Running at the KZNSA Gallery is Specimen 97-07, an exhibition of paintings by Peter Rippon spanning the last ten years.

Peter Rippon’s oil paintings on canvas are meticulously obsessive, finely detailed, exquisite depictions of his morbid fascination with the body, mortality, attitudes to death, loss and nostalgia. Containment is a particularly disturbing interest, his subjects often enclosed within the picture plane: in boxes and alcoves; squashed up against the surface. This suggests that the paintings are not merely representations, but that the subject is really situated there, in front of the viewer. In addition to heightening the immediacy and intimacy of the paintings, this technique works to tighten the claustrophobic screws.

Specimen 97-07 closes at the KZNSA Gallery on September 9.