Archive: Issue No. 73, September 2003

15.09.03 Tracy Lindner Gander at Joáo Ferreira
15.09.03 Co-existence: contemporary cultural production in SA at the SANG
15.09.03 Lecture by Michael Blum at Michaelis
15.09.03 Illustrated lecture on Van Gogh
15.09.03 Michaelis lunchtime lecture a film
15.09.03 Pierre Crocquet at Bell-Roberts
15.09.03 Gabriel Clark-Brown at Clarke's Bookshop
01.09.03 Sfiso ka M'kame, Jan du Toit and Theo Kleynhans at the AVA
01.09.03 Ed Younge at Bell-Roberts
01.09.03 Very Real Time residency programme and exhibitions
01.09.03 Andrew Lamprecht at Bell-Roberts
01.09.03 VANSA meeting on Cape Town Unicity Cultural Policy Document
01.09.03 Michelle Booth at the Bell-Roberts Photographic Gallery
01.09.03 Continuum at the Irma Stern Museum
01.09.03 'Library of Congress' at the SANG
01.09.03 Screening of Venice Biennale documentary
16.08.03 Willem Boshoff at Michael Stevenson Contemporary

STELLENBOSCH

15.09.03 Timo Smuts Award exhibition at the US Gallery
16.08.03 Alan Alborough at the Sasol Art Museum extended

EASTERN CAPE

15.09.03 Sprung! At Kalm Karoo, Montagu

This series of colour photographs, entitled 'Afterdark' by Tracy Lindner Gander, reveals roadside spaces at twilight or at night, illuminated by the artists' car headlamps. The images are imbued with a narrative of beauty and unease. Their subject is as much about what lies beyond the light, on the periphery, as about what is visible.

Instinctively, the eye searches for the recognisable - tarmac, concrete, gravel, bushes, human traces - as they merge into the shadows. Human presence is implied, as if someone has just stepped out of the frame, temporarily moving out of the spotlight and the viewer is invited to use their imagination in unravelling the mystery.

The photographers' intervention is fleeting, and leaves the viewer with a heightened sense of the nature of a place.

Opens: September 17
Closes: October 4

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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".

Opens: September 24
Closes: February 16

Vienna-based Michael Blum, currently in Cape Town taking part in the 'Very Real Time' residency project initiated by Gregg Smith, will present a lecture on past work. He will focus in particular on a recent project in Indonesia, which dealt with Nike sweatshops in that country.

Time: 12pm, Friday September 26

Vincent van Gogh is the topic of an illustrated talk by Dr Frans Hansen presented by the Friends of the Michaelis Collection. "The art of Van Gogh and his times", marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of an artist who, though described as a social misfit, nevertheless made a "gigantic contribution to the freeing of Western art from Victorian romantic realism, helping to lay the basis for contemporary art currents."

R30 for members and R35 for guests. Refreshments will be available as well as safe parking under auspices of CT Partnership.

Time: 6pm, Tuesday September 23

Instead of the usual public lecture, the organisers will be showing 'The Luggage is Still Labelled: Blackness in South African Art', a film by Vuyile C. Voyiya and Julie L. McGee.

This documentary film explores the notion of blackness in South African art through the voices of black artists and representatives of art institutions with which these artists interface. It investigates the notion of the "black artist" versus artist, black as style, and the roles played by art critics and historians in defining these aspects. The screening will be followed by an open discussion.

Vuyile Voyiya is a Michaelis graduate and, until recently, worked at the South African National Gallery as an Education Liaison Officer. He is currently a practicing artist freelancing in the film industry. Julie McGee is a Professor in the department of Africana studies at Bowdoin College Brunswick, Maine USA. Voyiya and McGee collaborated on this project when she was a visiting professor in the Department of Historical Studies, UCT.

Date: 17 September, at 1.15pm

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To launch his latest 110 page black-and-white photographic book, Pierre Crocquet will be showing a selection of images. The book, entitled 'On African Time', contains scenes of daily life from South Africa, Malawi, Namibia, Tanzania, Nigeria, Mozambique, and Zambia and includes quotes from the photographs' subjects. Crocquet was awarded the prestigious Mondi Photographer of the Year Award 2003.

Opens: September 10
Closes: October 4

Gabriel Clark-Brown's collection of prints 'Motherland' seeks to address issues associated with the recent large migration of mainly white South Africans to other countries, particularly the UK (considered as the Motherland to many white English- speaking South Africans). The number of people leaving South Africa could be comparable with the Great Trek of 1838 where thousands of disgruntled Dutch speakers, disillusioned by the lack of support by British rulers, left the Cape Colony to form a government more concerned with their interests. On arrival in other countries, many of these contemporary migrants find themselves challenged by preconceptions that the Motherland would treat them fairly. What ensues is the clutching onto old identities and myths in the new country and the tension in either adapting or letting go of the old identities and securities.

Closes September 23

'Very Real Time' is a one-month residency for six artists, which gets under way in Cape Town during September. It will involve both local and international artists, including Michael Blum, Bridget Baker, Jo O'Connor, Thembinkosi Goniwe and Gregg Smith, the latter artists co-ordinating the project.

'Very Real Time' focuses on projects of a non-gallery and non-object based nature, concentrating instead on forms of exchange that are primarily social and personal. Works will range from public castings in the streets of Cape Town to partner-swapping Tango couples. Projects have been selected in order to promote art of a socially engaged nature without setting preconditions of large-scale inclusivity (sic) or overt moral, political or social relevance in the work.

While these aspects are not discounted, it is hoped that viewers and participants will be engaged in their own personal reality in a way that is insightful and challenging for both artist and participant/ spectator. Because of the ephemeral nature of the work there is no formal exhibition to conclude the project, but there will be a workshop and a presentation, both of which will be hosted by the Michaelis School of Fine Art. A catalogue will be produced following the programme's completion. As events are scheduled, details of dates, times and venues will be made public.

'Very Real Time' is being hosted by the Association for Visual Arts and made possible by generous support from the National Arts Council of South Africa, The Royal Netherlands Embassy and the Rijksakademie Artists' Initiative Network.

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Andrew Lamprecht, artist and lecturer in Art Theory at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, presents an exhibition entitled 'Alterior'. Lamprecht has produced a series of xerographs which comprise fragmented and re-constituted images taken from the history of mathematics. The exhibition coincides with the Impact Printmaking Conference at Michaelis.

Opens: August 29, at 6pm
Closes: September 12

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The Visual Arts Network of South Africa (VANSA) will hold a meeting to examine the Cultural Policy Document of the Cape Town Unicity. The meeting will allow all those affected by the City's cultural policy, from a visual arts perspective, to become aware of the document, examine its implications and make suggestions for its improvement.

Yasmine Colley, the City's Arts and Culture co-ordinator will introduce the document, while Western Cape VANSA Chair, Zayd Minty and VANSA member Andrew Lamprecht will examine the implications of the document for the arts sector. There will be opportunity for general discussion.

VANSA, a visual arts workers' group, was formed earlier this year to protect the interests of artists and others who work in the field. VANSA will also develop policies and strategies for the broad improvement of the visual arts sector.

Saturday September 13, at 2pm.

In this his first one-person exhibition in Cape Town, Sfiso Ka Mkame presents works in several media, including oil pastel, on paper. His vibrantly colourful and highly charged work focuses on African symbols and on masks, which represent the ancestors and attempt to set up a communication with the spirits. Both figurative and patterned, these dynamic art works tell many tales which convey a spirit of Africa in its full glory.

Ka Mkame was born in1963 in Pinetown, KwaZulu-Natal and began exhibiting in 1986. He has taken part in many group and curated exhibitions, notably the Venice Biennale in 1993, and the Johannesburg Biennale in 1997. He also took part in the landmark 'Neglected Tradition' exhibition in the early 1990s, at the Johannesburg Art Gallery. He has held several one-person exhibitions. Ka Mkame's work is to be found in most public collections in South Africa as well as several corporate collections.

Jan du Toit holds his second one-person exhibition at the AVA, in the Long gallery. Du Toit was born in Tulbagh in 1974, and studied at the Foundation School of Art in Cape Town. He spent several years travelling, including a period where he worked for the British Museum in London. He returned to Cape Town earlier this year and began work on this series of paintings which he says go some way to capturing the 'incredibly inspirational experiences' he was fortunate to enjoy. Du Toit's last show at the AVA was sold out. A sculpture of his is to be found in the Constitutional Court.

Theo Kleynhans, who is showing on the Artsstrip, was born in Welkom in 1966 and studied at Pretoria University, the University of Houston, Texas, UNISA and RAU. He has participated in numerous group shows and held a number of one-person exhibitions, both in South Africa and abroad, but this is to be his first showing at the AVA. Kleynhans works mainly in gouache, ink, cont� and acrylic and here he revisits the styles of other artists while exploring the theme of panoramic memory. Cape Town, where he lives, features prominently as he examines issues of location and memory, both personal and geographic. Kleynhans' work is to be found in numerous private and public collections and he has been the recipient of several awards and been a finalist in a number of competitions.

Opens: September 1
Closes: September 20

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'Seeing White' is the title Michelle Booth has given to her first one-person exhibition. The show comprises 15 black-and-white fibre-based prints with text sandblasted onto the glass of the frame.

In text accompanying the show, Booth writes, 'I have deliberately not chosen images that also include black people - I want people to see white people as raced without the presence of the Other. I don't want to use the "non-white subject� as a means for knowing the white self". I want white people to be the object and not to have the attention drawn away by the inevitable focus on the relation between black and white. I don't want to perpetuate an "impression that whiteness is only white or only matters, when it is explicitly set against non-white"'.

Last year Booth completed a post graduate diploma in fine art (photography) at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, having previously studied photography at the Ruth Prowse School of Art and. Booth graduated from UCT with a Business Science degree in 1992.

Opens: August 23
Closes: September 15

Christina Bryer, Lisa Firer and Katherine Glenday call this exhibition of work in porcelain 'Continuum', and throughout they demonstrate their love of its translucent qualities. They see creativity as a process and exploration, and the finished work as an embodiment of these pursuits. Each has developed a highly personal technique to harness porcelain's potential as a medium and to explore its capacity to hold and filter light. Lisa Firer's work, casts of altered paper bags, was seen at YDESIRE earlier this year.

The artists will conduct a walkabout on Saturday September 13, at 11am.

Opens: September 10
Closes: October 4

A new and "bookish" installation titled 'Library of Congress, a.k.a The Reading Room' will be on view at Iziko/South African National Gallery. The focus of the installation - as suggested by its name - is on literature and texts and provides a "continuously expanding archive of literature on Africa by Africans", which ultimately aims to "wrest control of Africa's imaging from the West".

The rationale behind this unusual installation lies in the term anthropofagia, a concept that formed the theme for the XX1V S�o Paulo Biennale in 1998 where the exhibition was first aired. Apart from being a tongue-twister, anthropofagia is a popular notion among Brazilians that the formation of Brazilian identity resulted from "the constant interaction between diverse cultures, each of which consumed the other until a single, all-encompassing culture was created."

'Library of Congress' is a collaborative endeavour between Benin artist and set designer, Joseph Kpobly, and South African artist Thomas Mulcaire. Following the first installation in S�o Paulo, a second took place in Paris, focussing on texts reflecting the "contemporary relationship between France and its former colonies".

Emma Bedford, Head Curator for Iziko Art Collections states that the purpose of the Gallery's installation is to explore "the role of indigenous oral literary forms in the development of a national culture, specifically the way in which oral traditions influenced the liberation struggle and the Black Consciousness movement."

There will be a walkabout through the installation by artists Kpobly and Mulcaire on September 7, at 11am.

Opens: September 7
Closes: September 28

Artist Ed Young and academic/ artist Andrew Lamprecht were commissioned to make a video documentary about this year's Venice Biennale. The resulting 40 minutes unpicks some of the tangled politics of this major art event.

7pm, Monday September 8

Ed Young's follow-up to the controversial Bruce Gordon event is entitled 'MUSE'. Young has selected up-and-coming classical pop fusion string quartet 'MUSE' as his artwork. Young has arranged that the quartet perform surrounded by an elegant ambience, which in itself forms part of the exhibition.

According to Young, "every element on display - from the string quartet, to the bar-ladies and the guests themselves - is an integral part of the installation." Apparently viewers better take note of the bouncer at the door as well. Young postulates that these elements, usually the accompaniments to an exhibition opening, are here the exhibition itself. Without these, Young would effectively be exhibiting an empty space, and that's not entirely impossible.

A catalogue has been produced for the event and will be available on the night. The exhibition stays open only for one night.

The event takes place on Thursday September 4, from 6 to 9pm.

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'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

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Students from the Department of Fine Arts, University of Stellenbosch will be exhibiting entries submitted for the annual departmental competition, the Timo Smuts Award. The competition requires students to produce a work independent of any input from their lecturers. The exhibition will consist of work selected from these entries. From these works, a panel of three external judges nominate the prizewinners, of which there are three in the categories of Applied Graphics, Fine Arts, and Jewellery design respectively. The exhibition will be opened by Afrikaans poet and academic Joan Hambidge.

Opens 6.30pm, September 18
Closes October 9

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

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Elke Hond Algemene Kunstenaars (aka Every Dog Entertainments or Johnny Foreigner (aka Jannie Uitlander) and Judith Brigg) presents 'Sprung!', a spring exhibition of 'iets-van-niks installations and other fine art by famous names & lesser mortals'. Elke Hond will be showing 'The Blunt Wedge', their photo installation soap opera recently returned from the Grahamstown festival, and 'Nege jaar later', a working model of a memorial garden for next year's 10th anniversary of New SA.

Opens 12pm, Saturday September 20