In the middle of December, the announcement will be made from Venice as to which proposal has been accepted for space created for an African Pavilion in the Arsenale for next year's 52nd Venice Biennale. This year's director, Robert Storr opened up the doors to all comers with an unprecedented announcement on the Biennale website that the space, security and electricity would be free to the successful curator, and the original deadline of October 31 was extended to November 24.
Speculation has been that maybe thirty proposals will reach the table. Artists Ed Young and Christian Nerf travelled to New York to put their case to Storr personally (see DIARY) and the general intrigue and backbiting - and that's just so far - could have been the subject of a new reality TV show.
Watch this space for a special update announcement when the smoke signal is received.
STOP PRESS: The office of the Venice Biennale has announced that the news of the successful curatorial team will now
be given out only on January 15.
This is that time of the year when the art world shifts into holiday mode, and the January issue, due on the 15th, will be less substantial than usual. ArtThrob lite.
ArtThrob's financial resources are also in extremely low gear. Please help by buying a superb print from our Editions for ArtThrob series - a great Christmas gift - see EDITIONS. Also, very soon a few special advertisers will be introduced on to the site. Just clicking on and reading the ads generates enough revenue for us to pay for a few golden words of text.
Please help us keep going.
To all, a very happy Christmas and New Year, and thanks for being with us.
Sue Williamson
EDITOR
Next update: January 15
CAPE
The festive season is upon us and group shows predominate: Rose Korber's annual Art Salon opens at The Bay Hotel, Bell-Roberts holds a group show of new work, and both UCT and Stellenbosch Universities showcase their latest graduates' work. New exhibition spaces continue to emerge with Exposure Gallery in Woodstock hosting its second show and the Transient Studio in Kloof Street its first. A highlight this month is a one-night performance piece by French artist Fred Koenig at Trans-Cape Lab.
GAUTENG
The Gauteng art circuit quietens down as many galleries close around December 15, and quite a few are not hanging new shows after November. Nonetheless, check the listings to see where you should be getting your dose of visual art, and also where you can do highbrow festive season shopping. Important shows this month include the continuing Berni Searle retrospective at the JAG and Stefanus Rademeyer's second solo show 'Ideograph' at Warren Siebrits. Also notable is the 'Kazoo - it's a live art thing' at The Premises Gallery at the Civic Theatre.
KWAZULU-NATAL
Gearing up for the year end, Buzzart at the KZNSA and the Affordable Art fair offer artworks for sale; The African Art Centre showcases works by sculptor Julius Mfethe and mosaic works by Innocent Hlela. Bean Bag Bohemia's 'Iron Fist Art Decko' showcases an interesting collision between art and skateboarding.
INTERNATIONAL
South African artists are particularly prominent throughout the USA this month, with Nicholas Hales and Kim Lieberman showing in New York and an exhibition of African artists in Harlem. Also, amongst a selection of work from the last Venice Biennale, some prominent South African artists' works travel to Istanbul for 'Venice-Istanbul'.
CAPE
The private significance of the transient moment caught in a snapshot is transformed by Pierre Fouché through painstaking and idiosyncratic means into a playful suspension between revealing and concealing. Recent Michaelis graduate Fabian Saptouw reviews 'The Distance Between Us' at Bell-Roberts Contemporary.
GAUTENG
Recently, two independent critics, Brenden Gray and Landi Raubenheimer, expressed interest in contributing to Artthrob. Gauteng editor Michael Smith decided with them, in order to broaden the focus given to any single show, to all review the same exhibition. All three tackle 'Women: Photography and New Media: Imaging the Self and Body through Portraiture' at the JAG, and each independently finds fault with the curatorial brief more so than any of the work shown.
KWAZULU NATAL
Churchill Madikida's Standard Bank Young Artist exhibition, 'Like Father Like Son', finds the artist investigating his own upbringing, interviewing his family members, including, ultimately, his estranged biological father. Francesca Verga reports. Themba Shibase reviews 'Negotiated Spaces' by Nontobeko Ntombela and Bronwen Vaughan-Evans at the KZNSA, where he finds it more useful to look at what the artists have in common that what distinguishes them. Shibase explores how the two position themselves in society and what bearing this has on an interpretation of their work.
INTERNATIONAL
Museum for African Art, New York curator Laurie Ann Farrell reports on the inauguration of the Trienal de Luanda, in particular Paul D. Miller's (aka DJ Spooky) performance of New York is Now.
LOCAL
The SANG appoints a trainee curator as part of their mentorship programme while an Emerging Curators workshop is hosted by VANSA on Robben Island. VANSA receives much needed funding from the Department of Tourism and Economic Development. Esther Mahlangu wins this year's Lifetime Achievement Award at the Arts and Culture Trust Awards ceremony. Just a few months before 'TRANS CAPE' opening, CAPE Africa Platform alters its organisational structure. Michael Smith reports on the South Project to take place in South Africa in October 2007. Art for Humanity launches the 'Women for Children' Billboard Campaign across the country.
INTERNATIONAL
Linda Stupart reports on the launch of a new international art fair in the Asian Pacific.
See what Cape Town artist Ed Young has been up to for the last month.
Cape's Gabi Ngcobo profiles controversial and prominent Johannesburg-based photographer Zanele Muholi.
Carine Zaayman visits Dutch new media institution V2's Institute for unstable media http://www.v2.nl/.
We feature Leonardo Electronic Almanac, an offshoot of MIT's famed journal of the same name.
An international Mural Festival and Symposium invites submissions, as do the 11th Annual Arizona State University Art Museum Short Film and Video Festival, and more locally, the Month Of People's Photography.
See Editions
Browse through past editions of ArtThrob.
Who's who and how we started. New email addresses for ArtThrob staffers make it easy to contact the right person.
CONTACT US
Submit a message to the editor online - to contact a specific sub-editor,
which we'd prefer you do, please find their email address in the ABOUT
US section.
Subscribe to our monthly email update.
