are the clothes
What is the architecture
What is the frame+work

Were you standing out on the sidewalk in front of the orange door?  Bracing, puffed out in a coat, lighting a cigarette, shielding yourself from the street? The weather is approaching winter, but remember summer and longer days where you would sit and sit in the orange chairs in front of the gallery.

Were you standing in a huddle at the back of the gallery, still in a coat, or not in a coat. The coat on your arm is a shield, blessed protector. Oh excuse me, pardon me, sorry. Stepping around a stranger or the someone you know you know but kinna don’t and you forgot their naaaaaaame.

While there are eyes in the walls,

the still, strong voice here is Addoley Dzegede’s group of work originating from her time in Iceland in Fare Well, the last exhibition at fort gondo compound for the arts.

The work presents as the conscience in the gallery, but what is accepted as truth. What is the pivot from which successive answers are built.

What do you know (and not know) when negotiating an object? What do you allow yourself not to know? I started following Addoley on Instagram before the exhibition at fort gondo, I think before her residency in Iceland.

Broken Buoy, 2016 Found rope and buoy, copperleaf and indigo – in use out of use. The buoy has been rendered useless by the copperleaf, but it was already lifeless after it had been shot with a gun. An object killed twice, now full of use as Broken Buoy.

@dzegede, “This buoy I found in the junkyard in Skagaströnd. Someone had shot it multiple times with a gun. #FareWellatGondo”

Weighted Net, 2016

This piece: stained driftwood, rope, glazed ceramic, natural dyed yarn

Rope Hammock, 2016, fiber reactive dyed rope, steel rings

Notes:

Useless nets are the most useful when

Draped over a simple plinth               green ^ growth

Is a net a tool or a weapon or both?

A rope is a braid is a bind
Care and dyed

I am here ( all artwork)
                           ?
Torfbærinn I+II, 2016, glazed ceramics with model turf and grass

This is home

This is safety

Icelandic Turf houses rendered as an elevation of small ceramic tiles – ground is wall. The viewer is kept out, when does a model become itself?

Counterpoint I-III, 2016, sticks, ceramic sticks, found bone, ceramic bone

A spare arrangement of objects paired with their respective simulacra

Notes:

Twig bone log love
Artifact

Is it a hose it is
Not a nose
Lighter with dark paring ( I am aware of my reading of left to right and top to bottom)
Which is the original object and which is the ceramic – pinpoint the moment when it ceases to matter.

A note to myself: don’t just blow out of here

you have time

fare well – journey, be well

Local color (Icelandic Kente). 2016 – handwoven kente made with yarn dyed using Icelandic plants, driftwood, ceramic “bone” bobbins and sticks

Ghanian, displayed in an in-between state… in the middle…on the way to, to be finished at another time, farewell

What are the bones, what are the clothes
What is the architecture
What is the frame+work

Crow (Pottkökur II), 2016, ceramic bread plate, twine

Pottkökur,
Bread with proverbs

@dzegede, “Snail and Tortoise (Pottkökur I)” (inscription: it finds shelter with the tortoise when the snail travels abroad) and “Crow (Pottkökur II)” (inscription: the crow went traveling abroad and came back just as black)  are ceramic bread plates inspired by wooden bread plates I saw in a turf house museum in Iceland. The mirror writing transfers a message onto the bread. On one of these I wrote a centers, I chose #Adinkra symbols that relate to the proverbs. #hybridityGhanaian proverb and the other an English one.”

This is the last show at fort gondo compound for the arts

A note given to @dzegede:

Do not panic

Stay strong

Act courageous
Live with integrity