Archive: Issue No. 95, July 2005

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 Ekhurhuleni Winners at Coen Scholtz Recreation Centre
1.07.05 Kathryn Smith and Colin Richards at Constitution Hill
1.07.05 Adams Clarke Desmore and Dollar Brand at Warren Siebrits
1.07.05 Abrie Pieterse at Gallery @ 157
1.07.05 Richard Forbes at Gallery @ 157
1.07.05 Maureen de Jager at The Premises
1.07.05 Digital Masters students from Wits at Franchise
1.07.05 Preller, Dietrich and van der Walt at Artspace
1.07.05 Maja Maljevic at Obert Contemporary

3.06.05 Pieter Swanepoel and Emma Willemse at Artspace
3.06.05 Carol Nathan Levin at Gallery @157
3.06.05 Lesley Ann Myles at gordart
3.06.05 Kathryn Smith at Standard Bank
3.06.05 Emily Stainer at Standard Bank
3.06.05 William Kentridge at Goodman
6.04.05 Belinda Zangewa at Alliance Francaise

PRETORIA

1.07.05 Peter Binsbergen @ Association of Arts

3.06.05 The River Project at Pretoria Art Museum
 

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

The exhibition of the Ekurhuleni Fine Arts Award is currently on show. Originally named the Kempton Park Art Competition, it was first held 17 years ago and over the years the competition has earned a reputation for luring some of the best artistic talent in the country to enter.�

The overall prize money was raised this year to R42 000. The winner, Emmanuel Moutswi walked away on June 25 with R20 000 for his work Nomadism, a mixed media installation. In second place, bagging R12 000 for her piece Christelike Nasionale Onderwys, also a mixed media installation, was Celeste Nel. Printmaker John Moore was awarded the R8 000 third prize for his colour woodcut entitled Making Metal, Mountains and Monuments, and a special judges� award of R2 000, went to Marem Seabi for his sculpture Traditional Hat/Traditional Pot.

�The award is a way the municipality is showing its commitment to supporting arts in the country,� Zweli Dlamini, council spokesperson, said. �The competition affords much-needed opportunities, as well as exposure, to artists, especially the up-and-coming.�

Opens: June 25
Closes: July 13

On May 18, Constitutional Hill and the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER) launched their new partnership around a series of Public Encounters at the site's notorious Number Four prison. The ongoing partnership sees the two organizations collaborating on generating appropriate and interesting material for Constitution Hill�s Public Programming.

Constitution Hill is a unique mixed-use development in the Inner City of Johannesburg consisting of the Constitutional Court, the Fort Prison Complex including the Women�s Jail and Number Four, and in the near future, a retail, residential and hospitality development. The buildings of the site starkly echo the abuses of the past (as symbolized by the prison buildings) and the hope and enlightenment of the future (as symbolized by the Constitutional Court).

Lauren Segal, Programme Director for Constitution Hill comments: �The marriage of the two institutions for Public Encounters is ideal. Drawing content from an organization like WISER will ensure that our programmes remain relevant and dynamic, while Constitution Hill provides an exciting new space in Johannesburg�s inner-city for public participation and debate.�

Public programmes at Constitution Hill are divided into a variety of categories that allow for flexibility to embrace current issues, celebrate days of national significance, address matters of public interest and create a forum for public debate. These programmes take the form of talks, debates, visual exhibitions (photographic and fine art) and educational events.

According to Deborah Posel, Director of WISER, �The collaboration with Constitution Hill on Public Encounters is, for us, an enormously suggestive and creative one. Both organisations want to promote animated public debate on the critical issues of the day in ways which contribute to the strengthening of our fledgling democracy�.

On August 3, Kathryn Smith and Colin Richards will talk on Smith�s work Jack in Johannesburg

. Date: August 3
Time: 5.30 for 6pm

In 2004, Warren Siebrits Modern and Contemporary Art published X, a catalogue for an exhibition celebrating ten years of South African democracy. One of the works selected for that exhibition was a triptych by Albert Adams (b. 1930). �This was the first work by Adams I had managed to locate, and I have been fortunate over the last year to acquire two more oils, two charcoal drawings and a magnificent etched self-portrait�, Siebrits commented.

Although born in Johannesburg, Adams began his artistic training at Livingstone School in Woodstock, Cape Town in 1947. It was at this time that he became acquatined with fellow artists Peter Clarke (b. 1929) and Valerie Desmore (b. 1925). All three artists were classified as �coloured�.

Desmore left South Africa to study at Slade School of Fine Arts in London, at that time, later became a student of the Viennese Expressionist Oskar Kokoschka (1886-1980). Adams was also taught by Kokoschka, when he attended his School of Vision in Salzburg in the late 1950s. Desmore and Adams remained in London.

Clarke was first a dock worker in Simon�s Town before electing to become a full time artist in the mid 1950s. His talents were recognized by Sekoto during the 1940s, and Clarke went on to be influenced by artists like Diego Rivera and David Siqueiros.

Over the past fifty years, Clarke has been intimately involved in the Cape Town arts community. He has organized exhibitions and cultural events, designed posters and book covers for prominent writers. He is also a gifted storyteller and poet and has been published widely. This exhibition will give collectors the rare opportunity to acquire works from his Fanfare series, which combines aspects of collage and watercolour with poetry. These works underline the importance of acknowledging Clarke as both artist and poet. This series was published by Michael Stevenson in 2004.

Dollar Brand, now known as Abdullah Ibrahim, has achieved international acclaim as one of the finest jazz composers and pianists of his generation. �As he was born in District Six in 1934 and a product of the same communities and social fabric as Adams, Clarke and Desmore,� Siebrits added, �I felt that his music might add to the experience of viewing these artworks on show. I have collected his records for many years and we will exhibit roughly fifty of his albums and singles which span thirty years, many with striking, beautifully designed covers.�

Opens: June 21

Closes: July 14

Abrie Pieterse�s work explores the visual impact created by juxtaposing the rigid, man made geometric patterns of Op Art and Minimalism, with the softer, random shapes found in highly detailed studies of natural objects.

Opens: June 15
Closes: July 16

�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

�Leave/Remain�, a solo exhibition by Rhodes University Fine Art lecturer Maureen de Jager, is conceptualized around the fraught dynamics of leaving and remaining. It investigates the relationship between absences and their traces, between what is left out or left behind (absent, lost, voided) and what is left over (the fugtive remainder).

At its most prosaic, the exhibition draws its impetus from the artist�s own ambivalences about leaving, being left by others, and leaving one�s attendant losses (as when she left Johannesburg to move to Grahamstown in 2002). It figures the uncertainty of leaving behind and being left behind, the always unsettling prospect of leaving again, as well as the marks and remainders that one�s leave-taking leaves.

The works exhibited comprise media, including mild steel, stainless steel, rivets, rust, Perspex, concrete, found objects, crushed charcoal and coal dust. Some works incorporate literal remainders such as human hair, scorched timber collected from the defunct Grahamstown saw mill after it burnt down and teddy bears encased in concrete. Others reference the reminder as an insubstantial trace � a patina of rust obscuring the surface beneath or a shimmering reflection in polished stainless steel. Some deal overtly with remainders as after-effects of body traumas: scars, scabs, welts and bruises.

De Jager was born in Kuruman, South Africa, in 1973 and moved to Johannesburg at the age of seven. After matriculating, she studied at the University of the Witwatersrand, where she obtained both her Bachelor�s and Master�s degrees in Fine Art with distinction. She taught for three years at the Design Center in Johannesburg and in 2002, moved to Grahamstown to join the Rhodes University Fine Art Department. Her works have been included on group shows both locally and internationally, including the 1997 Johannesburg Biennale exhibition, �Graft�, curated by Colin Richards. �Leave/Remain� is her third solo exhibition.

Opens: July 2
Closes: July 23

�Return� is a collaborative exhibition of digital interactive artworks by the Wits School of Art (WSOA) Digital Interactive Media Design MA students of 2005.

The group is working in a uniquely multi-disciplinary environment, mixing with musicians, fine artists, and designers, and will be the second group of Master�s students to showcase completely interactive digital artworks. (The first was the 2004 class with the �drift between� exhibition at the Wits Substation Gallery.) The seven members of the group come from a variety of career and study backgrounds including commerce, television, fine art and graphic design.

The students of the Interactive Media Design programme at Wits are pushing the boundaries of interactivity. The focus in this programme is on interactivity in all its manifestations, spanning both avant-garde experiment and commercial applications. Each of the six artworks on show will be unique, using viewer participation and even natural real time phenomena to directly make and maintain interactions. Some interactions are designed to make the viewer a key player in a fun and beautiful process of creation and discovery, while others investigate new and interesting ways of integrating new and old forms of art making.

Opens: June 25
Closes: July 9

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

Born and educated in Belgrade, Serbia and Montenegro, Maja Maljevic has lived and worked in South Africa for several years. During the final year of her MFA studies in Belgrade, she painted a series of works on canvas called The Continents. These paintings compressed classical and modern techniques into a free-flowing abstract style of bold colours, jagged textures and embedded cultural icons. This acclaimed series launched her professional career in Europe where she has taken part in several exhibitions.

Maljevic has shown her work at various art platforms in Johannesburg; this is her fourth solo exhibition in this city.

Opens: July 21
Closes: July 31

An exhibition entitled 'Dwarsdeur', comprising surface paintings by Pieter Swanepoel and works on doors by Emma Willemse, will be opened by Karin Preller, at Artspace in Fairland. The event also features the launch of a volume of poetry, entitled Middelman by Rudolph Willemse and a poetry reading by Marcel van Heerden.

Swanepoel allows marks, scratches, spills and other blemishes that appear on the surface of painted surfaces, to become part of the visual language of his works. He consistently seeks for and experiments with ways to interfere with traditional notions of the pictorial conventions of easel painting in order to construct artworks he terms 'deconfigured paintings'.

Willemse uses doors as found objects in her work. Taken out of context, these doors become the evidence/trace/remnant of mundane rituals of transition. The door becomes an object of desire for the artist, as well as an indexical symbol of 'reaching the other side'.

Opens: June 26
Closes: July 16

Carol Nathan Levin, a fashion designer/textile surface artist, has always created super-kitsch shrines wherever she has lived. Fifteen years ago, while resident in Los Angeles, she saw an exhibition dealing with the Haitian artform of Drapo Vodou. Constructed of sequins and beads hand-sewn onto fabric, it is a medium designed to bring life to the iconography of Haitian Vodou. On seeing this approach to artmaking, Nathan Levin decided to make her own.

It was at this time that her sister was diagnosed with breast cancer. Throughout all the doctor's visits, operations and chemotherapy, Nathan Levin tried to take her mind off reality by sewing a 'mandala' using the technique of overlapping sequins, silently praying throughout. When her sister recovered, she put it away, secretly associating it with the cancer and never wanting to look at it again.

Ten years later, Nathan Levin's mother was also diagnosed with cancer. Once again she brought out the same mandala. 'Each stitch seemed to help me to transcend the emotional pain.'

For her mother's 72nd birthday, shortly before she passed away, Nathan Levin completed the 'cancer blanket'. Sequining became her medium of choice and her new works are mediations on life, spirituality and contemporary South African society. They are executed in the Drapo Vodou style, which present a similar quality to a Byzantine mosaic in the light reflections they cast.

Opens: June 1
Closes: July 2

Unisa graduate Lesley Ann Myles presents 'Death immortalises life', an exhibition of mixed media landscapes exploring the HIV/Aids pandemic. The exhibition will be opened by Koos van der Watt, senior lecturer in the department of Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology.

Opens: June 19
Closes: July 2

Making art and indulging a compelling interest in forensic investigation, particularly the psychological aspects of criminal activity, have preoccupied the Standard Bank Young Artist winner, Kathryn Smith, since childhood. Choosing to prioritise her work as an artist, curator and critic, her artistic practice owes much to the forensic investigator's ability to recreate narratives from evidence that can often best be described as 'debris'.

Smith's process and research methodologies are based on medical recreations (or reinventions) of events or situations which are not presented as complete 'histories', but abstracted moments and suggestive details. Working primarily in photography and video, and dabbling in performance, Smith will treat her exhibition 'Euphemisim' as a work-in-progress and response to the specific gallery and museum spaces to which it will travel.

Including the body of work entitled 'Jack in Johannesburg', the exhibition comprises work infused with baroque melodrama. Here, evidence and fantasy are circumstantial. Stand-ins, prostheses, body doubles and the slippery space between impersonators and impostors are all brought to bear in an exhibition that makes little attempt to sift truths from fictions.

Acknowledging the secret histories and unspoken desires that exist between public and private space, Smith's work flirts with the meeting of reality and fiction, fantasy and desire.

Opens: June 7
Closes: July 9

Emily Stainer's exhibition of display boxes entitled 'Menagerie', takes place downstairs in the Standard Bank Gallery. Like miniature theatres, the artworks shift in focus from mythical to erotic window displays. The cages are reminiscent of elaborate, gilded birdcages found in Victorian Drawing Rooms or nurseries, meant to house exotic birds, and yet they are evocative of the barred enclosure found in nightclubs and strip joints, containing gyrating women.

In her exhibition, Stainer has sought to evoke something of the ambience of the Victorian freak show, a collection of the outlandish and the strange. The body of work explores the notion of otherness in miniature worlds which enclose, cage and display a menagerie of the bizarre.

The suggestion of voyeurism and the use of contradiction and comic contrast play an explicit role in much of Stainer's work. Her use of mirrors confronts the voyeur with his or her own image. The lushness of velvet, varnish and gilt provide the temptation of spectacle and pageantry that paves the way for a public pleasure show, a menagerie.

Opens: June 7
Closes: July 9

Late April this year saw the Brussels opening of William Kentridge's interpretation of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, a production commissioned by La Monnaie/De Munt in Brussels, which will also travel to several other cities - including, with luck, Johannesburg.

For his exhibition at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg, entitled 'Preparing the Flute', Kentridge brings the Brussels theatre in miniature (the working model used in preparation for the opera) into the gallery. Animated sequences from the full-scale production of The Magic Flute will be projected on screens inside the theatre, in similar fashion to the way they will appear on the real stage. Alongside this mini-theatre, the exhibition will include many of the working drawings and fragments used in creating animation for The Magic Flute.

January 2004 marked the opening of a Kentridge's new survey exhibition which travels to museums in Turin, Düsseldorf, Sydney, Montreal and Johannesburg. Current projects include a commission for the Berlin Guggenheim, to open in October 2005.

Opens: June 4
Closes: July 16

As an adjunct to the Absa Atelier Awards, the French Embassy, French Institute and Alliance Francaise introduced the Gerard Sekoto Award for the most promising artist for the first time in 2004. The award comprises a return ticket to Paris, three months' stay at the Cité Internationale des Arts, a nation-wide touring exhibition, French language classes and a catalogue for the exhibition.

This award was won by Rhodes graduate Belinda Zangewa, with Faith, Love and Hope, a mixed media triptych of clutch bags depicting city scenes of Johannesburg. They celebrate the contradictory nature of the CBD: beautiful and at the same time, dangerous, whilst asserting the artist's femininity through the chosen media.

The upcoming exhibition entitled 'Hot in the City' explores this further. The city is a setting for stories with the action taking place in its streets and building interiors. The cityscapes introduce the story about to be told, as well as telling their own stories by appearance alone.

As with Faith, Love and Hope , she has worked on a raw silk 'canvas' forming images and words in silk collage, embroidery and beading to create these tapestries. The combined use of illustration and text communicates with the viewer on visual, conceptual and emotional levels, with things left unsaid to allow the viewer to participate in the story-telling.

Opens: April 9
Closes: July 8

�Whiteout Spaces�, an exhibition of paintings by Peter Binsbergen, focused on South African landscape. He acknowledges that the local landscape has been used prolifically by many artists for over two cenuries. �The result is that one may well speak of a South African tradition of landscape painting. Although comprising many different styles, it can generally be said that this tradition is by and large romantic, often reflecting an idealized vision and a nostalgia for rural peace and tranquility.�

Without being totally iconoclastic, Binsbergen, with his forceful style and original expressions, breaks with existing traditions. Although his works also capture the harshness, the faraway horizons and splendour of our open spaces, they convey much more. His art is complex without being willfully difficult. On the one hand, he comments on the existing culture of landscape painting with understanding and a measure of sympathy, whilst on the other side, he brings his own, innovative take on these celestial and subterraneous elements and forces of nature, which one can sense without being able to see them with the conscious eye.

Opens: June 19
Closes: July 14

A group exhibition of global artists musing on the power of the presence of live water, curated by Vivienne Lassman, currently features at the Pretoria Art Museum.

Lassman comments in the catalogue: 'Since ancient times, rivers have been a critical course of life, providing the most essential elementary needs of humankind, whether through fish from their waters or nutrients deposited on the earth for crops. Rivers continue to be a conduit for transportation across manmade boundaries allowing the flow of new ideas, goods and innovations that are absorbed and distilled into fresh sources of experimentation. These received influences have enriched the cross-pollination of religion, architecture, art and artefacts that have resulted in gradual or cataclysmic change through metamorphosis'.

Exhibiting artists include David Carlson (USA), Ruza Spak (Germany), Mansoora Hassan (Pakistan), Ashraf Fouad (Egypt), Nicholas Hlobo (SA), Sharlene Khan (SA), Churchill Madikida (SA) and more.

Opens: May 25
Closes: July 3