Short Cuts
by Michael Smith and Cara Snyman
Reshma Chhiba at Art Extra
Overall a strong show from a young artist. A multi-disciplinary affair utilising sculpture, photography, video and painting, the show suggests a number of paths the artist could take into the future. One senses that Chhiba would do well to rein herself in a bit on her next show, and focus on one or two media; but for now she has established herself as a newbie to watch.
MS
Jonah Sack at Warren Siebrits
Young Jonah presents a compact little show in the smaller of Siebrits’s two spaces. One suspects Sack spent many years as a sketchbook geek: he’s just too good with a fine-nibbed drawing pen not to have. Style and imagery clearly reflects Sack’s experience in Japan, yet the timeless quality of the landscapes is productively interrupted by clearly contemporary figures: backpackers, robotic men in goggles, etc. This interspersing of images of gravitas with cues from the current recalls, in spirit at least, the work of collaborative duo Muntean and Rosenblum.
MS
Wilhelm Saayman at Warren Siebrits
Saayman’s second show in nine months, ‘Don’t do business with family or friends’, seems to keen to avoid a sophomore slump, jamming 100 mostly sharp drawings into Siebrits’s main space. His typically acerbic social observations are delivered with a dry humour: Easy Rider is an unceremonious little doodle of a crashed motorcycle, while Missed Cue has a blank-faced girl with a microphone, presumably a merciless take on the stupidity of ‘Idols’ culture.
Yet, as with his 2007 show ‘The girl who always ignored me got hit by a bus’, its not all gags and giggles. The half-time score explores more painterly territory, somewhere between Hodgins and adolescent sketching, while the curious text-only They don’t make sperm like they used to asks more questions than it immediately answers.
Despite the evident horror on the faces of those who would keep drawing reverent and craft-bound, Saayman’s works are finding a ready audience in SA: I for one am keen to see how they would do abroad.
MS
Joni Brenner at Standard Bank
Brenner's 'Collection', is made up of a number of clay sculptures and water colour sketches of skulls. 'Sketches' might be the operative word, as none of the works have a 'finished' quality about them: they are suggestive and open ended, recognizable rather than presciptive. There is a strong sense of the ephemeral in even the solid clay constructions. The seventy odd works are exhibited in the permanent glass cabinets in the downstairs space of Standard Bank, and it is interesting how the display and repetition flattens the individual differences between the works. 'Collection' is thoughtful and quiet work. Brenner has creates theses 'portraits' using her sitter of more than fifteen years and there is a level of engagement that is maybe reflective of this relationship.
CS
Bronwen Vaughan-Evans at Gallery Momo
Very competent yet mostly unsurprising exploration of personal relationships and the relationships of people to the spaces they inhabit. Apparently my view of this show, tweely-titled ‘Home Is Where The Heart Is’, is not shared by the army of willing buyers snapping up Vaughan-Evans’s canvases. The trade in sepia-tinged heimwee remains a brisk one. Recession? Where?
MS
