Archive: Issue No. 134, October 2008

26.10.08 'Disturbance - Contemporary Art from Scandinavia and South Africa' at JAG
23.09.08 Jo Ractliffe at Warren Siebrits Modern and Contemporary
19.09.08 Gerard Sekoto at Afronova
9.10.08 Willie Bester at the Goodman Gallery
25.10.08 Usha Seejarim at Gallery Momo
19.10.08 Kim Lieberman at Gallery AOP
9.10.08 Jacki Mc Innes at the Absa Gallery
29.09.08 C30 at the Goethe-Institut
4.10.08 'On the globe' at Fried Contemporary
16.09.08 'The Indian in Drum magazine in the 1950s' at The Photo Workshop Gallery
4.10.08 Bob Cnoops at the Premises Gallery
28.09.08 Philip Barlow at Obert Contemporary
15.10.08 Jenny Stadler at Gallery on the Square

7.09.08 Tom Mulcaire at the Goodman Gallery
7.09.08 Lawrence Lemaoana at Art Extra
7.09.08 'Modern Fabrics' at the Bag Factory
7.09.08 'Drawing Show' at David Krut Projects

9.08.08 Dinkies Sithole at the Johannesburg Art Gallery

6.07.08 Kay Hassan at the Johannesburg Art Gallery

'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

'Terreno Ocupado' translates roughly as 'occupied land', and is a new body of by Jo Ractliffe concerned with post-war Angola.

Ractliffe notes that her inspiration for the series is much related to her understanding of a 'mythical' Angola. She read Another Day of Life by Ryszard Kapuscinskii in the mid-80s during South Africa's involvement in the Angolan civil war, but first visited Angola only in 2007, five years after the war ended. Ractcliffe says that 'Until then, in my imagination, Angola had been an abstract place. In the 70s and early 80s, it was simply "the border", a secret, unspoken location where brothers and boyfriends were sent as part of their military service. And although tales about Russians and Cubans and the Cold War began to filter back - all of which conjured up a distinctly different image from the one portrayed by the South African state - it remained, for me, largely a place of myth... Last year, I went to Luanda for the first time... I entered the myth.'

Okwui Enwezor, in an essay about Ractliffe, notes that the resultant series of black and white images reveals ' ... despite the precarious state of urban infrastructure and serious deficits in social amenities - a sense of humanism in the city's locations, a far cry from the familiar spatial givens of South Africa's intractable urban instability. Yet the view of Luanda is not at all sentimental, for inasmuch as the images excavate - with unremitting empathy and directness - modes of urban sovereignty of the inhabitants, the images do not retreat from the vestigial harshness that marks the shanty towns as urgent zones of official neglect.'

Opens: September 23
Closes: October 24

This exhibition entitled 'Exiles: Drawings by Gerard Sekoto' features a body of work recently repatriated to South Africa. It consists of more than 250 drawings, photographs and correspondence. The works draw an enlightening picture of Sekoto's exile in France and Senegal.

A 100-page full colour catalogue is published by Afronova to coincide the show. 'Exiles: Drawings by Gerard Sekoto' is supported by Spier, the French Institute and Moyo.

Opens: September 19
Closes: October 4

Willie Bester shows a new body of work this month at the Goodman Gallery.

Bester is a Cape Town-based artist who has become well known for his muscular, hard-hitting assemblages which address socio-political issues. His work is to be found in all of the country's major public collections and he is frequently featured on large international shows. This will he his first solo show at the Goodman for a while.

Opens: October 25
Closes: November 15

Usha Seejarim opens this month at Gallery Momo with her fifth solo exhibition to date. In this body of work Seejarim continues her interest in repetition and the cyclical nature of life.

Seejarim was born in 1974 and currently lives and works in Johannesburg. She obtained a B-Tech degree in Fine Arts from Technikon Witwatersrand and is currently completing a Master's in Fine Arts at the University of Witwatersrand. She works in various media including video, photography, installation and printmaking and continues to participate in various group exhibitions and art projects locally and internationally.

Opens: October 9
Closes: November 3

Kim Lieberman's second solo exhibition at Gallery AOP is entitled 'Human Constellations', and continues her examination of human interaction, albeit in a different media. For this show Lieberman has taken up lace making. Delicate lace circles are positioned on the necks of found antique bronze figures, the lace forming an intricate structural web, radiating outward from the figure.

The silhouette remains a central motif through which Lieberman explores the complexity of human relationships, but the figures being explored here have shifted from those culled from the media, to images of people who have had a direct influence on the artist's life.

Gallery AOP was known, until recently, as Art on Paper.

Opens: October 19
Closes: November 8

Jacki Mc Innes' 'Strutting, Flying & Dying' considers the life cycle of the the city pigeon as a metaphorical exploration of the uneasy status of foreign Africans living in the Johannesburg inner city. According to Mc Innes, foreign Africans tenaciously adapt, but never lose their alien stigma, and as they eke out territory and livelihood they are generally tolerated, but mostly disregarded, sometimes despised.

Until recently based in Cape Town, McInnes now lives in Johannesburg where she is a prolific artist and writer. She works in a variety of media, including printmaking and sculpture.

Opens: October 9
Closes: October 30

Marcus Neustetter, David Andrew and learners from the PJ Simelane Secondary School in Soweto have workshopped interventions that bring the two different learning spaces of PJ Simelane and the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg into conversation.

In doing this, the C30 Project group introduces a series of physical and metaphorical disruptions to the Goethe-Institut which disturb the order often associated with spaces of learning. The exhibition acknowledges these two spaces and asks playfully: what can they learn from each other?

The C30 Project began in early 2007 as an initiative that brought together the resources of a group of learners, teachers and two artists, in realising a series of creative interventions at the school in Dobsonville, Soweto. This exhibition follows the first C30 Project exhibition, which took place at the Sandton Civic Gallery in October 2007, and finds ways of approximating the second phase in this new space.

Opens: September 29
Closes: October 16

'On the globe' is curated by Elfriede Dreyer and consists of paintings, panoramas and digital works by Titus Matiyane, Pieter Swanepoel and Diek Grobler.

On her conception of the show, Dreyer states the following: 'Planet earth as an industrialised and globalised place reflects the changing morphology of our time in which new sociologies and psychologies of space are continuously created. "On the globe" reflects preoccupations with vision, surveillance, mobility and marking.'

Dreyer also referes to the theories of Judith Butler, stating that 'contemporary earthlings roam borderless and boundless space: the fluidity and nomadism encapsulated in the global transitive body imply a universe-roaming, shape-shifting being.'

Opens: October 4
Closes: October 25

This photography exhibition coincides with the launch of the book by the same title by Riason Naidoo. The show considers the importance of Drum magazine in Indian self-definition and contextualises the timeless photos of South Africa's Indian community in the 1950s.

Another, more extensive exhibition on the same subject matter opens later in the month at the Durban Art Gallery.

Opens: September 16
Closes: October 19

For 'Call & answer' Johannesburg-based photographer Bob Cnoops photographs objects to, in his words, 'reveal hidden meanings by shifting the boundaries of direct observation'. The photographs are blown up, forcing a reinterpretation and highlight disturbances, or 'scars'. The title refers to the interaction between image and viewer as they search for an answer.

Cnoops describes his working method as follows: 'By the use of technical manipulations such as repeat forms within the photographs, directional movement, selective blurring, negative imaging, pointed lighting, etc., the reading of the photographs is directed, even choreographed, and the other, darker, realities of the objects are brought forward into the conscious mind.'

Opens: October 4
Closes: October 25

Philip Barlow opens at Obert Contemporary with his solo show entitled 'Vapor'. This body of work features oil on canvas paintings that continue Barlow's fascination with light and its distortions. Light's effect on different surfaces, especially the abstraction of forms often generated by both natural and artificial lighting, is of special interest to the artist.

The paintings in 'Vapor' feature scenes from daily life. Light, blurred to near abstraction, suggests photographs taken into direct sunlight or in moist conditions.

Opens: September 28
Closes: October 12

Gallery on the Square presents an exhibition of paintings by Jenny Stadler during October and November.

Opens: October 15
Closes: November 3

Thomas Mulcaire was involved with the 1995 Johannesburg Biennale and since settling in Brazil, has co-curated the Bienal de São Paulo. This exhibition is his first at the Goodman, and also his first one-person exhibition in South Africa.

Opens: September 13
Closes: October 4

In 'Fortune Telling in Black, Red and White' Lawrence Lemaoana looks at the role of the mass media and its relationship to the broad populous in a series of textile constructions. Lemaoana reinterprets and adjusts news headlines, and liberation cries such as 'Power to the people', which now carries the threat of violence as the masses grow tired of inadequate and corrupt leadership.

Lemaoana explains his particular use of fabric as follows: 'Kanga fabrics (made infamous during the Zuma rape trial) are used extensively in my work. Designed in the Netherlands, manufactured in the East, and brought to South Africa to be sold in markets and bazaars, the journey of the fabrics speaks of the idiosyncrasies and trade imbalances of globalisation. The textiles themselves though have a wholly different life in South Africa - they are regarded as significant markers of spiritual healing, imbued with great religious and spiritual power, used by divinators and fortune-tellers.'

Opens: September 25
Closes: October 29

'Modern fabrics: Urban culture and artists connected to the city landscape' considers the idea of urban fabric, using the metaphor of cloth to stand for the ever evolving visual language that is the city. For the curator Nontobeko Ntombela, the term 'modern fabrics' also refers particularly to young artists.

'Modern fabrics' consists of work by Zama Dunywa, Bongi Bengu, Yvette Dunn, Lawrence Lamoana, Nothando Mkhize, Rike Sitas, Bronwen Vaughan-Evans, Mlu Zondi, Mary Sibande, Sharlene Khan, Dineo Bopape, Thando Mama and Mfundo Xaba.

Opens: September 22
Closes: October 8

'Drawing Show' is curated by Michael MacGarry and features new artwork by 12 graphic designers and illustrators.

MacGarry takes the act of drawing as a 'common nexus point for all creative visual output' and focuses this show on graphic designers and illustrators who blur the line between contemporary visual art, graphic design and illustration. The curator asked each designer, design company or illustrator to produce a series of two limited-edition A1 artworks either according to several prescribed themes, or relating to ongoing concerns in their personal projects.

Scott Robertson (AKA Dirty Sanchez), disturbance, Garth Walker, Joh Del, Jason Bronkhorst, Carina Comrie, Peet Pienaar, Olivier Schildt, Johnny Kotze, Givan Lütz and the am i collective contribute to the show.

Opens: September 10
Closes: October 11

In Dinkies Sithole's installation 'Shrine Rituals', he brings together different beliefs both old and new, in science and in spirits, religion and animism.

Yoruba cosmology states that every object has a 'life force' or 'ase', which for Sitole connects to our own cultural beliefs: many South Africans avoid throwing away personal affects for fear that these objects might be used to bewitch them. Here Sithole uses batteries, miniature Buddha's, rosaries, bottles of 'umuthi' and the coloured string often used by ZCC adherents for protection, to build shrines, enlivening the discarded objects.

Opens: August 5
Closes: October 12

Kay Hassan needs no introduction: his work has been widely exhibited both in South Africa and abroad. Amongst other awards, he received the 2000 DaimlerChrysler Award for Contemporary Art. 'Urbanisation' is a major mid-career solo exhibition hosted by the JAG and composed of aproximately 12 installations of new and recent works. While including Hassan's characteristic collage and installation works, 'Urbanisation' also features paintings, photographs and video.

In the installation The Boxers, old army carry bags are transformed into punching-bags and complemented by a video projection of boxers sparring at a gym in Hillbrow. While 'Urbanisation' deals with the rapid pace of urban life with a particular focus on the disenfrancised, it also includes work that deals with a more interior lanscape, such as Morning Ritual and My Father's Music Room.

Opens: June 29
Closes: September 30