Archive: Issue No. 76, December 2003

20.12.03 New exhibitions at Michael Stevenson Contemporary
20.12.03 IQE - The power of rock art: ancestors, rainmaking and healing at the SA Museum
20.12.03 Nicolaas Maritz at the UCT Irma Stern Museum
20.12.03 Berni Searle's 'Float' at the SANG
20.12.03 Susan Kruger-Grundlingh and Theo Kleynhan at Art.b
01.12.03 Karl Gietl at João Ferreira
01.12.03 12th Art Salon at the Bay
01.12.03 Prints and Drawings on show at the Sanlam Art Gallery
01.12.03 The Blowing of the Anvil at the Blacksmith Forge
01.12.03 Art of the Motorcycle at the VEO Gallery
01.12.03 Brenton Maart at Bell-Roberts Photographic
15.11.03 Minette Vari at Bell-Roberts
15.11.03 Louis Jansen van Vuuren at the AVA
15.11.03 Annual Michaelis student exhibition
15.11.03 AidsArt/ South Africa at the SANG
01.11.03 New Boshoff work on show at SANG
15.09.03 Co-existence: contemporary cultural production in SA at the SANG

STELLENBOSCH

15.11.03 Alan Alborough at the Sasol Art Museum extended again
15.11.03 Section 53 at the Sasol Art Museum and the US Gallery

Michael Stevenson Contemporary is host to two exhibitions through until next year. Hylton Nel presents some recent ceramics, while there is a curated show entitled 'Literally and Figuratively: Text and image in South African art'.

Nel describes himself as an 'artist-potter' which aptly refers to his interest in painted imagery as well as with form and function. Over the past four decades he has developed a style that makes reference to the decorative arts as much as literary and art historical sources. His plates, bowls, vases, plaques and figurative pieces are idiosyncratically decorated with witty - and sometimes poignant - line drawings and script. His imagery ranges from penises to Madonnas, and from cats through to angels, and his quotes are drawn from poetry and the daily press as well as his observations of the world around him. He presently lives on the outskirts of Calitzdorp, a small town in the Klein Karoo. A lavishly illustrated book on the artist accompanies the exhibition, and is jointly published by Michael Stevenson Contemporary and The Fine Arts Society in London.

Parallel to this is the group show of other artists who seamlessly integrate texts and images in their work. In the contemporary idiom, there are many artists who use both text and image to explore symbolism and convey narratives. Artists on this show range from Moshekwa Langa's word towers to Stanley Pinker's satirical oils, as well as works by Berni Searle, William Kentridge, Robert Hodgins, Jean Brunditt, Brett Murray, Chris Ledochowski, Colin Richards and Penny Siopis.

Opens: December 10, at 6pm
Closes: January 24, 2004

The long-awaited permanent exhibition of rock paintings and engravings is finally opening at the SA Museum. Entitled 'IQE - The power of rock art: ancestors, rainmaking and healing', the milestone exhibition, serves to demystify both the spiritual and workaday world of the Khoe-San people, descendants of the earliest inhabitants of southern Africa.

Rock art is undoubtedly one of the earliest manifestations of human's artistic awakening and Southern Africa is privileged to possess one of the richest legacies of cave and rock-shelter art in the world. Today, thousands of years after the first images were etched into rock, the results provide invaluable insight into what might otherwise have been an enigmatic past. Rock art holds the key to many mysteries of the past and interests not only those concerned with antiquity, but also artists, craftspeople and educators.

Despite their outward simplicity, the images are steeped in complexity and symbolism and the exhibition has necessarily drawn on the knowledge of the present-day San. Funded by a grant from the State Lotteries Board, the exhibition arises from a creative partnership with San and Khoekhoe descendant communities, curators, academics and leading designers. Associated educational and public programmes - for both schools and the public - will complement this powerful exhibition and include performance, storytelling, music, lectures and tours.

Opens: December 7

Nicolaas Maritz often exhibits at this time of year, and judging by the sales, his works are considered quite must haves. He shows a collection of work entitled 'Rock Pools, Insects and Other Paintings'.

Opens: December 9, at 6pm
Closes: January 17

Advance Notice: The South African National Gallery is hosting the travelling exhibition of the 2003 Standard Bank Young Artist Award winner, Berni Searle. A Capetonian artist with an international profile, Searle has exhibited her video and lens-based media installations in South Africa, the USA, Europe and Australia as well as at the 7th Cairo Biennale, Dakart and on 'Authentic/Ex-centric', at the 49th Venice Biennale.

The recipient of several international awards, she has most recently been short listed for the Artes Mundi or Arts of the World visual arts prize. The Standard Bank exhibition will coincide with that of the ten candidates for this prize in Wales, which will be judged in March by a panel including another international artist originating from Cape Town, Marlene Dumas.

Berni Searle is a conceptual artist who uses her own body to explore issues relating to personal and collective identity, aspects of South African history and her placement within it. 'Float' includes a commission for the Berkley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the video installation A Matter of Time (2003), and Home and Away (2003), produced for the NMAC Montenmedio Arte Contemporaneo in Vejer de la Fronterra, Spain, as well as an earlier video installation, Snow White (2001). The exhibition also includes related two-dimensional works.

Opens: February 3, 2004, at 6pm
Closes: February 29

The Arts Association of Bellville will be hosting a joint exhibition by Susan Kruger-Grundlingh and Theo Kleynhans. This exhibition will contain works from both of their exhibitions held in 2003.

Kruger-Grundling's exhibition is an extension of what she experienced and explored during a recent three month stay at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris: the notion of displacement and resulting issues such as alienation and loss of identity. She exhibited work at the Cité, which dealt with these concepts from a personal viewpoint as well as that of an observer.

Opens: December 3, at 7pm
Closes: January 16, 2004

This is Karl Gietl's second show of paintings at João Ferreira. Entitled 'Bringing it all Back Home', the body of work features portraits, landscapes and urban environments. Gietl's work deals with cities and people in urban environments and has been largely influenced by his travels through Europe over the past three years. His narrative explorations into the human condition are dealt with through his own experiences. The works also document his return to South Africa. Gietl has held several exhibitions in Belgium and Holland as well as South Africa.

Opens: December 16
Closes: January 3

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The (almost) old faithful is back. Rose Korber's 'Art Salon at the Bay - New Directions' features a range of work in a multitude of media by 75 artists and craftspeople. Included is work by Willie Bester, Sam Nhlengethwa, Deborah Bell, Jenny Stadler, Claudette Schreuders and Walter Meyer as well as Pete Eastman, Sanell Aggenbach and Colbert Mashile. Photographers participating include Tracy Lindner Gander and Jürgen Schadeberg. There will be ceramics from Ardmore Studios, Ian Garrett and John Walters amongst others. Martine Jackson's innovative socio-political themed beadwork will also be shown.

Opens: December 12
Closes: December 28

A new exhibition featuring selected drawings and prints from Sanlam's collection includes Willem Boshoff's Kykafrikaans portfolio of visual poetry, recently donated by Sanlam to the South African National Gallery. Other works include recent acquisitions from Giulio Tambellini, Elza Botha, Robert Hodgins, William Timlin, Malcolm Payne and Chris Didericks, amongst others.

Opens: December 1

The Blacksmith Forge, in the old Bijou building, holds an annual party which centres on the 'Blowing of the Anvil', a spectacular blacksmith's tradition. This year's celebration is preceded by a tool swap meet, which has to be a unique event.

Date: December 5
Time: 6pm, although the tool swap-meet starts at 4pm

To celebrate the centenary year of the Harley-Davidson motorcycle, VEO Gallery & FrameWorks is hosting an exhibition of photography, painting, sculpture and airbrush work related to motorcycles. To complement this, there will be custom-built motorcycles on show. Participants include Wayne Keet, Jacques de Villiers, Karl Staub, Gordon Netherton, Uwe Pfaff, Daniel Botha and custom motorcycle artist Joel Goldstone.

VEO is situated in De Waterkant Village which is fast becoming one of the city's more vibrant areas.

Opens: December 1, at 6pm
Closes: December 7

Following his PhotoZA show, titled Temporary Architecture, Brenton Maart shows a slightly altered body of unmounted, unframed colour photographs. 'Temporary Architecture' was a forced investigation of the systemic, habitual reading of codes. In particular, Maart's romantic visual language looked at altering the readings of landscapes and portraits within his queer identity. "Blah blah blah," the photographer admits, "an academic wank resulting in dry shots".

Bored with abstract ephemerality, the second leg of his show at the Bell Roberts Photographic Gallery "tosses pseudo-romance in favour of hard cock and man cunt". On show at Bell-Roberts is his Bareback:Flyboys work, a visual investigation into the irony of the virtual in contemporary desire. Maart also shows his "documentary of hard snaps of fuck boys" at Shaft, a sex pit in downtown Jo'burg. These works combine with his Blur into zones series "to make evident his fag psyche that links sex with love, death with lust, and furtive intangibility with the realness of semen".

Brenton Maart works as the Exhibitions Curator at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, and develops visual campaigns at the Centre for the Study of AIDS, University of Pretoria. He is a practicing artist and has, since 2000, participated in 14 group exhibitions at art festivals and venues including the South African Museum, Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees, Aardklop Festival, Pretoria Art Museum, Market Theatre Galleries and Museum Africa.

Maart will show work at the forthcoming 'A Decade of Democracy: Witnessing South Africa', a group exhibition touring American museums in 2004. Maart holds an M.Sc. in Biotechnology achieved with Distinction from Rhodes University, a number of certificates from the Market Photography Workshop, and is currently completing his MA in Fine Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand.

Opens: December 6
Closes: December 27

Minette Vari returns from New York to show a recent video work entitled The Calling. The two-channel projection will be accompanied by a series of stills. The work premiered this year at the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels. The work presents a broken metropolis, created from personal and found historic footage mainly of Johannesburg, but also of New York, Brussels and other places. It looks at what lies behind the human creation of, and search for Utopia, and plays these myths off against the harsh realities of survival in cities such as Johannesburg.

Vari obtained her Masters Degree in Fine Arts from the University of Pretoria in1997 and lives and works in Johannesburg. She has held one-person exhibitions in SA, Switzerland and the US and has participated in numerous group exhibitions. Last year Capetonians were fortunate enough to see her multi-projection installation 'Chimera' at the Michaelis Galleries.

Opens: December 4, at 6pm
Closes: December 20

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Former Capetonian Louis Jansen van Vuuren, who now lives in the Limousin region of France, holds his annual show in all three spaces at the AVA. Jansen van Vuuren is known for his evocative pastel work, often highlighting exotic destinations that he has visited. Since his move to France several years ago, his work has changed in tone, atmosphere and colour, focusing more on the hues of the French countryside and less on the bold blues of the Cape. This annual show is always popular and guarantees the gallery ample commission.

Opens: December3
Closes: January 24, 2003

The annual Michaelis School of Fine Art graduate exhibition showcases selected works by the graduating fourth year and Master's students of 2003. This year, breaking with tradition, the students have opted to curate the exhibition themselves, under the supervision of Gavin Younge. Other art-related events organised for the evening will be announced closer to the time. A CD Rom catalogue of the work will be for sale on opening night and at the Michaelis office thereafter.

Opens 6pm, December 3
Closes December 23

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Coinciding with the 2002 conference at Wellesley College, Boston, USA - 'Aids and South Africa', 'AidsArt/ South Africa' is a joint venture between that institution and Iziko Museums. The exhibition comprises a collection of artistic statements highlighting the tragedy that afflicts so many lives. It displays a gamut of artistic ideas and utilises a multitude of media, including photography, painting, collage and installation. Kyle Kauffman from Wellesley has co-curated the exhibition with SANG's Marilyn Martin and the work ranges from hard-hitting and powerful to poignant, personal, intimate and even enigmatic. The exhibition comes at a time when the Aids pandemic has reached epic proportions, and constitutes, says Martin, 'the most serious social problem facing the African continent'. Participants include Clive van den Berg, David Goldblatt, Karel Nel, Neo Matome and Lien Botha. A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition.

Opens November 29
Closes February 4

A significant addition to Iziko-SA National Gallery's permanent collection has been donated by Sanlam, in the form of a portfolio of visual poetry. 12 silkscreeens prints republished from Willem Boshoff's original KYKAFRIKAANS anthology of 1980 will be on show at the Gallery.

Willem Boshoff is a prolific, innovative and dynamic artist, a multifaceted craftsman and champion of the original, with a particular passion for languages under siege. On these, he bestows a new dimension and added impact by elevating words into an art form. His works have been exhibited at the Venice and Havana Biennale, in Belgium, Sweden, Germany and New York, and are also to be found in collections in Europe and USA.

A concrete or visual poem resembles a painting in that it is "in your face" - concerned not only with its literary content, but primarily with its visual or perceivable form. Interestingly, this art form dates back to the 16th century. Boshoff's "poems" have been made with an ancient typewriter, in the same manner that a brush functions in painting. Today KYKAFRIKAANS, states Marilyn Martin, Director of Iziko Art Collections, has gained almost mythical status and "occupies a respected place in the history of art and literature, both in SA and internationally."

The original KYKAFRIKAANS manuscript forms part of the Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry in Miami and was exhibited at the local Museum of Art during the 'Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin' exhibition. The new edition of Boshoff's visual poems was commissioned by Sanlam and printed by Hardground Printmakers.

The exhibition is on view daily from 10:00 - 17:00 (except Monday).

Set to open on Heritage Day, 'Co-existence: contemporary cultural production in SA' honours not only our internationally-acclaimed artists such as William Kentridge, but also those whose remarkable talents have come to light through needlework collectives and other self-help initiatives. As such, each artwork is a unique response to the country's complex environment, be it an eloquent statement by a celebrated artist or an item of skilled handicraft by anonymous rural craftsmen.

The exhibition is a result of a collaborative curatorial effort by Marilyn Martin, Director of Iziko Art Collections with Zola Mtshiza and Pamela Allara, Associate Professor of Art History at Brandeis University in Boston, USA. The show opened at The Rose Museum at the University earlier this year. In the catalogue accompanying the show, Martin states, "the contemporary world is not limited to makers trained at universities and versed in international concerns. It includes those with little or no formal education whose involvement in the realm of art is through projects initiated as a vehicle for providing an income".

Originally listed as opening on Wednesday September 24, the show's works have been delayed in transit. The show will open on October 5, or as soon as possible after this date.

Closes: February 16

Alan Alborough's cryptically titled show 'work[ing/ in] pro[cess/ gress] opens at the Sasol Art Museum. Extended for the second time now, Alborough's installation is set to continue evolving. The last time I visited the museum, detritus accumulated from the work and materials, potentially for later use, were taking up more space than what one initially surmised was the artwork. Of course with Alborough, and particularly in this case, it's difficult to say with certainty just where the work starts and where it ends.

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. An education programme aimed specifically at young learners has been running concurrently with the exhibition and by all accounts has significantly increased traffic through the museum's doors.

Opened: May 7
Closes January 18, 2004

Section 53 has become an annual event for students of the University of Stellenbosch's Department of Fine Art. Called 'Swing' this year, it showcases the work of students from the Fine Arts, Graphic Design and Jewellery Design departments. Previously held in the department's building, the exhibition takes place this year at the Sasol Art Museum and the US Gallery. James Webb will open the event.

The parking lot behind the museum will be host to party which will include an experimental sound piece by Righard Kapp and mystery guest DJ 'Kid Calculator'. Transport will be provided between the two venues.

Opens: November 22, at 6pm
Closes January 17, 2004 (the galleries will be closed between December 24 and January 5)