New major visual arts event launched
by Tavish Mcintosh
The Africa Centre project at Spier outside Stellenbosch announced the launch of a new major visual arts exhibition and award planned for December 2007. The Spier Contemporary will be a bi-annual event that begins with an exhibition and a series of awards at the Spier Estate in Stellenbosch, before travelling to other major venues throughout the country. Spier has committed itself to funding the event for six years and part of the project includes the building of an exhibition space on the Spier Estate.
Curator Clive van den Berg emphasised the proposed sustainability of the exhibition and accompanying awards. The exhibition will encourage artistic diversity, ranging from the 'cutting edge' to the traditional, including sound and performance crossovers. The organisers are committed to respecting the requirements of the selected artists' work and the exhibition aims to allow artists complete creative freedom. An intensive selection process will be conducted by two or three art professionals with curator van den Berg and co-curator Jay Pather acting as advisors. A maximum of approximately 100 works will be selected.
The final judging panel, comprising two South African and one international judge will operate completely independently of this selection body. The organisers went to some length to stress that awards are not by any means the more important part of this event and central to the project is an extensive outreach programme which will be managed by Churchill Madikida and Jay Pather.
Each artist selected to exhibit will receive an artist's fee of R 3 000. Following judging, selected artists will be invited to propose a 'career development plan' of sorts which will be funded by the award. In total the awards will be worth R 700 000.
Proposals and artworks need to be submitted by August 31, 2007. More information will be available at www.spiercontemporary.co.za from mid-March 2007 and the event will be launched to the public soon.
