Archive: Issue No. 83, July 2004

01.07.04 Daphne Prevoo's 'Inversions' at the NSA Gallery
01.06.04 'A Place Called Home' curated by Zayd Minty at the NSA
01.06.04 'Work in Progress' by Heleen Verwey at artSpacedurban

Daphne Prevoo lives one half of the year in Swaziland and the other in England, neither being her country of origin, although she hails from the Netherlands. This compulsive travelling has fuelled her art practice and the subject matter of the 'unplaced'. She is creating her personal space within radically different cultures. She is probing and pushing the existing boundaries of identity that have historically been set by society.

The work at the NSA explores issues of placement and displacement and the confusion surrounding identity. Prevoo investigates a confused sense of belonging, physical, geographical or sexual. She works both in two dimensions (drawing and print) and three dimensions (object-based installations and film). This non-committal attitude to processes emphasises the subject matter of her 'un-belonging'.

Following a degree in Fine Art from Central St. Martins (1994) she completed her Masters in Fine Art at the Royal College of Art (1996). Between 1998 and 2003 she was a Senior Lecturer at the Surrey Institute College of Art and Design, running a sculpture department. Since 2003 she has been a Senior Lecturer at the University of East London. Prevoo has shown her work in Europe, Africa and Asia in group and solo shows.

Opens: 6pm, July 13
Closes: August 1

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'A Place Called Home' is an exhibition of photographic, print, video, web-based and installation works by artists of Indian/ South Asian descent. It is bound to resonate in South Africa where over a million people originally hail from the Indian subcontinent.

Curated by Zayd Minty, the show documents what contemporary artists of the South Indian Diaspora have produced in the process of making 'home' the place of their birth or by adopting as 'home' the place to which they have chosen to move.

The show includes work by both local and international artists, amongst them: Sunil Gupta (India/ Thailand/ Canada/ UK), an artist who uses his own history as a gay HIV positive person who has lived in three continents; Chila Burman (UK) who was active in the black British arts movement of the 80`s and the renown collective Moti Roti (Trinidad/ Pakistan/ UK) whose dynamic and visually lush projects, inspired by the carnival traditions, engage subtly in transformative social commentary.

The South African contingent includes key artists such as Omar Badsha who rose to prominence as a lyrical documentary photographer during apartheid days. Badsha, together with younger upcoming artists, Usha Seejarim, Durban-based Faiza Galdhari and Zen Marie were all commissioned to produce new work for this show.

Zayd Minty is a cultural producer and organiser who was born and educated in Durban but has worked, since 1991, in Cape Town, particularly around issues of culture and transformation. He was previously artistic director of the Cape Town Festival (2002) and is presently deputy director of the District Six Museum. Amongst his curatorial achievements are 'Isintu' (1998) which showed at the SA National Gallery and 'Returning the Gaze' (2000), a public art project. He is a fourth generation South African of Gujerati/ Indian descent.

'A Place Called Home' was developed by Minty while he was a Rockefeller Fellow at Emory University in USA. The exhibition runs concurrently with the 25th Durban International Festival, which will screen a number of related films. An educational programme forms part of the project and includes engagements with schools as well as a set of discussion forums around issues affecting people of Indian descent in South Africa

Opens: 6pm, June 15
Closes: July 11

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Heleen Verwey's exhibition of works in progress form part of an exhibition she will be taking to Europe later this year. Verwey is a Dutch artist living and working in South Africa. She incorporates into installations, her paintings on doors, records and other available objects. She claims to be influenced by "informal artists" from Latin America and Spain.

Verwey is represented by agents in Europe, South Africa, and Mozambique. She has also been assigned to produce works for the new building for European Union in Namibia.

Opens: June 24
Closes: July 14

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