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Kimberley Gundle
How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, o prince's daughter! Song of Solomon Shoes have become the urban accessory of our times. They are cultural symbols at every level, from fetish objects to functional trainers, from school shoes to City brogues, down-at-heel or spit-and-polished. Shoes of the poor and shoes of the rich, shoes of workers, walkers, toddlers and cat-walk fashion models, comfy shoes or painful shoes - whichever their category, they take on the character of their owners and speak volumes of the life being led in them. This is why Kimberley Gundle paints portraits of shoes. London is her city and she observes its peoples' feet as they wait in line for a bus, or at a tube station. She watches girls at Sanderson's and other hip bars, she notes children at play and observes the shoes of women and men in suits. If any of them interest her, she interviews them, takes photographs and makes drawings. She gets to know them a bit and then works on her painting. A gorgeous colourist, Gundle treats her paintings as objects in their own right, with coloured edges and clear, bright backgrounds. The quality of drawing comes through in the richly applied paint, and the feel of the shoe, the shape of the leg and the ankle are treated with empathy and humour. Individuals and entire families have commissioned her to paint them in their favourite shoes, knee downwards. In general the single square and the long letter-box shape are the preferred formats. Some paintings involve four generations spun across the picture plane in a dynamic dialogue that conveys family structure and power play. Other groups, like Girls' Night Out, Jeans or Cousins explore friendships and peer groups. The subject is endless. The individual 'targets' for portraits are part of an expansive list, where a daily study of urban life penetrates the multiplicity of signs that shoes represent in contemporary life. This is an exuberant, up-beat body of work and in every sense it is a celebration of London life. Gundle was selected for the national touring exhibition called SHOE, curated by Kathy Fawcett at the City Art Gallery, Leicester. The writer Sue Townsend, who was invited to contribute her witty thoughts and memories for the occasion says in her essay, "Shoe making, of the highest quality, is not a craft, it is an art"?. The recent exhibition of Manolo Blahnik shoes at the Design Museum would support that. But Gundle's footwear is is worn by real people as they make their way around London. Her art is based on psychological insight rather than on precious objects and formal arrangements. Trained at the Michaelis School of art in Cape Town and the Slade School of Art, Gundle lives and works in London where she has exhibited over the past fifteen years.   |
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