Archive: Issue No. 94, June 2005

3.06.05 51st Venice Biennale
3.06.05 Prague Biennale
3.06.05 Art Basel
3.06.05 Liste in Basel
3.06.05 Penny Siopis at the Freud Museum, London
3.06.05 London Art Fair
3.06.05 'meanwhile in Africa...' in Germany

9.05.05 'Africa Remix' at the Pompidou in Paris
9.05.05 Hentie van der Merwe at MartA in Germany

AUSTRALIA

3.06.05 'Floating Land' in Noosa, Australia

USA

9.05.05 'Patriot' at The Contemporary Museum, Baltimore

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

26.04.05 The Sharjah 7th Biennial
 

Under the direction of the first women to be appointed to the position, Maria de Corral, and Rosa Martinez, the most venerable of the world's biennales, the 51st Venice Biennale, opens in the Giardini di Castello and its surroundings on June 12. Continually lambasted by critics from all sides for not presenting a cohesive vision of the new, the event holds its position as the grand old lady of the art calendar. For a full rundown on the event and the South African participation, go to Andrew Lamprecht's preview on News.

Opens: June 12
Closes: November 6

Opening immediately after the Venice Biennale (and one might have thought it would have been politic to wait a day or two longer so the international art crowd could finish partying in Venice before moving on), the International Biennale of Contemporary Art - A Second Sight will showcase the work of 400 artists from 20 countries. The biennale will 'focus on the traditional phenomena of post modern culture', presenting extensive new media projects while not abandoning the 'traditional' media of painting and sculpture.

German gallerist Dr Ralf Seippel has curated the African section of the biennale, entitled 'African Facets', pointing out in a curatorial statement that Africa 'cannot be pressed in to an artistic idiom just as little as the rest of the world. The positions that are presented in 'African Facets' consistently deal with African history, identity and urbanity'.

Participating artists are: Mbongeni Buthelezi, Zwelethu Mthethwa and Beezy Bailey, Minnette Vàri and Andrew Tshabangu from South Africa, Ingrid Mwangi from Kenya and Susan Hefuna from Egypt. A catalogue, in Czech and English will be available.

Opens: June 13
Closes: September 11

Timed also to follow the Venice openings is Europe's most prestigious art fair, Art Basel, which opens more or less simultaneously with its younger contemporary across town, Liste.

This is the 36th year for Art Basel, and more than 270 international galleries will be represented, many of whom will also have artists who will show on the Art Unlimited section, where performances and video installations like the US artist Bill Viola's The Raft may be seen.

South Africa's flagship, The Goodman Gallery, will have their usual stand, representing such artists as William Kentridge, Penny Siopis, Robert Hodgins and the young Mikhael Subotzky.

Opens: June 15
Closes: June 20

Reaching its 10th anniversary is the Liste, which features artists under 40 and galleries no older than five years. After no more than five appearances on Liste, these galleries must either make the leap to Art Basel or disappear from the scene. A total of 48 galleries from 22 countries will be exhibiting.

This year, for the first time, the João Ferreira Gallery in Cape Town has been accepted, and will have a solo show of young artist Julia Rosa Clark. Another of the gallery artists, Bridget Baker, will be part of the performance programme.

Opens: June 13
Closes: June 19

Curated by London-based Jennifer Law, 'Three Essays on Shame' by Johannesburg artist Penny Siopis will open at the Freud Museum in London on June 3. The exhibition will be an important extension of Siopis' work of the past few years, exploring the psychology of 'shame' and 'a poetics of vulnerability', and will mark the centenary of Freud's publication Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905). Through the display of paintings and objects that reference Freud's work, the artist will explore the significance of Freud's theories on sexuality (in particular as they relate to shame) in wide cultural terms.

The exhibition comprises three interventions into the intimate spaces of Freud's house. In Freud's famous study the artist situates seven 'voices' (audio recordings) of South African personalities who have all publicly expressed feelings on or about shame. Antjie Krog, author of Country of my Skull (describing her experience as a reporter for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission) reflects on this experience as well as more personal aspects of shame. Edwin Cameron, judge and AIDS and Gay activist, speaks of his personal experience of being HIV positive in the context of the pandemic of AIDS in Africa.

Fatima Meer, well-known sociology professor and detainee of the apartheid regime, describes the torture of her political detention as well as more personal memories of 'shame', while Paul Verryn, Bishop of the Methodist Church of Johannesburg, and activist priest in the apartheid era, speaks of his personal role in the Truth and Reconciliation hearings.

The second intervention, installed in Freud's dining room, incorporates a series of objects, artworks and film combined to orchestrate a chain of cultural and psychological associations reflecting the psycho-sexual state of shame in its broader cultural context. A terracotta figurine in Freud's collection of antiquities is the trigger for these associations, and is displayed as a key part of the installation. The figurine (probably of Egyptian origin) depicts a woman in a squatting pose, exposing her genitalia, with one hand gesturing towards the site of exposure. This provocative pose is identified with the character of Baubo of Greek mythology.

One of the films included in the installation, To Walk Naked, is a short documentary about a particular instance in apartheid South Africa in which a group of black woman stripped in front of white policemen intent on bulldozing their homes, using their nakedness and 'shame' as a weapon of resistance.

The third installation comprises paintings and found objects including personal items belonging to Freud. These works, which give form to the imaginative realm of shame, conceptually condense all the complex and contradictory qualities of shame as it specifically relates to sexuality.

Opens: June 3
Closes: July 3, 2005

ArtLondon is a newish (in its 6th year) art fair located in Chelsea, which this year will include a showing of six South African artists by Myerson Fine Art. The line up includes Arlene Amaler-Raviv, Regi Bardavid, Hanneke Benade, Robert Hodgins, Michael Pettit and Penny Stutterheim.

Opens: June 8
Closes: June 12

'Gleichzeitig in Afrika...' is a series of lectures and artistic presentations to take place in a number of venues in Germany this month. Curated by Christian Hanussek under the auspices of Africome, a governmental information organisation, the series was conceived, says Hanussek because art in Africa 'remains rather an exotic topic in the German art world'. Lectures will be accompanied by presentations of a number of initiatives from across Africa, one of which will be the CDRom ArtThrob: The Archive 1998-2003

The programme is:

'Asibi:photographs of the Lagos group DOF'

Opens: 7pm, June 1
Closes: June 18

Stadtbilbliothek,
Gewerbemuseumplatz 4, Nurnberg

'Gleichzeitig in Afrika...', Artists' groups and initiatives in Africa

Opens: 7pm, June 2
Closes: June 17

Akademie den Bildende Kunsten Nurnberg

'Taxis Zinkpe',installation by Dominique Zinkpe

Opens: 11am, June 3
Closes: September 4

Iwalewa House, Bayreuth
Munzgasse 9

'Peripheral' - video installation and presentation by Hala Elkoussy, Cairo

Opens: 11am, Friday June 10

Akademie den Bildende Kunsten Nurnberg

'Peripheral: Visual Arts in Egypt'

Opens: 7pm, June 14

Einstein Forum Potsdam
Am Neuen Markt 7

The mega show of contemporary art from the continent of African and the diaspora, 'Africa Remix', opens at the Pompidou Centre in Paris on May 15, on the third leg of a world tour which opened at the Kunstpaleis in Düsseldorf and continued to London's Hayward Gallery.

Under the artistic direction of Simon Njami and a team of international curators and featuring the production of 88 artists showing work made over the past 10 years, the show also includes furniture design, music, literature and fashion. South African-born artists make up 14 of the total - Jane Alexander, Andries Botha, Wim Botha, Willie Bester, Tracey Derrick, Marlene Dumas, David Goldblatt, Jackson Hlungwani, William Kentridge, Moshekwa Langa, Santu Mofokeng, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Rodney Place, Tracey Rose and Guy Tillim.

Marlene Dumas' work is a sober grid of ink and wash portraits of blindfolded or hooded figures, Jane Alexander shows her 'African Adventure' mixed media installation, Tracey Derrick presents a commissioned series of photographs of Western Cape farm workers, and Tracey Rose is represented by her seminal video, TKO, in which a camera concealed in a punching bag records her attack thereon. Jackson Hlungwani exhibits his outsize wooden figures with a biblical theme.

The exhibition is divided into three categories, with somewhat unoriginal titles - History and Identity, City and Land, and Body and Soul. This may not have been the curator's fault, however. Njami's original title for the entire exhibition was not the one the show now carries. His choice was the much more interesting 'Chaos and metamorphosis', but institutional pressure insisted on the inclusion of 'Africa' in the title.

In London, some critics took the attitude that while what was on offer was undoubtedly art from Africa, it could not be called 'contemporary' in terms of the British art world's understanding of the term. It will be interesting to see what the French critics have to say. Inevitably, comparisons will be drawn with 'Magiciens de la Terre' the 1989 show curated by Jean Hubert Martin at the Pompidou. Endlessly referred to in art journals as the exhibition which for the first time showed artists like Esther Mahlangu alongside western artists, as Njami has pointed out, the difference between Magiciens and Africa Remix is fundamental: not one of the African artists on the former had any art school training. All were self taught.

Plans are underfoot to bring Africa Remix to the Johannesburg Art Gallery after its next date, at the Mori Art Museum of Tokyo.

Opens: May 15
Closes: August 20

South African-born Hentie van der Merwe will be part of a group show entitled '(my private) HEROES' to open in a new Frank Gehry-designed museum called MartA in Herford, Germany. The show is under the direction of one of Europe's top curators, Jan Hoet.

A curatorial statement reads: 'The depiction of heroic individuals is one of art's great themes. This exhibition tells of heroes and the images of them in art stretching from the 19th century until the present day. In the 20th century, artists continuously rediscovered heroic modes of expression sometimes self-mockingly, such as Martin Kippenberger and Andy Warhol, and sometimes with a tragic, existential flavour, such as Jean Fautrier and Joseph Beuys.

'(my private) HEROES' deliberately avoids attempting to present unambiguous definitions of the heroic. Instead, it presents a much wider approach to themes such as idol and star, perpetrator and victim, and wounds and martyrdom. The exhibition calls into question the very nature of the hero. It investigates the ways in which artists nowadays portray themselves and work. The artist-heroes and media stars on show in this exhibition make up a subjective selection.'

Opens: May 7
Closes: August 14

Western Cape-based land artist Strijdom van der Merwe will be one of 20 international and Australian artists who will take part in a sculpture project in nature, working in a fragile slither of bushland between a pristine river and the ocean at Noosa, in a project entitled Floating Land.

The artists will make their sculptures out of whatever natural materials come to hand over a 10 day period. The project will also encompass a workshop and a conference. More information: www.noosaregionalgallery.org/ floatingland

Opens: June 18
Closes: June 26

'Patriot' is billed as 'a thought-provoking exhibition that examines the formation of the nationalist subject in the United States and elsewhere', and considers the connection between 'lands' and 'people'. 'Patriot' asks why nationalism, prophesised by figures as diverse as Karl Marx, Arjun Appadurai, and Antonio Negri as obsolete, has re-emerged in seemingly robust and aggressive forms today. The multi-media work of nine artists and collectives whose politically-engaged practices examine nationalism and/or nationalist subject formation is featured.

Siemon Allen's Cards is a new installation that examines US nationalist indoctrination through the presentation of thousands of trading cards, each enclosed in a see through plastic slip cover and arranged in a series of Allen's trademark grids.

Thematically and formally, this new work follows closely on Allen's previous installation, Stamp Collection: Imaging South Africa, in which the nature of the image South Africa wished to present to the world is examined through a display of the postage stamps it chose to issue.

Other artists on Patriot include the 16 Beaver Group of New York, who have produced Act Patriot Act a free newspaper style publication, the Big Noise collective with a film documenting the autonomist Zapatista struggle, German artist Andrea Geyer, who invites viewers to participate in a memory game, and Mexican artist Carla Herrera-Prats.

www.contemporary.org

Opens: April 15
Closes: June 11

A short drive from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, the Sharjah Biennial opened on April 6 for a two month run under the curatorship of Jack Persekian working with co-curator Canadian artist Ken Lum. Over 70 artists from 36 countries are represented, though South Africa is not one of those countries. On hand for the judging was Okwui Emwezor.

The biennial is being presented as "a new era for contemporary art in the Gulf", and an online tour can be taken at www.universes-in-universe.de/car/sharjah/2005/english.htm. Artists who may be known to South African audiences include Carlos Garaicoa, who exhibited in this country on 'Intimas Marcas Memorias' and Ingrid Mwangi, part of the lineup of the Museum for African Art in New York's 'Looking Both Ways' show. Egyptian artist and Cairo Biennale winner Moataz Nasr, who will show at Johannesburg's Franchise later this year, is also exhibiting.

April 6 - June 6