Archive: Issue No. 40, December 2000
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Durban 19.12.00 Kay Hassan opens at the Durban Art Gallery 12.12.00 Tommy Motswai, Mandla Mabila and Elvis Ntombela Exhibitions extended at BAT Centre 28.11.00 'Icons' - group exhibition 28.11.00 'The South Africans' - an installation of embroidered puppets by Masha du Toit 28.11.00 'Beadwork'from beadwork - an exhibition of jewelery that incorporates beadwork 28.11.00 NSA Annual Christmas Show 14.11.00 Standard Bank Young Artist Award winner Alan Alborough 14.11.00 Amazwi Abesifazane - Voices of Women
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Kay Hassan opens at the Durban Art Gallery
Kay Hassan is the recipient of first DaimlerChrysler Award for South
African Contemporary Art. The massive R300 000 prize included the making,
mounting and cataloguing of a large scale exhibition, which having opened
in Stuttgart, moved to Berlin, Pretoria, the South African National Gallery
in Cape Town and now comes to the Durban Art Gallery.
Encompassing video, installation, found objects and paper 'constructions'
from billboard posters Hassan uses the materials of the street that make up
our urban environment. Recycling and reframing the detritus of the city, he
encapsulates the experience of living in an unstable world where
uncertainty is the thing one can most rely on.
Hassan sees his way of working as mirroring his context and content saying
"Our lives have always been torn and put together and torn - people have
always been pushed around". Whilst his work has a distinctly South African
feel to it he sees its relevance as not confined to the geography of the
local: "I don't only reflect what is happening in South Africa, it's a
reflection of what is happening in this world".
At each stage of the current travelling exhibition, different work is
selected by the artist for showing, depending on the venue. After Durban
the show travels to a venue in Soweto.
Closing date: January 19, 2000.
Durban Art Gallery, 2nd Floor, City Hall, Smith Street
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Tommy Motswai, Mandla Mabila and Elvis Ntombela Exhibitions extended at BAT
Centre
The BAT Centre has extended its Tommy Motswai, Mandla Mabila and Elvis
Ntombela exhibitions until Sunday, 17 December.
The exhibitions were included in the BAT Centre's week-long programme
leading up to the International Day of the Disabled.
Internationally-celebrated deaf South African artist, Tommy Motswai has won
a multitude of awards, including the Santam Bursary for Fine Arts 1985, the
Volkskas Atelier Merit Prize, the Sol Plaatjies Graphic Art Award, the
Excelsior Award, the Vita Art Now Award and, in 1992, the Standard Bank
Young Artists Award.
Widely-exhibited throughout South Africa, Motswai's work is included
collections such as those of the Johannesburg Art Gallery, the South
African National Gallery, UNISA, the University of the Witwatersrand, the
Sasol Art Collection, the Pretoria Art Museum, the Durban Art Museum and
private and corporate collections internationally.
Providing South Africa with a rich, colourful legacy; a visual record of
our society, Motswai's superb visual memory enables him to record details
about people, places and events which provide us with the artist's
documentary of a period from the early 1980s to the end of the Century. His
colourful, bold and often naive images record the subtleties and humour
found within the relationships of a multi-cultural and economically-divided
country. Each of Motswai's works has a powerful positive sense of energy
and passion for South Africa's people.
A few of the Tommy Motswai works on show are for sale.
All three exhibitions are open from 09h00 to 17h00 on weekdays, and from
09h00 to 16h30 on Saturdays and Sundays.
For further information, please call Franki Hills at the BAT Centre on
(031) 332 0451.
BAT Centre, 45 Maritime Place, Small Crafts Harbour, Durban
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Kim Longhurst
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Four new exhibitions at the NSA
Moving into December the 'silly season' rears its head. But the NSA Gallery has tried to steer a course between the commercial, the serious, the sacred and the sensuous in their programme for the month. To this end, four new exhibitions open on Sunday December 3, 2000 at 4 p.m. and run until New Year's Eve, December 31, 2000. 'Icons' - group exhibition Rick Andrew (senior lecturer in the department of Graphic Design at the Natal Technikon) has curated a show of contemporary icons for December at the NSA. Defined as a sacred image an icon can be a totem, a symbol or a sign. Thirteen artists, qualified either in the disciplines of design or fine art, have been invited to produce two icons each and the show promises to offer an interesting range of work. Andrew states that "I chose 'Icons' as the theme of the exhibition, because icons offer interesting visual potential for the merging of symbolism with design. Icons tend to be compact and 'loaded' images and can range from traditional symbols of the sacred to the signs, myths and symbols of contemporary media". The artists exhibiting are Rick Andrew, Gert Swart, Gill Andrew, Alex Gower-Jackson, Andy Mason, Frances Andrew, Kim Longhurst, Bronwyn Vaughn-Evans, Martin Burnett, Daniel Ohene-Adu, Hylton Alcock, Zane Lang and Silvi Judd.
Opens: Sunday December 3, 2000 at 4 p.m.
Main Gallery, N S A Galleries, 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood, Durban, South Africa, 4001
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Masha du Toit
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'The South Africans' - an installation of embroidered puppets by Masha du Toit
Masha du Toit grew up in the Western Cape and completed a degree in Fine Arts at the University of Cape Town, Michaelis. Specializing in sculpture she moved to Durban in 1995 to do a Higher Diploma in Bronze Casting at the Technikon Natal. The exhibition 'The South Africans' consists of a number of embroidered puppets, each representing a stereotypical South African character. There is the Street Kid and the Car Guard, the Swart Gevaar, and the Bouncer. Each has an appropriate sound track linked to it which reflects alternative aspects of the character. Light and playful in appearance, decorated as they are with embroidered silks and velvets, covered with beads and sequins the puppets embody serious contemplation on living in contemporary South Africa. The artist states that "when I was working on these pieces, I struggled with various issues, foremost of these being our overriding obsession with Crime and Security. What causes someone to commit crime? I thought of the struggle to ensure your own safety without sacrificing empathy for the people on the other side of the security gate. I tried to understand how it is possible for people to be capable of unthinking and callous cruelty - not just the actions of criminals, but also the lack of human feeling we all learn to practice in order to survive in an unjust world. My aim is not to judge, or to make caricatures of typical "South African types," but rather to explore the complexity of the people who surround me. " Opens: Sunday December 3, 2000 at 4 p.m. Closes: New Year's Eve, December 31, 2000
Multi-media room, Mezzanine, N S A Galleries, 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood, Durban, South Africa, 4001
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Abigail Scorer
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'Beadwork' from beadwork - an exhibition of jewelery that incorporates beadwork
The aim of this exhibition is to promote an awareness of the potential of beads from a maker's point of view and to increase the awareness of the beauty of beads from a wearer's point of view. The show is curated by Chris de Beer and Abigail Scorer, both from the Jewellery Design department of the Technikon Natal. The department is instrumental in developing indigenous jewellery in South Africa, particularly in KZN with its wealth of craftspeople. To this end there has been several bead workshops in the department and a new interest in beads has resulted from these. Interaction with the African Art Centre has also been fruitful and several of the pieces on display are the result of this interaction. Opens: Sunday December 3, 2000 at 4 p.m. Closes: New Year's Eve, December 31, 2000
Park Gallery, N S A Galleries, 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood, Durban, South Africa, 4001
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NSA Annual Christmas Show
Whilst the commercial aspect of Christmas can get one down the NSA engages in an annual display of affordable work made by local craftspeople and artists. Well known for its incredible selection the aim is to promote local ingenuity and talent whilst providing something for everyone. Guaranteed not to disappoint any visitor the NSA Gallery shop will make available the best on offer in the province. The shop will extend onto the Mezzanine area during this time, giving an even bigger selection of quality goods. Opens: Sunday December 3, 2000 at 4 p.m. Closes: New Year's Eve, December 31, 2000
Mezzanine Gallery, N S A Galleries, 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood, Durban, South Africa, 4001
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Alan Alborough
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Standard Bank Young Artist Award winner Alan Alborough
Half way round the country, on its nationwide tour as this year's Standard Bank Young Artist Award winner, Alan Alborough's show mutates as it travels, necessitating the artist to move with it constructing and reconstructing the installations as he goes. Thus, despite having been seen already in Grahamstown, Port Elizabeth and Pietermaritzburg, it arrives fresh and challenging to viewers in each city whilst not growing tired on the artist. Opening last week in Durban the familiar, quotidian objects made strange encourage the viewer to engage with the unknown. Having been described variously as 'magical', 'conceptual', 'mysterious', 'beautiful, 'alchemical' and 'immaculate' this is a show that critics have waxed lyrical on whilst at the same time being lost for words of explanation. In a sense, having been born in Durban, Alborough returns home on this leg of the tour. Alborough did his degree at Wits and his masters at the renowned Goldsmiths College in London. He presently lives in Cape Town and teaches at Stellenbosch. For more info go to the constantly updated www.alanalborough.co.za.
This is a show not to be missed.
Durban Art Gallery, 2nd Floor, City Hall, Smith Street
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Fabric artist Leone Malherbe leads empowerment workshops
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Amazwi Abesifazane - Voices of Women
Another project initiated by sculptor Andries Botha comes to fruition this week when 22 beadworkers and doll makers show work that has come out of a series of empowerment workshops that helped black women deal with traumas from their personal lives. Fabric artist Leone Malherbe, assisted by Hlenge Dube as facilitator and Dudu Mngadi as translator led the project. The women were asked to depict a memorable or traumatic event from their past using applique and embroidery embellished with beads. Recalling tragedies they had suppressed or put behind them the women's stories include tales of houses burning down, taxi accidents, stock theft, drought, floods, robbery and murder, and, somewhat more exotically, elephants on the rampage.
The exhibition attempts to contextualise each woman's story with a photograph of the artist and her story in both English and Zulu. The project has been funded by the Prince Klaus Funds of the Netherlands.
Opens Saturday November 18, 2000 at 12 noon.
For more information tel: (031) 3012717
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