Archive: Issue No. 60, August 2002

19.08.02 Stanley Hermans at the Lipschitz Gallery
19.08.02 The 3rd Cape Town Public Sculpture Competition maquettes at the AVA
19.08.02 Christian Guy Tschannen at Bell-Roberts Art Gallery
19.08.02 Zapiro at Centre for African Studies, UCT
19.08.02 UCT HIV/ AIDS Unit presents a live art exhibition
19.08.02 Free Lunchtime Lecture by Rick Lowe
01.08.02 Tracy Lindner Gander at João Ferreira Gallery
01.08.02 Rodney Place at Bell-Roberts Art Gallery
01.08.02 Postgraduate students from the University of Stellenbosch & Carine Terreblanche at the AVA
01.08.02 Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds at Greatmore Studios
01.08.02 Hanneke Benadé, Retha Buitendach, Michèle Nigrini and Diek Grobler at the Chelsea
01.08.02 Drawings by Irma Stern at the UCT Irma Stern Museum
01.08.02 Mountain/ Berg at the Arts Association of Bellville
01.08.02 'Call me dog' at the Hof Street e-Centre
17.04.02 'Beyond the Material' at the National Gallery

19.08.02 The Jupiter Drawing Room at the US Art Gallery
01.08.02 Willie Bester at the Sasol Art Museum

This exhibition includes a selection of non-figurative and abstract works that painter Stanley Hermans produced following an extended stay in Paris in 1999. He explores, in this work, various aspects of post-impressionism, modernism and studio painting. The works range from figurative and landscape paintings to completely abstract works. The work delineates a continuity from post-impressionism (Matisse and Cezanne in particular) to the modernism of Klee, Kandinsky and Pollock as well as the work of South Africans Mohl, Mancoba, Sekoto and Pemba.

Stanley Hermans' work is to be found in numerous public and private collections in South Africa.

Opening: August 15
Closing: August 31

Lipschitz Gallery, 2a Uwe Koetter, 4th Floor, Amway House, Dock Road, Foreshore, Cape Town
Tel: 082 900-6631

The J.K. Gross Trust in association with the Association For Visual Arts (AVA) are host to an exhibition of all the maquette entries for the Third Cape Town Public Sculpture competition. The winner of this competition will be announced at the opening, after which the artist will have 12 months in which to complete and install the winning sculpture on the designated site, corner of St George's Mall and Shortmarket Street, Cape Town. The judges are Alan Alborough, Rayda Becker, David Brown, Marilyn Martin, Melvyn Minnaar and Zwelethu Mthethwa.

R80 000 has been set aside for the making and installation of the winning piece and R40 000 is the prize money for the winning sculptor. This is the third time the competition has been run in the city and has previously resulted in John Skotnes' Mythological Landscape in Thibault Square and Brett Murray's controversial Africa at the intersection of Waterkant Street and St. George's Mall. Ultimately, the competition intends to create a "walkway" of public sculptures in the heart of the inner city focusing on the St George's Street Mall precinct. In addition to enhancing the urban landscape, the sculptures serve as a drawcard for tourists and have been the focal point of heated debate on the meaning of public art and the very significant, but underrated, role it plays in the lives of a city and its peoples. To date, more than 100 artists have registered their participation in the competition.

Opening: Tuesday August 20, 6pm
Closing: August 30

Association for Visual Arts, 35 Church Street, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 424 7436
Fax: (021) 423 2637
Email: avaart@iafrica.com
Website: www.ava.co.za
Hours: Mon - Fri 10am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 1pm

The Bell-Roberts presents a brief exhibition, described as a 'painting installation', by Swiss artist Christian Guy Tschannen. Other than the show's title, '11 Squares 11 Places', the gallery has shed no light on what's to be expected.

Opening: Saturday August 17, 11.30am
Closing: August 24

Bell-Roberts Art Gallery, 199 Loop Street, Cape Town
Tel: 021 422 1100
Fax: 021 423 3135
Email: suzette@bell-roberts.com
Website: www.bell-roberts.com
Hours: Mon - Fri 8.30am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 1pm

This 'Africartoon Exhibition' features Jonathan Shapiro's (aka Zapiro) take on the politics and economics of South Africa and the African continent - a bold and satirical look at how global financial institutions and western powers are foisting economic policies onto Africa. Zapiro's biting sense of humour reinforced by his razor-like pen make these images enormously effective.

Zapiro, a former radical underground artist, has become the country's most popular political cartoonist. Over the past decade, he has chronicled almost every major event in South Africa's transition from apartheid to democracy and has poked fun at all aspects of life in the new South Africa, from corruption and crime to soccer and Mandela's love life. Though his politics are usually left of centre, Zapiro is quick to point out hypocrisy wherever he sees it.

Opening: Saturday August 14
Closing: August 30

Tel: 650-2308
Email: jschoof@humanities.uct.ac.za
Hours: 8.30am - 4.30pm

University of Cape Town (UCT) students will express their hopes and fears about HIV/ AIDS through a live art exhibition that will include music, drama and other performance art. This has been organised by the UCT HIV/ AIDS Unit and SHARP (Students HIV and AIDS Resistance Programme). It is a collaborative project that involves students from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, the music school, and other faculties at UCT as well as the Memory Box Project.

This is the first event of its kind on campus and provides an opportunity for students to get involved in education and awareness of the pandemic. The UCT HIV/ AIDS policy was drafted and adopted in 1993. Prior to this, the UCT HIV/AIDS Education Working Group was established and there was widespread consultation (both internally and external to UCT) around drawing up and implementing the policy and the programme. In 1994, funding was obtained to hire a part-time UCT AIDS educator. One of the first projects to be built up was a students' peer education project known as SHARP. In 1997, UCT took over funding a permanent, full-time post. In 2000, the policy was upscaled, another post established and the current HIV/ AIDS Unit was set up.

Thursday August 22, 1-2pm

The event will take place at the Plaza in front of Jameson Hall, Upper Campus, UCT
Tel: (021) 650-2212

Rick Lowe is a Houston-based artist/ activist. In 1992, he founded the Project Row Houses - an initiative in which 22 historic old slave houses were saved from demolition through a community-based programme of restoration. Today, some of the Project Row Houses are used to house and provide daycare for the children of single mothers who are furthering their education, while others are used as art installation spaces. Nationally known African-American artists install their work for four month periods and make themselves available during that time for community interaction programmes. In 1997, Project Row Houses was awarded the Rudy Bruner Award for Urban Excellence. This project has served as a catalyst for realising meaningful community and social development in its neighbourhood. Lowe has been involved in numerous community activities - he has served as board president of the National Association of Artist Organisations since 1995; in 1994 he was appointed a commissioner of the Municipal Arts Commission in Houston; he has been a member of the SHAPE Community Centre in Houston since 1988. Lowe is also current board member of the Rice Design Alliance at Rice University. He is a Loeb Fellow at Harvard Design School and is currently working with Rem Koolhaas, architect of the new Seattle Public Library, as chief arts planner.

Billed earlier this year as a headline panelist at the Public Eye symposium 'Beyond the Gallery: Art in Public Spaces', Lowe had to withdraw at the last minute. His visit to Cape Town will allow us the opportunity to hear his presentation, which will include a slide show.

Friday August 30, 1-2pm

Lecture Theatre, Michaelis School of Fine Art, 31-35 Orange Street, Gardens, Cape Town

Lowe will be in Cape Town from the August 29 � September 1 and can be contacted via Dale Dodgen on 082 417-5166 or Public Eye at info@public-eye.co.za.

'Flounce', photographer Tracy Lindner Gander's new show and second one-person exhibition in Cape Town, has been produced in collaboration with artist Katherine Bull. The images are the result of both the model and the photographer's response to a specific environment. The locations are significant in that they are largely uninhabited, or 'lost', public spaces, yet are known to us all - an oasis alongside the highway, a deserted city or a shadowy forest for example. The use of a single model establishes a familiar and repetitive motif in the pictures. The use of unsettling locations and carefully chosen costumes result in an almost surreal disjunction between the figure and the environment. In contriving these situations, Gander explores photography's ability to engage with both fiction and fact.

Gander's last exhibition 'Babes' also saw her photographing female models, examining the myth that sexiness and intelligence are mutually exclusive.

Opening: Wednesday August 7, 6pm
Closing: August 31

João Ferreira Gallery, 80 Hout Street, Cape Town
Tel: 021 423 5403 or 082 490 2977
Fax: 021 423 2136
Email: info@artjoao.co.za
Website: www.artjoao.co.za
Hours: Tue - Fri 10am - 6pm, Sat 10am - 2pm

'Bread City' is part of Rodney Place's ongoing 'RETREKS' project, tracking the emergence of post-democratic metropolitan Johannesburg from four social viewpoints: yuppie/buppie suburbanites; cowboy and -girl Calvinists, Anglo-tribal aristocrats of KwaSandton; and new African immigrants into the city. The project proposes - through a variety of mediums and actions - a "cultural approach to urbanism in South Africa". Says Place, "South Africa has a continuing disdain for its human content".

Some of the work showing at the Bell-Roberts was seen recently in Senegal on Dak/Art 2002. To help the new African immigrants who come to Egoli, Place designs streetwear conveniently printed with maps of the cities traffic arteries and buildings, hanging the outfits against the wall surmounted by portrait heads of the newly arrived wannabe workers. Elsewhere on the show, are handsome portraits of another kind - of South Africa's three major cities, Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban, each capturing something of the essence of the city. An energetic and cheerful show.

Opening: July 24
Closing: August 16

Bell-Roberts Art Gallery, 199 Loop Street, Cape Town
Tel: 021 422 1100
Fax: 021 423 3135
Email: suzette@bell-roberts.com
Website: www.bell-roberts.com
Hours: Mon - Fri 8.30am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 1pm

In the main and upstairs galleries, postgraduate Honours and Masters students of the University of Stellenbosch Department of Fine Art will show current work. Entitled 'Smaties', and featuring the work of both Honours and Master's students, the exhibition includes work by Christo Basson, Lynette Bester, Kurt Campbell, Mandy Conidaris, Carla du Plessis, Corlie de Kock, Anne Emslie, Rikus Ferreira, Piet Grobler, Sonja Gruner, Joanne Halse, Lenie Harley, Marthie Kaden, Renata Kriegler, Mariette Ligthart, Bernice Lizamore, Lyn Smuts, Kitty Schneider, Ronel Steyn, Michael Taylor, Ann Walton and Cate Wood. The show encompasses all the disciplines taught in the department including painting, sculpture, graphic design, jewellery design and illustration. Exploring wide-ranging material and thematic concerns, the show provides an intriguing insight into the systematic artistic investigations of the participating artists, as well as a selective overview of current art practices and thinking.

In the Long Gallery, Goldsmith Carine Terreblanche, a one-time Jewellery Design student and lecturer at the University, will show her innovative range of designer jewellery . Terreblanche applies traditional goldsmithing techniques in her use of gold, silver and other metals, but combines these with unusual materials to produce a unique and fresh aesthetic. Her jewellery is playful, experimental, celebratory and, often, quite daring, "but still highly wearable". Terreblanche works full-time from a studio in Cape Town where she also executes commissions for clients. She holds various degrees in jewellery design from Stellenbosch University, where she lectured for six and half years, and also spent a year studying at the renowned Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam. In 1999 she was co-curator of the well-received 'Low Lustre High Art' exhibition which showed in venues across SA, including Cape Town in 1999.

Opening: Monday July 29 , 6pm
Closing: August 17

Association for Visual Arts, 35 Church Street, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 424 7436
Fax: (021) 423 2637
Email: avaart@iafrica.com
Website: www.ava.co.za
Hours: Mon - Fri 10am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 1pm

Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds is a Native American artist well-known throughout the world. He has previously visited Cape Town where he delivered a number of lectures. His show is simply entitled 'Public Art Works from Oklahoma' and consists of sign panels, billboards and photographs created in Oklahoma which were presented all over the USA.

Opening: Wednesday July 31, 5.30pm
Closing: August 9

Greatmore Studios, 47 Greatmore Street, Woodstock
Tel: (021) 447 9699
Email: artmore@mweb.co.za

Hanneke Benadé, Retha Buitendach, Michèle Nigrini and Diek Grobler recently opened the Mind's I Art Space in Pretoria which permanently showcases their own work. The Chelsea Gallery is now host to a collection of their recent work.

Benadé is known for her evocative use of soft pastels on paper, her highly ethereal mood studies, notable in that they have largely but not exclusively focused on women. She explores the minutiae of daily life, yet somehow manages to extend these references to include aspects of the human condition. Her work was recently seen on the 'Grime' show at the Bell-Roberts. Retha Buitendach also had work on this show. She deals with nature in both its macrocosmic and microcosmic detail. The hidden interconnectedness of all living things is an important underlying theme, as is the chance connections between seemingly unrelated things or even words. The human figure is seldom directly visible in her artworks, although man's presence is often implied.

Diek Grobler calls his work loosely 'Magic Realism'. Taking things which seem insignificant in terms of social or political issues, he extracts the essentials of human drama. Using biblical narratives in a contemporary context, he injects these with humour and irony, thus subverting the accepted meanings.

Michèle Nigrini's work has always showed a preference for organic form. Known for her huge gardenscapes and later vegetables studies, she now presents images of her own surroundings receiving sustenance from the broader environment in which she lives. Indigenous plants, trees, stones, hedges, grass, birds populate her works. "... (T)he extent to which we take these everyday objects for granted, is the precise extent to which they govern and inform our lives - representing the logos of a culture and recording its life history."

Opening: Tuesday August 6, 6pm
Closing: August 24

Chelsea Art Gallery, 51 Waterloo Rd, Chelsea-Wynberg
Tel: (021) 761 6805
Fax: (021) 761 6805
Email: chelsea-gallery@mweb.co.za
Website: http://home.mweb.co.za/ch/chelsart/gallery
Hours: Tues - Fri 9.30 am - 5.30pm, Sat 9.30am - 1pm

Irma Stern sketched prolifically on her travels throughout Africa and Europe. Her drawings, described as dynamic, swift and sure, encompass harbour scenes, bustling street life, quiet portraits and nudes. This show features drawings done on her travels by land and sea through the Congo, Zanzibar and many parts of Southern Africa.

Opening: June 25
Closing: August 10

UCT Irma Stern Museum, Cecil Road, Rosebank
Tel: (021) 685 5686
Fax: (021) 686 7550
Email: bpettit@protem.uct.ac.za
Hours: Tue - Sat 10am - 5pm

Coinciding as much with the Cape Town 350 Commemorative year as the United Nations' proclamation of 2002 as International Year of the Mountain, 'Mountain/ Berg' is a group exhibition by 20 established and young upcoming artists in collaboration with artists from Streetwires. The work takes a look at Cape Town's Table Mountain from a contemporary perspective. All participants, including Theo Kleynhans, John Murray, Cobus van Bosch, Jonathan Comerford, Solomon Siko, Conrad Theys, Sandra Hanekom, Lize Hugo, Sanell Aggenbach, Lien Botha, Nadja Daehnke, Katherine Bull and Xolile Mtakatya have produced an individual artwork and will also donate a panel to make up a collaborative image of the mountain. This image will be sold as one work and half of the proceeds will be donated to the Cape Town Child Welfare Society for the Street Children Project.

In the Vestibule Gallery selected wire artists from the Streetwires project will work along the same lines These artists, Winston Rangwani, Geoff Mwhaza, Botha Bute, Makakhane Shasha and "Toto" Persy Mdidimba learnt some of their trade at Streetwire and recently worked there with sculptor Nico Eilers.

The gallery has recently re-christened itself 'Art.b - The Arts Association of Bellville' and has revamped its website. Visit www.artb.co.za

Opening: July 17
Closing: August 21

Arts Association of Bellville, Library Centre, Carel van Aswegen Street, Bellville
Tel: (021) 918 2301/2287
Fax: (021) 918 2083
Email: artb@icon.co.za
Hours: Mon - Fri 8am - 8pm, Sat 9am - 5pm

A powerful, realistic exhibition of photographs and texts from troubled youth on the Cape Flat is to be permanently hosted at the Hof Street e-Centre

The name of the exhibition is derived from a disturbing anecdote: 'I stopped and asked the kid his name and he answered, "Call me dog, tomorrow you will forget my name, but when you look at your dog maybe you will remember me" '.

In the exhibition, young people between the ages of 13 and 19 explore their lives through the medium of disposable cameras. Curators: Kali van der Merwe and Valentina Leo. Creative writer: John Fredericks. Kindly sponsored by: Fuji - Kodak - Kerkinactie/ children at risk, Handprint Photographic Specialists - Russell Jones @ Scanshop - Campus Camera.

Opening: Tuesday, August 6 at 6 pm

6 Hof Street, Gardens, Cape Town
e-mail: smoller@mweb.com

'Beyond the Material' is a rare showing of conceptual art from the National Gallery's permanent collection. Works have been selected by curator Emma Bedford in order to exemplify or raise questions about the nature and significance of conceptual art.

Artists whose work will be shown include South Africans Willem Boshoff, Alan Alborough, Neil Goedhals, Kendell Geers, Malcolm Payne and Sue Williamson, South Africans living abroad such as Shelley Sacks and Gavin Jantjes, UK artist Roger Palmer and American Martha Rosler. Works include Payne's Rorschach Test (1973-74), which he has donated to the collection, and Alborough's Heathen Wetlip, previously shown here on the Johannesburg Biennale.

The exhibition opens incrementally from April to August as rooms become available.

South African National Gallery, Government Avenue, Company Gardens, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 465 1628
Fax: (021) 461 0045
Email: ebedford@iziko.org.za
Website: www.museums.org.za/sang
Hours: Tues - Sun 10am - 5pm

Cape Town advertising agency, The Jupiter Drawing Room, is showing a collection of their graphic design work in the US Art Gallery. Packaging, posters, logos and corporate identities by designers Joanne Thomas, Janet Kinghorn, Sam Roman, Brandt Botes and Rikus Ferreira will be on view. Consistently one of South Africa's top agencies, and voted the fifth best agency in the world last year, The Jupiter Drawing Room has won many local and international awards.

Opening: August 14
Closing: August 29

US Art Gallery, corner Dorp and Bird Streets, Stellenbosch
Tel: (021) 808 3524
Email: usmuseum@maties.sun.ac.za
Hours: Mon - Fri 9am - 5pm, Sat 9am - 1pm

'Willie Bester - 15 years' provides a welcome mid-career survey of the work of this well-known Western Cape artist. During the 1990s Bester experienced a meteoric rise to international fame, through his extraordinarily moving commemorative portraits of 'struggle' leaders, and his collage works and salvage sculptures focusing on the complex realities of life in Apartheid and post-Apartheid South Africa. Today, Bester is without doubt one of South Africa's foremost artists. Strongly represented in most major art collections in South Africa, his mixed media paintings and sculptures are also housed in numerous private and public collections throughout Europe and the USA. Ironically, though, it is mainly in West Africa, Belgium, Spain, Italy and, most recently, Malaysia, that attempts have been made to mount informative retrospective exhibitions of his work. In South Africa his exhibitions to date have mostly been at commercial galleries. Most of the work here has been borrowed from private and corporate collections. The guest curator, for this exhibition will be Prof. Sandra Klopper, Head of the Department of Fine Arts, University of Stellenbosch.

Opening: August 8
Closing: September 29

Sasol Art Museum, 52 Ryneveld Street, Stellenbosch
Tel: (021) 808 3524
Fax: (021) 808 3669
Email: usmuseum@sun.ac.za
Hours: Tues - Fri, 9am - 4.30pm, Wed 9am - 8pm, Sat 9am - 5pm, Sun 2pm - 17pm