Archive: Issue No. 96, August 2005

5.08.05 Margaret Vorster at Spaza
5.08.05 Jurgen Schadeberg at Museumafrica
5.08.05 Trasi Henen at David Krut
5.08.05 Kevin Brand and Leon Vermeulen at Gallery @ 157
5.08.05 Selected photographers at the Goodman Gallery
5.08.05 John Moore at Gordart
5.08.05 Bruce Backhouse and Walter Voigt at Everard Read
5.08.05 Sean Slemon at The Premises
5.08.05 Johan Conradie at Obert Contemporary

1.07.05 William Kentridge Retrospective at JAG
1.07.05 Tanya Poole at Franchise
1.07.05 Phillip Rikhotso at Momo
1.07.05 Absa L�Atelier Winners at Absa
1.07.05 Richard Forbes at Gallery @ 157
1.07.05 Preller, Dietrich and van der Walt at Artspace

PRETORIA

5.08.05 Sasol New Signatures at PAM
5.08.05 Launch exhibition at Fried Contemporary
5.08.05 Bag Factory Artists at Unisa
5.08.05 Else Friemelt at Association of Arts
5.08.05 Isabel le Roux at Association of Arts
 

Margaret Vorster, a Unisa and Wits Fine Art graduate, has been the recipient of several awards including the Standard Bank Young Artist Award in 1988. Her work is represented in numerous public and private collections, including national major art museums. She lives on a protea farm in the Southern Cape and spends part of the year painting in Johannesburg.

In her new work on show, Vorster addresses a deep-seated view of humanity as separate from the rest of nature. Her visual and conceptual framework draws from plants and shamanic imagery resulting in quiet works where human beings and the natural world are presented as co-dependent and co-evolving.

Opens: July 31
Closes: August 21

An exhibition with photographs from Jürgen Schadeberg's publication Voices from the Land will be opened by the Honorable Dr. Z. Pallo Jordan, Minister of Arts and Culture, with music by McCoy Mrubata.

Opens: August 7
Closes: late 2005

In 'Passer Bye', Trasi Henen has created a series of etchings and monotypes that engage with the idea of the flâneur, the melancholy city wanderer making his or her way through an environment that is both alienating and liberating.

Henen's working method is energetic and intuitive, resulting in work that reflects the transience and bustle of urban life. The figures that populate her prints are like astronauts or deep-sea divers, setting out on journeys of discovery. At the same time, the taxis and chairs that jostle for space in the works are reminders of the ordinary details of the city, of the mundane routines that exist inside the pace and motion of the metropolis.

Henen graduated with a Fine Arts degree from Wits University in 2003, and has participated in several group exhibitions. She made her curatorial debut with the 2004 Women's Day Celebrations at Constitution Hill and organised 'Art in the Dark', a video art festival, in late 2004. This is Henen's first solo exhibition and features prints created with printers Tim Foulds and Jill Ross.

Opens: July 30
Closes: August 30

Kevin Brand and Leon Vermeulen host two exhibitions under one roof, entitled 'Pieces of Eight' and 'Shadow Drawing' respectively, which will be opened by Johannesburg gallerist and artist Gordon Froud.

Brand comments that 'Pieces of Eight' 'is a body of sculptural work that continues the exploration of ordinary objects as valid source references and subject matter. These works are inspired by the little components found on electronic circuit boards, as well as the patterns on the underside. Evocative of foliage, these 'patterns' are formed into types of flora from which the various'fruits', based upon the resistors, transistors and thermometers, etc. sprout.

'Formally the works have a consciously immediate look as there is no attempt to finish off the whittled surface. Initial drawings, subsequently discarded, are present in the realised objects as linear 'ghost' components, allowing the objects to escape their physical and material dimension.'

Vermeulen's 'Shadow Drawing' was motivated by a simple idea. He writes: 'One day I had the idea to draw a piano.I did that and saw that I needed a figure with it. An awkward space then made me put another figure on his shoulders and a technical problem caused this to be a black figure.Now the piano needed some foreign objects to penetrate it. A container with water and a warm background followed. The drawing started to dictate its own outcome, which then gave me ideas for a series of drawings. Only then did the drawings start to suggest possible readings or meanings.

'Drawing gives form to an imagined life for which I have few and inadequate words.The blank paper reveals nothing and as soon as I draw the shadows or darkness, light starts to appear.Then surprising things become visible, tangible and perhaps comprehensible.That is why I draw.I show these works to make a case for the compulsive obsessive act that drawing is for me.'

Opens: September 4
Closes: October 1

An exhibition by local and international photographers and artists, entitled 'Click' includes the work of Lolo Veleko, Kathryn Smith, Greg Marinovic, Tracy Derrick, Shirin Neshat, Tracey Moffatt, Marina Abramovic and Senzeni Marasela. It reflects on the collection of both renowned and emerging artists working in the photographic medium that the Goodman Gallery has amassed over the past several years.

Opens: July 23
Closes: August 27

'The Dreamburdens', master printmaker John Moore's most recent body of work, represents fusion between his technical skill and evocative subject matter. The conceptual matrix behind Moore's work lies in the wildlife and natural world of Africa. 'The Dreamburdens' explores this theme further by investigating dreams. Moore maintains that one's reality is born from one's dreams. It is from humankind's dreams that an industrialised, mechanised and urbanised world has evolved. Within this landscape, the world of animals and nature finds an existence both threatened and protected.

Moore has become a renowned printmaker specialising in woodcuts, linocuts and etchings, all of which are included in this exhibition. The Book of Dreams, the first of many artists' books by Moore, will début at the exhibition. This work comprises a combination of linocuts, embossing and typography and is inspired by San rock paintings. It has been beautifully conceived and bound, creating an exciting departure from Moore's two-dimensional approach.

The artist will conduct a walkabout of the exhibition at 11am on Saturday August 6. Opens: July 31
Closes: August 13

Social figure paintings by Bruce Backhouse and Walter Voigt are showcased by the Everard Read Gallery.

Opens: July 28
Closes: August 14

Sculptor Sean Slemon has, for the past several months, embarked on a project to remap Johannesburg. His latest exhibition consists of four renditions of Johannesburg. His work remaps each of the city's eleven metropolitan areas, according to current population statistics. Slemon 'corrects' the long history of disparity in our city, by giving more area to those regions that require it for their population.

'I want to create work that interrogates the ways in which South Africans have historically and politically approached the issues of land and community. Land, public space and architecture are central in my work. Public artwork or signature architecture is an important component in this debate: crucial to the dialogue between public space and the users of that space', he comments.

In the exhibition, entitled 'Joburg one to eleven', each region becomes its own mountain, in much the same way that the Premises Gallery became its own mountain in 'Uplift: The Mountain Premises', Slemon's show held in June.

'Joburg one to eleven' presents various views of present-day Johannesburg within its 11 metropolitan regions, through layered plywood. Photographs, drawings and found objects complete the installation, showing the progression of changing a landscape to fit a city's needs and abstractly address its problems. Aspects of the installation consider the effects of suburban territory and the boomed-off areas that reflect political fear and class imbalance.

Slemon's interest in public space and architecture has evolved during his work with the production and installation of museum and heritage sites in South Africa and abroad. Since 2001, he has worked on the New Northern Cape Legislature Buildings in Kimberley, Constitution HillMuseum in Johannesburg with '46664 A Prisoner Working in the Garden', a travelling exhibition sponsored by the Nelson Mandela Foundation and, more recently, Kliptown Museum's 'The People Shall Govern' installation.

Slemon graduated with distinction from Michaelis School of Fine Arts in 2001 and has recently been accepted by The Pratt Institute, one of New York's finest art institutions, to complete his Master's in 2007.

Opens: July 30
Closes: August 24

Johan Conradie, currently in the final year of his Master of Arts in Fine Arts at the University of Pretoria, recently participated in the 'Reconciliation' exhibition at the Pretoria Art Museum, alongside high profiled local artists. 'Stone and Silence' is his first solo exhibition and features variously scaled photographs and paintings that explore eternal symbols of life and spirituality.

Says Conradie of this work, 'graveyard and religious imagery in my works is far from innocent and nostalgic decoration. Nostalgia � means we are in the presence of death, something that endures in memory, and, while it no longer shapes the living moment, unconsciously influences the sense of life as a whole.

'Grand, sacred monuments are more solid, durable, sensuous and knowing than their contemporary surroundings. They are made of stone, indicating with their materiality that they will last forever. They symbolize eternal spiritual values, suggesting that there is more to life than speedy apprehension and the glamour of new technologies. If, for all their material indestructibility, the monuments could someday become historical ruins, the spiritual reality they signify could remain intact and unchanged.'

Opens: August 18
Closes: August 28

The Johannesburg Art Gallery presents a major retrospective of the work of William Kentridge. It is curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, supported by the City of Johannesburg, BHP Billiton, the Goodman Gallery and Sansui, and begun its international tour at the Castello di Rivoli in Italy.

William Kentridge�s art is an expressive attempt to address the nature of human emotions and memory as well as the relationship between ethics and responsibility. Whilst he has throughout his career moved between film, drawing and theatre, Kentridge's primary activity remains drawing. He has gained international recognition for his distinctive animated short films, and for the charcoal drawings based on 'erasure' that he makes to produce them.

Kentridge investigates how our identities are shaped through our shifting ideas of history and place, looking at how we construct our histories and what we do with them. His is an elegiac art that explores the possibilities of poetry in contemporary society, and provides a vicious satirical commentary on that society, while proposing a way of seeing life as process rather than as fact.

This retrospective represents a major survey of all of Kentridge�s oeuvre with a particular focus on recent works such as Sleeping on Glass (1999), Shadow Procession (1999), and Zeno Writing (2002). Seven Fragments for Georges Méliès (2003) and Journey to the Moon (2003) are new experiments reminiscent of the world of early film. A unique installation of his drawings and sculptures, designed by the artist, will also be included.

The exhibition is accompanied by a major new publication including the artist's writings, an anthology of critical writings and new essays by the curator and by South African writer and cultural historian Jane Taylor. The exhibition has also travelled to Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal, Montreal. After its showing at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, the exhibition will travel to Miami.

. Kentridge participated in �Documenta X� in Kassel in 1997, and a survey show of his work was hosted by the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, touring to Barcelona, London, Marseille and Graz. In 1999 he was awarded the Carnegie Medal at Carnegie International. In 2001-2002, a survey exhibition of Kentridge's work travelled to Washington, New York, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and Cape Town. He was awarded the prestigious Kaiserring Prize in 2003.

Opens: July 3
Closes: October 31

Gauteng art lovers who missed out on the 2004 Brett Kebble Art Awards in Cape Town will be able to see what all the excitement is about at solo exhibitions by the two artists who shared the Kebble top prize of R260 000.

Cutting edge video animator Tanya Poole, from Grahamstown will be exhibiting her work at Franchise in Milpark, and Philip Rikhotso from Giyani in Limpopo will be exhibiting at Gallery Momo in Parktown North.

Poole commented: �I enjoy Philip�s work tremendously and am very pleased to be able to exhibit with him. The Kebble team has arranged that we share an opening on the same night but in different venues, which gives our respective bodies of work the space they need while linking us as the joint winners of The Kebble.

�Because of the complexity of what I do I would never have been able to exhibit my work properly were it not for the support of Brett Kebble and his team who are raising the profile of art in this country so specifically and generously�, she continued.

On opening night Kebble organisers will provide an �art shuttle� between the two venues to make it as easy as possible for people to see both shows.

Opens: July 20
Closes: August 15

Gauteng art lovers who missed out on the 2004 Brett Kebble Art Awards in Cape Town will be able to see what all the excitement is about at solo exhibitions by the two artists who shared the Kebble top prize of R260 000.

Tsonga sculptor Philip Rikhotso from Giyani in Limpopo will be exhibiting his work at Gallery Momo in Parktown North and and painter/animator Tanya Poole from Grahamstown will be exhibiting at Franchise Gallery in Milpark.

�An important aim of The Kebble is to provide artists with a platform to reach a wider audience and these exhibitions are a great opportunity for Gauteng-based art lovers to see works by two of the country�s most talented artists,� commented David Barritt, producer of the BKAA. �[Poole and Rikhotso�s] backgrounds are as diverse as the media they choose to work in�.

Visitors to the exhibitions will be able to see the works which won their creators the top prize of R130 000.00 each, as well as a selection of recent work by each artist.

Opens: July 20
Closes: August 15

The finalists from around the country for the Absa L�Atelier Art Competition will be announced on the opening night of this exhibition. Young artists (between 18 and 35) are attracted to prizes to the value of R400 000, as well the opportunity for two of the most promising artists to spend time in Paris at the renowned Cité des Arts in Paris, France. The competition, which is the longest running in South Africa to date, is a good representation of the emerging, unknown and sometimes raw talent available in this country.

Opens: July 13
Closes: August 20

�With Logs�, an exhibition of moving sculpture by Richard Forbes is reflected in the artist�s words: �Each day in the city of gold has merit; has substance. This city never stops. Its movement, gyrating under the surface, enables us to exist. One of two major cities in the world without a river. What makes it pulse so?�

�We may think it is gold driven�, he continues. �We may say it is greed. I think it is persistence, perseverance, tenacity and a willingness within its people to melt into one unique daily, expression.�

�This is the engine; the source of my art works. Movement and interaction are essential to the language of my sculpture. At the same time I portray the varied personalities and attitudes of the people I meet and observe in this vibrant, colourful place.�

Opens: July 20
Closes: August 13

Artspace�s next three-man show features work by Johannesburg-based painter Karin Preller, and Cape Town-based Keith Dietrich and Clementina van der Walt.

Opens: July 24
Closes: August 20

Sasol's 2005 New Signatures Competition promises to once again unearth the creative talent of young, emerging South African artists.This year's competition will culminate in early August when the overall prize winner of R50 000 will be announced, along with the winners of the merit and other awards.

The New Signatures award has evolved into one of the most progressive art competitions in South Africa and presents unique opportunities for emerging young artists to advance their careers and gain local and international recognition. It has also inspired many important and exciting works of art.

A total of 551 entries were submitted via the competition website and at various collection points in Bloemfontein, Durban, Johannesburg, Port Elizabeth, Pretoria and Stellenbosch.From these entries, 97 artworks were selected for display. Adjudicators Willem Boshoff, Franci Cronjé, Teresa Lizamore, Churchill Madikida and Kathryn Smith selected the winning works.Walter Oltmann and Khwezi Gule will select the winner of the judges' award of R10 000. Opens: August 3
Closes: September 15

The Fried Contemporary, a new Pretoria gallery, launches with an exhibition entitled 'Art from Two Metropoles', to be opened by Willem Boshoff. Participating artists include Alex Trapani, André Naudé, Antoinette Murdoch, Bonita Alice, Celia de Villiers, Collen Maswanganye, Diane Victor, Franci Cronjé, Frikkie Eksteen, Gordon Froud, Harry Siertsema, Ian Marley, Jan van der Merwe, Johan Conradie, John Clarke, Karin Preller, Kudzanai Chiurai, Nina Romm, Phillip Badenhorst, Pieter Swanepoel, Stephan Erasmus, Stephen Hobbs, Titus Matiyane, Willem Boshoff and Wilma Cruise.

Opens: July 30
Closes: August 19

Currently associated with the Bag Factory are Ben Arnold, Bongi Bengu, Paul Emmanuel, Rookeya Gardee, Diana Hyslop, David Koloane, Stephen Maqhasela, Pat Mautloa, Sam Nhlengthwa, Tracy Rose, Joachim Schönfeldt, Andrew Tshabangu and Dominic Tshabangu. Individually and collectively they are all regarded as amongst the leading visual arts practitioners in Johannesburg.

This exhibition of their current output examines different thought processes and approaches to art and articulates an intention to further dialogue between the Johannesburg and Tshwane art communities. A catalogue will be published as part of this exhibition and regular walkabouts by the artists complete the gallery programme. In addition, theatrical lighting expert Quinten Rood showcases his lighting skills in the construction of this exhibition.

Opens: July 6
Closes: August 31

Else Friemelt is an artist who loves travelling and this has inspired her exhibition of etchings and watercolours, entitled 'Cape to Kunene' which is to be opened by Professor Karin Skawran. Friemelt's works are not simply images of nature, but are personal anecdotes of the artist's visual experiences. They tell of her deeply felt love for open spaces, far horizons, trees and vegetation.

Opens: August 5
Closes: August 31

Isabel le Roux presents her most recent oil and acrylic paintings collectively entitled 'The Colour of Time'. The work has been inspired by le Roux's recent sojourns in Paris and Venice. The exhibition is to be opened by celebrated actress, singer and cabaret star Amanda Strydom.

Opens: August 7
Closes: August 25