Where is the line? The one that is drawn temporarily, yet forcefully between what is acceptable and what is unthinkable? The line is a finish line, one that separates success from failure, or process from completion. The line is a lane, demarcating the margins of one’s allowed freedoms. The line is a net, that despite its permeability cannot be passed through. The line is the liminal space - the somewhere in-between. Yet, in most instances, the line is a border or an edge, limiting one’s movements while simultaneously providing a space to reside in.

In this body of work, Francois Jonker relies primarily on the graphic language of the lined spaces (such as fields, courts and tracks) that contain and direct competitive athletes as a means to explore these questions of normativity, compliance, performance and expectation. Additionally, the artist brings awareness to the presence of spectatorship - the line of sight.  Endless rows of vacant seats invite a multitude of imagined eyes to watch, scrutinise, judge and support from the sidelines. 

Throughout this body of work, these lines emerge and dissolve as they oscillate between definition and dematerialisation, sometimes locating the line and other times losing it completely. 

Exhibition Photographs by Bernard Brand