Retrospectives for Aardklop Arts Fest
Leora Farber's 'All You Can Be' and Robert Hodgins' major retrospective exhibition celebrating 50 years of painting are the pick of the crop at this year's Aardklop Arts Festival taking place in Potchefstroom, North West Province. Hodgins is this year's official festival artist while Farber and Thijs Nell were invited to present solo exhibitions. The other big highlight is Jan van der Merwe's Bagasie installation, fresh from this year's FNB Vita Art Prize, installed in the Perskor exhibition hall at Potchefstroom University.
Hodgins' show is a true retrospective, tracking his career from his student days at Goldsmiths College in London (represented by a lithograph he has kept since then) to his rise as South Africa's most celebrated contemporary painter. Often likened in style to his contemporary, Francis Bacon, and one of the best colourists (and wits) around, Hodgins' modus operandi has been steadily evolving into a more amorphous treatment of figures and spaces in hot, vivid tones. The show is installed in the foyer of the Sanlam Auditorium at Potchefstroom University.
Leora Farber's harrowing but aesthetic sculptural objects and multimedia installations in her solo show 'All You Can Be' comprise a kind of mini-retrospective - a collection of work made during the past five years. Dealing with the construction of femininity and related body politics ("beauty is always made, not born"), Farber works with found medical objects and clothing, wax, video and photography to give visual form to surgical processes and cosmetic obsessions. An excellent text by visiting academic Professor Pamela Allara from Brandeis University in Boston, USA, accompanies the show, which is installed on the top floor of the Snowflake building, Wolmarans Street.
Both shows run until October 13.
Other events on the visual art programme include:
- Thijs Nell in the Main Museum (corner Gouws and Wolamarans streets)
- A group exhibition entitled 'Kontemporer uit die Aard van die Saak' by Johan Moolman, Braam van Wyk, Alain Nortje, Marina Koeleman, Louisemarie Combrink, Susanna Swart, Katrina Potts, Deon Coetzer and Andre Venter in the Snowflake building
- 'Oorspronge' by Coral Fourie
- 'The Many Faces of North West' photography competition
- Work by staff and students of the Vaal Triangle Technikon Klerksdorp campus.
For information on venues, contact 082 850 1200 or visit www.aardklop.co.za.
