Archive: Issue No. 90, February 2005

04.02.05 Faye Sutherland at artSPACE durban
04.02.05 Vaughn Sadie at the NSA Gallery's Multimedia Room
04.02.05 'One Hundred Years of...' in the NSA's Main and Mezzanine Galleries

07.01.05 Brent Meistre at the NSA Gallery
07.01.05 Jane Strode at the NSA Gallery

Faye Sutherland is a South African-born artist who grew up in Kwa-Zulu Natal and graduated from the University of Natal with a Masters in Fine Arts in 2001. Sutherland works mainly in oils although sometimes she includes lettering and both found and fabricated sculptural elements.

Two main themes underpin Sutherland's work at present: the first centres on feelings or fears that inhabit our dreams. These can vary from desire and longing, to love and absence and loss and loneliness. In 'Dreams and dangers' she explores these issues through images of herself and those close to her in figurative work. The second theme concerns danger, or at least the feeling of some kind of imminent and pervasive harm.

One of Sutherland's current works is a series of panels entitled Small and Dangerous Things. The objects depicted in this series vary widely from a tube of paint to a thumb print and a safety pin. Almost all these objects are apparently innocuous, but potentially harmful depending on how they are used and who is looking at them.

Opens: 6pm, February 7
Closes: February 26

'Spill Light', an installation by Vaughn Sadie, is the third installment in the NSA Young Artists' Project (YAP). Sadie presents an installation that generates an urban environment, looking at public and private space and how these are affected by light. Symbols, elements and materials are combined to construct an ambiguous environment that places light as a catalyst that blurs ones visions as you move through these spaces.

Sadie is a Durban-based artist, who completed a B.Tech in Fine Art at the Durban Institute of Technology in 2003. In the last three years he has built up a body of work integrating performance, video, photography and installation. He has also collaborated on several public events - including Redeye at the Durban Art Gallery, and as part of JOMBA Dance Festival in the recent site specific performances 'Republic' in Durban. He was also an ABSA L'Atelier finalist in 2004 and participated in 'Negotiate' at the Johannesburg Art Gallery.

According to Sadie, 'Light, with its metaphorical qualities and practical applications, besieges our everyday existence, illuminating the spaces we occupy, affecting our social reality. The nature of light is such that it can be manipulated and altered to illuminate objects and spaces revealing only the aspects that are deemed suitable or necessary. One can also see light as a device used to shape and formulate one's understanding of both public and private spaces.

'Light hovers over the threshold between the intimate and the communal, the personal and the political. Artificial light is believed to have liberated the world from restrictions imposed by darkness and eroding the borders between public and private life. Here it is illumination that has promoted freedom, by making surveillance possible.'

The Young Artists' Project (YAP) is an ongoing initiative to showcase new work by young Kwa-Zulu Natal artists through four exhibitions, a publication and a public seminar annually. The project is funded the National Arts Council, Pro Helvetia, The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and the Royal Netherlands Embassy.

Opens: 6pm, February 15
Closes: March 6

The theme for the 2005 NSA Members' Exhibition is 'One Hundred years of... '. The NSA was established in 1905, and is celebrating its centenary during 2005. An exciting programme of activities is planned for the year and kicks off with this annual exhibition by asking members to complete the sentence in which ever way they want.

The exhibition attracts considerable interest every year, and is an opportunity for the public to acquaint themselves with the practice of the very active membership base of the organisation. The exhibition will include works in all media, and this showcase guarantees attractive artworks at affordable prices.

The NSA Gallery management also uses this opportunity to give exposure to the positive contribution our members make towards the arts in Kwa-Zulu Natal.
Furthermore the artist who produces the most outstanding work on the 2005 exhibition will be awarded a floating trophy in the name of Joan Emanuel, made available by Emanuel family. In addition the family will be sponsoring three prizes for the three best entries: a first prize of R3000, a second prize of R2000 and a third prize of R1000.

Opens: 6pm, February 15
Closes: March 6

Brent Meistre is a photographer and academic living and working in Grahamstown. A lecturer in photography at Rhodes University, Meistre has participated in numerous exhibitions, and was nominated for the prestigious Daimler Chrysler Award for Creative photography in 2003. 'Sans' was first presented during 2004 at the Grahamstown Festival.

The exhibition consists of photographic works, each made up of composite images, displayed in ornate frames and grouped to form grid-like structures. The exhibition also includes a sound installation and a DVD projection.

Meistre uses black and white images to quote and interrogate the idea of the photograph as a document of historical fact against the medium's possibilities for suggesting the unsaid. As the title (French for 'without') would suggest, the exhibition evokes notions of a phantom, a secret that may be known or unknown but that is unconsciously carried through generations of a family.

Meistre states, 'Throughout my different projects, I continue to investigate the possibilities of single and multiple images as cinematic and thereby playing with the veiling of narrative. Across all the bodies of my photographic work is a sense of loss, longing, melancholia or malaise. I see the photograph as a visual image that needs to be continually unpacked and read on many levels and it is from this departure point that I approach all my projects.'

Opens: 6pm, January 25
Closes: February 13

'Dream-works' is Jane Strode's second solo exhibition and consists of paintings installed in a chronological order, a series of works that charts her artistic practice of recent years.

Strode is visually disabled, the result of an hereditary eye disease. Recently she was also diagnosed with related eye dystrophy. Regardless of this she has continued to produce work, exploring her interest in light and abstraction.

Her interest and artistic endeavour is summed up in a statement by Patrick Heron, who once said, 'The best abstraction breathes reality, it is redolent of forms in space, of sunlight and air'.

Strode states, 'Although my paintings are not pure abstractions, I am impulsively and obsessively drawn to the effect of light in nature. I use my camera, an old Nikon, to help me, sometimes manipulating the images on my computer before I finally begin painting. I am drawn by the texture of nature, the roughness of bark, the silkiness of a petal, the crisp fragile-ness of a dried leaf'.

Opens: 6pm, January 25
Closes: February 13