Archive: Issue No. 27, November 1999

Sue Williamson
Can't forget, can't remember
Interactive video projection
Joao Ferreira Fine Art

Tanya Poole in her studio

On January 6, 1999 Clare Keenan was stabbed ten times in her home in St James while resisting rape. Keenan and artist Tanya Poole are childhood friends who are producing a collaborative work in order to put a face to the horrifying statistics of violence against women in South Africa. Keenan has spoken publically on numerous occasions about her ordeal and has been instrumental in setting up a system for the authorities to deal sensitively and compassionately with victims of this sort of crime. Poole was one of the participating artists at 'Softserve' recently held at the National Gallery. For this project, the two have received sponsorship from the Grahamstown Soroptimists, the Canadian Government, Magus Vision and the Breakwater Lodge Hotel amongst others. It is hoped that the project will receive sponsorship to take it overseas in order to raise awareness of the level of crime against women in this country and to raise funds for various women's organisations operating in South Africa. The exhibition takes place on International Women Against Violence Day.

7pm Thursday November 25 - Sunday November 28, 3pm - 7pm. .

18 Braemar Road, St. James.

In anticipation of the new Millennium, the Chelsea is holding a group show on which every work is priced at R2000. For this price you will be able to pick up a work by Marnus Havegna, Gregory Kerr, Judith Mason, Michéle Nigrini, Larry Scully or Jan Vermeiren and others.

November 15 - December 12

51 Waterloo Road, Wynberg, Cape Town.

An image from Stefan Blom's new show at the Hänel Gallery

Stefan Blom holds his second one-person show at the Hänel. He is exhibiting both two- and three-dimensional works which explore issues around masculinity amongst other things. The gallery celebrates, at the same time, its 3rd birthday.

November 14 - January 15

Detail of a Derek Bauer cartoon from the 80's

This exhibition presents an overview of this art-form both here and in Europe. It includes over 200 works by cartoonists, caricaturists and artists, with some works on loan from the National Gallery. Cartoonists and satirists have arguably reached greater audiences with their social commentary than many of our traditionally esteemed and established artists. South Africa has been called a "cartoonist's paradise" because of its unique social and political problems, and in this spirit, the commentary of Boonzaier, Tony Grogan, Fred Mouton and other well known cartoonists is included. The exhibition pays tribute to those who have entertained and enlightened us over the years with their perceptive and amusing visual commentary.

November 12 - March 2000

A photograph by Terry Kurgan from 'Bringing up Baby'

Terry Kurgan's work, "Maternal Exposures", which she showed on last year's "Bringing Up Baby" exhibition has found a permanent home. She has designed and produced, in consultation with Cohen, Judin and Sandler Architects, a permanent installation. This will be installed first at the Mowbray Maternity Clinic and later at Groote Schuur. Sue Williamson and Dr Tracy Eastman will launch the project.

Wednesday November 24, 3pm.

Photograph by Jo Ractliffe for poster

A special one-night preview of the multi media work-in-progress, "Orpheus and Eurydice and the Arts of Memory" is to be hosted by the Cape Town Planetarium. The show is a selection of works from the new opera, which explores the psychological complexities and implications of looking back, as an allegorical inquiry into our late-millennial obsession with memory. The work has been written by Philip Miller and Jane Taylor. Miller has composed much of the music for William Kentridge's films, and for the TV series "Yizo Yizo", and Taylor was the librettist and author of "Ubu and the Truth Commission". There may also be an experimental screening of fragments of film by Jo Ractliffe and William Kentridge who are involved in visual aspects of the work. The show is a laboratory performance which should last about an hour, and involves singers Angela Kerrison, Derick Ellis, Violina Anguelov, Clarence Anderson, Ntobizodumo Mboniswa, Patrick Tekolo and Sarah Jane Matthews. The musicians, a string quartet, with piano accordian by Stanislav Anguclov, will be conducted by Ronald Petersen. The performance will be broadcast live at www.worldonline.co.za

Queen Victoria Street, Cape Town

7.30pm, Sunday November 28

Hard Ground Printmakers, originally started by Jonathan Comerford, is celebrating its 10th year of independent printmaking with an exhibition at the Sanlam. Printmaking is no easy task and requires a considerable investment in equipment and materials, not to mention labour. For most artists access to such resources is only possible within the framework of institutions like technikons and universities. Yet, ever since 1989, Hard Ground Printmakers has produced art independently of such an institutional life-line and they have made these facilities available to many other, both established and emerging, artists. All this makes for a successful business that benefits both the workshop and the artists who make a steady income from the sale of their works through the workshop.

From November 20 - January 22, 2000.

Cyril Power
The Tube Station c.1925
colour linocut

In response to the approaching new millennium the SANG is producing an exhibition which explores cultural perceptions and expressions of time and space. The exhibition draws mostly on work in the gallery's permanent collection, and each curator has explored these ideas in their particular area of speciality. The title of the show, 'Theory and Myth', points to the diverse interpretations of time and space which the show includes and work as diverse as contemporary paintings and age-old rites of passage is presented. Complementing an exhibition on the theme of time and space at the SA Museum, this show ultimately concludes that the dawning of the new millennium is relative only to the birth of Christ and not necessarily important in non-Western, non-Christian cultures.

Opening Tuesday November 16 (tour on Wednesday December 15 at 1.05pm)

Walter Meyer
Sunset on water tank
Oil on canvas
60 x 50cm

Walter Meyer is well-known and highly regarded for his oil paintings of South African urban and rural landscapes. His naturalistic style and very particular sense of light manage effectively to conjure up feelings of melancholy and nostalgia. The rich texture of his paint and fuzzy but precise way of drawing make for paintings which are both intriguing and easily accessible.

Friday November 19 - November 26

The invitation for Canvas opening on November 10

In response to demand from patrons, the gallery invited artists to exhibit paintings in oil on canvas. Thirty-four artists have taken the offer up and the result is 'Canvas'. The show includes work by Wilna Coetzer, Johan Coetzee, Marie Grotepass, Sandra Hanekom, Mark Kannemeyer, Theo Kleynhans, Gregory Kerr, Johan Louw, Clare Menck, Thijs Nel, Michele Nigrini, Egon Tania, Clive van den Berg, Strijdom van der Merwe, Peter van Straten and Pienaar van Niekerk. Stephan Hundt, curator of the Sanlam art collection, will open 'Canvas' at 8pm on Wednesday, November 10.

Until December 2.

A group of UNISA Fine Art Graduates are exhibiting their final submissions in the Annexe at the SANG. The group includes Joan Mackenzie, Lyn de la Motte, Jacki McInnes-Graham, Natasja de Wet, Cecil and John Cowan, who is a teacher at the Frank Joubert Art Centre in Cape Town.

Thursday, November 11 - Wednesday, November 24.

Thembinkosi Goniwe
Untitled 1999
Video still

Thembinkosi Goniwe is a assistant lecturer at Michaelis School of Fine Art where he is currently completing his MFA. This is to be his first one-person show. Goniwe is a printmaker producing works in a mixture of media. The body of work he is exhibiting explores ritual practice in South African black culture and he chooses to focus particularly on the ritual acts of scarification, circumcision and the practice of cutting the finger. In addition to this he is also showing work depicting "township" musicians and dancers. In the AVA's long gallery, Lance Marshall is exhibiting paintings and Sally Stephens is showing prints and drawings on the ArtStrip.

Monday, November 8 - Saturday, November 27.

See Review

Fuad Adams
Untitled from (The Palette of Oppression) (detail) 1985
Poster paint

This exhibition charts the history of the Community Arts Project, or CAP as it is known. This organisation was established in Cape Town in 1977. It was established as a member-based organisation with cultural integration across community barriers as its aim. As such it asserted itself as a powerful political player in the Western Cape in the 1980s. Members produced banners and posters for many political parties and organisations during the struggle years. It provided a forum for political and cultural debate and served as a training ground for many black visual and cultural artists who were to become among the region's best known. CAP has subsequently transformed itself into a more formal education and training oriented NGO. It aims itself now at further learning and skills training for unemployed adults and youth.

September 24 - November 21

Genuine Eclectic Furniture
A show of furniture by Grant Baily, Contrad Botes, Barend de Wed, Edzard du Plessis, Conrad Hicks, Brett Murray, Claudette Shreders, Herman van Wyk, Robert Weinek, and others.

Currently housing Conrad Hicks' Blacksmith Forge, The Bijou is host to an exhibition of furniture by a diverse range of artists, designers and other visually inclined folk. The Bijou is an old movie theatre and was recently the venue for an exhibition of collaborative lamps by sculptor Brett Murray and comic artist Conrad Botes. 'Genuine Eclectic' will feature work by these two as well as Grant Baily, Barend de Wet, Edzard du Plessis, Conrad Hicks, Claudette Schreuders, Herman van Wyk, Robert Weinek and others. The burnt out walls and sombre ambience provided the perfect setting for Botes and Murray's lamps and are sure to provide a moody atmosphere to complement bright ideas by some of Cape Town's strongest and most prominent exponents of the visual arts.

Opens on Friday November 19 at 7.30pm. The exhibition runs from Monday November 22 - Saturday 27, from 10am - 3pm daily.

Paul Edmunds
Fold (in progress) 1999
Cable ties

RAM (Ryan Johnson, James Webb and Mark Coleman)

'Scale' is both the title and the point of access to Paul Edmunds' new exhibition of work. It's a three-piece show - the largest, Fold, requiring months of careful attaching, securing and trimming plastic cable ties, one to another, to bring into being a free-form carapace, industrial lace, suspended in mid-air. The ties are the self same ones - with the addition of thousands more - used by Edmunds in his last year's wall based installation at the Mark Coetzee entitled 'Once, Again', and this re-use of materials again reinforces Edmunds' concerns with the carelessness of our throwaway culture. The smallest piece is Cardinal, as in cardinal points, a heavy sphere of layer upon layer of steel pins inserted into a core.

RAM are producing a unique sound environment entitled Plans for Greener Structures. The piece draws on the notion of gardening and growth as a metaphor and consists, like compost, of debris and scraps from previous works by the collective. These are to be put together and played in an unpredictable and changing way, continually producing novel and unique combinations of sounds. RAM have worked collaboratively with other artists in the past, but this is their first unaccompanied foray into the field.

Closing November 20.
See reviews.

Part of the Lipschitz art sale - a piece by Thomas Kgope

Leading up to their co-hosting of the Goodman Gallery's 'Artery' show, the gallery is selling work at a 20% discount. They have in stock work by many well-known and up-and-coming young artists, including Bongi Benghu, Willie Bester, David Hlongwane, Dorothee Kreutzfeldt, Mustafa Maluka, Medina Morphet, Helen Sebidi, Jill Trappler and Jeremy Wafer and a host of others too numerous to mention. This might well be an ideal opportunity to invest in the visual arts and to feel good that 10% of the proceeds go to the Manenberg Disaster Fund.

October 20 - November 26

Collaborative wall lamps from sculptor Brett Murray and Bitterkomix co-founder Conrad Botes

The newly opened museum is co-hosting this exhibition with the French Institute of South Africa. It includes 'Images of the Year 2000' by a collection of French authors, as well as a similar project by South African authors. There are also on display some biting and satirical comic strips by the notorious Bitterkomix team. The lamps which resulted from the collaboration of Bitterkomix co-founder Conrad Botes and Cape Town artist Brett Murray are also being shown.

Johan Louw
Untitled (detail) 1999
Oil on canvas
120 X 81cm

Johann Louw is well known for his brooding and sombre oil paintings of anonymous male figures in unspecified, institutional-type spaces. Both the figures and the vast, oppressive spaces which they occupy are rendered in muted greys with flashes of tertiary reds and yellows. The scenarios which he sets up seem to exude menace and intrigue, and the works seem to occupy a tense psychological space. In this new body of work, Louw extends his vocabulary to include Karoo landscapes. Louw's work is held in many private and public collections.

Wednesday November 3 - November 27.