Archive: Issue No. 29, January 2000

A painting by Karen Jay
on show at Bang the Gallery

Words of Art at Bang the Gallery

An exhibition of poetry by Douglas Wilson as interpreted by nine Cape Town artists opened on Monday January 17. The participating artists are Alex Hamilton, Shany van den Berg, Karen Jay, Leigh-Ann Matthews, Veronika De Greeff-Gabrielse, Johan Angus, Jane Eastwood, Peter Muller and Lilly Turner who interpret Wilson's work in a large variety of media. Opening night featured a performance by Wilson himself, who will also perform at 6 p.m. on January 21 and 28. Wilson has staged two independent productions over the past two years combining elements of performance art and drama to convey his poetry in a more visual and accessible manner. His first show, 'Indirect Confessions', was performed at the Grahamstown Arts Festival in 1998 where it was voted one of the top ten shows by the Argus Tonight.

Monday January 17 - February 5

Tom Cullberg's Featherdome in the Church Street mall will be a highlight of Art Night.

In a kind of pared down version of Art Night, Capetonians will be able to visit all the galleries and some restaurants, between Burg and Bree streets, on the evening of January 24. Participating venues include the AVA, the Mark Coetzee Fine Art Cabinet, DC Art, the Cape Gallery and several other art and antique dealers. Unlike Art Night, no buses will be running, but the area covered by this event is small enough for the pedestrian. The Church Street antique market will be running, and live entertainment by bands and musicians will be provided. All events are free.

Monday January 24, 6 - 10pm

Dave Southwood
Shrapnel 9 1999
hand colour prints
1m X 1m

The Cabinet will be between shows on the night of January 24 so Coetzee has organised a one night event on this evening. The event will be entitled '1 X 8 Repeated' and will include work by artists who have recently shown at the Cabinet

Monday January 24, 6-10pm

Karen Dando

Three new shows open here on the evening of January 24. Twinky Laubscher's body of work, consisting of small abstract paintings, will be shown on the ArtsStrip. Well known Capetonian Ishmael Thyssen will show in the Long Gallery. He is exhibiting a group of recent figurative mixed media paintings and carved and painted wooden reliefs. The highly regarded Karin Dando, whose work has not been seen in Cape Town for a very long time, is in the Main Gallery. Her oil and watercolour paintings explore the tension created by the interaction of physical, pictorial and emotional space in her work.

Monday January 24 - Saturday February 12

Greatmore Studios in Woodstock

The Greatmore studios are Cape Town's version of Johannesburg's Bag Factory and London's Gasworks, and function in a similar way. Local artists have extended and partially subsidised residencies in some of the institution's spaces and other studios are occupied by visiting foreign artists. The studios, which have been functioning for some time, open officially on Tuesday January 25. The opening show includes work by South Africans Bernie Searle, Ishmael Thyssen, Sophie Peters, Garth Erasmus, Gary Frier, Billy Mandindi, British resident Johannes Phokela and Indian resident Radhika Vaidyanathan.

Tuesday January 25, 5pm

Detail of a painting from '26 Acts of Balance'
See Artbio

Joao Ferreira is hosting this highly regarded show which is taking place at the Castle. Entitled '26 Acts of Balance', the show constitutes a series of paintings created over a period of a year-and-a-half. The body of work is divided into three groups entitled 'land', '26 acts of balance' and 'falling'. Kreutzfeldt has derived her images from newspaper cuttings and the visuals explore the drama of the everyday. The series addresses the impossibility of making sense through painting in a land of crisis. The show has been sponsored by the Institut Francais d'Afrique du Sud.

Wednesday January 12 - February 6

The Good Hope Gallery, The Castle, Buitenkant Street, Cape Town

Tel: 423-5403
Fax: 423-2136

Candice Breitz
Ghost Write Series 1999
Tippex on paper

Amanda Williamson
Pretty Baby, 1999
Fabric, fibreglass, paint
82x174x110 cm

Dana Hoey
The Boardroom 1998
C print

Given the dismal state of the art market and the inbred parochialism of most local critics, why would a group of New York artists, some of whom are represented by that city's top galleries, want to show as part of a group exhibition here?

In part, because it's the millennium, a time for new beginnings, and Cape Town is seen as a promising destination, untrodden ground, an opportunity to connect with a new audience. But mainly the energy for 'One Night Stand', the show to which opened at Joao Ferreira Fine Art on January 10 has come from the two curators, both South Africans and both practising artists. Justine Wheeler, a Wits graduate, is head of Jeff Koons' sculpture studio in New York, and Amanda Williamson, who grew up in Cape Town, has lived in New York for the past 14 years, and has a masters degree from Rutgers. Their show, 'One Night Stand', says the press release, 'is a celebration of Baccahnalian bliss at the turn of the millennium. It offers viewers a comforting breast in a cultural milieu torn between temperance and excess, with work ranging from the abjectly sordid to the euphorically horny'.

Nine artists are participating, some of whom are well known to Cape Town audiences: Lisa Brice and Candice Breitz, both currently in New York, have prepared new work for the show, and Brice will return for the opening. In 1998, Breitz exhibited her Ghost Series (1994-6) at the Chicago Project Room, using Tippex to whiten the bodies of women on ethnographic tourist postcards. For 'One Night Stand', Breitz again uses Tippex for a series of text-based pieces entitled Ghost Write Series.

Kara Walker sends up black social stereotypes by blowing old fashioned silhouette drawings to wall size scale, and staging her own tableaux. Sue de Beer's large scale photograph shows a model as a character with a severed torso from the movie Nightmare on Elm Street, the great teen horror classic. In Trisha, her severed torso sits against a wall smoking a cigarette. Laura Parnes will be exhibiting a movie poster and her video No Is Yes, a movie about fashion and transgression, and the commercialisation of nihilism, in which a couple of young girls murder their favourite alternative rock star.

Dana Hoey plays with fact and fiction in photographs which are seemingly realistic, but are in fact elaborate fictions. Amanda Williamson's large scale soft toy sculpture with its doll face, and mouth open in suggestive supplication considers the media pressure on young girl children to turn themselves into pre-pubescent sex objects.

Cecily Brown, represented by New York's Gagosian Gallery, works on paintings and videos which are testimony to sensual pleasure; and Durban's Asiya Swaleh puts a contemporary spin on to traditional erotic Indian prints. Also exhibiting is New York photographer Laure Leber.

See Reviews

Closes January 29

Mustafa Maluka in front of a detail of his work
See Reviews

As its name implies, this show represents the coming together of two currents. It forms part of a series of travelling exhibitions which opened in Luxembourg last year. Participating artists have created a work in collaboration, to varying degrees, with Louis Jansen van Vuuren. Arlene Amaler-Raviv, Willie Bester, Kevin Brand, Mark Coetzee, Eunice Geustyn, Mustafa Maluka and Zwelethu Mthethwa are among those taking part. The show has produced a high quality catalogue.

Until January 22.

Heart of Darkness, the powerful video installation by Kendell Geers and Bili Bidjocka, can be seen - or rather, experienced - in a darkened gallery flanking the Lieberman room. Considered by many to be one of Geers' best pieces, it was first seen on the Grahamstown Art Festival in 1997.

Until mid January

SANG, Government Ave, Gardens
Tel: (021) 4651628
Email: satsang@mweb.co.za
Website: www.museums.org.za/sang
Gallery hours: Tues - Sun, 10am - 5pm

See Reviews

A Russian Poster on view now at the SANG

In 1991 the South African Library donated to the SANG a collection of Russian posters from World War II. The posters were in poor condition and have since been restored. They are now to be exhibited for the first time since their restoration, and it will be the first comprehensive selection of such work ever to be exhibited in SA. The posters first appeared on the windows of the Tass news agency in Leningrad, and are both striking works of art as well as a vivid historical record of the war as experienced by Russians.

Through January

Cyril Power
The Tube Station c.1925
colour linocut

In response to the approaching new millennium the SANG is producing an exhibition which explores cultural perceptions and expressions of time and space. The exhibition draws mostly on work in the gallery's permanent collection, and each curator has explored these ideas in their particular area of speciality. The title of the show, 'Theory and Myth', points to the diverse interpretations of time and space which the show includes and work as diverse as contemporary paintings and age-old rites of passage is presented. Complementing an exhibition on the theme of time and space at the SA Museum, this show ultimately concludes that the dawning of the new millennium is relative only to the birth of Christ and not necessarily important in non-Western, non-Christian cultures.

Invite for Other People's Property

Spraycan artists from The Villainous Animatorz, Your Millennium's Best and Free Flight Corporation are featured on an exhibition entitled 'Other People's Property' at the South African Museum. The group is billed as 'the friendliest, funniest, most talented, non-CFC using crews in South Africa, and their show is sponsored by Trafalgar Property and Financial Services.

Detail of a Derek Bauer cartoon from the 80's

This exhibition presents an overview of this art-form both here and in Europe. It includes over 200 works by cartoonists, caricaturists and artists, with some works on loan from the National Gallery. Cartoonists and satirists have arguably reached greater audiences with their social commentary than many of our traditionally esteemed and established artists. South Africa has been called a "cartoonist's paradise" because of its unique social and political problems, and in this spirit, the commentary of Boonzaier, Tony Grogan, Fred Mouton and other well known cartoonists is included. The exhibition pays tribute to those who have entertained and enlightened us over the years with their perceptive and amusing visual commentary.

November 12 - March 2000

M D'Agent
Frolicking Democracy
linocut
21.5 X 30.8cm

Hard Ground Printmakers, originally started by Jonathan Comerford, is celebrating its 10th year of independent printmaking with an exhibition at the Sanlam. Printmaking is no easy task and requires a considerable investment in equipment and materials, not to mention labour. For most artists access to such resources is only possible within the framework of institutions like technikons and universities. Yet, ever since 1989, Hard Ground Printmakers has produced art independently of such an institutional life-line and they have made these facilities available to many other, both established and emerging, artists. All this makes for a successful business that benefits both the workshop and the artists who make a steady income from the sale of their works through the workshop.

Until January 22.

Bridgette Baker
In celebration of my 100th sent e-mail message (detail)
Cloth covered buttons imprinted with digital images, card

An exhibition of functional art and contemporary decor opened on Thursday December 9 at 7 p.m.with contributions from such artists as Bridget Baker, Brendhan Dickerson, Brett Murray and Lisa Perold.

Durant Sihlali
Utopian Wall May 1999
Colour Cotton Fibres
Diptych, 98 x 216 cm and 12 x 195 cm

'Wamkelekile kwi Nkulungwana entsha no Durant Sihlali' at the Goodman

Paper-meister Durant Sihlali helps us to usher in the new year with a collection of works that he says are his spontaneous responses to his environment and creative life. Sihlahi, who is continuously experimenting and refining his papermaking process to the extent that he has designed and built machinery tailor-made for his purposes, is primarily concerned with man's quest, which he believes is to make one's presence known by any means possible. His raw material is the ancient mark-making found on rocks, caves, wood or metal. As these bespeak a specific time or place, Sihlali feels a strong ancestral connection to them which he transforms into vibrant works on a larger scale than almost any other artist working with handmade paper.

January 29 - February 19, 2000

Robert Hodgins
A Beast Slouches 1986
Acrylic on Canvas
122 X 173cm

To people with any interest, however fleeting, in the history of this country's visual culture, 'Emergence', should need no introduction. Curated by Julia Charlton and Fiona Rankin-Smith in consultation with Marion Arnold, this overview traces 25 years of cultural production underpinned by and dialoguing with major changes in the political, societal and technological fabric. Opening at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival 1999, the show moved from there to the King George VI Gallery in Port Elizabeth, followed by the Durban Art Gallery, and now comes to the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg. Given the scale of the show (in excess of 150 works), achieving comfort and breathing space between works has proven a challenge. But for those wanting a quick fix-speed read of contemporary South African visual arts from the time of the first television broadcast to the embracing of IT, this should do the trick.

Walkabouts with the curators will held on Wednesday, February 9, February 23 and March 9 between 1.00 p.m. and 2.00 p.m.

Visit the very informative but aesthetically disturbing website at www.wits.ac.za/emergence.

Kathryn Smith
Lethal Spaces #3 1999-2000
Digital c-print
50 X 35 cm

'Emotions and Relations', curated by Hentie van der Merwe, features camera-based works by, amongst others, Jo Ractliffe, Clive van den Berg, Luan Nel and Stephen Hobbs. The show's conception reveals an intense awareness of the 'camera eye': its power to capture the intimacy of a fleeting moment, but also its fickleness and the endless possibilities for repetition and obsessive replay it provides. Content of work determined the selection process, with self-conscious subjectivity being a primary criterion. The images chosen bear witness to a complicity between photographer and subject, and explore the notion of 'relating' through a consideration of everything that this might mean.

February 1-19, 2000

The 1999 part-time jewellery students of the Johannesburg Art Foundation will be holding an exhibition of their work for one night only on Friday 28 January for prospective students and interested members of the public. This popular jewellery course incorporates a wide variety of methods, including wire work and soldering, setting of stones, enamelling onto wire worked objects, and cuttle fish casting. Part-time classes for 2000 start on February 5.

For further info, please phone 646-6197 or 486-1658/9.

Wim Botha
Make Yourself Hurt 1999
digital image, dimensions variable

Gordon Froud
Ultimate Communication 1999
30 x 40 cm
mixed media

The Johannesburg Civic Gallery, in conjunction with the MTN Art Institute and Ericsson, presents its annual fundraising show of good, affordable art. Each artist was given two cell phone pouches, donated by Ericsson, as a starting point for a work of art. The result is eclectic cellular mania, ranging from paintings to videos to lithographs to performance art and sculpture. Participating artists include Antoinette Murdoch, Anton Kannemeyer, Gordon Froud, Hentie van der Merwe, Mandla Mabila, Marc Edwards, Naeem Bismilla, Pitso Chimzima, Robin Rhode, Senzeni Marasela, Stompie Selibi, Veliswa Gwintsa, Wim Botha and 53 others. Catalogues of the exhibition are available, thanks to the sponsorship of the MTN Art Institute and Ericsson. We all love cell phones, so just admit it. Get down to the Civic and see what happens when they get turned into art.

Until January 25

See Reviews

Invitation image for 'The Mask' by Paul Alberts - South Photographs, Soweto 1983

Invitation image for Democracy's Images

'The Mask' at the Bensusan in MuseuMAfricA
November 21, 1999 - January 9, 2000

One connection between these two shows is that they opened within hours of each other on the same day. The other is they are both photographic, and thus continue a trend in exhibitions that has been quite marked in Johannesburg in the past year. Not that I'm complaining. There have been some real corkers. The much-lauded 'Democracy's Images' co-curated by scholar Rory Bester and Katarina Pierre of the BildMuseet, Umea, Sweden also continues a trend - that of a seemingly never ending and wonderful Sweden-South Africa 1999 partnership that has given rise to incredible opportunities, acquisition of skills and the sense that at least one country out there recognises the value of cultural production. The show features Kay Hassan, Minnette Vari, Joachim Schonfeldt, Santu Mofokeng and uber-young photojournalist Ruth Motau, amongst others.

'The Mask' at the Bensusan Museum in Museum Africa features images made by the members of South Photographs. This collective includes such major players as Jurgen Schadeburg, David Goldblatt, Motlhalefi Mahlabe, Paul Weinburg, Guy Tillim, Jodi Bieber (who also features on 'Democracy's Images')....the list goes on. Harrowing, amusing and lyrical, these masks don't hide but reveal wants, needs, desires and illicit agendas. South Africa has a fraught but fascinating history in terms of photographic images and photographic documentation and the 'harsh truth of the camera eye', once restricted and now emancipated, was and is still used to bear testimony and witness to the complex layering of experiences and realities. Don't miss these shows - they may just alter your point of view.

See Reviews

'Disposable Information' invitation detail designed by third year student Mario Prelorenzo

'Disposable Information' Student Exhibition at the Open Window

More of an introductory nod to prospective new students than anything else, the Open Window Art Academy mounts its annual student show for two days only, featuring work made during 1999. If the current semi-trend of judging a show by the quality of its invitation is anything to go by, then this one is slick, super-smooth and desperately fashionable.

January 26 to 28.

Norman Catherine
Green Man Salon 1990
Silkscreen
59,5 X 89,5cm

In 1999, six South African printmakers were selected from an exhibition at the State Theatre Art Gallery (STAG) to show their work in France alongside six reputable French graphic artists. In the spirit of reciprocity and cultural 'bridge-building', the STAG is hosting their first international show ever in the hopes of strengthening ties between France and South Africa. The number of artists has been increased so that approximately 80 works will be on display, including pieces by Norman Catherine, Zwelethu Mthethwa and Pierre Courtins, the latter curiously described as a " French renowned modernist". It sounds like it may be something of a mixed bag.

For more information contact Pieter van Heerden at (012) 322 1665 extension 2419 or check out the theatre's website at www.statetheatre.co.za

January 24 - February 11

Photograph by Liana Turner from her exhibition: Reflections of Beauty & Desire.

Red Eye Starts Again

Red Eye @rt starts off the new millennium on Friday, February 4 with its usual exciting line-up. In keeping with its mission to showcase the work of young artists, the February Red Eye @rt will give a preview of the annual KZN Matric Art students representing the best of the 1999 Matric year. Final year B.Tech students will also be showing selections from their final year exhibition. These include Emma Smith Award winner, James Beckett, Leigh Jamieson, Liana Turner, Cyril Mkhwanazi & others. Some exciting cutting edge art will be on view.

A special treat for those who wonder what the new millennium has in store will be the internationally renowned, young, palm readers The Mystic Sisters, Mellissa & Jayshree Mallay, who have become extremely well-known for their uncanny predictions. They will have copies of their book Palm Reading and Positive Thinking available. Readings will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. so make sure you get in the queue.

Music will be provided by a jazz combo - Trio Wot who will play sax, bass & drums and D.J. as well as a traditional Indian group will provide a variety of music for all tastes. Mike Hunt will also play. Cash bar available. Entrance fee R10.

Pascale Chandler, who for the past couple of years has been running a highly succesful Durban painting studio offering dynamic courses to artists, will take over the NSA for three weeks from January 16. The 'Collaborative Painting Studio' exhibition will consist of recent works by participants of Chandler's courses. For the run of the exhibition, the studio will also move into the gallery space, allowing the public to become involved in the creative process. Activities will include life drawing and painting, as well as discussions on works produced during this time.

For more information please contact Storm van Rensburg or Nathi Gumede.

16 January - 3 February