Archive: Issue No. 72, August 2003

16.08.03 Mark Hipper at João Ferreira
16.08.03 3rd International Impact Printmaking Conference
16.08.03 Prints from the Artists' Press Archive, at the Castle of Good Hope
16.08.03 Degrees of Three Dimensionality at João Ferreira
16.08.03 Tracing Times at the South African Museum
16.08.03 Josie Borain at Bell-Roberts
16.08.03 Lundi Mduba at Greatmore Studios
16.08.03 Walkabout of Empowering Prints exhibition at the SANG
16.08.03 Ed Younge at Bell-Roberts
16.08.03 Willem Boshoff at Michael Stevenson Contemporary
16.08.03 Michaelis Lunchtime Lecture by Marcus Wormstorm
01.08.03 Jesus Macarena-Avila at Greatmore Studios
01.08.03 New Shows at the AVA
01.08.03 Michaelis Collection talk
16.07.03 Jeremy Wafer at Michael Stevenson Contemporary
16.07.03 Sandile Zulu at Michael Stevenson Contemporary
01.07.03 Rorke's Drift: Empowering Prints 1962 - 1982 at the SANG

16.08.03 Print Works from the Fine Art Department at the US Art Gallery
16.08.03 Alan Alborough at the Sasol Art Museum extended

'Exitus' is the name Hipper has given to his new body of work, first shown at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown last month. The title, he says, is a word used both in German slang and forensic and medical jargon to denote death and relates to the English word 'exit'.

His paintings arose as a response to the current war in Iraq, the events preceding it, and the Orwellian newspeak that accompanied it. Hipper has attempted to empty his paintings of all but two signs: exit/exitus. "An exit sign," he says, "is a cue, a directive; it marks the possible call for action, a point of departure, of death, and is a signal (a shifting signifier) of some threat, warning or challenge". He intends the paintings to communicate on the level of "a challenge, a call for action, a demonstration, and hopefully, ideally, as an imperative".

Opens: August 7
Closes: August 30

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

The 3rd International Impact Printmaking Conference takes place this year at Michaelis School of Fine Art. Organised by Stephen Inggs, head of the printmaking department at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, in conjunction with Dominic Thorburn of the Rhodes University Department of Printmaking, this third edition of Impact will be the first time the conference has been held in South Africa.

Linked exhibitions of prints will take place at the art school, the South African National Gallery, the Cape Town Castle and at other venues throughout the city. International guest speakers include Faye Hirsch, founding editor of Art on Paper, and Lynne Allen, of the International Center for Innovative Printmaking at Rutgers University, New Jersey. William Kentridge will be the keynote speaker on the first night of the four-day event.

The programme includes daily practical printmaking workshops in the Michaelis studios run by Richard Kennedy, Eric Avery and Bill Lagatutta as well as panel discussions and stand-alone papers on every aspect of printmaking, from the theoretical and historical to the aesthetic. Considerations of the place of prints in the art markets of the world will also come under discussion.

There are many exhibitions taking place during the conference, in conjunction with particular presentations and at conference venues. Some of these are listed here, the rest can be found online, where you can also register.

Opens: August 27
Closes: August 30

Email: ajames@curie.uct.ac.za
Website: www.impact2003.uct.ac.za and www.uct.ac.za/depts/pgc

In addition to this, most of the city's galleries are holding exhibitions associated with conference. A selection is listed here.

'Prints from the Artists' Press Archive' is an exhibition of graphic work and forms part of the prestigious 3rd Impact International Printmaking Conference, hosted by Michaelis in collaboration with Rhodes University.

More than 40 works will reveal the diversity of talent that has been engaged in the collaborative productions of these works. Artists' Press founder Mark Attwood has worked in the printing field since 1981, initially as an apprentice in The Broederstroom Press, his father's printshop, later training in hand-printing at Lowick House Print Workshop, in the United Kingdom. He became the first African to complete the Professional Printer Programme at the renowned Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.

On returning home in 1991 he set up the Artists' Press lithography studio in Johannesburg. This workshop is dedicated to the production of limited edition hand-printed lithographs and is the only kind of its sort in South Africa. Today the Artists' Press offers a variety of print media to artists and also publishes lithographs and sells prints and artists' books.

The Artists' Press has worked with many well-known South Africans, emerging talent and artists from abroad. Published artists include Sam Nhlengethwa, Penny Siopis, Dumisani Mabaso, Kim Berman, Chris Diedericks, Flip Hattingh, Kendell Geers, Robert Hodgins, William Kentridge, David Koloane, Patrick Mautloa, Tommy Motswai, Diane Victor, Nhlanhla Xaba, and, in a different vein, even former president Nelson Mandela. The exhibition presents a tribute, through a series of artists' prints, to the important influence of the Artists' Press on South African printmaking.

Opens August 18
Closes September 12

Good Hope Gallery
The Castle, Darling Street, Cape Town
Tel: 469 1160 / 462 3751
Hours: Mon - Sat 9.30am - 4pm

For more information, call Professor Dominic Thorburn from the University of Rhodes, Grahamstown -
Tel: (046) 603-8194
Fax: (046) 622-4349
Email: d.thorburn@ru.ac.za

Running in conjunction with the 3rd Impact International Printmaking Conference, 'Degrees of Three Dimensionality' presents a collection of work from Scotland that investigates how three-dimensional digital design and industrial manufacturing technologies might bring about a radical shift in the practice of printmaking.

Throughout its history, printmaking has always been open to the appropriation and modification of emergent technologies in the pursuit of visual creativity. This relationship, for the printmaker, with material and chemical technologies resonates at different levels. The strong printmaking tradition in Scotland, and these new visual and material forms of printmaking, makes clear links between current developments in new digital practice. The works on display are the result of research and external collaborations by the group Drawing Out Digital Media at Gray's School of Art, in conjunction with the Robert Gordon University.

Opens August 21
Closes September 13

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

The Exchange Portfolio Exhibition, co-ordinated by printmaker Justin Diggle, includes the work of 20 artists from all over the world. Participants have all produced work on the same format but in a variety of media. Thematically the exhibition deals with the idea of the traces of historical events and how history is created by the recognition and interpretation and possible manipulation of these traces. Participants include Diane Victor and Gabriel Clark-Brown from South Africa, Catherine Lynch (Ireland), Kathleen Stevenson (USA), Yoko Kawazoe (Japan), Diane Longley (Australia) and Sean Caulfield (Canada).

Opens: August 27
Closes: August 30

Email: justindiggle@hotmail.com

South African Museum, Company Gardens, Queen Victoria Street, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 424 3330
Email: cquerido@iziko.org.za
Website: www.museums.org.za/iziko
Hours: Mon - Sun 10am - 5pm

When Josie Borain left her native South Africa for Paris in the early 1980s, she didn't know that within two years, she would usher in the era of the supermodel, with a seven-figure salary as the face of Calvin Klein's Obsession. She was aware, however, that modelling would not last forever. Combined with a love for photography and Leica cameras, this inspired her to document every aspect of her daily life on film. Twenty years and over 35 000 images later, she is still busy. 'You and Me' presents a selection of these images and is accompanied by the launch of an extensive book of the same name.

Opens: August 6
Closes: August 23

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

Lundi Mduba hails from Khayelitsha and recently participated in a three-month residency at Greatmore Studios where he completed this body of figurative paintings entitled 'Phefumla - Breath'.

Opens: August 7
Closes: August 29

Greatmore Studios, 47-49 Greatmore Street, Woodstock
Tel: (021) 447 9699
Email: artmore@mweb.co.za Website: www.greatmoreart.org
Hours: Mon-Fri 9 a.m � 4 p.m

Elizabeth Rankin (of the University of Auckland) and Philippa Hobbs (of MTN) will facilitate a walkabout of their curated show, 'Rorke's Drift: Empowering Prints'. The Evangelical Lutheran Church Art & Craft Centre at Rorke's Drift in KwaZulu-Natal was a highly influential source of training for black artists in South Africa at a time when tertiary institutions were closed to them. The exhibition comprises 120 artworks created during the politically fraught period from 1962 - 1982. Entrance costs R10.

1pm, Tuesday August 26

South African National Gallery, Government Avenue, Company Gardens, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 481-3823 from 8:30am-1pm
Fax: (021) 461 0045
Email: ebedford@iziko.org.za
Website: www.museums.org.za/sang
Hours: Tues - Sun 10am - 5pm

Ed Younge's 'The Muse' shows at the Bell-Roberts for only one night, and features, apparently, a string quartet. It's tricky to know what to expect, bearing in mind that Younge recently auctioned Jo'Burg bar owner and Long Street institution Bruce Gordon, who was bought by Suzy Bell and donated to South African National Gallery.

6pm, Wednesday September 4

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

'Licked' is Willem Boshoff's first one-person exhibition to be held in Cape Town. He will present two large installations as well as a number of smaller pieces. Boshoff has been writing dictionaries and 'concrete poetry' since 1977 and he combines these two esoteric interests in the production of three-dimensional 'books' which he will show here. Boshoff's Index of (B)reachings pays respect to secrets of decipherment practiced in divination technologies and practices of both Europe and Africa. Since 1982 he has been studying the names of plants from across the world, and this information he uses in Garden of Words 1, which he calls a kind of 'futile hothouse of thousands of plants prepared for the end of time'. Boshoff will also show a number of map-works.

Boshoff needs little introduction to South African audiences. His work is held in most of the country's major collections and he has exhibited extensively abroad, notably at 2001's Venice Biennale.

Opens Tuesday August 26
Closes Saturday September 27

Michael Stevenson Contemporary
Hill House, De Smidt Street, Waterkant, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 421 2575
Email: michael@michaelstevenson.com
Website: www.michaelstevenson.com
Hours: Mon - Fri 9am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 1pm

Marcus Wormstorm traverses the realms of DJ, composer, sound artist, performer and visual artist. Selected as one of the most significant under-25s in South Africa by SL Magazine, his work in numerous media is becoming increasingly well-known. He is a founder member of the Constructus Organisation and is a leading figure in contemporary South African popular culture.

1.15 - 2.15, Wednesday August 20

Michaelis Lecture Theatre, Hiddingh Campus, 31-37 Orange Street, Gardens
Tel: (021) 480-7111/4
Email: lessex@hiddingh.uct.co.za

'Invisible Skin' is the title given to Chicago resident Jesus Macarena-Avila's show at Greatmore studios. The show follows his residency there and also a collaborative work produced with Liza Grobelaar exhibited recently at Observatory's Museum of Temporary Art. He has also produced a collaborative work with Seth Harper which is currently on show there. Born to Mexican immigrants, Macarena-Avila concerns himself here with the racial and cultural 'melting pot' of the American Metropolis. He has created a body of work with bubble-wrap and other plastic, commonly used to protect artwork in transit. Exploring his personal mixed-race identity, Macarena-Avila explores the schism between equal rights and equal opportunity. Using a fragile, transparent material, he defines the skin as 'a site for social and political discourse where culture is not an un-individuated alloy but a sturdy sheath composed of delicate and innumerable individuals'.

Opens: 6pm, July 14
Closes: August 4

Greatmore Studios, 47-49 Greatmore Street, Woodstock
Tel: (021) 447 9699
Email: artmore@mweb.co.za Website: www.greatmoreart.org
Hours: Mon-Fri 9 a.m � 4 p.m

Forming part of the international Impact Printmaking conference to be held in Cape Town, artist Thembinkosi Goniwe is co-ordinating an exhibition of printmakers. Participating will be Peter Clarke, Roderick Sauls, Sipho Hlati, Thembeka Quangule, Ernestine White and himself. This exhibition, examining issues around the medium, is entitled SURFACE=/=PRINT. In the Long Gallery, Michaelis graduate Lyndi Sales will be holding a one-person show. Sales held an exhibition at João Ferreira about 18 months ago and was one of the 10 finalists for the ABSA L'Atelier Award.

Opens: August 11
Closes: August 30

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

Angela Zehnder, art restorer with Iziko Museums, presents an illustrated talk on the role played by Cape Town's famous Michaelis Collection at the important European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht, Holland. Seventy-nine paintings from this world-renowned collection, two of which were restored by the Limburg Conservation Institute, are currently on loan to the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht. Normally housed at Cape Town's Old Town House, the collection is possibly one of the most important of its kind outside Europe and includes works by Dutch Masters such as Frans Hals and Jan Steen. The paintings were also displayed at the 'Kunst uit die Kaap' exhibition in Maastricht.

Zehnder will discuss various aspects of this important event and the preparations leading up to it. Promotional material, such as catalogue and pamphlets will be on display.

1pm, August 6

R15 for Friends of SA National Gallery and R20 for guests

Tel: 467-4662 (Tue-Thu 10am-2pm)

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

Jeremy Wafer's first major exhibition of work in Cape Town follows closely on last year's comprehensive 'Survey', held at Stellenbosch's Sasol Art Gallery. Including both new and older work, the show is entitled 'Topographies'.

The title derives from the landscape motifs, which run through a large part of Wafer's work. While the landscape has been represented more literally in his photographic pieces, either close-ups of the ground, stones or in images made from aerial photographs, the less representational works also allude to land or landscape. The repetitive marking of the surfaces or the repetition of similar images in a series relates to Wafer's growing interest in musical rhythm, particularly the repetition of simple motif characterising, for example, Zulu walking songs. Wafer's exploration of landscape relates to marking or measuring, establishing one's place in the world.

Wafer was born in 1953 and has a Master's degree in Fine Art from the University of the Witwatersrand. He taught for a long time at the Durban Technikon (now the Durban Institute of Technology) and currently heads the Fine Art Department at the Witwatersrand Technikon. His work is included in all South Africa's major collections and he has produced numerous commissions, most recently one in collaboration with Greg Streak at the Arabella Sheraton Grand Hotel adjoining the Cape Town International Convention Centre.

Opens: July 23
Closes: August 16

Michael Stevenson Contemporary
Hill House, De Smidt Street, Waterkant, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 421 2575
Email: michael@michaelstevenson.com
Website: www.michaelstevenson.com
Hours: Mon - Fri 9am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 1pm

Sandile Zulu's first one-person exhibition in Cape Town is entitled 'Points of the Delta'.

The show's title refers to the triangular mass of sediment that accumulates at a river's mouth, causing the river to disperse into a maze of smaller tributaries. Deltas have been inestimably significant in the development of human society through the agriculture and cultivation made possible by the deposit of fertile soil at a river's mouth. Zulu also refers to the 100 million-year-old star, 'Delta Cephei', which belongs to Population II, a class of old stars found in the core and in the halo of the Milky Way galaxy.

In this show Zulu employs both a five-pointed star and simpler triangular shape repetitively throughout his large and complex abstract works, which are made literally using fire, water, earth and air. His work is often characterised by the repetitive branding and burning of surfaces and materials. Zulu describes his new work as a continuation and partial consolidation of the investigative process started with his earlier exhibitions 'Fire' (1995), 'Artomic' (1997) and 'Camouflage' (1998). Here he delves deeper into his exploration of revolutionary and transformative acts.

Zulu lives and works in Johannesburg. Since graduating from the University of the Witwatersrand in the early 1990s he has exhibited extensively in South Africa as well as in the US, Germany, France, Sweden, Scotland and the Seychelles. He has won numerous international awards and is represented broadly in public, corporate and private collections.

Michael Stevenson Contemporary
Hill House, De Smidt Street, Waterkant, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 421 2575
Email: michael@michaelstevenson.com
Website: www.michaelstevenson.com
Hours: Mon - Fri 9am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 1pm

This retrospective exhibition has been curated by Elizabeth Rankin and Philippa Hobbs and is an MTN Foundation Arts and Culture flagship project. The Evangelical Lutheran Church Art and Craft Centre at Rorke's Drift has long been recognized as a highly influential source of training for black artists in South Africa in the years when tertiary institutions were closed to black students. Rorke's Drift has been included in many accounts of South African art, but exhibitions and publications devoted to the Art and Craft Centre have been surprisingly few, and those which take printmaking as a theme even more rare. This exhibition showcases the period from the conception of the Centre at Ceza to the closure of the Fine Art School in 1982.

The exhibition includes 120 artworks representing a wide range of Rorke's Drift printmakers, many of whom, like Paulos Mchunu and Michael Ngema, are virtually unheard of. At Rorke's Drift, discussion and debate around social issues was encouraged, affording the art a political dimension that has not fully been acknowledged. The exhibition will include works that underscore this point, from very early 'resistance' pieces, by artists like Azaria Mbatha to overtly political examples of work by Charles Nkosi and Tony Nkotsi. The centre is perhaps most famous for John Muafangejo's linocuts, but a wide range of media - including etching, aquatint, drypoint and mezzotint as well as screenprinting - were part of the curriculum. The exhibition also includes print designs for tapestries and ceramic decoration.

Opens July 7
Closes September 7

South African National Gallery, Government Avenue, Company Gardens, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 481-3823 from 8:30am-1pm
Fax: (021) 461 0045
Email: ebedford@iziko.org.za
Website: www.museums.org.za/sang
Hours: Tues - Sun 10am - 5pm

Staff members and students of the Fine Arts Department, University of Stellenbosch were invited to contribute a printed artwork with no restriction in theme, scale or specific print medium to this exhibition, facilitated by artist and lecturer Katherine Bull.

Set to coincide with the 3rd Impact International Printmaking Conference, to be held in Cape Town at the end of the month, it is hoped that the works shown will hopefully inspire and encourage further critical exploration around aspects of printmaking and its continued relevance in contemporary art practice. Participants have been encouraged to extend and integrate printmaking with their ongoing area of theoretical/ practical investigation. The staff members come from Graphic Design, Jewellery Design, Fine Art and History/ Theory of Art.

Contributing are Elizabeth G�nter, Sandra Klopper, Lize van Robbroeck, Marthie Kaden, Anton Kannemeyer, Jean Brundrit, Paddy Bouma, Kurt Campbell, Ronel Steyn, Alan Alborough, Kieth Dietrich, Vivian van der Merwe and Katherine Bull.

Alongside the staff exhibition there will also be a selection of student work. At the university, printmaking is offered as an integrated component of the Graphic Design and Fine Arts programmes and as a means of expanding the students' visual vocabulary in their search for the most appropriate medium for the development of an individual visual language.

Opens: August 14
Closes: September 4

US Art Gallery, corner Dorp and Bird Streets, Stellenbosch
Tel: (021) 808 3524 or 072 133-2006
Email: kgb@sun.ac.za or usmuseum@maties.sun.ac.za
Website: www.sun.ac.za/usmuseum
Hours: Mon - Fri 9am - 5pm, Sat 9am - 1pm

Alan Alborough's cryptically entitled show 'work[ing/ in] pro[cess/ gress]', at the Sasol Art Museum, has been extended to October 31.

Alborough has been in residence at the gallery on Wednesday evenings and Sunday afternoons as the work has evolved. This has happened very slowly, mostly because the size of the task he has set himself. Alborough is creating an enormous piece of French knitting from the gallery's circular balustrade, which encircles the opening in the first floor of the building. Running concurrently has been a series of workshops for school children aimed at, amongst other things, populating and demystifying the museum's large, often ignored spaces.

Alborough has been remarkably prolific in the last few years, having produced his major Standard Bank Young Artist Award exhibition, a solo show at the US Gallery and having won the last FNB Vita Award with another major work last year.

Opens: May 7
Closes: October 31

Sasol Art Museum, 52 Ryneveld Street, Stellenbosch
Tel: 021 808 3693
Fax: 021 808 3669
Email: lmdw@sun.ac.za
Website: www.sun.ac.za/usmuseum
Hours: Tues - Fri, 9am - 4pm, Wed 9am - 8pm, Sat 9am - 5pm, Sun 2pm - 5pm