2.06.06 Saso Sinadinovski at Obert Contemporary
2.06.06 'Fall 2006: A Group Exhibition' at Everard Read
2.06.06 Carmen Truter at Fried Contemporary
2.06.06 Doung Anwar Jahangeer at The Parking Gallery
2.06.06 Selections from the KKNK at gordart Gallery
2.06.06 Ruhan Janse van Vuuren and Francois Visser at gordart Gallery's Project Room
2.06.06 Robert Kirchner at The Premises Gallery Corridor
2.06.06 'Mapping the Route from the 60s' at The Goodman Gallery
2.06.06 'Artists in Conversation' at Wits University Art Galleries
2.06.06 'Paintings - Methven to Mashile' at Warren Siebrits Modern and Contemporary Art

5.05.06 William Kentridge's 'Black Box' opens at the JAG
5.05.06 Barend de Wet at the Muti Gallery
5.05.06 Nathaniel Stern at Outlet
 

Young artist Saso Sinadinovski presents a show of mixed media work entitled 'A Distant Place' at Obert Contemporary Melrose Arch this month. A refugee from Macedonian communist rule, Sinadinovski moved to SA in 1985. He obtained a fine art degree from the Elam School of Fine Art at the University of Auckland, New Zealand and also studied with Bill Ainslie at the Johannesburg Art Foundation. The work on show, his first solo outing in SA, explores perception and the greater human condition.

Opens: 6pm, June 8
Closes: June 30

The Everard Read Gallery in Johannesburg will be holding a group show of work by local and international artists, entitled 'Fall 2006'. One of the highlights is Helmut Starcke's Psychological Triptych.

Opens: 6pm, May 18
Closes: June 10

Carmen Truter's exhibition 'Flesh Text', deals with issues of spirituality in the flesh and the relation of the body to text, specifically with regard to discourse and the Holy Scriptures. Her work explores alternative inscriptions of selected metaphors of the Word into the flesh in order to revise ancient religious symbolism with contemporary relevance.

Opens: June 3
Closes: June 24

A new experimental project space opens in Johannesburg this month, with an inaugural show by Doung Anwar Jahangeer, of recent Mira Mari fame. 'The End of Architecture; Scale 1: Now' is the title of the Durban-based architect and self-styled psychogeographer's show. The venue is located in Johannesburg's inner city.

Opens: 5.30pm, May 25
Closes: June 15

Following on its success at the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees in Oudtshoorn, much of the work from '40x40x40' will be shown at gordart Gallery alongside a selection of other works from the festival, curated by Gordon Froud. These include: Chris Diedericks (winner of the best show on at the festival), Sandra Hannekom, Robert/Adele Hamblin, Colijn Stryjdom, Franci Cronje and a rare chance to see a wall of Froud's own cows - not usually shown through his own gallery.
Opens: 5pm, Sunday June 4
Closes: June 24

'Deluge', an exhibition of sculptures, features work which is figurative, narrative, representational and symbolic, and highly crafted in bronze, aluminium, ceramic, steel and cement.

Described as 'part of a continuum of figurative work that reaches from the Venus of Willendorff to artists like Lucian Freud', the show reveals personal manifestations of the two great streams of human expression: the Classical and the Romantic. Visser deals with 'a stream of signs and symbols of a well-established data base', while Janse van Vuuren's sculptures reveal an intense empathy for the unsanitised, mundane and flawed.

Opens: 6pm, June 7
Closes: June 23

Robert Kirchner presents a selection of his latest woodcut and dry-point works, handprinted on Japanese paper, including works selected for the final of the 2006 Brett Kebble Awards. Envisaging his prints through drawing and photography, Kirchner then transfers or redraws the images onto woodblock or plate. Of 'Origin of Form' he states, 'When one looks closely there is a mystery within the forms and patterns of nature. I work from images of natural objects, silhouettes created against the sky, shadows, trees, nests and landscapes. Through the process of drawing, cropping, cutting the block and finally pulling the print, I have arrived at these images. My work seeks to depict my source material as close to how it actually occurs and as I originally saw it; this may only be a second of inspiration, a glimpse which gives rise to a new work.'

Opens: 5.30pm, May 25, which includes a walkabout

The Goodman Gallery presents a survey show of work from the 1960s through to the present day, collected under the title 'Mapping the Route from the 60s'. A powerhouse exhibition of works by some of the most important SA artists from the last four decades, the show revisits powerful moments in resistance and post-resistance culture. Featuring sculpture, drawing, painting and printmaking, the show seeks to assert these works' 'continued resonance in the art of today' and 'reveal the positive role of art during the divisions and struggles of the past'.

Opens: 9.30am, May 27
Closes: June 17

Telkom, in partnership with Business and Arts South Africa (BASA) and Wits History Workshop and Division of Visual Arts, has sponsored a project entitled 'Artists in Conversation'. Essentially aimed at historicising the careers of a range of SA artists, the project seeks to assert a place for the work of artists in the struggle for liberation. The project was also intended to bridge the gaps between artists and students, providing a group of students linked to the History Workshop with an opportunity to establish a valuable new resource. True to the name of the project, much of what has been produced consists of frank and often revelatory discussions between artists and students.

The project has culminated in a show of art selected from Telkom's collection, representing the 14 artists involved. Some rare treats are on show, like a work by painter Mandla Mabila, and numerous by printmaker Osiah Masekoameng. The show represents a cross-section of SA art from the last 30 or so years, and is definitely worth braving Wits parking officers for.

Opens: May 17
Closes: June 7

Warren Siebrits presents a survey show of painting spanning virtually a full century. Important early painters, representatives of struggle art and some strong new voices are on show. Siebrits' acumen as a dealer and purchaser of art is, as always, evident in this show, with some rare finds and important examples of stellar SA painting. Of particular interest is a sextet of Andrew Motjuaodi paintings portraying Mamelodi's Dr Fabian Ribeiro and family. Painted in 1965, the paintings now serve as a poignant eulogy to Dr Ribeiro and his wife Florence who were assassinated in 1986 by an apartheid death squad.

Opens: June 6
Closes: July 21

Commissioned by the Deutsche Guggenheim and first presented there for four months from October 2005, William Kentridge's new opus 'Black Box/Chambre Noire' opened at the Johannesburg Art Gallery on May 7. The curator was Maria-Christina Villaseñor, Associate Curator of Film at the New York Guggenheim.

As the commission had been given by a German art institution, Kentridge decided to take as a point of departure aspects of German colonial history in southern Africa, namely, Namibia. The work focuses particularly on the German massacre of the Herero people in what was then South West Africa in 1904, an event considered by some historians to be the first genocide of the 20th century. In the following year, 75% of the Hereros were decimated.

Kentridge works never operate on a single level, and in this case, the term 'black box' has been reflected upon from a number of points of view: a black box theatre, a 'chambre noir' as it relates to photography, and the black box flight data recorder used by aircraft to record information in the event of a disaster.

As with so many of Kentridge's works, the music and sound composed by Philip Miller is an integral part of the multi-media installation, which includes animated film, drawings, kinetic objects and a mechanical theatre in miniature. See Review.

Opens: May 7
Closes: July 9

Barend de Wet's first one-person show in some time is entitled 'Different strokes for different folks' and includes sculpture, painting, videowork and photography. On opening night there will also be a performance entitled Camping. De Wet was a a very prominent figure on the SA arts scene in the 90s but has since only produced work sporadically, always managing to generate a fair amount of excitement around his output. Last year he ruffled a few feathers by erecting a large steel cut-out of the word 'God' on a bridge near Plettenberg Bay in the Western Cape. De Wet took part in the first Johannesburg Biennale and the the Sao Paulo Biennale amongst others, and his work is to be found in several prominent collections including that of the SA National Gallery.

Opens: 6pm, May 11
Closes: June 29

Nathaniel Stern presents an exhibition of 'Compressionist prints' this month at Outlet in Pretoria. 'Time and Seeing' exhibits selections from Nathaniel Stern's Compressionism - a 'digital performance and analogue archive'. Stern traverses bodies, spaces and objects with his scanner face, while the head is in motion. After being compressed into digital images the size of a small sheet of paper, the files are then stretched, cropped and coloured by hand. 'Compressionism is an exploration of media and perception, a transfiguration in Time and Seeing', says Stern.

Opens: May 1
Closes: June 12