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Archive: Issue No. 48, August 2001

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MONTHLY ISSUE NO. 48 AUGUST 2001



Durban
28.08.01 'Denial and Revelation' - Artists for Human Rights at the BAT
28.08.01 'Toyota Hilux Show' at the BAT's Democratic Gallery
28.08.01 Dance meets performance art at Jomba!
28.08.01 'Amazwi Abesifazane' at Thekwini Business Development Centre
28.08.01 'Black and White Copies' - a project by Miguel Petchkovsky
21.08.01 Art from the Han Coray Collection at the Durban Art Gallery
21.08.01 'The Politics of Space' at the KwaMuhle Museum
21.08.01 Contemporary dance performance at the NSA
21.08.01 'Art Against Apartheid' at the Durban Art Gallery
21.08.01 Ceramics by the Nala family at the African Art Centre
14.08.01 'Imperial Ghetto' - A photographic diary by Omar Badsha
14.08.01 'Lines of Violation' at the Durban Art Gallery
31.07.01 FNB Vita Art Prize 2001 at the NSA Gallery
31.07.01 August Red Eye @rt at the Durban Art Gallery
Pietermaritzburg
31.07.01 Hylton Nel retrospective at the Tatham Art Gallery
31.07.01 'The Hourglass Project' at the Tatham Art Gallery


Artists for Human Rights

Detail of the invitation



DURBAN

'Denial and Revelation' - Artists for Human Rights at the BAT Centre

The Durban-based Artists for Human Rights group is exhibiting a selection of works by its South African and international artists to coincide with the World Conference on Racism. Artists for Human Rights (AHR) is a non-profit organisation that has produced a number of international print portfolios promoting awareness of Human Rights. AHR recently received the Medaille d'Excellence, a major international award, at the Youth Empowerment Summit and the UN NGO Alliance meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, in the category HIV/AIDS Media for one of its projects, the HIV/AIDS billboards 'Break the Silence'.

For the billboard project, 31 community-based and professional artists contributed artworks. The majority of artists are from South Africa, with others selected from a network of well-established international artists. AHR hopes that the Medaille d'Excellence confirms to potential supporters of AHR efforts that artists can contribute creative solutions towards threats to society. With the international recognition that the award brings, AHR hopes that greater involvement and funding support from abroad can be solicited.

'Denial and Revelation' draws from the considerable base of artistic production that has contributed to a variety of projects that the AHR has been involved in and should be an interesting contribution to the debates raised by with the World Conference on Racism.

Opening: August 29 at 6.30 for 7pm
Closing: September 8

Menzi Mchunu Gallery, BAT Centre, Maritime Place, Small Craft Harbour
Tel: (031) 332 0451
Fax: (031) 332 2213
Email: info@batcentre.co.za
Website: www.batcentre.co.za
Hours: Mon - Fri 9am - 5pm, Sat - Sun 9am - 4.30pm





'Toyota Hilux Show' at the BAT's Democratic Gallery

Considering the title, you might expect yet another show of luxury 4x4 vehicles more likely to see the tarmac driveways of plush mansions than the mud of Africa. But you'd be wrong in more ways than one. Pull in to the BAT Centre for some really innovative design and material solutions in this exhibition of handmade miniature cars by Michael Mbatha and the boys from Mkhambathini.

Opening: August 31
Closing: September 19

Democratic Gallery, BAT Centre, Maritime Place, Small Craft Harbour
Tel: (031) 332 0451
Fax: (031) 332 2213
Email: info@batcentre.co.za
Website: www.batcentre.co.za
Hours: Mon - Fri 9am - 5pm, Sat - Sun 9am - 4.30pm


Tim Feldmann

Tim Feldmann
Photo: Per Morten Abrahamsen



Dance meets performance art at Jomba!

This year's FNB Vita Jomba! dance festival features some "must-sees" for those interested in the cross-pollinated area of contemporary dance and performance art. Showcasing both local and international artists, Jomba! has scooped one of South Africa's most provocative choreographers, Robyn Orlin, as well as the highly respected Danish choreographer Tim Feldmann and his WILDA Dance Productions.

Orlin has redefined choreography in South Africa - her appearance at the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale (1997) in an elasticated harness, tutu and crash helmet surrounded by 30 100W light bulbs which she systematically destroyed, like much else in her iconoclastic journey through convention, epitomises her approach.

Orlin's work daddy, I've seen this piece 6 times before and I still don't know why they're hurting each other ... (a piece for 5 performers, a stage and an audience), was first commissioned for the FNB Vita Dance Umbrella in 1999. Having toured extensively from Johannesburg to Madagascar to Paris, the piece has finally arrived in Durban and shows for two consecutive nights. It is performed by Toni Morkel, Nelisiwe Xaba, Gerard Bester, Pule Molebatsi, Nico Moremi and Dudu Yende.

WILDA Dance Productions' The Exploded Man is a grotesque and funny cartoon-noir. It explores the human form - deformed or conforming; man as disciple or freak. Feldmann has assembled a powerhouse of Danish and international artists, including London's slam-poet king MC Jabber, the slingerjaxx orchestra Bazookahosen from Denmark, ballet dancers Helen Saunders and Trinidad Bermudez (formerly of the Royal Danish ballet and American Joffrey Ballet), and mad film animators Spild Af Tid ApS. The result has been described by the Danish press as a "shortwired dance performance, where live music, yodelling, bouncing beats, operetta, scales and surf-rock create the backdrop for a cloning between classical ballet, flamenco and Riverdance - all with toppings of animation, puppets and finger dolls."

WILDA was founded by Feldmann in 1996 to explore, create and present experimental dance. The company is renowned for its performers, its original artistic vision and its wild and virtuoso choreography

Feldmann will also be presenting a solo piece entitled Ø. Originally choreographed in 1997, Ø is influenced by a series of Egon Schiele's self-portraits. Here the physical control of the dancer is "wrecked" and challenged in a series of "close-up", virtuoso manipulations of the male body.

WILDA's trip to South Africa was sponsored by the Danish Theatre Council (under the Danish Ministry of Cultural Affairs) and the Danish Centre for Culture and Development (DCCD). Tickets are R20 (students R15), and all performances are at the Elizabeth Sneddon Theatre, University of Natal, Durban.

Robyn Orlin: daddy I've seen this piece ... - August 28 and 29 at 7pm
WILDA: The Exploded Man - August 31 at 7pm
WILDA: Ø - September 1 at 2.30pm and 7pm


Celani Nojiyeza

Celani Nojiyeza
Embroidery on cloth, 2000



'Amazwi Abesifazane (Voices of Women)' at Thekwini Business Development Centre

'Amazwi Abesifazane (Voices of Women)' is an exhibition organised by Andries Botha under the auspices of Create Africa South (a non-profit visual arts organisation). An ongoing project, this exhibition extends the run - and content - of the recent show of "memory cloths" at the Durban Art Gallery. In these works women have stitched, sewn and embroidered representations of important events in their lives onto squares of cloth, thus making public private experiences that have strong political implications.

The exhibition is part of an event titled 'Creativity in Crisis' running parallel with the World Conference Against Racism. The two-day conference starts on August 29 and covers such topics as 'Women's Creativity Against Discrimination' and 'Indigenous Women in Social Healing and Conflict Prevention'. The event is supported by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Swiss Department Federal of Foreign Affairs (DDC) , L'Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie and the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries (CPLP), and produced in co-operation with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva.

More information on the exhibition can be found at www.voices.org.za

Opening: August 28

Thekwini Business Development Centre, 127 Alice Street, Durban


Miguel Petchkovsky

Miguel Petchkovsky



'Black and White Copies' at Thekwini Business Development Centre

'Black and White Copies' is a project initiated by Angolan-born, Dutch-resident artist Miguel Petchkovsky, in connection with the World Conference Against Racism. As the title of the project suggests, it looks to interrogate notions around identity - race, authenticity, original and copy. Petchkovsky - considered white in Angola, black in Europe; his name of Portuguese and Russian descent - obviously regards the questions of "Who am I?" and "To whom and where do I belong?" as personally pertinent.

This project, however, is not about Petchkovsky - he sees his role more as "artistic director", in that he has set the parameters within which he has invited the public, art students and professional artists to respond. Simply, he has hired a black and white photocopy machine that will be located at the Thekwini Business Development Centre, 127 Alice Street. Anyone and everyone is invited to come and make a maximum of 10 free photocopies between August 26 and 28. In return, one copy must be given as a contribution to the project that will see a collation of these photocopies assembled into a publication of sorts.

This compilation promises to be an interesting mix of "copies" in which the varying interpretations of "original", "authentic" and "identity" are seen in the context of Durban, South Africa, in the moment that it hosts the World Conference Against Racism.

'Black and White Copies' accompanies the exhibition 'Amazwi Abesifazane (Voices of Women)'.

August 26-28

Thekwini Business Development Centre, 127 Alice Street, Durban
Tel: Miguel on (031) 201 7000 or Storm on (031) 202 3686


Han Coray Collection

Mask from the Han Coray Collection



'Soul of Africa' - Art from the Han Coray Collection at the Durban Art Gallery

Han Coray was one of the first collectors of the early 20th century to exhibit African tribal objects as art. His collecting was based largely on aesthetic considerations and the collection has always been regarded as an art collection and never as an ethnographic one. The people for whom these objects were made, however, did not separate form from function and the "aesthetic" effects were an indication of the object's status and importance.

While the concept of art, as is understood in the Western European paradigm, did not exist in these communities, the success of the work in rituals and ceremonies was linked to the craftsmanship. In most of the cultures represented in the Han Coray Collection, for instance, "good" and "beautiful" are expressed by the same word. The many chairs and stools that were owned by persons of a high status are one example where the symbolic ornamentation reflects their rank, prestige and standing in the world.

The exhibition is structured into six thematic areas that address royalty, proclamations of status, rituals of passage, religious practices, funerary and ancestral beliefs and ceremonial instruments. In a museum environment, these pieces are out of context, removed from their natural life cycle. For example, idealised human figures carved by the Baule to assuage the spirits of the wilderness were usually smeared with beer or blood from sacrificial offerings. While some figures still bear traces of their earlier lives, most were cleaned off before they were sold to European collectors. Similarly, power figures were altered once the maker had completed them. Substances thought to contain supernatural powers were added or nails were driven into them to stimulate healing powers, elicit advice, or seal an oath.

Exhibition curator Miklós Szalay says Coray came to believe there was no distinction between African art and religion. Szalay goes on to say that today, the unity between art, religion and society no longer exists in Africa the way it did in the 1920s. "Art, it is said, strives for autonomy," he writes in the catalogue, but then cautions that as art is released from its social and religious context, its importance is diminished.

Opening: September 2
Closing: November 25

Durban Art Gallery, 2nd floor, City Hall, Smith Street
Tel: (031) 311 2262
Fax: (031) 311 2273
Website: www.durban.gov.za/museums/artgallery/index.htm
Hours: Mon - Sat 8.30am - 4pm, Sun 11am - 4pm



'The Politics of Space' at the KwaMuhle Museum

Subtitled 'Apartheid Architecture, Urban Design and Spatial Policy', this promises to be an interesting exhibition. Drawing on Michel Foucault's writings and elaborations on Bentham's Panopticon as a model for the organisation of the apartheid city, the exhibition will demonstrate that in South Africa the control of the black majority was based on the same principles as the Panopticon, a prison in which all prisoners can be watched from one point, a structure which is "the epitome of surveillance; a machine for controlling people, a laboratory of power". The exhibition will use text, documents, photographs and artefacts to show the way in which apartheid was implemented, taking Durban as its main point of reference. The exhibition will also examine resistance to apartheid and the way in which the oppressed claimed spaces within the city to demonstrate their opposition to racist and oppressive laws.

The guest speaker for the opening evening will be Minister of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology Ben Ngubane.

Opening: Tuesday August 28 at 6.30pm for 7pm

KwaMuhle Museum, 130 Ordinance Road, Durban
For more information contact Lorelle Royeppen at loreller@crsu.durban.gov.za
Tel: (031) 311 2235 or 083 234 4598
Fax: (031) 311 2224



Contemporary dance performance at the NSA

The NSA Gallery in collaboration with FNB Vita's Jomba! Contemporary Dance Experience presents Saint Leu/Joburg, return, an extract from everyday life, to be performed outside - a duet by Valérie Berger of Reunion and South Africa's Sello Pesa.

Berger is a choreographer for the Tetradanse company and is currently in residence at the Séchoir theatre in Saint Leu, Reunion. She and Sello Pesa, Inzalo company dancer and choreographer, met in Antananarive in 1999 during Meetings of the Choreographic Creations of Africa and the Indian Ocean.

Since September 2000, several flights have taken Berger to Johannesburg and Pesa to La Reunion, and it was during this time that the piece took shape. The work explores daily life and the boundary that separates our social, conditioned space from a more primary space in which we trust our instincts and our senses. In the piece Berger and Peso reference the habitual limits of our conditioned lives; internally the repetition of actions in daily life, humour, irony, and light cruelty while externally the body language of instinct and organic movement. They speak of their project as soft evidence that becomes more and more solid during and between rehearsals until it is temporarily concretised in the final performance.

This is a co-production between Le Séchoir theatre of Saint Leu, Reunion; the French Institute of South Africa and FNB Vita.

Performance: Monday August 27 at 6pm
Tickets: R15 at the door

NSA Gallery, 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood
Tel: (031) 202 3686
Fax: (031) 202 3744
Email: iartnsa@mweb.co.za
Website: www.nsagallery.co.za
Hours: Tues - Fri 10am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 4pm, Sun 11am - 3pm


Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein
Gouache



'Art Against Apartheid' at the Durban Art Gallery

Spanish artist Antonio Saura and French artist Ernest Pignon-Ernest devised the concept of an association of Artists of the World Against Apartheid in Paris in 1983 - the same year the United Democratic Front was formed in South Africa. International artists responded to the appeal by Saura and Pignon-Ernest to denounce apartheid's crime against culture and fight for a new non-racial democracy by producing a range of art that was both powerful and moving.

This international collection was first shown in Paris in November 1983 at the Rothschild Foundation. Since then it has been exhibited in over 40 cities worldwide. In 1995, a year after the first democratic elections in South Africa, the collection was presented to South Africa and it is now housed in Parliament.

The collection comprises works by 80 artists, as well as contributions by internationally acclaimed poets, writers and philosophers. Hazel Friedman comments: "The exhibition reads [most] effectively as an extraordinarily broad selection of works by representatives of popular international art movements of the late 1970s and 1980s ..." Artists include France's Christian Boltanski, showing conceptual photographs of children framed in glass; op art works by Venezuelans Carlos Cruz-Diez and Jesus Raphael Soto; abstract expressionism by Robert Motherwell and Antonio Tapies and pop art by English artist Joe Tilson. A gouache by Roy Lichtenstein, lithographs by James Rosenquist, mixed media by Claes Oldenburg and a figurative oil by Richard Hamilton are but a small fraction of the big-name works on this exhibition.

The exhibition forms one of the fringe activities of the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance that is being held in Durban in early September. It has been brought to the DAG by the South African government.

Opening: August 20
Closing: October 20

Durban Art Gallery, 2nd floor, City Hall, Smith Street
Tel: (031) 311 2262
Fax: (031) 311 2273
Website: www.durban.gov.za/museums/artgallery/index.htm
Hours: Mon - Sat 8.30am - 4pm, Sun 11am - 4pm



'Nesta, Thembi and Zanele' - Ceramics by the Nala family at the African Art Centre

Already in full swing at the African Art Centre, this show offers a rare chance to see the work of three members of the internationally renowned Nala family of ceramicists. Nesta Nala, born in Oyaya, Eshowe in 1945, has claimed a unique place for herself due to the exceptional quality of her traditional Zulu beer pots. Having been taught by her mother Siphiwe, who is still making pots, Nesta has in turn imparted her expertise to her daughters Thembi and Zanele. The classical forms and complex raised and incised designs on the meticulously finished pots which made Nesta famous have subtly evolved to reflect a contemporary interpretation in the work of her daughters.

African Art Centre, first floor, Tourist Junction Station Building, 160 Pine Street
Tel: (031) 301 2717 or 304 6369
Hours: Mon - Fri 8.30am - 5pm, Sat 9am - 1pm


Omar Badsha

Omar Badsha
Black and white photograph


Omar Badsha

Omar Badsha
Black and white photograph



'Imperial Ghetto' - Omar Badsha at the Durban Art Gallery

'Imperial Ghetto' is a photographic diary of people and events encountered by Omar Badsha in the Grey Street or "Coolie Town" area of Durban. The title 'Imperial Ghetto' is an ironic play on the fact that the streets at the heart of the ghetto were named by the colonial administration after Queen Victoria, her children and leading members of the Imperial establishment. The photographs, taken between 1978 and 1986, cover the period when hundreds of families who had lived in the area since the early part of the 20th century were forced to move. It was the time of growing militancy, the rise of worker and community anti-apartheid and resistance groups of which the photographer was an active participant and witness as this collection of photographs shows.

Badsha played an active role in the South African liberation struggle as a cultural and political activist and trade union leader. In 1979 his first book of photographs, Letter to Farzanah, published to commemorate the International Year of the Child, was banned. In 1982 he was instrumental in establishing Afrapix, the now legendary independent photographers' agency and collective. In 1984 his book on life in the massive informal settlements of Inanda outside Durban was published. Also during the 1980s Badsha headed the photographic unit of the Second Carnegie Inquiry into Poverty and Development in Southern Africa, and edited the seminal book on life in South Africa in the 1980s, 'South Africa: The Cordoned Heart'.

Since 1965 he has exhibited widely at home and internationally. His paintings and photographs are to be found in all the major public collections in South Africa and leading galleries and institutions abroad. Badsha lives in Pretoria and is the director of South African History Online, an internet education project on South African history.

Opening: August 20
Closing: September 20

Durban Art Gallery, 2nd floor, City Hall, Smith Street
Tel: (031) 311 2262
Fax: (0310 311 2273
Website: www.durban.gov.za/museums/artgallery/index.htm
Hours: Mon - Sat 8.30am - 4pm, Sun 11am - 4pm


Lines of Violation

'Line of Violation'
Plexiglass installation


'Lines of Violation' at the Durban Art Gallery

'Lines of Violation: Comfort Women Survivors' is a plexiglass installation depicting the hands of 52 former "comfort women" from the Philippines, Taiwan, Korea and Holland. These women were victims of the Japanese military policy during World War II of forcing young women in occupied territories into sexual slavery. Their story was kept hidden from the world for 50 years before a Korean woman broke the silence. Since then many women have come forward with similar stories.

Andrew Ward travelled to Taiwan, Korea and the Philippines to draw the hands of 52 survivors and record their stories. In the installation their voices tell of their experiences as victims 50 years ago, but also of their hopes and aspirations today as old women who have attempted to regain their honour and dignity through a campaign for restitution from the Japanese government.

The installation premiered at The Hague Appeal for Peace Conference in May 1999. More recently it was exhibited in Metro Manila and at the District Six Museum in Cape Town. It opened at the Durban Art gallery on National Women's Day, and will remain on view during the World Conference Against Racism, after which it will travel to Bangalore, India and Thailand.

Opening: August 9
Closing: September 9

Durban Art Gallery, 2nd floor, City Hall, Smith Street
Tel: (031) 311 2262
Fax: (031) 311 2273
Website: www.durban.gov.za/museums/artgallery/index.htm
Hours: Mon - Sat 8.30am - 4pm, Sun 11am - 4pm


Kathryn Smith

Kathryn Smith
The Way We Kiss in Public/A.D..A.S.T.W., 2001
Multimedia installation


Clive van den Berg

Clive van den Berg
Love's Ballast, 2001
Mixed media installation


FNB Vita Art Prize 2001 at the NSA Gallery

A month of art competitions in Johannesburg ends with the FNB Vita Art Prize opening in Durban at the NSA - the first venue to host the competition outside of Gauteng. This move confirms FNB Vita's commitment not only to rewarding excellence in the arts, but also to fostering contemporary art discourse within a wider community.

While the Vita is an established award it has only been around in its current format for four years (previous winners include Terry Kurgan, Jo Ractlife and Steven Cohen). This year Moshekwa Langa, Kim Lieberman, Robin Rhode, Clive van den Berg, Jan van der Merwe and Kathryn Smith, ArtThrob's Gauteng contributing editor, have been commissioned to produce new work. Commissioning fees increased substantially to R12 000 each this year, aided by a generous contribution from the Goodman Gallery. This year's winner will receive a cash prize of R35 000.

The selection of the commissioned artists includes input by the general public who nominate artists they think deserve recognition and a panel of visual art experts who make the final decision about who to commission. The selected artists must have exhibited work during the past year. This time round the selection panel comprises Nathi Khanyile, Pat Mautloa, Willem Boshoff, Natasha Fuller and ArtThrob's Durban contributing editor, Virginia MacKenny.

A full-colour catalogue will accompany the exhibition with contributions by James Sey, Clive Kellner and Rosalind Morris. The NSA Gallery will run an extensive educational programme during the exhibition.

Opening: Tuesday August 7 at 6pm
Closing: September 8

     See Reviews

NSA Gallery, 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood
Tel: 202 3686
Fax: 202 3744
Email: iartnsa@mweb.co.za
Website: www.nsagallery.co.za
Hours: Tues - Fri 10am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 4pm, Sun 11am - 3pm


David Haigh & Travis Lyle

David Haigh and Travis Lyle



August Red Eye @rt at the Durban Art Gallery

Packed with visual art this month, Red Eye features no less than 12 artists plus a futuristic jewellery installation and "art in action" with Performance 119. You can also marvel at acrobatic dancers as they push their bodies to the limits of physical endurance and flexibility or view Human Industry - a performance by the PACE Drama Group exploring the body as machine. Music offerings include the ever popular Eric Coolfire and DJs from the local drum scene.

Friday August 3 at 6pm

Durban Art Gallery, 2nd floor, City Hall, Smith Street
Entrance R15, R10 for members and students
For more info contact Liana Turner at tel: 311 2268
Website: www.redeyeart.co.za


Hylton Nel

Hylton Nel
Ceramic




PIETERMARITZBURG

Hylton Nel at the Tatham Art Gallery

Showing in the Tatham's ceramics room, this exhibition, curated by King George VI Art Gallery for the Grahamstown festival, is bound to engage more than just the ceramics aficionado. Hylton Nel's work is known for its paradoxes, seemingly naive and crude, yet simultaneously witty and knowledgeable. It assimilates many ceramic traditions, particularly those of the ancient Chinese, with masterful sophistication.

Closing: Sunday September 6

Tatham Art Gallery, cnr Longmarket St and Commercial Rd
Tel: (033) 342 1804/01
Hours: Tues - Sun 10am - 6pm




'The Hourglass Project' at the Tatham Art Gallery

In 1998 seven women artists from South Africa were joined by eight international women artists in a printmaking residency in the KwaZulu-Natal midlands. 'The Hourglass Project: Past, Present and Future: A Women's Vision' was the result of a partnership between master printer Malcolm Christian at the Caversham Press and the Fulton County Arts Council in the United Kingdom. Artists shared experiences and gained understanding of cultural diversity through art. The theme, a dialogue about "icons" for the millennium, examined ideas and values related to the passage of time.

Opening: Thursday August 2 at 6pm
Closing: Sunday September 2

Tatham Art Gallery, cnr Longmarket St and Commercial Rd
Tel: (033) 342 1804/01
Hours: Tues - Sun 10am - 6pm

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