CURRENT

FRANCES GOODMAN

Peroral

August 21 – September 28, 2026.

JOIN US FOR THE OPENING ON FRIDAY AUGUST 21 AT 17:00 – 19:00!

SPECTA is pleased to present Peroral, a new solo exhibition by South African artist Frances Goodman, bringing together a series of hand-quilted works and glazed ceramics that explore desire, consumption, and the language of contemporary digital communication.

In Peroral, Goodman explores what we put into our mouths - food, medicine, and sources of pleasure - as well as the images we use to communicate desire. At once playful and provocative, the works move between nourishment and indulgence, health and pleasure, and the physical and the virtual. Doughnuts, bananas, and other comestibles are transformed into seductive ceramic objects, while a series of meticulously hand-quilted works takes the visual form of pharmaceutical blister packs. In Goodman’s hands, the familiar meanings of these objects begin to collapse and blur.

The exhibition takes its title from the medical term peroral, meaning administered or taken through the mouth. The mouth becomes a point of departure for considering both physical consumption and contemporary forms of communication. In the digital vernacular of texting and social media, food has acquired an unmistakably erotic vocabulary: the peach, banana, eggplant, and other everyday images can function as coded references to bodies, sex, and desire. Goodman plays with this slippage between the innocent and the suggestive, transforming familiar foodstuffs into objects that are humorous, sensual, and at times slightly uncanny.

The “pharmaceutical” quilts operate in parallel. The blister pack is an instantly recognisable object associated with medication, relief, and the promise of an immediate solution. Goodman recreates it through the painstaking processes of hand quilting, appliqué, thread, and fabric. An object associated with speed and immediate effect is thus transformed through an intensely slow and repetitive physical process.

A tension between instant gratification and sustained labour runs throughout Peroral. Taking a pill takes seconds; sending an emoji requires only a few taps; an intimate message or image can be transmitted almost instantly. Goodman’s works, by contrast, demand hours of repetitive, tactile work. Stitch follows stitch; ceramic forms are shaped, glazed, and fired. The seductive immediacy of the motifs is set against the persistence, discipline, and physical endurance required to make them.

This contrast has been central to Goodman’s practice throughout her career. She repeatedly takes images and subjects connected to contemporary life - often charged with desire, anxiety, sexuality, and consumer culture - and translates them into labour-intensive processes. The more immediate the subject matter appears, the more insistently the material process slows it down.

Peroral ultimately considers a culture in which desire is increasingly communicated through instantly recognisable images, and where pleasure, consumption, self-medication, and relief can be only a gesture or a click away. Goodman slows these fleeting gestures down, giving them weight, texture, and physical presence. The instantaneous becomes labourious; the disposable becomes precious; and the playful reveals a more complex relationship between desire, consumption, and the body.

Frances Goodman (ZA, 1975) lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. She has exhibited widely across South Africa, Europe, and the United States. In 2026, she completed a residency at the Nirox Foundation, South Africa. Recent solo exhibitions include Ping!, SMAC Gallery, Cape Town (2025/26); Red Runs Through, Les Filles du Calvaire, Paris (2024); and Ecstasy, SPECTA, Copenhagen (2022). Selected group exhibitions include I Hit You With A Flower, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam; Frieze Sculpture, London (with SPECTA); and Ubuntu – a Lucid Dream, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2021). Goodman’s work is held in public and private collections including Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town; Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM); the National Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; 21c Museum; Fondazione Fiera Milano; and the Missoni Collection, Milan.