Jeannette Unite

"Strelitzias and bones are ubiquitously the stuff of still life at high schools and tertiary institutions. Themes of flight, transcendence and masks as well as painting's relationship to music have also been well explored in these contexts. All of the above feature prominently in Jeanette Unite's show entitled 'Sentences', and it is for this reason that I found myself suffering from a sense of deja-vu. Somehow though, I felt reluctant to dislike the exhibition. Perhaps it is the energy which clearly suffuses the show or perhaps the sincerity of Unite's quotes which appear throughout the well-produced catalogue. She may, I guess, believe herself but I'm a little less sure."

"I'm not sure I really bought it, but the clearness of the artist's intention and her apparent sincerity cannot be ignored. In the catalogue and abridged essay which appears with the list of works, I found Unite's claims grandiose and her jumps from one subject to another a little unbelievable and unresolved. I also battle to discern the relationship between pretty abstract paintings and a peppering of very specific themes. Nevertheless, as a visually consistent body of work and a thorough exploration of various media I find it interesting."

"Jeannette Unite also works directly with the products of mining. She, however, signals the artist’s complicity in the industry. Creating her own pastels using pigments ground from leftover minerals and mine tailings she continues the tradition of landscape representation, but knowingly constructs her images from the constituents of land itself."

"Mining has been central to her practice since an introduction to alluvial diamond prospecting pits on the Palaeolithic African West Coast beach resulted in her first body of work Earthscars (2004). The exhibition engaged the damage done directly to the earth by excavation, and aligned her concerns with an eco‐ feminist consciousness of earth as body."

"She has a deep reverence for all these substances and also a deep knowledge of their origin, their age, their occurrences. For them, it is important that we humans as end consumers and consumers develop a deeper awareness of the fact that practically everything we use every day comes from the minerals and materials we find on and in the earth. We ourselves consist of it! Unite is passionate about mixing, batching, firing, melting and reacting its substances. This passion and energy is clearly noticeable in her work. She works largely in the open air at home, so that the wind and other factors also leave room for chance."

"On her travels, Jeannette Unite collects ore-containing sand from the dumps, as well as dust, overburden and metal oxides. She uses them as a painting medium on her picture carriers, which makes her art something very special. The artworks thus contain waste products from industrial mining that develop amazing colors and patterns when they react chemically, for example, or are melted in the artist's kiln at extreme temperatures (her studio is half chemistry lab, half office, half apartment)."

"In Jeannette's work, the degree of abstraction varies. While in the abstract works just discussed the powerful effect of the self-created colours dominates and a very sensual, atmospheric impression is created, the objects in the "Highgear" series with the conveyor frames are clearly recognizable to the viewer. We can clearly see winding towers, machines, wheel bucket excavators, cranes... But even in these works there are undefined areas."

"Unite is one of the world's most respected artists when it comes to mining. Due to her artistically unconventional approach, she is often compared to an alchemist. In the creation and production of its works of art, Unite benefits significantly from its strong physical, chemical, geological and historical knowledge."

"Due to her artistically unconventional approach, she is often compared to an alchemist. In the creation and production of its works of art, Unite benefits significantly from her strong physical, chemical, geological and historical knowledge."