Archive: Issue No. 108, August 2006

4.08.06 South African Photographers in London
4.08.06 Liz Crossley in Berlin

7.07.06 Jane Alexander in Belgium
7.07.06 Robin Rhode in Germany
7.07.06 Gregg Smith in Paris

2.06.06 Penny Siopis in Belfast

THE AMERICAS

4.08.06 William Kentridge in Texas
4.08.06 James Webb in Brazil

7.07.06 'Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography' in Miami
7.07.06 'Body of Evidence' at the National Museum of African Art in the USA
7.07.06 Jane Alexander in California
7.07.06 Four SA artists selected for Sao Paulo Bienal

FAR EAST

7.07.06 Santu Mofokeng in Taiwan

5.05.06 'Africa Remix' opens at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo
5.05.06 'Off the Record' in Tokyo

AUSTRALIA

4.08.06 Roger Ballen in Sydney
 

Mikhael Subotzky, Lolo Veleko and Zwelethu Mthethwa are amongst those taking part in 'The Living is Easy', an exhibition of international contemporary photography at the Flowers East Gallery in London. The exhibition shows a bittersweet collection of imagery which seems to say that while it may be summertime in London, the living is not easy for all.

Opens: August 11
Closes: September 10

South African born and educated Liz Crossley is showing a selection of paintings done since the mid-90s, under the title 'Extremes & Elements' at the ARD Hauptstadtstudio in Berlin.
Crossley was born in South Africa, trained at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town and has been living in Europe since 1974. The links with South Africa have however remained and been strengthened since the late 80s, while her interest in and fascination with Europe are being developed constantly.

Much of her work circles around the core themes of place or land and survival, particularly under extreme conditions. These themes are explored in works such as the San Ladder series which spring from the artist's interest in San engravings near her hometown in Kimberley and painting installations that explore her time in residence in the barren coldness of Iceland.

Opens: September 4
Closes: October 6

Jane Alexander shows amongst a long list of internationally acclaimed artists in the opening exhibition of a new contemporary art space in Brussels, la Centrale Électrique. The exhibition is titled 'Zoo' and takes on the question of the animal in contemporary art, a recurring topic in the history of art since the very beginnings of humankind. More than 30 artists, Belgian and international, put forward the ambiguity of the relationship between man and animal; humanity and animalism. The exhibition will be accompanied by a book published in English, French and Dutch with contributions from art historians and anthropologists.

Opens: June 23
Closes: August 8

Robin Rhode exhibits along with the three other recipients of the 'ars viva 05/06', a competition organised by the Cultural Committee of German Business. In spring 2005 Jason Dodge, Takehito Koganezawa, Michaela Meise and Robin Rhode were awarded this prize, given to artists dealing particularly with issues of identity. After exhibitions in Rostock and Antwerp, KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin shows works by the four artists that have partly been conceptualised for this venue.

During the past few years all four artists have moved their life and work to Berlin and thus this show in their new hometown will focus on the impact that Berlin and its artistic and social contexts have on the creative process in terms of personal and historical histories.

Opens: June 25
Closes: August 20

Gregg Smith will be exhibiting a recently completed video installation, The End at Le Plataeau's Experimental Space, a gallery space aimed particularly at artists currently in residences in France. The End follows in the line of Smith's previous pieces, taking a personal dilemma from everyday life as its starting point. The artist is currently in residency at Paris' Cité Internationale des Arts.

Opens: July 7
Closes: August 20

'Migrations' is part of a multi-stranded project being developed in Belfast exploring different experiences of migration. The show will will feature major works on the subject of migration by well-known contemporary artists and researchers including Anthony Haughey, Andrea Lange, Breda Beban, Penny Siopis and Terence Wright.

Penny Siopis is to show 1997's My Lovely Day , a piece which combines spliced sequences of 8mm home movies that the artist's mother shot in the 1950s and 1960s in South Africa with sound and visual text which tell an elemental story of migration, displacement and exile. The narrative text is that of of Siopis' maternal grandmother telling her grandchildren of her emotional and literal journeys between Europe, Greece and South Africa in the early part of last century. The moment of her telling is apartheid South Africa, as are the scenes captured on film, yet her references to social turmoil and catastrophe are those of an earlier time and another place. The quality of the found footage - the jumps, sprocket tracks, scratches, light flares, camera movements, frail focus and intrusion of peripheral images - dramatises the quality of the film as artefact and in a way stand for the fragmentary nature of memory.

Opens: June 15
Closes: August 25

William Kentridge's well known 1997 piece, Weighing and Wanting is showing at the Austin Museum of Art in Texas. The film, and the drawings which accompany it on this exhibition, centre around Soho Eckstein, a broad-shouldered, white South African industrialist whose self-assured place in the world has been dismantled by the ascendancy of the African National Congress and the condemnation of apartheid. Eckstein's story is related through his personal meditations on a failed love affair, the Johannesburg landscape which stands as silent witness to the atrocities of the apartheid era, and his own internal psychic landscape, represented by images of MRI brain scans. The title of the exhibition refers to a biblical episode in which a disembodied hand appears before King Belshazzar of Babylon and writes a message on the wall, reading, 'You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting, for you have not humbled your heart before God, so your kingdom has come to an end.'

Opens: August 19
Closes: November 5

James Webb will be participating in a residency deep in the jungles of the Brazilian Amazon. With local guides and interpreters, and under the watchful ear of internationally-renowned sound artist Francisco López, Webb and others will do regular diurnal and nocturnal trips to record, collect and document the sounds of the jungle.

While Webb is there, he will also be broadcasting the calls of certain species of restricted-range South African and West African birds from the trees.

Opens: August 18
Closes: August 28

'Snap Judgments' moves from New York to Miami this month. Organised by Okwui Enwezor, the exhibition is the first major US presentation to focus on photo-based artwork from the African continent since 1996. More than 200 works by 35 artists from across Africa, the majority of whom will be exhibiting in the US for the first time, will be presented. The show's four sections - Landscape, Urban Formations, The Body and Identity, and History and Representation - reflect important themes being addressed by African artists today. A number of South Africans are exhibiting, including Mikhael Subotzky, Guy Tillim, Hentie van de Merwe, Moshekwa Langa, Zwelethu Mthethwa and Nontsikelelo Veleko.

Opens: June 30
Closes: August 17

'Body of Evidence' is a new show at the Smithsonian Institute's Museum of African Art. The long running show is an exhibition of works by contemporary African artists from the museum's collection who deal with ideas of 'The Body' with varying levels of explicitness.

The artists use the human body, and its absence, as a site for issues of race, identity, gender and geography - all issues that are often integral to artists from this continent. South African artists Kay Hassan, Gavin Jantjes, Rudzani Nemasetoni, Georgie Papageorge, Johannes Phokela, Berni Searle, Sue Williamson and Jeremy Wafer are included.

Opens: June 14
Closes: April 6

Jane Alexander is one of the 88 contemporary artists from 25 countries to have contributed artworks for an exhibition inspired by the messages, vision and values of Tibet's spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. 'The Missing Peace: Artists Consider the Dalai Lama' at the UCLA Fowler Museum explores themes of peace, compassion, patience and tolerance. Participating artists have considered the Dalai Lama in a broad array of new and existing works made in a variety of media expressing their personal interpretations of and reflections on his philosophies and ideals.

Many artists, including Bill Viola, Mike and Doug Starn, Sylvie Fleury, El Anatsui, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Michal Rovner and Chuck Close, have created new works for the exhibition which also includes art superstars like Marina Abramovic and Laurie Anderson. Jane Alexander is the only South African taking part.

Opens: June 11
Closes: September 10

Following a visit to South Africa some months ago, Lisette Lagnado, chief curator of the 27th Sao Paulo Bienal, has selected Jane Alexander, Guy Tillim, Mustafa Maluka and Pieter Hugo to participate. For the first time, national representation has been discarded, and the 119 chosen artists have been selected purely on the merits of their work. Well known artists from other countries include Cildo Mereiles, Tacita Dean, Loulou Cherinet and Thomas Hirschhorn.

This year's theme is 'How to Live Together' and the Bienal will run from October 7 to December 17, 2006.

Santu Mofokeng is participating in an international exhibition entitiled: 'Exorcising Exortism' curated by Sandy Hsiu-chih Lo at the Taipei Hsinyi New Life Square, Taiwan. The show is presented by Taiwan Institute of Culture Industry, Taipei Artist Village and Shin Kong Mitsukoshi in association with Taiwan Institute of Urban Design and Youth Literacy. The exhibition won the main curatorial prize awarded by the National Culture and Arts Foundation, Taiwan.

Mofokeng will be presenting his exhibition 'Township Billboards: Beauty, Sex and Cell-phones' and will also take up residency for 3 weeks while presenting workshops at the institution.

Opens: July 15
Closes: August 13

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

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 figues, Jane Alexander shows her African Adventure mixed media installation, Tracey Derrick presents a commissioned series of photographs of Western Cape farm workers, Tracey Rose is represented by her seminal video, TKO, in which cameras concealed in a punching bag record her attack on the bag, and Jackson Hlungwani exhibits one of his majestic carved wooden figures.

The exhibition is divided into three categories, with somewhat unoriginal titles - History & Identity, City & Land, and Body & 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. In Tokyo, the Mori is under the direction of David Elliott, curator of the first major show of art from South Africa in Britain, with his 'Art from South Africa' at the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford in 1990.

Elliott's framing of the show for a Japanese audience will, one imagines, be an important factor in the reception of the show in Tokyo. Next stop for 'Africa Remix': the Johannesburg Art Gallery.

Opens: May 27
Closes: August 31

Timed to coincide with the opening of 'Africa Remix' at the Mori, is a project much lighter in weight and more ephemeral in concept: 'Off the Record', devised by Belgian artist Eric van Hove, now based in Tokyo, will hi-jack X-Cube storage lockers found in subway stations in the city.

These lockers are opened not by a key but by utilising a cell phone number designated by the storer. Invited artists will make an artwork to fit into one of these lockers, which measures 30 x 30 x 60 cm. An SMS to a friend inviting him/her to come and view the artwork will set the process in motion. The invitee will then invite someone else in turn, setting the new cell phone number as the new code. 'Think of Chinese whispers', says Van Hove.

Participating artists include Lara Baladi (Egypt), Federico Herrero (Costa Rica), John di Stefano (New Zealand) and Sue Williamson (South Africa).

Will the artwork be stolen by a viewer? Will the next invited viewer take the trouble to pay a visit? Will an earthquake destroy Tokyo and all the artworks? The agenda is open.

More information? http://www.transcri.be/projects/offtherecord/downloads.html

May 2006 - until such time as the project ends itself.

Roger Ballen will be exhibiting images from his recent show 'Shadow Chamber' and the book Outland at the Stills Gallery in Australia.

Ballen's photographs for 'Shadow Chamber' are striking, ambiguous images of people, animals and objects posed in mysterious, cell-like rooms. The pictures occupy the grey area between fact and fiction, blurring the boundaries between documentary photography and constructed images. Ballen focuses on the interactions between the people, animals and objects that inhabit mysterious rooms - the shadow chamber. The resulting images are surreal and intriguing, and powerful disturbing psychological studies.

Opens: August 16
Closes: September 16