Archive: Issue No. 98, October 2005

7.10.05 Walter Battiss at the Standard Bank Gallery
7.10.05 Strijdom van der Merwe at University of Johannesburg Art Gallery
7.10.05 Carl Büchner at ABSA
7.10.05 Anne McIlleron at Goodman
7.10.05 Ian Waldeck at Gordart
7.10.05 Angus Taylor at Artspace
7.10.05 Andrew Munnik at Gallery @ 157
7.10.05 Siobhan McCusker at The Substation
7.10.05 Group show at Obert Contemporary
7.10.05 Group show at Franchise

2.09.05 David Goldblatt retrospective at JAG
2.09.05 Johan Meyer at JAG
2.09.05 Samson Mnisi and Gera Mawi Mazgabu at Afronova

5.08.05 Jurgen Schadeberg at Museumafrica

1.07.05 William Kentridge Retrospective at JAG

PRETORIA

7.10.05 Artists in Conversation at PAM
7.10.05 John Moore at Tina Skukan
7.10.05 Ceramics SA at Association of Arts

2.09.05 Helena Brandt at Café Arté Gallery
 

A comprehensive, if belated, Walter Battiss retrospective, entitled 'Walter Battiss: Gentle Anarchist', presents more than 300 works in a diversity of media. These works have been drawn from public and private collections, and reflect the artist's prolific career that spanned more than 50 years.

Battiss' weird and wonderful personal appearance, his colourful and eccentric persona, his insatiable curiosity about life and his remarkable work ethic continue to capture the imagination of art lovers and intellectuals alike both at home and abroad. Collectively, the work on show not only reflects Battiss' creative development over 50 years, but also provides insight into the diversity of his subject matter, techniques and styles.

In the exhibition�s fully illustrated catalogue, well known artists, art historians and writers have focused on a few of Battiss' preoccupations and achievements. These include his interpretation of Africa, his exquisite watercolours and amusing erotica, his involvement with Rorke's Drift Arts and Crafts Centre in KwaZulu-Natal, his concept of Fook Island, his many travels to exotic places and his own literary output.

The chief aim of the exhibition is to take a fresh look at Battiss' contribution to South African art. There is evidence in these works that his discovery of San rock art brought about a significant shift in his vision of the world, and that this was reinforced by his experience of European art at the time: his meeting with Picasso, and his admiration for artists like Gauguin, Van Gogh, Matisse, Modigliani and many others.

Battiss' public stance against censorship is well known, as is his creation of the imaginary Fook Island, where artists and writers could express themselves freely and enjoy life. The exhibition contains a section dedicated to elements in the artist's biography. It is here that an attempt has been made to 'reconstruct', as far as possible, the world of Fook Island. Photographs taken at Fook Award ceremonies and exhibitions, curious Fookian items and memorabilia will be on display in an attempt to rekindle the spirit of Fook Island.

Opens: October 20
Closes: December 3

The new Arts Centre at the University of Johannesburg will be inaugurated on October 5, the culmination of a six year long project. The Arts Centre boasts a new art gallery, a 436-seated theatre with full facilities, a coffee shop and bar. The roof of the structure is grassed and will serve as a sculpture garden. This inauguration will be celebrated with the opening of 'Messages from the Southern Earth', an exhibition by Stellenbosch-based land artist Strijdom van der Merwe, as well as a choir work entitled Missa de Meridiana Terra (Mass from the Southern Earth), composed by Niel van der Watt.

Van der Merwe draws inspiration for the current work from the rock engravings of Driekopseiland in the Riet River, near Kimberley. The artist investigates the symbols in these rock engravings under a magnifying glass and reconstructs them to form a new landscape in the environment. In this way, van der Merwe participates in a universally human need to 'mark' the landscape. Relocating these symbols in a new landscape on a new scale lends new meaning to the symbols and gives new identity to the landscape in which they are made.

By means of maps, every work in the exhibition documents the place where the original artwork was made. This documentation is important because the original work is not permanent and the artwork in the gallery now takes on the status of 'original'. A floor installation of over 30m in diameter, consisting of salt, dyes, herbs and sand, will refer to a possible origin and reasons for the existence of the rock engravings that are found at Driekopseiland.

Opens: October 10
Closes: December 7

An exhibition curated by Pieter van Heerden, director of the Association of Arts in Pretoria, celebrates the life and work of Carl Büchner, who passed away in 2003 at the age of 81. The exhibition comprises more than 70 works, many of which have never been shown before.

Primarily working within a modernist aesthetic, Büchner earned a solid critical reputation with art collectors and his works are housed in all South African public collections. The exhibition also features a reappraisal of Büchner�s role and standing in South African art, written by van Heerden, which will be launched at the opening of this exhibition. Elsie Büchner, a second cousin of the artist, will open the show.

Opens: October 5
Closes: October 28

A concern with light, colour and indeterminacy is the impulse for much of Anne McIlleron's work. Her current exhibition, entitled 'Rio, Mark Dion, IPod, Wallpaper, Etc.' takes its title from one of the works on show. This exhibition frames its concerns with fragments, transience, improbable contiguity, private senses and slippery meanings, language, lightness and play.

The body of work on show comprises photographs and video stills (as a medium of light and colour more than as documentary evidence), text pieces and video projection. The photos are informally shot and capture transient moments and configurations. Translucent text pieces crystallise half-sensed shifts of thought and memory, stolen phrases, duplicitous meanings, tending toward incompletion and ambiguity rather than closure. The video work finds text sliding in shifting layers, in moments which are clear but often elusive.

Opens: October 8
Closes: October 29

One night in March 1995, four men armed with knives broke into the Bezuidenhout Valley house of an elderly couple, Diamantino Baptista De Carvalho and his wife Edith. The attackers surprised the couple in bed, and demanded guns and money. Frustrated at finding nothing, they proceeded to strangle and beat the couple severely with a water pipe, leaving them for dead.

Their eldest son Diamantino (Tino) Jnr found them and after medical treatment, moved them into his own home close by. He packed some essentials for them and locked up the house in which he had grown up, leaving all his parents' furniture, clothing, documents and other personal effects in the house. His parents never again returned to their house. Diamantino Snr. passed away the next year from his injuries. In 2004, Edith passed away. To date no perpetrators have been arrested.

The De Carvalho house, an historic mansion built in 1903, was left intact by Tino Jnr. as a site of remembrance. For the past 10 years, since the date of this tragic event, this house has been under sustained attacks by thieves and vandals with repeated violations resulting in all the personal effects strewn over the floors of the rooms and most furniture and fittings stolen. Tino has been a virtual prisoner of his duties to preserve the house and its memories and fighting a losing battle with the police. Day and night he chases away or arrests perpetrators and confiscates trolleys with stolen goods.

This project, of which the current exhibition is the first part, grew out of Waldeck's recognition of this site as a container of human experience, with the site, objects, images and memories compounded in a multi-layered manifestation of our collective experience of transformation in South Africa. Tino is collaborating as the curator of this project, as he has been acting as curate and caretaker of the site for 10 years. The works on show consist of images taken of the layered objects on the floor, printed on vinyl and interfaced with the presence and absence of certain objects. The exhibition is experienced as a walk-through of the house.

Ian Waldeck is known for his disturbing and incisive art-projects, including the rebuilding of a shack in the Newtown Galleries in 1992 and the showing of prisoners' beds on the 1995 Johannesburg Biennale. His work is informed by philosophical and socio-anthropological concerns. The exhibition will be opened by Dr. Robin Woolley.

Opens: October 2
Closes: October 15

'Corporeal' is the title of Angus Taylor's current solo exhibition. Based in Pretoria and well-established in his field, Taylor works with a diversity of media. The exhibition will be opened by Diane Victor.

Opens: October 2
Closes: October 29

A solo exhibition entitled 'The 21st Century will (in part) begin with bodies', by Andrew Munnik presents a focus on the daily violence articulated across and between nations. Munnik comments that the continuous global conflict has been a sad start to the 21st century.

In an age of extraordinary technological and intellectual development, humankind still behaves in the most primitive and barbaric of fashions, according to Munnik, and this has resulted in hundreds of thousands of maimed men, women and children. In this exhibition, Munnik attempts to highlight these issues through the use of colours, images, shapes, signs and materials. Dealing with the problem of confronting politics with his art, Munnik is shaped by struggles and conflicts outside his immediate experience, yet inextricably linked to an historically accountable view of global war-based events.

Opens: October 9
Closes: November 12

Siobhán McCusker's first post-MA solo exhibition, entitled 'attitude remains nominal' comprises an installation of shadows and a frieze of photo drawings, in which she explores the experience of 'home' as a concept, in particular, how this experience is mediated by proximity to, or alienation from, natural terrain. The importance for her of this project lies in the relationship of nature to the direct experience of locality, in this case suburban Johannesburg.

The phrase attitude remains nominal, is both a trifling opinion as well as aeronautical jargon for an event, such as an orbit-bound flight path, proceeding according to plan. This phrase has resonance because it defines our general relationship to nature: marginalised for the advancement of technology. Shadow as medium is by nature ephemeral, transient, mediated and contingent. Shadow is both truth and deception, as expounded in Plato's analogy. Primarily, however, shadow is about longing; longing for the tangible and inalienable.

Opens: September 27

Closes: October 8

A group show entitled 'Melrose Art', featuring work by Henry Symonds, Peter Eastman, Kudzanai Chiurai, Mark Erasmus, Maja Maljevic and Matthew Hindley is being presented by Obert Contemporary. The exhibition takes place concurrently at three venues within the Melrose Arch complex: Obert Contemporary Gallery, the Exhibition Marquee and Pam Golding's Show Unit. Each of the participating artists have been notably successful in selling work at either Obert Contemporary or Michael Stevenson in the last two years.

New Zealand-based Symonds exhibits mixed media ultra-Baroque paintings derived from floral, carpet and fruit patterns that take on new meaning in translation. Chiurai presents bold new mixed media works that explore urban culture and recent forced evictions in his homeland of Zimbabwe. Erasmus has made new geometric drip paintings, evocative of the approach of Jackson Pollock, while Belgrade-born Maljevic offers new bold abstracts exploring contemporary cultural icons.

Opens: September 15
Closes: October 11

'Surface' is a show of paintings by both young and established artists including Virginia MacKenny, Moshekwa Langa, Luan Nel, Dorothee Kreutzfeldt, Trasi Henen and Themba Shibase.

Opens: October 7
Closes: October 29

'David Goldblatt: Fifty-One Years, a Retrospective Exhibition' celebrates Goldblatt's (b.1930) photographic achievements in documenting the country's informal history for over a half a century. Originally curated by Corinne Diserens and Okwui Enwezor and produced by the Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) in Spain in 2002, this retrospective has travelled to New York, Rotterdam, Oxford, Brussels and Munich.

In 1985, British Channel 4 made the documentary David Goldblatt: in Black and White, which was shown in the USA and Australia and is screened as a part of this exhibition. Goldblatt's work is in many major art collections, including that of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and has been shown in several international exhibitions.

Goldblatt's work belongs to the tradition of documentary photography and takes a critical look at South African society. He records the conditions of everyday life experienced by ordinary people. Goldblatt reflects on the gradual deterioration of the urban landscape and highlights the solidarity and spirit of union of social collectives in difficult times.

Opens: August 17
Closes: October 31

'Signs/Science of Life' by Johan Meyer and close to 250 collaborators represents explorations into the role of art in non-western cultures. Having worked with multi-media installations since 1990, Meyer now seeks to understand how participants' involvement is interwoven and comes to terms with the significance of the three-fold processes of thinking, production and execution in the art of non-westerners.

In our current cultural context, the proliferation of visual and textual information through cutting edge technologies in microbiology and palaeontology provides fresh options for investigation by artists. Palaeontological and microbiological content, by nature concealed, can serve to stimulate questions regarding our spirituality in place and time. Such subject matter offers possible restoration role options for the arts in the face of questions about ecological sustainability and the future.

The exhibition will be opened by Willem Boshoff and the artist will conduct a walkabout on September 24. The exhibition was funded by the National Arts Council.

Opens: September 10
Closes: October 9

Afronova is a new Pan African gallery for modern and contemporary art, created by last year's ABSA L'Atelier winner Billie Zangewa and Henri Vergon. Located opposite the Market Theatre in Newtown, Johannesburg, Afronova aims to contribute to the cosmopolitan landscape of the city. It offers a specialised bookshop as well as a catalogue of local and international publications on the art of the continent.

Its first exhibition showcases work by Johannesburg-based Samson Mnisi and Gera Mawi Mazgabu from Addis Ababa. Inspired by ritual practises, Mnisi creates sacred spaces with bold paintings and installations, designed to be powerfully evocative of African heritage. Mazgabu is an erudite of the Ethiopian Church, holds a degree in rhetorical poetry and works by realising powerful talismans in the style of the tradition nurtured by the orthodox religion.

Opens: September 16
Closes: October 20

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

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

'Artists in Conversation' is a collaboration between the University of the Witwatersrand and Telkom. Culminating in a visual arts exhibition featuring the works of 14 South African artists, the project featured what is understood to be the first oral history art project in the country.

The exhibition displays a selection of 43 works by the participating artists, who were selected to reflect a cross-section of South African artists and all of whom are represented in the Telkom Art Collection. It also features a multimedia display capturing the artists' views of their work, personal history and creative influences. This display was based on personal interviews with the artists during the oral history art project.

Participating artists are Vincent Baloyi, Kim Berman, Clifford Charles, Bettie Cilliers-Barnard, Chris Diedericks, Mandla Mabila, Osiah Masekoamang, Daniel Mosako, Henriette Ngako, Charles Nkosi, Mmakgabo Sebidi, Moses Seleko, Kedibone Tabane and Alfred Thoba.

The purpose of the project is to contribute to the body of knowledge on South African art. Currently, there is very little literature on South African art on which students, researchers and the public can draw, and it is hoped that this project will contribute to a better understanding of South African art from the past 50 years.

The project is available in CD form, incorporating sound and images, and will be available at www.telkom.co.za. The project was based on oral history research techniques, involving in-depth interviews with the participating artists on their ideas, intentions and personal histories. For the interviews, Visual Arts students were paired with History Workshop students, using video cameras and sound equipment. After the content was individually verified by each artist, the students and their lecturers consolidated the material and packaged it in multimedia format.

Opens: September 28
Closes: October 30

'All Things Bright and Beautiful', a new body of highly detailed lithographs, colour woodcuts and linocuts by John Moore, depicting the fauna and flora of South Africa, will be on show at this gallery.

Opens: September 18
Closes: October 13

Ceramics Southern Africa (formerly APSA), Gauteng Region, in collaboration with the Association of Arts Pretoria, presents 'Reflections in Clay', the association's annual regional exhibition. Entrants to the exhibition are all members of the association, and all works are for sale. The exhibition will be opened by Professor Marinus Wiechers, past Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of South Africa, artist and collector.

Opens: October 9
Closes: October 25

Namibian artist Helena Brandt presents her solo exhibition, entitled 'A Testimony of Love', which draws from her passion for the grandeur of the Namibian landscape. Trained formally in Cape Town, Brandt is a co-founder of a contemporary arts movement in Namibia and one of its prominent members. She uses printmaking techniques and mixed media in order to convey visual images which go deeper and beyond the pictorial, exposing the ethos of the land and its people.

Her first exhibition in South Africa will be held in the Café Arté Gallery in Centurion, under the auspices of the South African Association of Artists. This exhibition serves to celebrate her late husband who tragically passed away very recently. Thus the work collectively becomes an act of atonement which transcends personal grief to become a testimony of love.

The exhibition will be opened by Professor Marinus Wiechers.

Opens: September 1
Closes: September 30