Archive: Issue No. 71, July 2003

16.06.03 Berni Searle - Standard Bank Young Artist Award Winner 2003
16.06.03 Best of the Harvest
16.06.03 Tracey Rose: 'Ciao Bella'
16.06.03 George Pemba Commemorative Exhibition
16.06.03 Homing In
16.06.03 Visual Arts Lectures

Striking, almost iconic images of a piercing gaze redirected, of a body scrutinised to its most intensely vulnerable declarations of exposure, at the same time aesthetically pristine, but subtly disarming works have come to be associated with Berni Searle's production. Over the past few years, the Cape Town-based artist Searle has become an increasingly noted and noteworthy entity within the South African and international art arenas. But this capacity for highly memorable imagery is not the full extent, nor the only engaging aspect of her creative output and explorative domain. Searle engages actively with the possibilities of the diverse media she works with, and within a conceptual sphere that is intricately integrated.

Searle came to the fore in 1997 with an installation on the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale at the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town. The impact of her conscious engagement with the history of that space, and, in what that seemed to infer, of her own placement within that history, became a catalyst for further questions and interrogation of how she defines and represents herself. The projects that followed might be viewed as a series of ongoing explorations around issues of personal identity and self-representation, examples being her earlier 'Colour Me' series (1998), the 'Discoloured' series (1999-2000) and more recently, 'Snow White' (2000-2001).

In 2000 Searle was a FNB Vita Art Prize finalist as well as the Daimler-Chrysler Award for South African Contemporary Art. Searle has also received awards at the Cairo Biennale (1998) and the Dakar Biennale (2000). In June 2001, Searle took part in 'Authentic/ Ex-centric' at the 49th Venice Biennale. She has exhibited in the USA, Netherlands, Ireland, Germany and Spain, and has participated in residencies at Civitella Ranieri in Umbria, Italy and at the South African National Gallery in Cape Town.

Her most recent projects were commissions for the University of California's Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, who also hosted Searle's first one-person museum show in the USA in February this year. Her work is to be found in the BHP Billiton Collection, the South African National Gallery Permanent Collection and the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art amongst others.

Monument Gallery

The Eastern Cape Provincial Art Exhibition, hosted by the Department of Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture, focuses on excellence and seeks to represent the richness and diversity of aesthetic ability in the province. Initially the Department gave more exposure to emerging artists, and then gradually started raising the standard, until an exhibition was curated entitled 'Beginnings Towards Excellence'. This year's exhibition will showcase a selection of some of the Province's most technically and conceptually mature artists. Various media will be showcased, from painting and graphics to mixed media. To further blur the distinction between 'Fine Art' and 'Craft', ceramics and sculpture and other types of well-designed and conceived work will be included in the exhibition. These are unique craft objects, 'one-off' creations that stand above craft objects that are categorised as being more 'manufactured' in terms of repetition of design and colour.

To widen the scope of the exhibition, the Department invited representatives from the art institutions in the province and some specialised crafters to form a selection panel. Exhibitions were held in the 24 provincial districts, enabling artists in the most rural areas the opportunity to participate. The exhibition offers a keen insight into the essence and excellence of Eastern Cape artists.

Atherstone Room, Monument

Presented by The Goodman Gallery, 'Ciao Bella' is a triple-screen DVD projection, which first premi�red at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001. Tracey Rose presents the viewer with what seems to be a familiar environment: a table of 13 characters, a Last Supper scenario. But instead of the expected male figures, acting out their expected roles, Rose has drastically altered the players in her scenario and all are female. This shift from the male to female is not a simple substitution however, and the incongruous mix of Rose's players seems to directly challenge their historical and political origins.

Of the work, Tracey Murinik wrote: "They taunt one another's historical time zones and scoff at one another's histories and politics. Saartjie Baartman pores disarmingly over Marie Antoinette/ Queen E. An Afro'd mermaid languishes with her plate of hot chips and 'Catch-Up', while the China Doll quotes passages from 'The Merchant of Venice� Rose has commented that theatre has always been an integral socially accepted domain - a place where questions can be posed and new roles adopted, especially when those possibilities do not readily exist in the immediacy of one's environment."

Gallery in the Round, Monument

George Milwa Mnyaluza Pemba (1912 - 2001) lived and worked all his life in the Eastern Province. Pemba came to be associated with the National Arts Festival when an exhibition of his paintings was exhibited there in 1989. He is regarded as one of South Africa's greatest pioneering artists who, against all odds in the Apartheid era, strove to become a full-time artist.

Pemba's work is rich and colourful and varies greatly in subject matter. It is however his depiction of people from both the rural and township areas captured in his paintings that reflect the honesty, integrity and warm sincerity of this great artist.

Pemba lived in Motherwell outside Port Elizabeth and was wheelchair-bound for the last part of his life. In 1979 he was given an honorary Master's Degree by Fort Hare University and in 1998 an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Port Elizabeth. His work is represented in many private collections locally and abroad and is also included in major corporate collections in South Africa.

The exhibition, sponsored by the Department of Arts and Culture, has been produced in a portable format for nationwide distribution in the educational sphere. It includes posters in full-colour containing biographical text richly illustrated with paintings, drawings, photographs and memorabilia.

Ntsikana Gallery, Monument

Originally conceived by Andrew Verster, 'Homing In' has been curated by ArtThrob's Durban correspondent Virginia MacKenny with assistance from Paul Edmunds. The show serves as a platform for emerging artists. 'Homing In' focuses on newly produced work by artists not yet familiar to the public. Concentrating on a particular thematic concern, that of 'home', the exhibition does not attempt to provide an overall view of contemporary production, but instead presents a varied engagement around a theme that has much contemporary currency in a time of global disruption, migration and transition.

Traditionally, perhaps romantically, 'home' is a place of refuge, a private domestic sanctuary where the family resides. In the South African context 'home' is, however, a contested site of meaning. Dominated by a colonial heritage, disrupted by migrant labour and historically problematised by the old regime's creation of 'homelands', the search for a place that one might legitimately call home, or the interrogation of what constitutes 'home', is highlighted. The show ranges in media from animation, to sculpture, installation and video.

Contributing artists are Thando Mama, Kelly Tuck and Milijana Babic from Durban, Colleen Alborough from Johannesburg and Matthew Hindley, Heath Nash and Julia Clark from Cape Town and Every Dog Entertainment (Johnny Foreigner and Judith Brigg) from Montagu in the Western Cape.

Standard Bank & Grahamstown Galleries, Albany Museum

Art audiences interested in immersing themselves in contemporary polemic are advised to attend a series of one-hour lectures. Artist, and 'Homing In' curator, Virginia MacKenny explores the way many South African artists engage with the tactile and associative qualities of local materials as they concentrate on issues of identity, place and what constitutes 'home'. Multi-faceted arts academic Jane Taylor draws on examples from performance to give a condensed overview of the shifts in our attitudes to sincerity and expressing emotion since the Renaissance. Judge Albie Sachs, a vocal commentator on the arts, explains the hows and whys of choosing and converting the Old Fort Prison into South Africa's Constitutional Court.

Blue Lecture Theatre, Eden Grove, Rhodes Campus