A narrative in paint

Meyer first worked for VZ Agency before departing for the United Kingdom to pursue a career in illustration. He returned in 1969 and has become recognised as one of South Africa's foremost landscape and portrait painters.

'Sequential Narratives' represents a new direction for Meyer, revealing the influence of popular culture, mass media and, particularly, the moving picture. In his new book on Meyer's art, Brett Hilton-Barber describes these works as "cinematic realism"- a direct allusion to the post-World War Two generation of European film-makers who pioneered a tradition of gritty no-frills film-making as a riposte to Hollywood's candy-floss cinematic style.

"We live in an age where we are highly influenced by a cinematic views of things," Meyer explains. "Everything is sequential, we relate to stories that unfold but at the same time we are conditioned to seek resolution."

Executed in Meyer's trademark realist style each canvas forms part of an emerging narrative - like a freeze-frame or segment extracted from a film storyboard. But unlike the linear film narrative, the stories provide neither definite beginnings nor neat, singular finales. Their plots spring not only from the optic nerve of the artist but also from the imagination of the viewer.

We are invited to embrace the characters' ambiguities and to alter the sequences of the narratives- to play the film backwards, start in the middle - and transpose the entire storyline.

The exhibition open on 3 November, with the official launch of the book 'John Meyer: Sequential Narratives'.