South African Art Exhibition at Fried Contemporary Art Gallery & Studio

The Secret Adventures of Lady Anne Barnard and Other Diversions
An Exhibition by Carine Zaayman
Gallery Fried
7 -28 July 2007

This exhibition will feature two series of works, the first being an excerpt from an ongoing project, namely a novel entitled The Plague of Fantasies. The second part will deal with Lady Anne Barnard’s stay at the Cape of Good Hope as the wife of the first British colonial secretary, Andrew Barnard, from 1797 - 1802. This section of the exhibition is called The Secret Adventures of Lady Anne Barnard. It focuses on the journey she together with her husband, Anne Barnard the younger, Captain Johnny Dalrympie, and a number of assistants, undertook to the interior of the Cape colony. Their sojourn covered a large section of the Southern Cape, including the caves at the Kelders and the Moravian mission at Genadendal.

Lady Anne was a remarkable woman who enthusiastically engaged with the people and places in Cape Town. An accomplished hostess, her interests were not limited to the social fabric of the Cape, as she also displayed a keen interest in the fauna, flora and geography of the area. Evidence of this is Lady Anne’s reputation as the first woman to climb Table Mountain.

In 2006, a collection of letters was discovered in Uppsala Sweden, which, upon closer inspection appeared to be correspondence from Lady Anne to an unknown gentleman referred to only as one Hon…… W. The author of these letters is identified as Louisa Melford, possibly a Nom du Guerre for Lady Anne. Some of the letters are reprinted in the exhibition, and correlations are drawn between these and Lady Anne’s account of her journey, revealing some interesting new information regarding this celebrated historical figure.

In essence the exhibition aims to illuminate a part of the history of Cape Town and its environment, by tracing the ways in which history has shaped contemporary life, and to bring about an awareness of the long trajectory of contemporary culture and society in Cape Town.

The Plague of Fantasies series consists of a number of found and original texts, presented in print and video format. On display in The Secret Adventures of Lady Anne Barnard will be a series of digital prints composited from photographs, drawings and texts from Lady Anne’s journal and the newly discovered letters. Included in the exhibition are excerpts from her letters and journals, chosen for their particularly intelligent and insightful observations of life at the Cape in the late eighteenth century. A video installation dealing with Lady Anne’s ascension of Table Mountain will also be shown.

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Carine Zaayman is a lecturer in new media at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town, and the exhibition is made possible with the generous financial assistance from the University of Cape Town Research Office, and Emerging Researchers Grant, as well as the Malan Trust. A selection of the work will be shown at the Irma Stern Gallery in Cape Town from 7 – 30 August 2007.