ART BRUSSELS
Frances Goodman and Michaela Younge
PREVIEW
PRIME SECTION | BOOTH 6B-21
Opening 24. 04. 25
We are pleased to present new works by Frances Goodman and Michaela Younge opening on Thursday 24th April 2025 at Art Brussels. Frances Goodman critically engages with culturally established norms regarding beauty and femininity by reworking stereotypically gendered materials, such as sequins and acrylic nails, and anchoring her practice in an exploration of these materials as valuable and disposable; hand-made and synthetic; culturally significant and passing trends. ​Michaela Younge has made a stir in the local and international art scene with her highly detailed, provocative wool tapestries depicting elaborate and often controversial scenes. Her work most often depicts contemporary tableaus of dream-like moments. Instances of decapitation, seduction, and general debauchery are commonplace in her work, which uses the dramatically absurd to highlight the humour and violence of our South African society, and our fraught relationship with the past.
ART BRUSSELS
FRANCES GOODMAN
MICHAELA YOUNGE
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BRUSSELS EXPO, BRUSSELS
PRIME SECTION
BOOTH 6B-21
24. 04. 25
27. 04. 25
ARTWORKS
Goodman has, in the last few years, introduced a new medium into her practice: ceramics. As a medium, ceramics are rather contrary to what she has used before –that is, synthetic, throw away materials: sequins, acrylic nails. Goodman notes that the sculptures resulting from these materials are more constructed, whereas the ceramic work is more sculpted. The process of the former is more related to pattern making and upholstery; the latter is an additive, alchemical process. This process, she says –and the fact that she became interested in it during the COVID-19 pandemic– gave rise to a new subject of inquiry: pills.
South African artist, Michaela Younge’s process involves painstakingly felting wool, cutting, layering, and assembling fibres to create scenes that often depict surreal, dream-like worlds where deceptively playful aesthetics create narratives that are rich with allegory, exploring the depths of identity, power, and the human condition. Informed by both fables, childhood stories and cautionary tales, the artist’s practice itself is an act of story-telling, building up felt and fabric tableaus, infused hidden narratives, modern anxieties and existential themes.
