Archive: Issue No. 131, July 2008

6.07.08 Carlos Motta at the KZNSA Gallery
6.07.08 Greg Streak at Bank Gallery
6.07.08 'Start: The Nivea Art Award 2008' at the KZNSA Gallery
6.07.08 Victor Shange at the African Art Centre
6.07.08 'Bigwood2' at artSPACE durban

8.06.08 'Wings, Legs & Videotapes' at the Durban Art Gallery
8.06.08 Videos from Rijksakademie at Bank Gallery
8.06.08 Wilma Cruise at Kizo Gallery
8.06.08 Terri Broll and Terence King at artSPACE durban
8.06.08 Kieran Smith at artSPACE durban

13.05.08 'Ready Made' at Kizo Art Gallery
11.05.08 Leora Farber at the Durban Art Gallery

2.03.08 'Recent Acquisitions' at the Durban Art Gallery

Over the last three years, Columbian artist Carlos Motta has developed a series of videos documenting street protests in various countries in the Americas, organised by civil movements that are in opposition to structures of repression affiliated to the state, the government and the army. Three videos, shot in New York, São Paolo and Santiago respectively, comprise this programme, and refer to three specific socio-political disturbances, which may be used as case studies for situations that reccur throughout the world.

September 22, 2005 takes place in a 'street vendor evacuation action' by the Metropolitan Police of São Paolo, Brazil. Vendors reject the violent treatment incurred by the authorities, leading them to react and resist. In the video, two displaced vendors tell their opinion about this ongoing situation and lament having no rights or possibilities of working legally. They also question the local system's 'lack of democracy' in a country 'where one wants to work and one can't. One wants to be legal and one can't'.

Memory of a Protest, 2007 takes place during a street protest - organised by Chilean human rights organisation Kamarikun - in Santiago, Chile in November 2006 against the infamous US-sponsored military training institution 'The School of The Americas'. This works highlights the importance of the facility in US foreign policy, emphasising its involvement in the training of torture techniques.

Where Do I Stand? Right, Left or the Human Kind? 2008 documents the polarised political situation in Colombia through the lens of two recent protests against violence. One was against the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the other was against state violence and the Paramilitaries. Both marches took place in several cities around the world, with this footage from New York.

The exhibition is presented in association with the Urban Concerns Programme, Johannesburg Art Gallery.

Opens: July 8
Closes: August 2

Bank Gallery presents 'Accumulative Disintegration' a solo show by Greg Streak. Streak looks at our need and at times failure to control the chaos of our everyday lives in this his much anticipated mixed media show.

Says the artist: 'Sometimes things fall apart. Sometimes things go wrong. I think we are living in particularly fragmented times and in many ways this body of work explores this. A consequence of this lack of cohesion is the inability to place oneself - both physically and emotionally. Sometimes we blame ourselves for this dissolution, sometimes with just cause but at other times it is more than just a consequence of the displacement. When things begin to unravel it is human instinct to attempt to hold them all together. The title of this body of work, "Accumulative Disintegration", attempts to sum up the ambiguity of this contradiction: trying to pull things towards a whole whilst they disperse around us.'

Streak is an interdisciplinary practitioner working in sculpture, video, installation and documentary filmmaking. His cool, even minimalist aesthetic is characterised by formalistic concerns and a preoccupation with the materiality of substance and things, but also space, both physical and psychological.

He has exhibited nationally and internationally, amongst others on 'World Tune' KAVC , Tokyo; 'Video Brazil - Single Channel', São Paulo; 'Drift' 1708 Gallery, Washington; 'De Grote Oversteek', Stedilijk Museum, Zwolle; 'Shared Histories/Decolonising the Image', Arti De Amiticae, Amsterdam; and 'Nie Meer', De Warende Turnhout, Belgium. Streak's first full feature documentary film Beauty and the Beasts won a special mention jury award at the 21st Durban International Film Festival. He was the recent winner of the prestigious Ampersand Fellowship awarded on merit to a South African artist.

Opens: July 24
Closes: August 21

The exhibition showcases the final submissions from the 25 emerging artists from KwaZulu-Natal selected for 'Start: The Nivea Art Award'. From these 25 finalists, three winners will be selected and will be awarded prizes ranging from R20 000 to R5000. The overall winner also receives a solo exhibition in the KZNSA's Nivea Gallery the following year.

Selected from hundreds of entries, finalists this year were partnered with professional local artists who became their mentors for the duration of the competition, offering advice, guidance and support throughout the process.

The theme for 2008 is 'Beauty Is... '. Finalists were each given R1200 from Beiersdorf to create a wall-mounted work in any medium.

2008 finalists are Monique Ballam-Smith, Vanessa Black, Lydon Cadle, Claude Chandler, Denise de Sa, Nkosingiphile Dlamini, Barbara Duigan, Kelly Dyer, Natalie Fossey, Gillian Gerhardt, Anelia Gouteva, Lungelo Gumede, Bongumusa Hlongwa, Bheki Khambule, Cally Lotz, Michelle Luffingham, Christopher Mlambo, Musa Ndawonde, Muzikayise Ndlela, Sifiso Ngcobo, Nomsa Ngidi, Siphamandla Nhlangothi, Malibongwe Shangase, Diane van Wyk and Sarah Whitaker.

At an awards ceremony, to be held on opening night, winners will be announced and cash prizes presented.

Opens: July 8
Closes: August 2

Victor Shange exhibits at the African Art Centre this month. His paintings explore political and historical events in South Africa. In considering the rural landscape of KwaZulu-Natal, Shange looks at the effects of urban sprawl on the landscape.

Opens: July 9
Closes: July 26

The first 'Bigwood' exhibition was held at Manna in 2007. There, a crop of some of Durban's most inspired and talented creatives were brought together for a joint exhibition. Among them were graphic designers, fine artists, a photographer and several seriously talented illustrators. The success of 'Bigwood' was largely due to an underlying element of fun that ran through all the work on show.

A pre-requisite was that all artists have a strong individual style, a unique and rare talent, and pack some heavyweight skills in their arsenal. This is also an opportunity to get some of the lesser-known, unsung talents out there some exposure.

The theme this year is 'wood' (as in a forest and all the funny little things you might find hiding out there). Artists have been invited to submit their creations in any medium they choose, affording them an opportunity to break out of their conventional style and try something different.

Opens: July 18
Closes: August 2

Creepy crawlies, bugs, nunus - call them what you will, they have been around longer than humankind and will probably be here long after we cease to exist.

'Wings, Legs & Videotapes' is an exhibition curated to investigate artists' preoccupation with these 6-legged creatures. Insects appear frequently in South African artistic expression both as symbolic motifs and as the central focus of the artwork.

Kathryn Smith's Memento Mori engages with imagery of death and the 'new' science of forensic entomology. Fans of CSI can really relate to this work depicting the decaying body of a Ripper victim showing the flies and maggots that swarm over a corpse and can be used to determine the time of death. Penny Siopis' Pinky Pinky (fly eyes) described by the artist as 'a hybrid creature, half-everything, half-nothing' also contains elements of instability and mortality.

The chrysalis form is a motif of creation, of emerging life and an implied parallel can be drawn between human and insect societies here. Moths and butterflies are in abundance on the exhibition through a wide range media including photography, painting, sculpture and video. Langa Magwa, Diane Victor, Rosemarie Marriott, Fiona Couldridge and Peter Rippon are a few of the artists using the more 'friendly' insects to explore contemporary culture and concerns.

Also on exhibition are more decorative pieces, like a Danish bakelite brooch in the form of a butterfly from the Gallery's collection and lace from the Local History Museum's collection.

The exhibition takes place at the same time as the International Congress of Entomology to be held at the ICC.

Opens: June 12
Closes: July 27

The exhibition 'Dis-Ease' is a video compilation screening from the Rijksakademie by 27 artists from 17 different countries. Greg Streak, representing the artist-run initiative PULSE, partnered with the Rijksakademie and Bank Gallery to produce the show which will travel to two other venues in South Africa during 2008 - 9, and then move on to Mali and Cameroon.

The works all have a sense of dis-ease about them and carry explicit cultural overtones and idiosyncratic nuances that suggest the artists' origins which range from Brazil to Taiwan.

Kuang-Yu Tsui from Taiwan is the featured artist on the show and a separate screening of seven of his video works takes us on a personal journey of the artist as he engages with his environment.

Opens: June 19
Closes: July 17

Wilma Cruise's exhibition 'Cocks and Asses' opens at the Kizo Art Gallery after a successful run at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2007.

Cruise is one of South Africa's most important artists and is also a curator, writer and teacher. Her work is represented in most of the country's major museum and corporate collections which include the Durban Art Gallery, the S.A. National Gallery, the Standard Bank Gallery, the Constitutional Court and BHP Billiton. She has completed many public commissions including the monument to celebrate the 1956 Women's March on the Union Buildings in Pretoria.

This provocatively titled exhibition actually refers to the designations of two kinds of animals and is intended to stimulate conversation in its allusion to the bawdy naming of sexual body parts. The exhibition is the most comprehensive body of this artist's work to be shown in Durban and includes sculptures over 3m in height.

Opens: June 19
Closes: July 28

Terri Broll and Terence King are artists with a commitment to the richness of abstraction in painting. King's work is rooted in observation, chiefly of the figure, whereas Broll draws on intuitive processes in the discovery of her subject matter. Both hold an interest in the interactive and interdependent process between artmaking and the objectivity of the painted surface. In this exhibition Broll and King present recent work reflecting their long-held interests in problems of figuration and abstraction.

Both artists come from academic backgrounds in the visual arts, have exhibited extensively and are represented in private and public collections here in South Africa and internationally.

Opens: June 23
Closes: July 12

'Us' explores familiar people and places in Kieran Smith's life. Here he takes a step away from the iconic subject matter of his prior projects to the intimate and personal world immediately around him. The works explore the relationship between familiar people and proverbial places in and around Durban, particularly buildings and urban environments, ascribing a personal slant to this collection of works. Smith is interested in the dramatic, expressive quality of materials used and eschews all delicacy in favour of harsh, brash marks made in pencil or in smears of sand, glue and paint: grit in favour of gloss.

Opens: June 23
Closes: July 12

In line with Kizo Gallery's strategy of hosting socially and educationally inclined exhibitions, Kizo Curator Nathi Gumede has invited Cape Town writer and curator Bettina Malcomess to curate a show. She has responded with 'Ready Made' which includes some works and artists from her recent show 'Upstairs/Downstairs' at the AVA in Cape Town.

The show uses the idea of the art object itself as 'readymade' and explores how the art work's de-contextualisation and dis-placement in the gallery shifts its meaning, in much the same way that Duchamp's found objects change meaning when taken out of 'the everyday' and placed in the gallery. The show takes work already made out of the context of the artist's production, ouevre and style so that it cannot be interpreted in relationship to identity, cultural or social context and precedent. Much of the work has been chosen for the way that identity politics over-determines its interpretation, and the curation intends to question this fetishisation of 'identity' in contemporary South African art, whether it refers to sexuality, race and class, or the idea of the artist. The show sets itself the challenge of creating its own identity while playing with identity itself as a 'ready made'.

Exhibiting artists include Ed Young, Andrew Lamprecht, Nontobeko Ntombela, Bianca Baldi, Unathi Sigenu, Lizza Littlewort, Peter Jenks, Niklas Wittenburg, Dale Washkansky, Christian Nerf and Douglas Gimberg, Stuart Bird, Justin Brett, Margaret Stone, Linda Stupart, Lonwabo Kilani, and Charles Maggs. As Duchamp famously said, 'The artist of the future will merely have to point his finger and say this is art.'

Opens: May 29
Closes: June 15

Produced by Leora Farber, in collaboration with the South African design team Strangelove, Carlo Gibson and Ziemek Pater, 'Dis-Location / Re-Location', is a travelling exhibition touring seven South African Museums from June 2007 to May 2008.

The premise of this multi-media, multi-disciplinary exhibition is how cultural identities are formed, re-defined and become 'hybridised', according to Farber. The body of artwork challenges common assumptions that exist regarding cultural purity - one such assumption being that identity is static. Debate around identity construction, an issue particularly relevant in contemporary South Africa - at a time when this society finds itself in a process of redefining and building a new integrated South Africa from the diverse amalgam of cultures that coexist here. 'This exploration extends into the questioning of what constitutes South African identity, in relation to South Africa's place within the post-colonial African continent,' says Farber.

These conceptual underpinnings are explored through Farber's interrogation of her Jewish immigrant cultural background, in relation to Bertha Guttman, the colonial English wife of immigrant entrepreneur and maverick personality Sammy Marks. The link between Farber's post-colonial experiences of living in South Africa with that of Guttman's colonial one provides a rich source for the exploration of her own identity. Farber says, 'Marks' immigrant status draws parallels with postcolonial concerns of diasporic, immigrant and migrant communities that form part of the broader Pan African, Polyglot South African society'.

Opens: May 15
Closes: July 27

The Durban Art Gallery will be opening an exhibition of 'Recent Acquisitions' on March 20 in the circular gallery. As acquiring new artworks is one of the core functions of any art museum, this installation will feature all donations and acquisitions made over the last three years.

The DAG has an acquisitions committee made up of visual artists, educators and key representatives from the Durban art world who select according to a laid down DAG policy which considers conceptual, aesthetic, social, historical issues among others and how the particular work will fit into the existing collection. The DAG accepts donations and these are also vetted by the same committee with the same criteria.

The installation will show a variety of media, which include works by Langa Magwa, Johannes Phokela, Duke Ketye to name a few. Within the holdings is a growing collection of works around HIV/AIDS and included on the exhibition is a recent donation by Bernice Stott titled Femidoms and Traditional Herbs, which centres around women's choices through developments such as the femidom and the juxtaposition thereof against traditional medicine in women's health.

For more information contact gallery curator Jenny Stretton on (031) 3112262.

Opens: March 20
Closes: April 20