Archive: Issue No. 112, December 2006

3.12.06 Philipp [sic] Gasser and Bruno Tremblay at blank projects
3.12.06 15th Annual Art Salon at The Bay
3.12.06 Santu Mofokeng at Iziko SANG
3.12.06 Francois van Reenen and 'Twogether' at 34 Long
3.12.06 Michaelis Graduate Show 2006
3.12.06 Fred Koenig at Trans-Cape Lab
3.12.06 Group show at Bell-Roberts
3.12.06 Louis Jansen van Vuuren at the AVA
3.12.06 Catharina Helena at Transient Studio
3.12.06 'Dog Road Kids' at Exposure
3.12.06 Logan Hicks at The Bin
3.12.06 'First Exposure: Their Lens, Their World' at the Baxter Theatre
3.12.06 'Embracing Aids/HIV' at Iziko SANG
3.12.06 Tom Cullberg at João Ferreira
3.12.06 Samantha Bulgin at what if the world...

5.11.06 Pierre Fouché at Bell-Roberts
5.11.06 Takashi Murakami and Matthew Hindley at 34Long
5.11.06 Hylton Nel and 'South African Art: 1900 - Now' at Michael Stevenson
5.11.06 'Form and Substance' at Erdmann
5.11.06 Group shows at what if the world...
5.11.06 Comic artwork at Alliance Française
5.11.06 'Embracing HIV/Aids' at Iziko SANG
5.11.06 Jurgen Schadeberg at the National Library
5.11.06 Acquisitions at Sanlam Art Gallery
5.11.06 Susan Kruger-Grundlingh at artb
5.11.06 Maarten Zaalberg and others at Rust-en-Vrede

1.09.06 'Memory and Magic' at the SANG

PAARL

1.09.06 Deryck Healey at Glen Carlou Vineyards

STELLENBOSCH

3.12.06 'Section 53' at Sasol Art Museum
3.12.06 Andries Gouws at US Art Gallery

HERMANUS

3.12.06 Cameron Platter at Newton Johnson Wines

RIEBEEK KASTEEL

3.12.06 'Ja but Nee Show' at Cape Francolin Art Hotel

Philipp Gasser and Bruno Tremblay, two Basel-based artists, are currently on a six-month residency programme split between Johannesburg and Cape Town as part of an exchange programme at Pro Helvetia and IAAB in Switzerland. Their show, 'Improvising on Truth' was first used as title for a Drill Hall exhibition in September where they exhibited a multimedia collaborative piece - a video installation with soundtrack. In the Cape Town show at blank, the duo uses the title as a theme for individual works which open a dialogue between them. Gasser shows a new animation and digital print comprising assemblage of drawings and newspaper clippings. Tremblay will exhibit pencil drawings in which he has used the computer as a tool in the creative process to create 'delicate and poetic pictures'.

Opens: 6pm, December 6
Closes: December 15

Art consultant and curator Rose Korber is hosting the 15th Annual Art Salon at The Bay Hotel in Camps Bay with works on show from a selection of SA artists working in a variety of media. Established names are exhibited alongside up-and-coming artists. Korber says this year's Salon is riding a wave of interest from museum directors and international curators around South African and non-Western contemporary art.

Artists represented include Beezy Bailey, Wayne Barker, Deborah Bell, Willie Bester, Paul Blomkamp, Conrad Botes, Robert Hodgins, William Kentridge, John Kramer, Erik Laubscher, Johann Louw, Colbert Mashile, Walter Meyer, Sam Nhlengethwa, Claudette Schreuders, Robert Slingsby and Richard Smith.

Younger artists like Sanell Aggenbach, Peter Eastman, Dan Halter, Ruan Hoffmann, JP Meyer, Pamela Stretton, Gina Waldman and Alastair Whitton also show, alongside photographs by Stephen Inggs, Terry Kurgan and Jurgen Schadeberg, amongst others.

Opens: December 22
Closes: January 11, 2007

A survey show called 'Invoice' of the work of photographer Santu Mofokeng at Iziko SANG includes photographs from nearly all his major bodies of work produced between 1982 and 2006. The exhibition is hosted in partnership with Gallery Momo in Johannesburg and Autograph ABP in London.

Mofokeng began working as a street photographer and in the mid-80s he joined the Afripix Collective agency. Pam Warne, curator of photography and new media at SANG, says of his work: 'From an early stage, Mofokeng exhibited an independent approach and produced images that refuse to be overtly political but nonetheless contain a fundamental political dimension.�

Mofokeng has held solo shows in Johannesburg and London and recently participated in the international exhibition 'Africa Remix' as well as Beijing's Forbidden City International Photography Festival. He has received numerous awards and exhibited extensively in Europe and elsewhere.

Opens: December 2
Closes: May 2, 2007

Pierre Fouché in 'The distance between us' exhibits a collection of portraits comprised of sculptural domestic photographs, process remnants, patterns and drawings. The show explores permutations drawn from the triangulation of familial others and the artist and motivated by 'the primal desire for the absent being'. The exhibition is a playful engagement with contemporary notions of masculinity, effected through a web of 'licit, illicit, embraced and disavowed touches between the men represented'. The exhibition depicts a personal journey of dealing with intimacy within the constraints of distance - the distances of physical separation, the emotional distances even in close proximity, and the distances created by societal norms.

Fouché is currently completing his Master's at the University of Stellenbosch.

Opens: November 8
Closes: December 2

'Monster Love', a solo show by Francois van Reenen, shows upstairs this month at 34Long. The artist recently returned from a two-month residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris where he spent much of his time photographing dogs in the streets and painting these images onto Parisian street maps. These works are included on the show.

Van Reenen's work reflects a love for toys and games, playfulness and fun, evidencing a lifelong diet of cartoons: 'Cartoons, like fairy tales, run the gamut from infinite lightness and beauty to the murky side of humanity, its absurdity, stereotypes and prejudices. 'Monster Love' is about all of this', says 34Long's exhibition statement.

A group show downstairs entitled 'Twogether' runs parallel, focusing on work by William Kentridge and Marlene Dumas, who is expected to exhibit next year at Iziko SANG. Work by Norman Catherine, Esther Mahlangu, Willie Bester and Matthew Hindley is also on show, alongside graphics of low edition by Chiho Aoshima and Takashi Murakami.

Opens: December 12
Closes: January 26

UCT's Michaelis School of Fine Art will open its doors to the public for a fortnight this month for its annual graduate exhibition, which is essentially a curated group show of final-year practical work by about 50 students. The artworks span a range of media including sculpture and installation, painting, printmaking and photography as well as cutting-edge 'new media'. There are also some off-site projects where students have engaged with particular communities in socially aware interventions.

There seems to be a general trend towards gestures that articulate a sense of self, according to 2006 graduate Fabian Saptouw in an accompanying catalogue essay. Saptouw suggests that a few discernable strategies of representation have been employed by the student body. These range from placing themselves literally within the picture frame to exploring the notion of self in relation to the other, from defining themselves in relation to society to using social space as a base for meaning in its own right.

The exhibition is curated by Kathy Coates and the artworks and catalogue are for sale. The catalogue also includes contributions from Michaelis director Professor Pippa Skotnes, Professor Gavin Younge and writer Catherine Green.

Opens: 6pm, December 6
Closes: December 20

French artist Fred Koenig, currently completing a residency at Greatmore Studios in Woodstock, is holding a one-night only performance in collaboration with South African dancer Ebrahim Medell and actress Toni Morkel called My Little Pink bag Stories. 'The Voodoo Divas' is the name given to creative duo Koenig and Morkel, which focuses on 'absurd, risqué performances to challenge and dismantle conservative notions of art-making'. It is no surprise then that this performance tells a narrative about gay marriages in Cape Town. Koenig describes his style as 'falling between contemporary conceptual high art and total trash'.

Koenig blends photography, film and performance, manipulating these to allow him to expose the fiction and construction of identities. A recent performance called My African Safari narrated his impressions of Johannesburg and was the result of a residency last year at The Bag Factory.

Performance: 6pm, December 12

An end-of-year group show at Bell-Roberts includes new work by Sanell Aggenbach, Theresa-Ann Mackintosh, Santu Mofokeng (currently on show at Iziko SANG), Nigel Mullins, Norman O'Flynn, Johannes Phokela, Cameron Platter, Tanya Poole and Lyndi Sales. The exhibition is being held in conjunction with Gallery Momo in Johannesburg.

The gallery will be closed from December 24 until January 3, 2007.

Opens: December 1
Closes: January 6, 2007

A solo exhibition of new works by Louis Jansen van Vuuren, currently living in France, is on show at the AVA this month. The works are executed in both pastels and oils to capture 'the temperament, charm, allure and different moods of Paris'. The new works were made during the past 18 months in a city to which the artist has been connected for 20 years.

The gallery will be closed from December 23 until January 3, 2007.

Opens: November 29
Closes: January 17

This debut solo exhibition by Catharina Helena comprises a collection of inter-related paintings, photographs, text and other 'paraphernalia'. The images are either drawn spontaneously from the artist's mind or salvaged from remembered dreams.

Several themes that connect the work range from identity and relationship to brokenness and redemption, transience, transcendence and individuation. The artist says: 'The images are products of a continuing spiritual search of relatedness - not only of Self to the Other but also to a higher consciousness.'

Helena is founder of the Kuru Art Project for Nhara San artists in Botswana and the !Khun and Khwe Art Project, currently on show at Iziko SANG.

Opens: November 24
Closes: December 7

A documentation of the lives of street kids in Cape Town is the subject of the second exhibition at new gallery Exposure in Woodstock's Old Biscuit Mill venue. The photographs are the work of Richard Johnson and Shelly Rankin and of them the two say: '[These street kids] spend their days scrounging a meagre existence and their nights in a concrete shelter they've come to call home. Although certainly no angels, together, they're striving for a better life.' The documentary is coincidentally highly topical, with the fatal shooting of a street kid in the CBD the subject of a local court case that hit the headlines last week.

Opens: November 25
Closes: December 8

The Bin hosts an exhibition by LA stencil artist Logan Hicks called 'Hollow Cityscapes'. Hicks has fine-tuned a process of stenciling that mimics the principles and processes of screenprinting but with a more gritty, urban look. He walks the line between commercial and fine art and is known for his 'hyper-detailed, meticulously hand-cut stencils'. He focuses on exploring patterns and details, or finding beauty in the mundane, using subject matter like urban cityscapes, architecture and organic forms.

Ten per cent of the proceeds from sales will be donated to the South Africa Aids Foundation.

Opens: December 7 (official opening event 11am - 4pm, December 10)
Closes: December 13

The Baxter hosts a photographic exhibition featuring work by Akhona, Lwando, Olwethu, Ayabonga, Zingisa, Lusanda, Zwelethu, Phem and Nkosiyapha, children from Emasithandane and Baphumelele children's homes. They have all taken part in a series of workshops run by volunteers and these are the results. Proceeds from a silent auction and prints for sale will benefit CHOSA (www.childrenofsouthafrica.org), an organisation that directly supports both children's homes.

Opens: November 27
Closes: December 12

This new exhibition at Iziko SANG is timed to coincide with International Aids Day on December 1. The SANG says few SA artists initially engaged with the pandemic but this has changed over recent years and the number of artworks that deal with Aids owned by the gallery has slowly increased.

Recent exhibitions and research revealed a substantial body of new work in the area and SANG successfully applied to the DAC for funding to purchase specific pieces. These include works on exhibition by Kim Berman, David Goldblatt, Churchill Madikida, Berni Searle, Clive van den Berg, Diane Victor and Zapiro. Previously acquired works by David Goldblatt, Gideon Mendel, Penny Siopis and Hentie van der Merwe will also be on show.

Opens: December 1
Closes: January 2007

Tom Cullberg exhibits a new series of works titled 'House' at João Ferreira gallery this month, which has now moved to 70 Loop Street - just around the corner from its former Hout Street venue.

The paintings separately depict seemingly empty buildings juxtaposed with small groups of people and a few belongings. Cullberg most recently exhibited at the group show 'New Painting' at the KZNSA, where he recently held a solo too. Cullberg was a top 10 finalist for the 2006 ABSA l'Atelier award.

Opens: November 29
Closes: December 16

The first solo exhibition by illustrator and fashion designer Samantha Bulgin of Alfalfa is hosted this month by what if the world� gallery. It features a selection of new pencil drawings, limited edition silkscreen prints and fashion designs. The artist says in a statement: 'In Alfalfa's first solo exhibition you will see drawings and prints and clothes and my obsession for keys and hearts continues.'

Opens: December 8
Closes: January 6, 2007

One of Japan�s hottest young artists, Takashi Murakami, is the subject of the latest exhibition at 34 Long. Murakami has set up factory-like studios in Tokyo and New York where he churns out soft toys, giant inflatable balloons, t-shirts, comics, sculptures, prints, watches and other mass produced products in his 'superflat' style. His KaiKai Kiki business boasts a signature character in the big-eared, wide smiling Mr DOB. 34Long suggests Murakami's works could be understood as 'commentaries on western modernism, contemporary consumerism, cartoon animation and Japanese history, combined'.

Upstairs, the gallery hosts new work from young South African artist Matthew Hindley in 'Before My Time'. Hindley considers Murakami a formative influence, which makes the two exhibitions conceptually a neat fit. 34Long says Hindley's paintings are emotionally-laden inventions that fall into a self-imposed mainly naturalistic pictorial genre in which portraits and landscapes come to resemble action-packed movie stills: 'Skeletons do hip hop dances and burn castles, ghost kittens sit around lonely sad girls, people stare out to sea, trees grow out of clouds, everything happens slowly.'

Opens: November 14
Closes: December 9

A selection of major new works by the gallery's contemporary artists will be exhibited alongside works by earlier South African masters like Irma Stern, Gerard Sekoto, Walter Battiss, Stanley Pinker, Alexis Preller, George Pemba and John Mohl in its annual end-of-year exhibition. Recent works include photographs by Guy Tillim of the DRC elections, a series by Pieter Hugo of boy scouts in Liberia, a series of South African landscapes by David Goldblatt, portraits by Zanele Muholi, new paintings by Mustafa Maluka, Deborah Poynton, Tracy Payne and Conrad Botes, prints by Berni Searle, sculptures by Doreen Southwood, Nicholas Hlobo and Wim Botha, and a huge shark-shaped drum by Samson Mudzunga.

A show of recent ceramics by Hylton Nel will run parallel to the group exhibition. Nel will show a series of plates which are wall-hung in particular patterns, many of these inscribed with his characteristic quirky and polemical phrases. He has also made many new vases and small sculptures which will be included in the exhibition.

Opens: November 28
Closes: January 13

A group exhibition of 10 artists working in very different media is unified by a common conceptual thread: the theme of 'Form and Substance' from which the exhibition also takes its title. Brent Meistre, Brendhan Dickerson, Terry Kurgan, Elizabeth Gunter, Johann Louw, Themba Shibase, Jean Brundrit, Marc Stanes, Bronwen Vaughan-Evans and Brooke Fasani are the participating artists. A fire sculpture by Dickerson promises to be a highlight: it's a once-off performance at 8pm, December 15.

Opens: November 20
Closes: January 20

A group of artists all interpreting the idea of collage comprise 'The Collage Show' this month at the new Woodstock premises of what if the world�. An assortment of two and three-dimensional work will be on show by artists including Adrienne van Eeden, Asha Zero, Bettina Malcomess, Frauke Stegmann, Hannah Morris, Jeanne Hoffman, Julia Rosa Clark, Karen Stewart, Liza Grobler, Lynette Bester, Marna Hattingh and Michael Taylor.

'The Collage Show' follows 'All Creatures Great and Small', an exhibition that explores the animal in various forms ranging from fuzzy toys to dark man-beast hybrids, from the quirky to the macabre. The media range from bronze to stencils, etchings, paintings, ceramics and prints. Artists include Rowan Smith, Zander Blom, Ali Aschman, Murg, Merwe Marchand le Roux, Marna Hattingh, Tina Jensen, Jesse Breytenbach, Hannah Morris, knolc, Brandt Botes, Maya Marshak, Linda Stupart, Justin Poulter, Dave Scadden, Mike Saal and MiliTösT.

'All Creatures Great and Small' opens: October 25
Closes: November 11

'The Collage Show' opens: November 15
Closes: December 6

An exhibition dedicated to the talents of young European and South African comic strip artists is the focus of an exhibition hosted by Alliance Française in Cape Town. It is a touring exhibition that comprises 20 South African artists presenting their unpublished works within a given theme of 'première fois' (first time). The works will be published in a comic called The Outline Project, devised to showcase up-and-coming talent. In addition, there is a series of workshops and other events: documentary films on November 7, a screening of Immortel by Enki Bilal on November 17 and a workshop with Brice Reignier on November 21.

The show forms part of 'Comics Brew', an international festival of comic art - for more info visit www.comics-brew.com French graphic novels will also be for sale from October 30.

Opens: 6pm, November 4
Closes: December 5

'Embracing HIV/Aids', which opens on International Aids Day, showcases a substantial body of new work around the impact of HIV/Aids on the country. Artists featured include Kim Berman, David Goldblatt, Churchill Madikida, Berni Searle, Clive van den Berg, Diane Victor and Zapiro, and media range from photography to sculpture, paintings and drawings. Works previously acquired (Goldblatt, Gideon Mendel, Penny Siopis and Hentie van der Merwe) are also included.

Says Iziko SANG of the exhibition: 'As with many previous projects, the exhibition Embracing HIV/Aids will be a point of departure for education programmes and special walkabouts. It will draw NGOs into our work and vision and sensitise visitors to the challenges we face in South Africa.'

Opens: December 1

Jurgen Schadeberg documents farm life and labour conditions in this show of 128 black-and-white photographs at the National Library. He undertook a countrywide trip with a team of researchers to inform this photographic series. The National Library says in its exhibition statement: 'Schadeberg, whose skilled camera has documented so much of our recent history, hopes this work will create more awareness of rural problems especially among the urban population whose contact with this fragile economy is usually via the supermarket.' The National Library hopes the exhibition will also be a positive contribution to the land issues debate currently occupying the social discourse in South Africa.

Opens: November 15
Closes: January 26

Sanlam this month presents highlights of recent acquisitions. Stefan Hundt, curator of the Sanlam Collection, said new works include a Lambda print by Tracy Rose, a papier mâché sculpture by Wim Botha reminiscent of Rodin's Torso of 1877 - 78, alongside the simple portrait bust by Job Kekana and a superb Erich Mayer Portrait of an African Prince, as well as Helmut Starcke's luscious rendering of Dutch flowers in a Cape landscape Dreams and Madame de La Q. Hundt said in a statement: 'The collection has grown substantially over the past two years with stark contrasts marking the acquisitions.'

Opens: October 26
Closes: January 26

A solo exhibition of new work by Susan Kruger-Grundlingh will be held in the artb gallery this month. Her oil on canvas paintings evoke atmospheric interiors, sometimes with a figure, centering around a theme of longing. Kruger-Grundlingh began this exploration during a recent residency at the Cités des Arts in Paris.

Ceramics by Hennie Meyer will be on display in the artb Vestibule Gallery.

Opens: 7pm, November 29
Closes: January 10

A retrospective exhibition of ceramic works by Maarten Zaalberg is on show at Rust-en-Vrede in Durbanville in the clay museum. In the gallery, meanwhile, a group exhibition of various artists depicting poems runs concurrently.

Opens: 7.30pm, November 7
Closes: December 15

A retrospective selection of 82 of the best works produced by seven artists from the !Xun and Khwe Cultural Project in the private collection of Hella Rabbethge-Schiller of Rosenheim, Germany, is on show at the SANG this month. Entitled 'Memory and Magic' the works on paper and canvas span the period from the inception of the project in 1994 until the present.

Rabbethge-Schiller inherited a farm near Kimberley in the 1970s and built up a visual archive of over 400 works from the !Xun and Khwe artists in an nearby community. The collection is regarded as the largest and most comprehensive of such art in existence and has until now resided outside South Africa.

Opens: September 23
Closes: January 2007

Swiss businessman Donald M. Hess, founder of the Hess Group, owns an impressive contemporary collection including works by Andy Goldsworthy, Georg Bäselitz, Susan Derges, Franz Gertsch, Alois Lichtsteiner, Leopoldo Maler, Nakis Panayotidis, Vincent Prud'homme, Gustav Troger and recently deceased South African artist Deryck Healey. A selection of works by Healey forms the bulk of this inaugural show at Glen Carlou winery outside Paarl, supplemented by several Goldsworthy 'snowball paintings'.
Healey, born in Durban in 1937, lived and worked in South Africa and the UK. The collection will undergo regular changes; according to curator Myrtha Steiner, and an installation by Goldsworthy is one future possibility. Said Hess at the opening: 'If you imagine that an artist puts heart and soul into art, you can't just walk by because the painting needs time to respond to your looks. I have also learnt to rely on my eyes and my intuition... Art mirrors not only the artist and his feelings and interior life or ideas but also mirrors the times we live in. A sincere artist can't just paint a field with flowers when he thinks about the world.'

Opens: August 24
Closes: Ongoing

'Section 53', the annual showcase of the 2006 final-year students' work from Stellenbosch University's Department of Visual Arts, is hosted by the Sasol Art Museum. It showcases work from the Fine Art, Jewellery and Graphic Design departments.

Opens: November 24
Closes: February 10, 2007

'Hiding behind simple things' is the title of Andries Gouws' travelling exhibition which opens at the US Gallery this month. His paintings express a fascination with everyday objects and interiors, 'numinous and banal, as one encounters them in mediation'. Gouws aims to transfigure the everyday and to invest the overlooked with fresh observation.

The current show has been to the Grahamstown Arts Festival, the Oliewenhuis Museum in Bloemfontein, the Aardklop Festival in Potchefstroom and the University of Johannesburg Art Gallery. Next stops are the Pretoria Art Museum and the KZNSA in Durban.

Opens: November 23
Closes: January 6, 2007

'Bell-Roberts Contemporary Gallery in conjunction with Newton Johnson Wines (Hermanus) is hosting an exhibition of selected works by Cameron Platter that includes drawings, sculptures and limited edition prints of his funky characters.

Opens: December 1
Closes: January 7, 2007

'The 'Ja but Nee' show at the Cape Francolin Art Hotel is characterised by what its curator calls 'oxymoron and ambivalence'. It is a group show of artists working in the space between the incredible beauty of now, and incredible worry about the future.

The show features David and Clive Bellamy, Tracey Derrick, Kim Gurney, Ian Hunter, Louise Kaye, Andrew Lord and Catherine Price. The artists have produced a range of two and three-dimensional works tackling zones of responsibility significant to the artists.

Opens: December 15
Closes: January 31