Archive: Issue No. 84, August 2004

01.08.04 Thembeka Qangule, Louise Linder and Madi Phala at the AVA
01.08.04 Deborah Poynton, Diane Victor and Tracey Payne at Michael Stevenson Contemporary
01.08.04 Matthew Hindley at Bell-Roberts Gallery
01.08.04 Nortje and Singelton at Obz Café
01.08.04 A selection of Stern ballet paintings at Irma Stern Gallery
01.08.04 New artists join SANG's 'Decade of Democracy'
01.08.04 Pain du Ciel/ Bread of Heaven at 3rd i Gallery
01.08.04 Tamlin Blake, Barbara Wildenboer and Caversham prints at the AVA
01.08.04 Kevin Brand at Bell-Roberts Gallery
01.07.04 'Thingerotomy' by Joanne Bloch at João Ferreira
01.05.04 'Democracy X' at The Castle of Good Hope
01.04.04 'Old Masters, New Perceptions' at SANG
03.03.04 A Decade Of Democracy at the SANG

STELLENBOSCH

01.08.04 'After-image' by Paul Emmanuel at US Gallery

Thembeka Qangule, recent MA graduate in Fine Art from Michaelis, exhibits her Masters work in the Main Gallery. The show focuses on innovative printmaking using fabric as part of the installation.

Louise Linder, who has exhibited widely and is well represented in public collections, exhibits new figurative paintings in the Long Gallery. They depict aspects of her childhood sourced from her family photographic archive. This is a familiar theme for Linder, with personal history and family memories a prime source of inspiration.

Upstairs, Madi Phala holds his first solo AVA show. It highlights his interest in collage and construction using found objects. Phala recently moved to the Western Cape from Springs, where he taught for many years and had a strong influence on up-and-coming artists.

Opens: August 2
Closes: August 21

For the second time in a row, Michael Stevenson hosts three painters' shows simultaneously. Deborah Poynton's new series of six large-scale paintings employ visual metaphors to operate on various levels. From depictions of a beach scene to a family group, the paintings are rich with references both classical and peculiarly South African. Contradictions between the human condition and societal expectations, between inner and outer realities, are inferred.

Tracey Payne, who showed earlier this year at the Irma Stern Gallery, now brings her distinctive painting style of subtle washes and veils combined with precise detail to the Michael Stevenson Gallery. The works were inspired by kinbaku, erotic rope bondage, and sakura, the cherry blossom and Japan's national flower.

Payne sees bondage as a metaphor for other kinds of ties that bind us to superficial habits and compulsions. The cherry blossoms are a reminder of the cyclical nature of life and offer hope and freedom from bondage.

Diane Victor, well known for her consummate charcoal and pastel drawing and printmaking skills, will show alongside her contemporaries.

The Friends of the South African National Gallery will be holding a walkabout of this exhibition at 11am on August 5. Call (021) 467 4662 for details.

Opens: August 4
Closes: September 11

Michaelis graduate Matthew Hindley exhibits one sculpture and four oil paintings in this show of new work called 'Surrender'. His paintings often evoke a distinctive emotion somewhere between alienation and impending doom but are also hauntingly beautiful in their 'pop' style.

A work by Hindley was recently included in Andrew Lamprecht's 'Contra Mundi' at the AVA, where it was singled out by critics as one of the stronger works on show. Carving a niche for himself as a cutting-edge new media artist, a Hindley video installation can also be viewed at SANG's 'Decade of Democracy' exhibition.

Obz Café has recently initiated a series of events including poetry, open mic evenings, Cape jazz nights and art exhibitions. This month, photographer Nerissa Niva Nortje and painter Mark Singelton exhibit new works.

Upstairs, Gavin Calf and Evan Oberholster exhibit paintings of nudes while Jaqui Sinclaire turns her camera on the same subject matter. Oberholster was part of a group exhibition entitled 'Corpus' at the ArtB in Bellville in 2001 that showed the current state of the body as art object.

Opens: August 2
Closes: September 5

During August, there will be a special exhibition of 10 ballet works in a range of media by Irma Stern on view in the artist's sitting room. A recent acquisition Ballet dancers (1943), an oil on canvas, will form the focal point of this event.

The Museum gratefully acknowledges the support of the Rowland and Leta Hill Trust who made it possible to acquire a major work by Irma Stern, which celebrates the discipline and beauty of classical ballet.

Opens: August 2
Closes: August 29

The SANG's 'Decade of Democracy' exhibition has recently expanded as new artworks have joined the ranks on show. Most recently, Minnette V�ri's evocative Chimera (black edition) has been installed.

The video, which was shot at the Voortrekker Monument, is projected onto four semi-translucent suspended screens and spills onto the walls behind. It depicts a procession of animals and people from the marble friezes of the Great Trek.

This narrative is invaded and animated by the spirit of the Chimera, a legendary hybrid creature with a lion's head, goat's body and serpent's tail. V�ri inserts herself as this creature into the historical procession. The images are set to sounds of wind and voices of visitors inside the Monument.

Other work recently added includes Zwelethu Mthethwa's series of photographs of sugar cane workers in KwaZulu Natal. Thembinkosi Goniwe's Untitled from the 'Returning the Gaze' billboard project, will also this month be on view.

At 10.30am on August 1, Iziko curator of Photography and New Media Pam Warne leads a walkabout through this exhibition. Current photographic practices and new directions will be highlighted, with special emphasis on works on display. The cost is R15 for Friends and R20 for guests.

Alongside, in the gallery's Annexe, is an anti-racism project that shows body maps and identity boxes in a show called 'Unboxed'.

Closes: August 29

Painter Catherine Raphael exhibits new work at the 3rd i Gallery, which takes as its thematic starting point the recognition of 'the feminine' in a patriarchal world that can objectify and devalue it.

3rd i describes Raphael's work as a witty and subtle reaction to this recognition, 'weaving a tapestry of female sexuality, charm and bewitchment in a provocative assertion of the feminine'.

Opens: August 18
Closes: September 25

The main gallery hosts a group exhibition called 'Journey' of limited print editions created during international residency programmes by artists hosted at the Caversham Centre for Artists and Writers.

Tamlin Blake, a botanical artist from Cape Town, exhibits entire paintings produced from a variety of beads in the Long Gallery in a show called 'Change of Address'. She was a finalist in last year's Brett Kebble awards with a collection of South African stamps featuring Proteas, also made out of beadwork.

Upstairs, Barbara Wildenboer holds her first solo show with mixed media work. Most recently, her artwork The Bridge was on show at the Spier Outdoor Sculpture Biennial in January this year. It raised questions on issues like displacement and ownership of land.

Opens: August 23
Closes: September 11

Kevin Brand exhibits a new body of work at the Bell-Roberts Gallery based upon sketches done for a commission by Dimension Data of an abacus. In terms of theme, the show makes a departure from earlier work, which was largely motivated by particular social issues.

However, in terms of style, it continues a trend evident for some time in his exploration of pixellation techniques. At his AVA exhibition in 2001, 'Something Old, Something New', Brand transcribed faces taken from newspapers into grid-like monochromatic squares painted onto wood. The same technique was used for his 2000 Havana Biennale piece and for large-scale public drawings.

In this exhibition, entitled '+50', Brand exhibits the same image repeated in different perspectives, also broken up into grid-like squares. The medium is particularly intriguing. Brand blends the seductiveness of a lenticular print with the formal qualities of an industrial-type light box to produce shimmering variations on the same basic form.

Opens: July 14
Closes: August 7

Advance Notice: Artists are often also collectors of objects that catch their eye. Joanne Bloch started this obsessive endeavour early in life. Her amassed array of cheap trinkets forms the basis of this exhibition, 'Thingerotomy', which was hosted at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in April.

Toys from Christmas crackers and lucky packets, key rings and egg machines are re-presented in a contradictory form, as both treasured object and emblem of excess. Bloch says: "At the heart of my work lies an enduring interest in this world of trashy ephemera. 'Thingerotomy' evokes an imaginary surgical procedure that cuts open and lays bare this world, with the intention of both commenting on it as well as reconfiguring a new, personalised order."

Bloch's exhibition reflects her own ambivalence about what constitutes 'trashy' or 'valuable' as it reconsiders notions of beauty in a celebration of the daily pleasures of the visual. She was artist-in-residence at the 2003 Grahamstown National Arts Festival, where she pinned up her plastic bric-a-brac on the walls of a room.

Opens: August 5
Closes: August 28

This exhibition, in South Africa's oldest colonial building, brings together over 300 artefacts, contemporary artworks, documents, photographs, sound and film. Most of these are from Iziko's own collections but the exhibition also includes items on loan from public and private collections throughout South Africa.

The exhibition spans seven rooms, beginning with the early traces of the human past, the first farmers and early southern African states, and leading to colonial dispossession and African resistance. Mining, urbanisation and apartheid precede the turning points of the 1970s until democracy in 1994. A special room is dedicated to the Truth Commission.

Interviews with and self-portraits of 28 year-old South Africans conclude the exhibition. Sue Williamson's Messages from the Moat, a permanent installation piece on slavery at the Cape, looks right at home in the basement of the Castle's Block B.

Opens: April 21
Closes: September 30

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This exhibition brings a fresh lens to restored and newly acquired pre-20th century European paintings, sculptures and art works on paper. The major highlight is a new arrival, Antonin Mercié's Gloria Victis (Glory to the Vanquished) of 1875, described as a tour de force in bronze casting. Pietro Calvi's marble and bronze bust Othello (1868), now retitled Portrait of Ira Aldridge as Othello, is unveiled as an actual portrait of the internationally famous black American Shakespearian actor.

Opens: March 2004
Closes: December 2004

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the first democratic elections Iziko: South African National Gallery is showcasing a comprehensive exhibition featuring works of art made and acquired between 1994 and 2004. This exhibition presents an astonishing visual record of the hopes and aspirations, the fears and concerns of ordinary South Africans in this extraordinary decade of transformation.

Works of art produced during the decade by over 150 South African artists will be on view in nine rooms throughout the Gallery. In addition, a contemporary site-specific work on slavery at the Cape by Sue Williamson will be installed at the Castle of Good Hope. Works by major artists such as Jane Alexander, Willie Bester, Marlene Dumas, Kendell Geers, David Goldblatt, William Kentridge, Moshekwa Langa, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Malcolm Payne, Johannes Phokela, Berni Searle and Tracey Rose will be shown alongside the work of emerging artists including Thembinkosi Goniwe, Thando Mama, Colbert Mashile, Robin Rhode, Usha Seejarim, Mgcineni Pro Sobopha and Doreen Southwood.

The accompanying book, co-published by Double Storey Books and Iziko, is lavishly illustrated, includes a comprehensive listing of all works and features discursive essays by authors, curators and critics including Emma Bedford, Rory Bester, Joe Dolby, Ashraf Jamal, Andrew Lamprecht, Moleleki Frank Ledimo, Marilyn Martin, Zayd Minty, Andries Oliphant and Liese van der Watt.

Exhibition enquiries should be directed to Emma Bedford on email: ebedford@iziko.org.za.

Opens: April 3
Closes: August 31

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Printmaker Paul Emmanuel continues his investigations into the politics of South African militarism, power and patriarchy and their relationship to the male identity with his first solo show. The highlight is a large-scale drawing (2m x 4.8m), in which a fine steel blade has sensitively incised exposed photographic paper.

Emmanuel is known for his printmaking and intaglio works. He was the first recipient of the Ampersand Foundation Fellowship in 1997 and winner of the Sasol 'wax in art' competition in 2002.

More recently, he exhibited a site-specific installation during the Grahamstown Festival, called Lost Men. Three works from this installation will also be on show, along with a handmade artist's book seven years in the making, titled Cathexis.

Professor Keith Deitrich of Stellenbosch University's Fine Art Department will open the exhibition.

Opens: 6pm, August 3
Closes: August 26