Archive: Issue No. 95, July 2005

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CAPE TOWN

1.07.05 Claudette Schreuders & John Murray at Michael Stevenson Contemporary
1.07.05 Colijn Strydom public performance at DIRT contemporary
1.07.05 Natalie Souchon, Adrian Kohler & Donovan Ward at the AVA
1.07.05 Johann Louw at the UCT Irma Stern Museum
1.07.05 Dario Matter and 'Discomfort' at Erdmann Contemporary
1.07.05 Lara Feldman and Toni Dorfman at DIRT contemporary
1.07.05 Maxim at VEO Art Warehouse
1.07.05 Horizons of Babel: Keith Dietrich at Bell-Roberts Gallery
1.07.05 Carol-Anne Gainer at Bell-Roberts Gallery
1.07.05 Advance Notice: Dumile Feni: A Retrospective Exhibition at the SANG
1.07.05 Fantastic Kill presents: Masjien 6

3.06.05 Mustafa Maluka at Michael Stevenson Contemporary
3.06.05 Gretchen van der Byl, Tommy Motswai and Corinne Smit at the AVA
3.06.05 Monica Dart at 3rd i Gallery
3.06.05 Daniel Blom at Bell-Roberts
3.06.05 Mareli Esterhuizen at DIRT Contemporary

09.05.05 'Subject to Change' at the SANG

DARLING

3.06.05 Judith Mason at Chelsea on 34

FRANSCHHOEK

26.04.05 'Kaleidoscope' at Grande Provence
 

CAPE TOWN

Claudette Schreuders

Claudette Schreuders
She used to be Nice, 2005
Jelutong and enamel

John Murray

John Murray
Kofi Annan
 


Claudette Schreuders & John Murray at Michael Stevenson Contemporary

Sculptor and printmaker Claudette Schreuders presents two new series of lithographs and two new sculptures at the Michael Stevenson Contemporary Gallery this month. The former include eight prints based on her seminal sculpture series Burnt by the Sun and three large-scale prints called The Three Sisters.

Schreuders is well known for her distinctive oeuvre of carved and painted figurative sculptures that formally reference the West African colon tradition. But her subjects are firmly located in the anxiety of suburban South African existence and often contain elements of autobiography, according to the gallery's statement. She has received wide exposure in the United States, with sell-out shows in New York in 2001 and 2002 and a touring exhibition of university gallery spaces last year.

Painter John Murray's exhibition runs concurrently in an exhibition of portrait and cut-out figure paintings that draw stylistically on West African barbershop signs. Murray's new work includes large-scale portraits of a number of African leaders, including United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan, which reflects a quiet and dignified statesman. Murray will also present charcoal drawings based on newspaper photographs that explore the subtlety of interactions between African politicians.

Opens: July 13
Closes: August 13


Colijn Strydom

Colijn Strydom
Cross
150x 80, charcoal on fabriano paper
 


Colijn Strydom at DIRT contemporary

The public is invited to view the ongoing visual debris of a creative man locked in a white box for a week at DIRT contemporary art space. Colijn Strydom will be living in complete isolation in DIRT contemporary art space for one week. The only contact with the outside world will be what he can see through the gallery window � passing pedestrians, motorists and neighbouring buildings.

The window acts as a looking glass through which the public can scrutinize the artist at work 24 hours a day for the duration of the exhibition while he works on a large-scale charcoal drawing covering the interior of the gallery space. A self-imposed routine will be central to the performance, with set times for waking, sleeping, eating, going to the toilet and drawing.

Opens: July 12
Closes: July 19


Adrian Kohler

Adrian Kohler
Division of Spheres, Superwood and material 1
 


Natalie Souchon, Adrian Kohler & Donovan Ward at the AVA

Natalie Souchon, a newcomer to the Cape Town art scene, exhibits in the Main Gallery with an installation of painting and other media in her first solo at the AVA. Adrian Kohler exhibits in the Long Gallery with abstract sculpture, while Donovan Ward presents an installation in mixed media upstairs.

Opens: July 11
Closes: July 30


Johann Louw

Johann Louw

Johann Louw

Johann Louw
 


Johann Louw at the UCT Irma Stern Museum

Johann Louw is known for his large canvases of life-sized male figures and with this recent body of work he makes an unexpected return to the female figure, in combination with landscape and still-life elements and the more familiar male figure. The exhibition comprises the past two years of studio work but includes some of his earliest work never publicly shown, which depict Louw's radical move from colourful expressionist to figurative style.

The Irma Stern Museum says Louw explores the psychological landscape of South African identity in a tactile and visceral way through the juxtaposition of anonymous figures in spaces with images of the South African interior: "This semi-desert landscape is typified in Louw's work by the repeated stretches of dry bush, waterless riverbeds and the continual presence of mountain chains on the horizon."

Opens: June 29
Closes: July 21



Dario Matter and 'Discomfort' at Erdmann Contemporary

The inspiration for this body of work comes from Dario Matter's daily travels on foot from his home in Observatory to his studio in Salt River. He has captured ordinary moments on Polaroid film and reworked them into sculptures made of steel, stone and found objects.

The exhibition, 'dis-comfort', examines and comments on Matter's surroundings and his interaction with them. In this way, he moves from his background training of a precision stone sculptor to a more conceptual artist. Matter trained in Switzerland for four years as a stone sculptor before studying a Post Graduate Diploma at Michaelis School of Fine Art and more recently holding solo shows in Switzerland.

Opens: July 6
Closes: August 13


Lara Feldman

Lara Feldman
'Dutch in the Morning', 120 x 80cm
Oil on canvas

Toni Dorfman

Toni Dorfman
'Untitled', 120 x 140cm
Acrylic on canvas
 


Lara Feldman and Toni Dorfman at DIRT contemporary

Lara Feldman is exhibiting paintings that are described as full of descriptive scenery, "like postcards from a laid-back city". She says returning to Cape Town from a few years abroad gave her a renewed sense of the city: "The distinctive colours of Cape Town impress me. My paintings are a reflection of all the diverse and magnificent scenery around me."

Toni Dorfman is a practising graphic designer and trained glass blower who has turned to painting. Her distinctive brightly coloured canvases in acrylic washes and abstract lines depict space, both real and imagined.

Opens: July 23
Closes: August 6



Maxim at VEO Art Warehouse

Maxim is a self-taught artist, working mainly in acrylic on canvas, with a style described as "colourfield abstraction and colourfield minimalism". He says: "All my work is a result of the intuitive placement of colour and objects, much the same as the imaginary borderlines that make up our personal space. I experience fields of free colour and movement in my compositions and these represent who I am, now or then."

Room 303 at VEO Art Warehouse is a collection of imagery depicting peculiar twists in an existence that is sometimes fictitious or altered according to the vast number of occurrences taking place in life, comprising colour fields and objects.

Opens: June 28
Closes: July 8


Keith Dietrich

Keith Dietrich
Cape Columbine (Hoedklip) � 32 � 49 ' 30 '' S: 17� 50' 44'' E, 2004, Foldout panorama printed with Epson UltraChrome inks on Arches Inkjet Media Albrecht 210 gsm
 


'Horizons of Babel': Keith Dietrich at Bell-Roberts Gallery

'Horizons of Babel', framed against a backdrop of a fascination with the topography of the country, explores how images construct knowledge and investigates the relationship between the centre and the periphery. The site of the project is located on a semicircle between Cape Columbine on the West Coast of the Cape and Cape Agulhas, with the centre falling on the hill Babelonstoring in the vicinity of the winelands. For those who missed the exhibition at the University of Stellenbosch Art Gallery in July last year, this is another chance to view it.

Keith Dietrich, professor of art at Stellenbosch University, is a kind of artist/ explorer with a fascination for history. Through his artistic investigations, a number of themes repeat themselves. The tension between chance and order recurs, as does the duality between fact and fiction, reality and appearance. His explorations often have a scientific rigour which he uses to create works layered with multiple references and rooted in research.

Opens: July 6
Closes: July 25


Carol-Anne Gainer

Carol-Anne Gainer
Piss, video still
 


Carol-Anne Gainer & 'b(l)ind' at Bell-Roberts Gallery

"Carol-Anne Gainer's production engages the forces that bind us to daily life, our own bodies and each other", reads the press statement. "Her concerns focus on her sense of relationship to place or land while simultaneously exploring norms around the body. Creating works where she contests boundaries of difference, Gainer produces images that affront or confound, calling for a reassessment of expectation."

Opens: July 6
Closes: July 30


Dumile Feni

Dumile Feni
'Untitled', pen and ink
 


Advance Notice: Dumile Feni Retrospective at the SANG

The Dumile Feni retrospective comes to Cape Town's National Gallery this month from the Johannesburg Art Gallery. Feni's drawings, which depicted township life and its values, won acclaim as South African social commentaries. His work has won numerous awards and in 1967 he represented the country at the Sao Paulo Biennale.

Feni's artistic ability was nurtured from 1964 when the artist Ezrom Legae encouraged him to draw and several artists later assisted him in his career, including Cecil Skotnes. In 1968, he went into exile and lived in London for many years. In the 1980s, he moved to New York after teaching art in Boston. He died in 1991.

Opens: August 11
Closes: November 5


masjien

Masjien 6 logo
 


Fantastic Kill presents: Masjien 6

Independent short film screening by Anri du Toit, Mikhael Straat, Ed Young, Berlin East, Watkin Tudor Jones and Flava X � plus DJ Waddyphunkkkoutand and VJ Neon Demon.

Saturday, July 16

9.00 for 9.30 pm


Mustafa Maluka

Mustafa Maluka
'Accented living (a rough guide)' Oil on canvas, 183 x 133cm
 


Mustafa Maluka at Michael Stevenson Contemporary

Mustafa Maluka, who last year returned to Cape Town after spending six years in Amsterdam, presents an exhibition of new paintings in his show called 'Accented Living (a rough guide)'. The series comprises head-and-shoulders portraits of people the artist describes as 'invented heroes' interspersed with abstract canvases drawing strongly on the hip-hop aesthetic.

Maluka has a particular interest in urban African youth and their relationship to hip-hop culture and technology. His exhibition also ties into the notion of a globalised world, characterised by large-scale displacement and relocation - with accents being one marker of identification, as indicated by the show's title.

Maluka exhibited internationally in 2004 on the New York group show 'Personal affects: power and poetics in contemporary South African art' at the Museum for African Art and the Cathedral of St John the Divine and at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, Romania the same year. On his return to Cape Town, he was awarded the annual Tollman prize for a young artist.

Opens: June 8
Closes: July 9


Conrad Botes

Conrad Botes
'Untitled', 2005
Monotype, 85 x 120 cm
 


Conrad Botes at Erdmann Contemporary

Conrad Botes is holding a solo exhibition before his departure to Paris for four months to claim his Absa Atelier award. The exhibition, entitled 'Devil's Bullets' includes multi-media works on paper and canvas as well as reverse-glass paintings.

Botes says his painting has its roots in comic book drawing, and he approaches it in a very eclectic manner combining cartoon stereotypes with more figurative ways of representation. He also juxtaposes humorous and disturbing subject matter.

The narrative content of Botes' work is usually related to race, gender and violence and their relationship to power and hierarchy. Botes says: 'Rather than delivering future vision or a solution to problems, these narratives try to present situations around power and hierarchy in a very direct and confrontational way. I love to think of my work as a post-mortem of the society and culture from which I have emerged.'

Opens: May 25
Closes: July 2


Gretchen van der Byl

Gretchen van der Byl
'Catherine Sitting on a Chair'
Oil on canvas
 


Gretchen van der Byl, Tommy Motswai and Corinne Smit at the AVA

Gretchen van der Byl shows a series of figurative paintings in the Main Gallery, which were completed as part of her Master's degree at UCT's Michaelis School of Fine Art. In the Long Gallery, Tommy Motswai - former winner of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award - exhibits colourful pastels on cotton paper. Upstairs, Corinne Smit presents new sculptural pieces in a show called 'Fetish'.

Opens: June 20
Closes: July 9


Monica Dart

Monica Dart
 


Monica Dart and 'Fleeting Childhood' at 3rd i Gallery

An exhibition of photographs by Monica Dart, called 'Fleeting Childhood', takes an apparently provocative look at the tender age of transition, 'that gut-wrenching passage between adolescence and adulthood'.

Opens: June 16
Closes: July 23


Daniel Blom

Daniel Blom
'The historian', 2004
Plastic, found wood, and cloth, approx. 110 x 60 x 40 cm
 


Daniel Blom at Bell-Roberts

Daniel Blom exhibits an installation of sculptures called 'The Ship of things � study for scribe' at Bell-Roberts this month. Blom says: 'The keel, the prow, these glorious forms groan and strain, and very slowly in the condensing procedure of movement, all aspects of process are controlled. But prior and akin to process, four archetypical figures, or companions, contribute to the peculiar infusion of conquest. Instructed and necessary, they assist its tendency of self-conscious struggle. Defined and differentiated, they help defy the process of destruction, enabling the ship to devour its own history and potential threat.'

Opens: June 1
Closes: July 2


Mareli Esterhuizen

Mareli Esterhuizen
'Breathe', 2005
Archival ink on paper, 290 mm x 420 mm

Mareli Esterhuizen

Mareli Esterhuizen
'untitled', 290 x 420 mm, archival ink on cotton paper
 


Mareli Esterhuizen at DIRT Contemporary

Mareli Esterhuizen exhibits photographs that explore a change in one of life's seasons using underwater images of a pregnant figure to signify an expectation of the new, while abstract seascapes speak of a future of spacious places. The images layered with textures and grain are printed on unbleached rice paper using archival inks.

The fragility of the paper that floats evocatively in the gallery space suggests lightness and space, building upon Esterhuizen's earlier work concerning emotions. She says: 'My work is about the freedom of expressing the inner-most self, of laying it bare with vulnerability.'

Opens: June 24
Closes: July 8



'Subject to Change' at the SANG

This exhibition, which is drawn from the SANG's permanent collection, 'explores the multiple and complex subjectivities of South Africans through works of art that address the need for change and the process of transformation in South Africa'. The focus of the exhibition is not only on political transformation but also on the transformative power of desire and spirituality.

The exhibition profiles many recent acquisitions made with the gallery's funds from the Department of Arts and Culture's Transformation Budget. These newer works are juxtaposed with earlier works exposing intolerable conditions.

Artists include Jane Alexander, Tyrone Appollis, Willie Bester, Peter Clarke, Randolph Hartzenberg, Nicholas Hlobo, Ranjith Kally, Simon Lekgetho, Leonard Matsoso, Santu Mofokeng, Thami Mnyele, Zanele Muholi, Antoinette Murdoch, Tracey Rose, Philip Rikhotso, Alfred Thoba and Diane Victor.

Opens: March 19
Closes: August 28


DARLING

Judith Mason

Judith Mason
'Lost Dog'
Oil on board
 


Judith Mason at Chelsea on 34 Art Gallery, Darling

This exhibition of drawings, mixed media and oil paintings is centred around a number of themes, starting with 'My Artist's Muse' in various guises from clown to hobby horse. In some paintings, Mason attempts to apprehend the four elements of the universe and the harmony of Empidocle's sphere and ponders 'The God that is within Thee', as Marcus Aurelius described his daemon. A few paintings are laments of one kind or another, and others are pastiches of religious ideas.

Opens: 11am, June 11
Closes: July 9


FRANSCHHOEK

Sanell Aggenbach

Sanell Aggenbach
'Six Degrees of Separation', 2004
Oil on canvas
 


'Kaleidoscope' at Grande Provence

A new gallery opens this month at the Grande Provence wine estate in Franschhoek. Art consultant Rose Korber has selected an assortment of artworks in a range of media from painting to sculpture and prints.

Artists represented include Sanell Aggenbach, Peter Eastman, Robert Hodgins, Stephen Inggs, JP Meyer, Xolile Mtakatya, Zwelethu Mthethwa, John Murray, Sam Nhlengethwa, Robert Slingsby, Herman van Nazareth, Avhashoni Mainganye and Louise Gelderblom.

Opens: April 10

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