Archive: Issue No. 112, December 2006

3.12.06 Mare van Noordwyk and Andrew Bannister at Rainforest@gordart Gallery
3.12.06 Shane de Lange at gordart Gallery
3.12.06 Berni Searle at the Johannesburg Art Gallery
3.12.06 Mainganye and Zulu at David Krut Arts Resource
3.12.06 Ardmore Ceramic Art, Ubuhle Beautiful Beads and Keiskamma Art Project at Everard Read
3.12.06 'Turn the Table' at Artspace Fine Art Gallery
3.12.06 Stefanus Rademeyer at Warren Siebrits Modern and Contemporary Art
3.12.06 Fried Students and Lecturers with Selected Contemporary Artists at Fried Contemporary Art Gallery and Studio
3.12.06 Timeless Junxion Exhibition at Timeless Junxion
3.12.06 Laurence Blogg, Thomas Dunn and Gregory Wright at JAG
3.12.06 'Kazoo - it's a live art thing' at the Premises Gallery

5.11.06 'Women: Photography and New Media - Imaging the Self and Body through Portraiture' at JAG
5.11.06 'Distant Relatives/Relative Distance' at the Standard bank Gallery
5.11.06 Jacki McInnes at Constitution Hill
5.11.06 Bronwyn Millar at Obert Contemporary Melrose Arch
5.11.06 Society of Photographers at the Premises

Painter Mare Van Noordwyk and photographer Andrew Bannister have joined forces for this exhibition of drawings on photographs entitled 'Gone Fishing'. The show consists of 10 A1 digital prints. The work draws on the Romantic tradition in painting (JMW Turner and Caspar David Friedrich) and fishing. A combination of Bannister's photographs of clouds and van Noordwyk's drawings of figures and her digital manipulation locate the works within the artists' unique vision.

These are Romantic works of an imaginary time. They promise to seduce with their beauty, humour and sadness.

Opens: November 29
Closes: December 15

'Anticube' is Shane de Lange's Master's Degree exhibition, completed for the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT). De Lange views the white cube as a signifier for notions such as idealism, rationalism, progress, homogenisation, globalisation, and most importantly, humanism. This show redefines the traditional, typically modernist, art gallery as a concept and a space that epitomizes the totalitarian worldview that has evolved from humanism. It does so by emphasising the context of an exhibition-as-happening: an abstract construct in a solid architectural space.

The exhibition is an attempt to deconstruct the white cube of the gallery, specifically in relation to the artworks that give it purpose, and are, in turn, given value through the gallery. De Lange states that 'the gallery is the centerpiece of the exhibition? a kind of factory for meaning and value.' The show endeavours to do this by using and appropriating institutionalised and established styles, specifically drawing inspiration from Modernist movements such as Dada, De Stijl, Abstract Expressionism, and Minimalism, juxtaposed with postmodern trends such as Art Brut, Neo-Expressionism, and graffiti.

The show will be opened by Sean O'Toole at 5pm on December 3.

Opens: December 3
Closes: December 15

A mid-career Berni Searle retrospective opens at the Johannesburg Art Gallery this month. 'Approach' is part of a series of solo exhibitions the JAG is mounting of SA artists that are gaining international recognition. Curated by JAG director Clive Kellner, the show collects together a number of Searle's most important recent works, such as Snow White (2001), Profile (2002), About to Forget (2005) and Night Fall (2006). As Kellner stated, 'Searle is part of a generation of South African artists who are transcending the dictates and limits of identity politics to create powerful images that resonate within a global cultural discourse, while still referencing particular aspects of home and place. Her artistic production, although always personal and encompassing the human form, most often the artist's own body, has evolved from overt concern with body politics and identity framing to gestural, poetic subject matter.'

The show is accompanied by a full colour catalogue.

Opens: November 19
Closes: February 28 2007

New works by artists Avhashoni Mainganye and Sandile Zulu go on show at David Krut Arts Resource this month. The show ends off a busy year for the gallery, which will close for the festive season on December 15.

Opens: November 24
Closes: December 15

Everard Read Johannesburg presents a show of latest works from Ardmore Ceramic Art, Ubuhle Beautiful Beads and the Keiskamma Art Project. The show is tipped as a great place to do some creative festive season shopping.

Ardmore Ceramic Art was founded by Fee Halsted-Berning in 1985 on the farm Ardmore in the central Drakensburg KZN where she began teaching ceramic skills to the local women. After winning the Standard Bank young artist award in 1990 the now famous Bonnie Ntshalintshali introduced her sisters, aunts and friends to the studio. From this small start, Ardmore has grown into the largest ceramic art studio in South Africa. The studio provides the infrastructure for a large and diverse group of self-employed artists, historically female but now representing a strong male influence.

Vusi Khumalo has been working as an artist for many years. His efforts to render the South African landscape, and particularly the burgeoning informal communities in the Eastern Cape landscape, were frustrated, as he found that oil painting did not bring him the intense realism he sought to evoke. This led him to his startlingly real collages. Khumalo takes us where we might, otherwise, fear to tread and, perhaps, reminds us that behind the media façade of brutality, crime and squalor, these 'growths' on our landscape are populated by human beings under trying circumstances.

Ubuhle Beautiful Bead project tackles the problem of how a traditional African medium, like beading, can be harnessed and developed into something completely new that is relevant in the 21st Century. On a small farm in the foothills of the Drakensberg a remarkable group of artists is exploring this idea. Their beaded patterns and images, which speak eloquently of African heritage, are using this artform to uplift themselves and members of their community from the ravages of poverty and HIV/Aids. Beverly Gibson, a resident on a farm in Kwa-Zulu Natal, inspired by the beading work of her friend Ntombephi Ntombela, initiated Ubuhle as a sustainable project. The project aims to created an environment in which the women are nurtured and supported, allowing them to create these masterpieces and ensuring that they are not exploited.

Opens: November 23
Closes: December 10

The success of the 'Oppitafel' series of group exhibitions over the last four years has encouraged the curators to shake things up a bit this year. This year's show is to be called 'Turn the Table', and sees participating artists working with an old vinyl LP record as a starting point. Artists have been encouraged to utilize the record to create their contribution, yet to retain their own established artistic concerns. Thus, one can be assured of a range of responses to this brief.

Participating artists include Chris Diedricks, Johan du Plessis, Gordon Froud, Jaco Sieberhagen, Luan Nel, Landi Raubenheimer, Mandla Mabila, Musha Neluheni, Nirupa Sing and Paul Boulitreau.

Opens: December 1
Closes: January 31

Stefanus Rademeyer returns to Warren Siebrits this month for his second solo outing. Building on the interests established in his first solo show 'Surface Depth', the works express Rademeyer's concern with structural geometry. For this show, entitled 'Ideograph' he has produced works inspired by 10 theorists whose ideas centre on complex structures. These thinkers are French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995), German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), Scottish psychiatrist Ronald David Laing (1927-1989), Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), American experimental music composer and visual artist John Cage (1912-1992), French artist Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), English mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose (b.1931), Polish/American architect Daniel Libeskind (b.1946), and, Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem (1921-2006).

Rademeyer has produced 'abstract visual representations' based on his reading of the dense, complex texts left by these theorists, primarily dealing with the shift between the concept ('ideo') and the representation of it (writing, i.e. 'graph').

A fully illustrated catalogue will be published to coincide with this show. This will contain double page spread images of all the works, an interview with Rademeyer conducted by Siebrits, and an essay by Frikkie Eksteen entitled The Originality of Translation.

Opens: November 9
Closes: December 15

The Fried Contemporary Art Gallery and Studio presents a show of work by its lecturers and students, incorporating the work of selected contemporary South African artists. The show aims to showcase works produced in relation to the busy creative environment of this gallery/studio.

Opens: November 28
Closes: December 15

Timeless Junxion, in collaboration with Fried Contemporary Art Gallery and Studio, invite you to an art exhibition. Artists represented on the show will include Adele Oldfield, Antoinette Murdoch, Karin Preller, Pluto Panoussis, Collen Maswanganyi, Kamal Naran and Lisa Allan.

Opens: November 30
Closes: December 30

The organisers of 'Kazoo - it's a live art thing' state that it is 'the first ever international annual event of its kind in Johannesburg'. The event aims to introduce a take on art that is unpredictable, accessible and democratic, in response to the limited audiences of art that foregrounds socio-political issues. The participants in 'Kazoo' believe that the more playful side of art needs to be given more attention; it is their intention to explore performance art that focuses on play, action and intervention, giving local and international, emerging and established artists working within the Live Art/Performance Art arena an opportunity to engage with the people and space within the city of Johannesburg. The purpose is to reach a more diverse audience and create meaningful exchange between artists and community.

Attendance at the opening event will secure you a map to the various sites around Jozi playing host to the performances/interventions on Sunday December 3.

Juliana Smith (USA) and Anthea Moys (SA) are pleased to present the following artists: Penny Siopis (SA), Benedikt Partenheimer (Germany), Lerato Shadi (SA), Alison Kearney (SA), Ella Ziegler (Germany), Barend de Wet (SA), Simon Gush (SA), Donna Kukama (SA), Karin Lustenberger (Switzerland), Sarah Burger (Switzerland), Maja Marx, Edda Holl (Germany), Jemma Kahn (SA), Nhlanhla Thulane (SA), Nina Barnett (SA) and Robin Nesbitt (SA), Timo Mueller (SA) and Jonas Etter (Switzerland). Kazoo also kindly acknowledges the support of the American Embassy, Göethe-Institut, Wits School of Arts, Absolute Vodka and Red Bull.

Opens: December 2
Closes: December 3

A collaboration between young artists Laurence Blogg, Thomas Dunn and Gregory Wright has produced this show, an installation of film and related photographic prints entitled The Man. The film, immersive in its sound component and positively brutal in its lo-fi visuals, reads as an indictment of power and its consequences. The disjointed narrative takes as its backdrop a hypothetical urban space, devoid of human presence, yet retaining the trace of human activity. While I'm not in the habit of offering opinions in LISTINGS, this one is a must-see for many reasons, not least of which is that it challenges the fey nebulousness to which many art videos/films fall prey.

Opens: November 2
Closes: February 4

An exhibition that explores the work of women artists working in photography and new media opens at the Johannesburg Art Gallery this month. Specifically, the show focuses on works that image the self and body through portraiture, dealing with identity and mirroring the self. Featuring work by established and emerging artists, the works on show are drawn in part from the JAG's collection. Artists represented include Bridget Baker, Zanele Muholi, Usha Seejarim and Nontsikelelo Veleko.

Opens: November 9
Closes: February 28

During November, 'Distant Relatives/Relative Distance', curated by Michael Stevenson Contemporary, comes to the Standard Bank Gallery. The exhibition brings together six artists with African connections who now live in either European or American cities. The common thread is that these are all artists who are 'displaced' persons, dislocated from their countries or places of origin, as is common in context of globalisation. The show defines these artists as 'Afropolitans' rather than persons with a clearly defined sense of nationhood, home and self: they belong to 'no single geography, but (are) at home in many'.

Works on show range in media and aesthetic sensibility, and deal with issues around Aids, power, exchange between the West and Africa, identity, femininity, Hurricane Katrina and modernism.

Opens: November 1
Closes: December 2

A site-specific exhibition of sculptural works by Jacki Mc Innes is to be shown at the Women's Jail, Constitution Hill, as part of the national '16 Days of Activism' campaign. This is billed as a 'thematic extension on previous work where the artist explored whether the lived experience of South African women had changed since they had obtained the right to opt for legal abortions.' 'Patterns in Silence' endeavours to investigate the social and psychological ramifications specifically associated with infanticide.

By the very nature of the subject, the exhibition touches on marginalised groups most severely affected by poverty, alcoholism, unemployment and sexual abuse. Deliberately avoiding sensationalist imagery, McInnes employs kitchen knives, salt, steel and lead, exploring her ideas through metaphors.

Opens: November 24
Closes: December 10

Following on the success of her 2005 show 'Selfish', Bronwyn Millar presents a new show of work at Obert Contemporary. 'The Devil I Know' explores Millar's teenage experiences of learning to disguise herself. She states that she would apply make-up to the point where she looked 'airbrushed', hiding the idiosyncrasies of her own face under a mask of disguise. The show looks at the roles of masks and altered identity.

Opens: October 19
Closes: November 9

The Society of Photographers, an international organisation which was formed at the end of 2005, is launching an international exhibition at the Premises. The 'TEN' show and book launch is the culmination of a process in which photographic artists were asked to submit entries for possible inclusion in the show and book. The resultant final selection of 10 will be announced at the opening of the show, which will in turn travel to London and New York. Our own Guy Tillim and Jo Ractliffe, amongst a host of noteworthy internationals, served as judges in this process .

Opens: November 23
Closes: November 25