Archive: Issue No. 97, September 2005

2.09.05 Willie Bester at 34 Long
2.09.05 Gina Waldman at Bell-Roberts Contemporary
2.09.05 Tracy Payne and Doreen Southwood at Michael Stevenson Contemporary
2.09.05 Isolde Krams: 'Lost andFound' at Bell-Roberts Contemporary
2.09.05 Ruth Sacks at João Ferreira Gallery
2.09.05 Gavin du Plessis at Sanlam Art Gallery
2.09.05 Cameron Platter at Bell-Roberts Contemporary
2.09.05 Lynette Bester at blank projects
2.09.05 Malcolm Payne screening at Michaelis Gallery
2.09.05 Contemporary Glass exhibition at Irma Stern Museum
2.09.05 'ReVisions: A Private Narrative of SA Art' at SANG
2.09.05 Jenny Parsons at 3rd i Gallery

5.08.05 'In the Making' group exhibition at Michael Stevenson
5.08.05 Francois van Reenen at Erdmann Contemporary
5.08.05 Vuyile Voyiya and Susan Kruger Grundlingh at the AVA
5.08.05 Diana Page and Jane Young at UCT Irma Stern Museum

1.07.05 Advance Notice: Dumile Feni: A Retrospective Exhibition at the SANG

DARLING

2.09.05 'On the Beeton Track' at Chelsea on 34

STELLENBOSCH

2.09.05 Horst Janssen and Early Etchings at Sasol Art Museum

5.08.05 'Promised Land' at the US Art Gallery

EASTERN CAPE

2.09.05 Greg Schultz at Ann Bryant Gallery, East London
 

Willie Bester is holding his latest solo show called 'METALized' at 34 on Long this month. The exhibition is essentially a survey of sculptural work from the past five years, produced by one of South Africa's best known contemporary artists.

Bester's focus over the last decade has shifted to combine fresh conceptual directions with familiar themes and materials, according to 34 Long. The works on show are assembled primarily from waste metal and other debris of industrial, agricultural and domestic activity. The works comment on diverse socio-political issues both South African and international.

Bester also combines in his recent work see-through sections that reveal inner worlds with a new emphasis on detailed surface articulation. Security Guard, for example, re-contextualises utilitarian objects into a monumental free-standing sculpture with a forceful message.

Opens: September 6
Closes: October 8

Gina Waldman presents a new body of work called 'Threads' at Bell-Roberts gallery. Her new work, painting and tapestries, deal with labour and domestic activity. Waldman is known for her exploration of various themes including kitsch, consumerism, decorating and taste.

Of her new work, she says, 'The image of a tapestry is so domestic and in some ways banal but so many interesting things happen on their surfaces. The front side ... is like a paint by numbers - perfect and seamless, whereas the underside exposes the hidden labour of the sewer. The underside renders a slippage of perfection and is a marker of the labourer's hand.'

Waldman completed her MA in Fine Art at Wits University in 2002. She lives and works in Johannesburg as a full-time artist, co-owner of Boom Factory fashion label and art editor for www.jhblive.com.

Opens: August 13
Closes: August 24

Each of Tracy Payne's paintings in her new series is made up of six triangular panels forming a hexagon, with elements that mirror each other. According to the gallery: 'Sacred geometry emerges with the balancing of feminine (inverted) and masculine triangular forms integral to the structure... The paintings combine seductive beauty with an intimate knowledge of the trauma that precedes new life.'

The new series follows on from Payne's recent paintings that took inspiration from a trip to Japan. They featured the cherry blossom (sakura) as well as the art of kinbaku or erotic rope bondage. As with the new series, Payne employs photographic realism and abstract washes in her distinctive style.

Alongside, Doreen Southwood exhibits a series of paintings. A key work is a large-scale triptych. It reprises the theme of the swimmer, for which Southwood became famous when her sculpture The Swimmer won the Brett Kebble Art Awards in 2003. This time, the individual figure is multiplied and repeated in different poses across a breadth of water.

This theme of inner struggle (ongoing competition with the self) is common to many of Southwood's works. The gallery says: 'Extraordinary attention is paid to the refined quality of the surface, emphasising the painting's status as object; at the same time, paintings interact with each other and their surroundings, highlighting the dynamics of their installation.'

Opens: September 21
Closes: October 22

Isolde Krams has shifted her focus from a feminist perspective to a concern for the preservation of nature, animals and the earth as is evident in her latest exhibition at Bell-Roberts, entitled 'Lost and Found'.

Krams has devised a technique in which she uses rubber latex to give her sculptures a skin-like quality. The works are therefore 'soft, light, tactile and psychologically charged'. Krams uses wit and irony to challenge and expand the potential of the three-dimensional form and to juxtapose positive with negative.

At present, the artist is busy working on a series of over life-size fish taken out of their natural environment and bound and gagged. The 'fish out of water' are meant to symbolise man's misappropriation, pillage and misunderstanding of nature.

Her film, It is so Beautiful it almost looks Artificial depicts life-sized animated rubber sculptures - Miss World, Wolf, Mensch, and Schweinehund - that perform on 'the biggest mine dump in the world'. Two rubber figures have been added to this group and will also be exhibited in 'Lost and Found'.

Opens: August 31
Closes: September 24

Ruth Sacks exhibits a new installation of objects and video projections called 'When the Inside Stays Inside'. The exhibition forms part of an ongoing series of interventions and collaborations. For this stage of the project, different ventures have been linked together within the confines of a commercial art space. Bits of everyday life have been reconstituted to create an idiosyncratic environment.

'When the Inside Stays Inside' relates to the fact that when things go wrong it is hard to get the right words out. The exhibition is described as one where nothing seems to fit into its proper place: 'Obscure South African dorpies are hyped into designer glitter print T-shirts, obese taxidermised pigeons and a billboard-sized Chanel No. 5 logo get inserted alongside the ambiguous texts scrawled above Cape Town's skyline'.

Sacks is currently completing her MA in Fine Art at Michaelis, UCT.

Opens: August 3
Closes: August 27

'Perceptions of an Outsider' is an exhibition of digital video films, drawing and light-box installations spanning the last few years of Gavin du Plessis' work. He has been active as an artist for almost 30 years, investigating 'the psychic underbelly of the society that formed him and that he now works in'.

According to Sanlam Art Collection curator Stefan Hundt, Du Plessis' endeavours have always stood outside of normal modus operandi of the art establishment. Hundt says: 'His early experiments as a student in the 1970s, using an 8mm cine camera and following in the footsteps of Warhol and Brackage, were flippantly rejected by an insular and arrogant art establishment.'

Hundt says Du Plessis' use of figuration and traditional media make him tread an unappreciated path in contemporary art. He adds: 'Combining a well-honed skill for drawing with an intimate knoweldge of Jung's philosophy, Du Plessis' films and drawings are not simplistic musings on the conditions of life but intricate symbolic constructions that require a deeper inquiry by the viewer'.

The artist will present guided tours of the exhibition every Wednesday at 11am and 12.45pm. Booking is essential.

Opens: September 22
Closes: October 28

Cameron Platter presents an exhibition called 'Life is Very Interesting' in a multi-storey spectacle. It boasts some grand themes - crime and punishment, sex and sin, love and revenge, corruption and betrayal, power and glory, blood and guts. The story is told through a combination of media, including giant drawings, a series of prints, and a hardcover limited edition illustrated book. They are dubbed the trailers for Platter's upcoming third movie, described as a gangster-caper.

The intriguing sub-title reads: 'Starring Cat Blofeld and the World Dominatrix and Dirty Harry the Croc, with a cameo by John Muafangejo, stunts by The Zebras (from Outer Space) and The Yakuza Penguins and introducing Desiree the Femme Fatale go-go girl.'

Opens: September 29
Closes: October 22

Lynette Bester exhibits 'Dimensions Variable' at blank projects this month. Bester couples a mathematical exercise with an exploration of the possibilities of the sculptural object, reconfiguring it in different spaces and to different extents.

The work is hinged to the notion that the artist or viewer is able to put parts of information together during the act of art-making or viewing that results in what is perceived as whole. But this wholeness is in fact temporary and dependent on either association or recognition.

Heart, Dimensions Variable, for instance, is described as a volumetric puzzle, constructed by assembling flat puzzle pieces to create a complete three-dimensional icon of a heart constructed on the x, y and z axes. The pieces are cut from 30mm super wood at specific angles that interlock to create the three-dimensional shape. The work can be displayed in various stages of assembly.

Opens: September 7, 14, 21 and 28 from 4pm - 7pm or by appointment
Closes: September 28

A series of new works in video by Malcolm Payne entitled 'Democracy' will be shown at the Michaelis Gallery at lunchtime on Thursday, September 15. Payne is a professor at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, and exhibits his video and installation work internationally.

1.15pm, Thursday, September 15

The newly formed SA Glass Society is holding a festival of art glass from September 18 - 28 and this exhibition forms part of that celebration. Artists on show include David Reade, Liz Lacey, Lothar Bottcher, Nelius Britz, Sue Meyer and Shirley Cloete. The art glass festival includes workshops, demonstrations and various exhibitions at venues in Worcester, Stellenbosch, Paarl and Cape Town. Contact Lorna Reade for more information: (023) 342 8136.

Opens: September 24
Closes: September 28

This exhibition at the South African National Gallery claims to be drawn from one of the most impressive private collections of South African art assembled by an individual. Bruce Campbell-Smith started collecting in the mid-1980s and the result is a collection of work by almost 90 artists, mostly black South Africans, working from the 1920s until 1994.

Hayden Proud, curator at Iziko, says the collection is impressive because of its scope, its items of rarity and the fact that the collector has had a fine arts training himself, which has informed many choices. He says the collection contains works by well-known and now historical figures the public have never seen before. It is focused on artists working in the figurative traditions of painting, printmaking, drawing and sculpture, with a strong Natal bias.

Artists represented include Gerard Bhengu, Trevor Makhoba, Sthembiso Sibisi, Maggie Laubscher, Amos Langdown, Arthur Butelezi, Mizream Maseko, George Pemba, Gerard Sekoto, Dumile Feni, Billy Mandindi, Peter Clarke, Neville Lewis, Gregoire Boonzaier, Marianne Podlashuc, Selby Mvusi, Irma Stern, Gladys Mgudlandlu, Sydney Khumalo, Louis Maqhubela, Tommy Motswai, Alfred Thoba, Noria Mabasa and Johannes Segogela.

Opens: September 24
Closes: March 19, 2006

'Paradise Found' is an exhibition of vibrant paintings that are described as a response to Cape Town, the city in which the artist Jenny Parsons lives and works.

Parsons says of her own work: 'The act of seeing and drawing led me to a painting experience where choice of colour and shape is based on observation, intuition and memory. The painting of the surface of the canvas has a similar history to that of the landscape... Painting has depths of history, where the action of the artist and the nature and substance of paint create a landscape for the eye and mind.'

Opens: September 5
Closes: October 15

The Michael Stevenson Contemporary presents an exhibition of artists who have strikingly individualistic practices yet share a deep concern with materials and materiality. Their work also draws attention to the process of their own making, which is often labour-intensive. The show is curated by Sophie Perryer.

The exhibition includes 11 South African artists at various stages in their careers: Alan Alborough, Dineo Bopape, Paul Edmunds, Retha Erasmus, Nicholas Hlobo, Nandipha Mntambo, Walter Oltmann, Stephanus Rademeyer, Doreen Southwood, Jeremy Wafer and Sandile Zulu.

A large-scale work by Ghanian guest artist El Anatsui, professor of sculpture at the University of Nigeria, is featured as a complement to the exhibition. El Anatsui's work recently featured on 'Africa Remix', a survey of contemporary art of the continent that is currently showing at the Pompidou Centre in Paris.

Curator Sophie Perryer will conduct a walkabout of the exhibition at 11am on Thursday August 18, costing R30 which will go to Friends of the South African National Gallery.

Opens: August 17
Closes: September 17

The toy-like quality of Francois van Reenen's sculptures recalls the nostalgia of a childhood spent playing without any perception of the passage of time. In the same way, the title of this exhibition, 'Sunday Afternoon', refers to the kind of limbo before the rush of Monday begins.

The exhibition is described as a showcase of sculptural and computer-generated graphic works - all autobiographical - with a visual language shaped by comics and pop culture. Animation is narrative in linear sequence, with the sculpture treated as a 3d manifestation of an animation freeze frame.

Opens: August 15
Closes: September 24

Diana Page's new work presents a journey of exploration of two cities: New York and Cape Town, her home town. She seeks to present an intimate and personal geography. Her subject matter is described as only the starting point: 'It is the process of painting and drawing that shapes the content of the work'. Past meets present in the evolution of layers of mark-making, erasures and gradual construction in Page's cities. A cityscape becomes a tussle between the moment and the memory, a journey and investigation into painting itself.

Jane Young has developed a personal iconography in her ceramics that balances the functional and non-functional with a love of materials and the process of shaping clay. Her work is described as playful in attitude, free and painterly, accepting chance as part of the process but with an excellence in craftsmanship.

Opens: 6pm, August 16
Closes: September 10

Vuyile Voyiya exhibits new mixed media works and a video in a show called 'Pentimenti' in the main and upstairs AVA galleries this month. The title usually refers to under-drawings in paintings that show the artist's creative process. These drawings are usually obscured by the end painting and sometimes revealed in restoration or cleaning processes. In this exhibition, the term is taken to allude to the diverse life experiences in society - some disturbing, some uplifting. The AVA writes: 'Here, the term pentimenti is not used as a technical term but as a metaphor for the process of revealing experiences that... may have been hidden from view.'

Susan Kruger-Grundlingh says that for some time, her work has been concerned with displacement and dislocation. In this exhibition, 'Karoo Stories', she shifts from displacement to place. The Karoo has become that place. It has become a part of her frame of references and she uses it as 'a calibrating tool'. Kruger-Grundlingh says landscape has always been an emotionally loaded subject and the South African landscape is drenched with the ongoing history of people disowned and moved from their land. 'One merely has to present oneself and a narrative starts unfolding', she says, 'Like a stage for our human drama with that big neutral sky as a backdrop, the Karoo wants to tell its stories.'

Opens: August 22
Closes: September 10

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.

Curator Joe Dolby will present a walkabout of this exhibition on September 18 at 10.30am. The cost is R25 for walkabout and refreshments or R10 for walkabout only.

Opens: August 11
Closes: November 5

A family of three artists exhibits together this month at Chelsea on 34 in Darling in an exhibition entitled 'On the Beeton Track'. Jean Beeton and daughters Julia and Carol show paintings tracking images from the Klein Karoo and the Darling landscapes.

Jean Beeton was the head of the Fine Art Department at Technikon Pretoria before retiring to Darling. Her daughter, Julia Beeton-Kuhlmann, studied Fine Art at Michaelis and has taught at various institutions. Her sister, Carol Eady, studied Fine Art at Technikon Pretoria and has also taught art privately.

Opens: September 3
Closes: October 1

An exhibition of prints by Horst Janssen is exhibited at the Sasol Art Museum this month. Janssen was a German printmaker and during his career was one of Germany's most prolific artists. He died in 1995. Janssen's work was influenced, according to Sasol Art Museum, by his teacher Paul Wunderlich as well as artists like Edvard Munch and Jean Dubuffet's 'art brut'. He led a full life with a selfless dedication to printmaking.

Opens: September 7
Closes: September 23

Bonita Alice presents a multi-media exhibition called 'Promised Land' at the US Art Gallery this month, which addresses 'a tender node somewhere between the endlessly enduring human preoccupation with place in life, and the inescapability of our material return to soil after death'.

Alice says that previous works raised the question of what bond of blood or history produces mythical sense of lifelong attachment to a place, even one not visited. She adds: 'Now, it is an attempt to understand the nature of our desire for that connection to place.'

Professor Keith Dietrich of Stellenbosch University will open the exhibition at 6.30pm on August 4.

Opens: August 4
Closes: September 7

Greg Schultz is exhibiting new work in his latest solo exhibition entitled 'Panacea' at the Ann Bryant gallery in East London. It moves to the Cuyler Street Art Gallery in Port Elizabeth from September 20 until October 1.

The artist says this body of work reflects 'a personal preoccupation with our eternal quest for well-being'. The South-Eastern Cape is the landscape of this quest, with its ancient medicinal trees, plants, seeds and roots as subject.

Schultz uses new wax burning techniques in combination with metal-ageing processes and conventional oils. For Schultz, the creative pyrotechnical processes and binding of medicinal plant forms have mysteriously evolved as healing events in their own right.

Opens: 6pm, September 6
Closes: September 16

Ann Bryant Gallery

Opens: 6pm, September 20
Closes: October 1

Cuyler Street Art Gallery