Nothing Bad | A Solo Exhibition by Michaela Younge
SMITH is pleased to present Nothing Bad, a solo exhibition by Michaela Younge and her first with the gallery. Younge has made a vast collection of Merino wool on felt works in her signature style. 
Cupid is wearing a thong, a cat is playing the trumpet, and a naked man is lying in the cold cuts counter. Someone is braaing in the art museum, and someone has lost an arm. There are adverts for Carling Black Label and Maserati, a DVD rental store, a peep show. And everywhere animals. Michaela Younge’s felted compositions appear as scenes from obscure fables; not ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’ but rather ‘Used Cars and Lobsters’. She weaves together popular culture, urban legends, myths and stories into rich narrative scenes. They are at once playful and violent, dark despite their colours. Her work appeals to dream logic, which is no logic, set in places at once familiar and strange.
Younge’s tableaux are dense with detail. The walls are patterned, the floors tiled. There are candlesticks and pot plants and empty beer bottles, trinkets, posters, neon signs. She meticulously pricks and sticks each scene into shape, working dyed merino wool into a felt backing with a barbed needle; stabbing death and drama into its very fibre. Artist and exhibition description written by Lucienne Bestal. 
The Nothing Bad exhibition by Michaela Younge starts next Thursday 8 May from 5:30pm and is open to the public until 6 June. Younge's first exhibition at the SMITH Gallery is definitely not something you should pass on!
SMITH Gallery, 56 Church Street, CBD Cape Town.
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