Archive: Issue No. 108, August 2006

4.08.06 Nicholas Hlobo at Michael Stevenson Contemporary
4.08.06 Angela Buckland at the Michaelis Gallery
4.08.06 Ralph Borland at Blank Projects
4.08.06 Marieke Kruger at Bell-Roberts Contemporary
4.08.06 'Review' at 34 Long
4.08.06 'Bennie's Games' and 'About Face' at Bell-Roberts
4.08.06 Peter Clarke and Ishmael Thyssen at Kalk Bay Modern
4.08.06 Painters at João Ferreira Gallery
4.08.06 'Portraits': a group exhibition at the AVA
4.08.06 Marianne Podlashuc at the Old Town House
4.08.06 'Breaking the Silence - A Luta Continua' at the Slave Lodge
4.08.06 UK artists at Irma Stern Museum

7.07.06 Laurina Paperina at Erdmann Contemporary
7.07.06 Koos de Wet at 3rd i Gallery
7.07.06 'Second to None' at the SANG

11.04.06 'Facing the Past' at the SANG
 

Nicholas Hlobo, the 2006 Tollman award winner, holds his first solo exhibition this month presented by Michael Stevenson Contemporary. Hlobo's affinity for non-traditional materials such as rubber inner tubes, leather, ribbons, soap and found objects is strongly evident in his latest creations.

Hlobo's work often explores issues related to sexual identity, masculinity and ethnicity and frequently makes reference to Xhosa idioms. In this exhibition, he explores 'comfort, shelter, protection, beauty, cleanliness, sacred space, pleasure and fantasy'. Hlobo said of his process in a 2005 statement: 'I always find that the material tends to dominate the entire process. My ideas evolve in unexpected ways as the material helps me discover new things. The start usually seems like trying to roll a rock as large as a double-decker bus, and by the completion of the work I go, "Wow, I can't believe I went through that and came back sane".'

Hlobo has exhibited at numerous local and international venues this year, including the group exhibition 'Olvida Quien Soy - Erase me from who I am' at the Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno in Las Palmas, Canary Islands. He is also one of 28 South African artists selected to participate in next month's four-week art event, 'TRANS CAPE'.

Opens: August 19
Closes: September 16

Photographer Angela Buckland exhibits a series of photographs that explores the representation of disability. 'Zip Zip my Brain Harts' is the culmination of six years of work on the subject, inspired by her own experience as the mother of a disabled child, Nikki. Her photographs centre on her child but Buckland has also collaborated with a small group of families with disabled children.

The exhibition is described as an uncompromising portrait of the normative social context within which disabled individuals and their families operate. Buckland adds: 'The photographs are public expressions of the sometimes painfully private experience of being the parent of a disabled child in South Africa'. Four distinct collections, thematically linked, form part of the exhibition. They include the Dysmorphic Series, the Stickytape Juice Collection, Where's Nikki and Shadow Catching.

Buckland's work is also currently on show at the SANG's group exhibition 'Second to None'. 'Zip Zip my Brain Harts� coincides with the launch of the book by the same name that features photography by Buckland and text by Kathleen McDougall, Leslie Swartz and Amelia van der Merwe.

Opens: July 28
Closes: August 9

Ralph Borland, an artist, designer and technologist, exhibits a body of work called 'Promised Land' for two weeks at Blank Projects this month. The exhibition combines sampled and manipulated mass-produced objects with fictional artifacts to produce a wry commentary on present-day South Africa.

Borland says the exhibition plays on some of the faultlines running through contemporary South Africa: disparities in wealth, contests of ownership over symbols and cultural objects, the threat to stability offered by the dispossessed and new struggles with their conflicted relationship with the struggle against apartheid.

The exhibition title, 'Promised land', poses the question: 'Was it land that was promised; is this the land that was promised?' Borland's exploration offers a coincidental counter-point to another August exhibition down the road from Blank: Marieke Kruger's 'To a Promised Land' (below), at Bell-Roberts Contemporary.

Opens: August 9
Closes: August 23

Marieke Kruger creates multi-dimensional, ambiguous spaces that draw the poetic and the everyday into an imaginative conceptual interplay. In 'To a Promised Land' she explores the possibility of bringing about a dialogue between identity, womanhood and a sense of belonging through porcelain, etching, digital and litho prints, charcoal and pastel drawings.

Kruger was recently shortlisted as an Absa L'Atelier finalist. She has held two solo shows, participated in numerous group exhibitions and undertaken two residencies in Belgium.

Opens: August 16
Closes: September 9

'Review' at 34 Long is aimed at introducing new work from the international circuit in addition to showing selected works from the gallery's inventory. A highlight is a work by Japanese artist Mr., who is a protégé of Takashi Murakami. The latter is one of Japan's best known contemporary artists famous for his 'super-flat' productions at Kaikai Kiki in Tokyo. The exhibition also includes work by relative newcomer and Kaikai Kiki associate Chiho Aoshima whose work, according to 34 Long, has not been exhibited in South Africa before.

Viewers will also be able to buy a limited edition hand-coloured spot etching by UK artist Damien Hirst, called Xylene Cyanol dye solution. Hirst's spot works have become a phenomenon, with 500 paintings produced at the last count. 34 Long says the most popular item in the Tate Modern store is apparently the Hirst spot badge, of which over 20 000 have been sold. Also on exhibition are works by Amsterdam-based South African artist Marlene Dumas.

Opens: August 8
Closes: September 9

There is good news for viewers who missed out on a trip to Oudtshoorn earlier this year for the KKNK arts festival. Two of the visual art exhibitions that appeared at the KKNK are this month on show at Bell-Roberts Contemporary.

Anita van Tonder shows seven sculptural pieces, each either accompanying a typical video arcade game or transformed to become such a game. Van Tonder aims to expose issues from abuse of power and substances to media-induced obsessions with food, physical appearance, sex and general corruption by creating detailed and humorously 'kitsch' renditions of the stereotypical.

Van Tonder was a finalist for the KKNK's Kanna award. She has a Fine Art degree from Unisa and is currently completing the final year of her Master's. [See Reviews]

Alongside is a portrait exhibition entitled 'About Face', which features artists like Sanell Aggenbach, Cameron Platter, Tanya Poole, Paul du Toit, Nigel Mullins and Norman O'Flynn.

Opens: July 19
Closes: August 12

A mini retrospective of Peter Clarke hangs alongside sculptures by Ishmael Thyssen in this joint exhibition at Kalk Bay Modern. Clarke's works range from paintings created in the 1950s, such as Balancing Act, to linocuts made in 2006, such as Still Life and Moonlight. His media range from woodcuts to monoprints, gouache, mixed media, watercolour, ink and wash, and linocuts.

Clarke has also been selected as one of 64 African artists to participate in next month's four-week art event, 'TRANS CAPE', which takes place at various venues around the peninsula.

Opens: June 21
Closes: August 31

João Ferreira Gallery shows new works by Dorothee Kreutzfeldt, Robert Hodgins and Nadja Daehnke along with other new acquisitions.

Opens: August 2
Closes: August 26

The AVA this month hosts a group exhibition on the theme of portraits, which has been broadly interpreted by participating artists. They were invited to submit an artwork in any medium that related to the subject in some way and the shortlist was drawn up by the AVA selection panel. The exhibition takes up all three gallery spaces.

Opens: July 31
Closes: August 18

A selection of artworks by Dutch artist Marianne Podlashuc is on show at The Old Town House until the end of October. Each artwork is accompanied by a caption that highlights the vicissitudes of the era in which she lived. She was born in 1932 and lived through the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands during WWII. Her awareness of social injustice is reflected in her South African work of the 1950s and 1960s.

Herder met Bokke, painted in 1958, was rejected by the Vrystaat Kunsvereeniging for political reasons, an event that precipitated the formation of the Bloemfontein Group that same year. Her painting Three Boys (1961) became well known when it was used as a cover for Alan Paton's Penguin edition of Cry the Beloved Country.

Curator Hayden Proud states: 'Her realist style fits well within the Dutch tradition and most of her subject matter was drawn from local sources. She played an early and unacknowledged role in forging a realist art in South Africa that was subtly critical of apartheid.'

A special tour of the exhibition will be held on Women's Day, August 10 at 10am .

Opens: July 6
Closes: October 31

The struggle against apartheid is explored visually through scrapbooks, body-maps, photographs, memory cloths, drawings, paintings, banners and film in this group exhibition entitled 'Breaking the Silence' at the Iziko Slave Lodge.

The artwork has been produced by Western Cape members of the Khulumani Support Group, which helps survivors of apartheid violence and torture. Stories from the Bontheuwel Veterans' Association are included, as well as a selection of rural stories that are also available in a booklet called The eye has never seen enough, the ear has never heard enough.

The exhibition is the result of five years of collaborative work between the Human Rights Media Centre and Khulumani. A parallel educational outreach and seminar programme is being arranged. The Slave Lodge also recently opened its doors to a permanent exhibition about slavery and the role the Western Cape played in the global slave route. Artist Roderick Sauls has created a memory wall and Garth Erasmus exhibits a sound installation.

Opens: July 31
Closes: November 30

'I wandered lonely as a cloud' is the well known opening line of Daffodil, one of William Wordsworth's most famous poems. Artists from the Lake District in the UK have responded to the poem with paintings, photographs and prints, which are exhibited this month at UCT's Irma Sterm Museum in a show entitled 'Wandering Cloud'.

The artists include Alan Stones, Julian Cooper, Rebecca Payn, Linda Ryle, Phil Morsman and Andrew Ratcliffe. Mark Haywood and Angie Wyman comment on the history and relevance of the romantic tradition, while photographers Martin Campbell and Val Corbett elect to focus on botanic details.

The exhibition is organised by the Centre for Landscape and Environmental Arts at Cumbria Institute of the Arts in the UK. Curator Charles Mitchell invited selected artists to provide their own reflections on the poem and the landscape which inspired it.

The exhibition will appear next in Greyton's Scarlett Gallery later this year.

Opens: July 26
Closes: August 20

Italian artist Laurina Paperina exhibits original drawings and work on video in this exhibition of comic art entitled 'Hot Drawings'. Paperina describes her work as an ironic elaboration of contemporaneity and the identities that constitute it. She uses dynamic forms and gaudy colours in a kind of virtual world where appearance and reality conflate. Her work is influenced by internet culture, strip cartoons, science fiction and game displays.

Opens: July 19
Closes: September 2

The 3rd i Gallery exhibits new paintings by Koos de Wet in a show titled 'Keep It Together!'. De Wet's work presents bittersweet snapshots of everyday life in the Western Cape, constructing free-floating narratives embroiled in the area's histories and cultures.

Opens: July 26
Closes: August 26

Curated by Virginia Mackenny and Gabi Ngcobo, this large show of (mainly) women's work commemorates the spirit of the Women's March to Pretoria in 1956, and celebrates the power of women, while examining issues of gender, race and identity. Artists include Penny Siopis, Diane Victor, Tracy Payne, and rising young artists like Lolo Veleko and Zanele Muholi. See Linda Stupart's review.

Part of the show but in its own exhibition space are the arresting large scale black and white photographic portraits of some of the 75 women featured in Karina Turok's newly launched book, Body and Soul (Doublestorey Publishers).

Opens: June 24
Closes: September 3

A decade after the country's Truth and Reconcilliation Commission was established, an exhibition at the Iziko South African National Gallery recognises and reflects on its achievements. The show includes often iconic works by artists such as Steve Hilton-Barber, Rose Kgoete, Kevin Brand and Zwelethu Mthethwa as well as works which 'look to the future' by Given Makhubele and Vuyisani Mgijima among others. All works are from the permanent collection of the Iziko South African National Gallery.

Opens: April 4
Closes: end 2006