Archive: Issue No. 136, December 2008

20.11.08 Gordon Froud at the UJ Art Gallery
30.11.08 Thami Mnyele and the Medu Art Ensemble at the Johannesburg Art Gallery
23.11.08 Maureen de Jager, Grace da Costa, David Ceruti and Ludumo 'Toto' Maqabuka at Gordart

06.11.08 Wim Botha at Brodie/Stevenson
20.11.08 Jodi Bieber at the Goodman Gallery
02.11.08 Judith Mason at the Standard Bank Gallery
06.11.08 Stefanus Rademeyer at Warren Siebrits
06.11.08 'The Rationalism of Nationalism?' at Warren Siebrits
26.11.08 Phillemon Hlungwani, Vusi Mfupi and Thabo Molapo at Gallery on the Square
14.11.08 Billie Zangewa at Afronova
06.11.08 Dumisane Mabaso and Manfred Zylla at Gallery Momo

26.10.08 'Disturbance - Contemporary Art from Scandinavia and South Africa' at JAG

'Modular Repetition' at the UJ Art Gallery exhibition is part of Gordon Froud's final exhibition for his M Tech degree in Fine Arts at the University of Johannesburg. 'Modular Repetition' is split into two parts, with the other showing concurrently at World Art.

At the UJ Art Gallery five large spheres have been constructed from found objects used as modules. The work is made specifically to 'interrupt' the rectilinear architecture of the UJ Art Gallery, with the work touching both floor and ceiling, leaving only a metre on either side for the viewer to pass.

Objects such as plastic buckets, coat hangers, water bottles and ceramic dolls are attached to each other to make up complex modules and eventually complex sculptural forms. The spheres are on average 4m in diameter and often employ as many as 20 000 objects and cable ties in their construction. The thesis of this work is based on modular repetition and the choice of materials is central to its meaning.

Opens: November 20
Closes: December 10

'Thami Mnyele and the Medu Art Ensemble' aims to give an overview of the artistic output of this ANC-initiated cultural organisation which was founded by Dr Wally Serote in 1978. Medu was disbanded after a SADF raid left Mnyele and 11 others dead in 1985.

Of particular importance to Medu's visual art contribution is the 1982 'Symposium on Culture and Resistance', which was a major gathering of South African and international cultural activists in Gaborone, Botswana. The symposium was accompanied by an exhibition of South African exiles' work entitled 'Art towards social development', which was curated by Thami Mnyele and Gordon Mentz.

Opens: November 30
Closes: March 31

Maureen de Jager's 'In Sepia', in the main gallery, deals with the passage of time, focusing on the keepsakes of her youth. Grace da Costa's oil paintings, hung in the second gallery, were begun during her life drawing classes, and are, for her, a way to express her 'immediate emotions'.

David Ceruti explores the dialectic between object and subject by making the relationships between image, medium, exhibition space and the observer obvious in his photographic works. Ludumo 'Toto' Maqabuka's 'Socially Disorientated' presentation in the Rainforest Project Room considers constructed identities, underlying societal norms and the influence of mass media on township life.

This is the last exhibition before Gordart's relocation to the Jan Smuts Avenue 'art strip' next year.

Opens: November 23
Closes: December 13

Formerly known as Art Extra, Brodie/Stevenson presents Wim Botha's first solo gallery exhibition in Johannesburg. The show will include a new sculptural installation, large and small individual drawings and recent large-scale prints.

Botha's works for this exhibition are primarily concerned with the passage of time and make reference to both inverted and non-chronological time and the resultant relativity of a personal point of view. The central installation uses images from art history and historical visual culture, which are presented in a semi-structured constellation that seems to suggest a non-linear time line.

Using as original source motif the standard illustrated depiction of time as a linear sequence of events, the work adapts and perverts this format in three-dimensional space - turning back on itself. This sequence with its various elements suggests a type of system, a volatile organism with high entropic possibility.

Opens: November 6
Closes: December 13

For Jodi Bieber's solo at the Goodman Gallery she photographed and interviewed ordinary women regarding their perceptions of beauty and self. 'Real Beauty' is the resultant body of work.

Says Bieber of the work: 'I felt a strong need to create a body of work that goes against what the media has depicted as beautiful. Even within a complexed society such as South Africa, across all communities, women hold unneccesary perceptions of self doubt around themselves and their beauty from an early age... The work deals with reality and no photoshop has been used to remove blemishes, scars, cellulite and any other form of "mperfection", but also touchesÔøΩon fantasy.

'The photographic shoot was a collaboration between myself and each woman, whom I photographed at their homes. The setting within their surroundings was my choice but each woman's pose was pretty much self- directed. I wanted each woman to project her personality or her fantasy into her shoot. The shoot created a space for each woman to explore her own identity in relation to beauty and to live for a couple of hours in an environment of elements of fantasy.'

Opens: November 20
Closes: December 12

Judith Mason's retrospective exhibition, 'A prospect of icons', covers the expanse of her oeuvre and includes paintings, drawings and installations, as well as artist books.

According to the show's curator Wilhelm van Rensburg, the exhibition is 'an inventory of her icons'. Mason's personal iconography includes recurrent and ambiguous symbols, and while the work draws extensively on religion, it is also informed by her exploration of mythological figures and creatures.

In Mason's work there is a constant interplay between beauty and the abject and as Van Rensburg states '... it can be argued that Mason's "psychological insight" might be detected in her concern with the bodily drives in relation to life and death in her work, might be suggested in notions of the damaged body, in a fascination with trauma, both personal and collective, reinforced by her interest in the "abject" body. Equally strongly it can be argued that Mason paints an "exulted" body. And it is in this paradox that the genius of Mason's work resides.'

Opens: October 2
Closes: December 6

'Crystalline Variations' is Stefanus Rademeyer's third solo exhibition at Warren Siebrits, and further develops themes explored in his previous two shows.

Rademeyer constructs crystalline symmetries with a range of different angles and curves. The light-box Hexagrid consists of nested hexagons that create a tessellation similar to that of a honeycomb. This structure is dominated by 60 degree angles and presents an array of hexagonal and triangular shapes. Wavegrid, shows the first use of curves in the light-box series and consists of visually modulating sine-waves creating complex interference patterns. Hybridpentagrid consists of two symmetrical pentagons that are stacked with two different triangles creating a whole variety of clusters in the three-dimensional reflections. It is possibly Rademeyer's most complex light-box in terms of its multiple symmetries. Hexagridpoints shows a reduction of its twin work, Hexagrid, to floating points, revealing the nodes connecting the vectors.

The four prints on exhibition are further explorations of works created in 'Ideograph', presenting hybrid crystalline structures that resemble organic formations. They are introductions and blueprints for sculptures to follow in 2009 and 2010.

Opens: November 6
Closes: December 10

'The Rationalism of Nationalism?' is a curated exhibition which considers the dangers of nationalism particularly when fuelled by powerful propaganda devices such as a national flag and/or a coat of arms.

The majority of the works on exhibition focus on atrocities committed during the apartheid years, but works that look at the Holocaust, the Rwanda genocide, and the torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison also feature.

The show includes works by Wim Botha, Kendell Geers, Pieter Hugo, Carmen Jerrard, Ezrom Legae, Santu Mofokeng, Jo Ractliffe, Harold Rubin and Paul Stopforth. It is, however, the collection of 59 artist-designed and hand-printed resistance posters by the Medu Art Ensemble that is the focus of the exhibition. Included are posters designed by Albio Gonzalez, Heinz Klugg, Thami Mnyele, Judy Seidman and other members of the Medu Art Ensemble in exile in Botswana during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Opens: November 6
Closes: December 10

Gallery on the Square presents an exhibition of new work by three young artists. Hlungwani studied at various institutions, including the Artist Proof Studio in Newtown, Johannesburg. He now teaches professional printmaking classes there. His work is predominately self-expressive in light of his background and Christian beliefs. His landscape images refer to self, family and history, thus functioning as a type of documentation of his background.

Vusi Mfupi's work celebrates youth and mobility, as well as aspects of human life that affect people globally. He works in collage, using newspapers, magazines, found objects and pigments, feeling that it raises the awareness of the intrinsic aesthetic qualities of mundane materials.

Thabo Molapo employs traditional weaving as an expression of his creative talents. His portraits, reminiscent of early works by Gerard Sekoto, capture people from the townships, while linking the past (ancestral), the immediate and the future.

Opens: November 26
Closes: December 10

An exhibition of new work by Billie Zangewa is showing in November at Afronova.

Zangewa, who was born in Malawi and now works and lives in London, rose to prominence when she won the Gerard Sekoto Absa L'Atelier Award in 2004. Her signature autobiographical silk tapestries have been exhibited widely since.

Opens: November 14
Closes: December 13

Gallery Momo presents an exhibition of new works by Dumisane Mabaso and Manfred Zylla.

Mabaso's body of work, entitled 'Life and Life's Agony', particularly focusses on female portraits, while Zylla, in his large-scale works entitled 'The Painful Earth, looks at globalisation and the social and political circumstances in South Africa.

Opens: November 6
Closes: December 1

'Disturbance - Contemporary Art from Scandinavia and South Africa' aims to examine the relationship that Scandinavian and South African artists have with respect to identity and notions of place. The project's thematic will focus explicitly on 'disturbance' as a concept to explore ruptures in society.

Curated by Clive Kellner and Maria Fidel Regueros, the show will include work by Torbjørn Rødland, Goksøyr & Martens, Bodil Furu, and Urstad, with South African artists including Anthea Moys, Lerato Shadi and Siemon Allen.

Opens: October 26
Closes: February 28