Jane Alexander

Current Review(s)

Jane Alexander: Wrestling with the Spirits

Jane Alexander at Cathedral of St. John the Divine

On what is invariably a crystalline Sunday every October, a parade of animals of every size and description ascends the broad steps of the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine in Upper Manhattan.  They crawl, hop, lumber, walk, or are carried through the imposing nave to the altar. White-robed attendants accompany each one, their duties ranging from holding a Petri dish containing microbes, to bearing a python draped about the neck – some years there’s even an elephant.  It is the celebration of the Feast of St. Francis. This becomes a treat for the eyes and ears: pet dogs and cats brought by parishioners trigger a cacophony of barking and meowing that resounds throughout the Romanesque and Gothic Revival structure, the largest cathedral in the world.

18 April 2013 - 29 July 2013

Listings(s)

Editions for ArtThrob Print Exhibition

Guy Tillim, Jane Alexander, Lisa Brice, Peet Pienaar, David Goldblatt, Penny Siopis, Hentie van der Merwe, Robert Hodgins, Tracey Rose, Mikhael Subotzky, William Kentridge, Zwelethu Mthethwa and Nontsikelelo Veleko at South African Print Gallery

Editions for ArtThrob is pleased to announce an exhibition of all artist prints in our collection at the South African Print Gallery in Woodstock, Cape Town. You are cordially invited to attend the opening finger lunch at 11:30am on Saturday the 29th of August, where all available prints will be for sale.

Editions for ArtThrob, in collaboration with South Africa’s leading artists, has developed a series of specially-commissioned prints; these are sold to cover the running costs of the ArtThrob website. ArtThrob is South Africa’s leading website on contemporary art, and is an important point of reference worldwide for curators, dealers and those interested in South African art.

Artists who have participated in the in the print program include William Kentridge, Penny Siopis, Robert Hodgins, Jane Alexander, Willem Boshoff, Nontsikelelo ‘Lolo’ Veleko, David Goldblatt, Guy Tillim, Lisa Brice, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Mikhael Subotzky, Peet Pienaar, Hentie van der Merwe and Tracey Rose.

In addition, we will be launching a brand new print by Robert Hodgins. Hot off the presses at Mark Attwood’s studio, the image will be available for preview the at exhibition opening. 

Please contact Natasha Norman from ArtThrob for online orders or Gabriel Clark-Brown at the SA Print Gallery for more information.

29 August 2009 - 28 September 2009

'Security (Surveys from the Cape of Good Hope)'

Jane Alexander at Centrale Electrique: European Centre of Contemporary Art

Strange hybrids populate the installations, photomontages and videos of Jane Alexander, whose work is features in a solo exhibition for the first time in Belgium. Although firmly implanted in the history of South Africa, the exploration transcends national limits to reveal the global impact of mechanisms of domination and descrimination, as well as the growing safety obsession subtended by economical and socio-political disparities.

25 March 2011 - 28 August 2011

'Appropriated Landscapes'

Jo Ractliffe, Guy Tillim, Jane Alexander, David Goldblatt, Penny Siopis, Santu Mofokeng, Angela Ferreira, Sabelo Mlangeni, Zanele Muholi and Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse at The Walther Collection

'Appropriated Landscapes' explores landscape typologies in South Africa, Namibia, Angola, and Mozambique, and presents works by fourteen artists, including Jane Alexander, Ângela Ferreira, David Goldblatt, Sabelo Mlangeni, Santu Mofokeng, Zanele Muholi, Jo Ractliffe, Penny Siopis, Mikhael Subotzky/Patrick Waterhouse and Guy Tillim.

Many of the artists presented in 'Appropriated Landscapes' have created images through topographical studies, explorations of nomadic peripheries and in-between spaces, or chronicles of social geography altered by divisive spatial planning and modern architecture. The concept of landscape here is not linked to historical notions of the picturesque and the sublime. Instead, the exhibition considers landscape as a prism of experience, a reflection of ideology, and a stage for the performance and perception of identity. Whether sweeping views, architectural compositions, or portraits, the varied works in the exhibition remind us of the density and richness of the notion of landscape, the complexity and subjectivity of its depiction - and ultimately, of our own spiritual, emotional, personal, and political relationship to it.

16 June 2011 - 13 May 2012

'Peekaboo'

Wim Botha, Jane Alexander, Anton Kannemeyer, Hasan and Husain Essop, Penny Siopis, Daniel Naude, Lawrence Lemaoana and Nandipha Mntambo at Helsinki Art Museum (Tennis Palace)

South Africa has in the past fifteen years developed into a major centre of contemporary art, with several artists in the international limelight. 'Peekaboo' is Finland’s first major review of the artists and themes in contemporary South African art.

The key theme shared by the featured artists is society in a constant state of flux. Apartheid was abolished in 1994, but its scars are still visible. In addition to historical traumas, the artists are concerned with present insecurity, the changed role of religion and the possibilities offered by new kinds of identities. Some works explore personal experiences and others comment brutally or poetically on the surrounding reality, sometimes using humour or satire. The history of European art and modern life in South Africa converge in unexpected ways.

'Peekaboo' is produced and curated by the Helsinki Art Museum, and includes twenty South African artists. In addition to the artists, the South African partners in this venture are the Goodman Gallery, the Michael Stevenson Gallery and the Brodie/Stevenson Gallery.

 

20 August 2010 - 16 January 2011

'The Rainbow Nation'

Wim Botha, Jane Alexander, Mary Sibande, Paul Edmunds, Willie Bester, Nandipha Mntambo and Nicholas Hlobo at Various venues around The Hague

This year, the Hague Sculpture Festival focuses on South Africa, with more than 50 sculptures by major artists of the past 60 years from 29 May to 9 September on the Lange Voorhout and from 8 June to 30 September in Museum Beelden aan Zee. The artists at the exhibition range across three generations. The first generation is represented by artists including Edoardo Villa, Sidney Kumalo and Noria Mabasa. Andries Botha, Willie Bester, Jane Alexander and Angus Taylor are among the second generation artists. Works by artists such as Wim Botha, Paul Edmunds, Nicolas Hlobo, Nandipha Mntambo and Claudette Schreuders represent the third and youngest generation. Nelson Mandela International Day will be celebrated in The Hague on Wednesday, July 18 with the unveiling of the Nelson Mandela monument by Dutch sculptor Arie Schippers.

29 May 2012 - 30 September 2012

'Jane Alexander: Surveys (from the Cape of Good Hope)'

Jane Alexander at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston

Jane Alexander’s hybrid mutants speak to the porous borders between humans and other forms of animal life. Alexander acts as a surveyor mapping the forces, interests, and passions at play in human behavior. Her sculptures, installations, and photomontages are firmly rooted in her South African experience. They also transcend their locality, revealing the disparity felt every day around the world between the rhetoric of peace and decorum and the human capacity for oppression and violence. Alexander’s body of work throws into relief the asymmetric relations and practices that preclude access for so many people to a free and dignified existence.

'Jane Alexander: Surveys (from the Cape of Good Hope)' is a major exhibition of works by important South African artist Jane Alexander and is organized by the Museum for African Art (MfAA), New York, and supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts. It is guest curated by Pep Subirós.

11 August 2012 - 04 November 2012

'Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life'

Jo Ractliffe, Guy Tillim, Sue Williamson, Jane Alexander, Omar Badsha, David Goldblatt, Peter Magubane, Santu Mofokeng, Ernest Cole, Jurgen Schadeberg and William Kentridge at Haus der Kunst

'Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life' is a photographic exhibition examining the legacy of the apartheid system and how it penetrated even the most mundane aspects of social existence in South Africa, from housing, public amenities, and transportation to education, tourism, religion, and businesses. Complex, vivid, evocative, and dramatic, it includes nearly 500 photographs, films, books, magazines, newspapers, and assorted archival documents and covers more than 60 years of powerful photographic and visual production that forms part of the historical record of South Africa. Several photographic strategies, from documentary to reportage, social documentary to the photo essay, were each adopted to examine the effects and after-effects of apartheid's political, social, economic, and cultural legacy.

Curated by Okwui Enwezor with Rory Bester, the exhibition proposes a complex understanding of photography and the aesthetic power of the documentary form and honors the exceptional achievement of South African photographers.

From the work of members Drum Magazine in the 1950s to the Afrapix Collective in the 1980s to the reportage of the so-called Bang Bang Club, included in the exhibition are the exceptional works of pioneering South African photographers including Leon Levson, Eli Weinberg, David Goldblatt, Peter Magubane, Alf Khumalo, Jürgen Schadeberg, Sam Nzima, Ernest Cole, George Hallet, Omar Badsha, Gideon Mendel, Paul Weinberg, Kevin Carter, Joao Silva, and Greg Marinovich, and the responses of contemporary artists such as Adrian Piper, Sue Williamson, Jo Ractliffe, Jane Alexander, Santu Mofokeng, Guy Tillim, Hans Haacke, and William Kentridge. In addition, the exhibition will feature the works of a new generation of South African photographers such as Sabelo Mlangeni and Thabiso Sekgale, who explore the impact of apartheid as it continues to resonate today.

15 February 2013 - 26 May 2013

'Survey: Cape of Good Hope' and 'Infantry with beast'

Jane Alexander at STEVENSON in Johannesburg

STEVENSON presents two works by Jane Alexander from her retrospective survey, most recently shown at the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York

'Survey: Cape of Good Hope' (2005-9), a series of 54 black-and-white manipulated photographs and photomontage images combined in a large-scale slideshow sequence, will be installed in the first gallery. The images, leading from the rural areas of the Western Cape into the city of Cape Town, refer to historical markers and the postcolonial environment. These include land as a resource, repository and site of human presence, habitation, conflict and migration, considering the social environment in the context of visible economic polarities, endemic violence and the picturesque landscape. Alexander sees this series as a contextual backdrop against which the origin of her sculptured figures can be considered.

The large sculptural installation 'Infantry with beast' (2008-10), comprising a phalanx of 27 marching hybrid figures on a red carpet with a small dog-like creature, will be placed in the second, long gallery. The work alludes to structured social organisation as in the military through which men and sometimes boys are constrained to a system of physical and psychological control by an unaccountable authority, with the appearance of the parading figures reminiscent of African wild dogs. The work refers to the hunting strategies of the wild dog or Lycaon pictus, 'cursorial hunters' which live in socialised hierarchical packs of about 20 members, bound by systems of co-dependence and co-operation, not unlike the military.

18 November 2013 - 07 February 2014

'Jane Alexander: Surveys (from the Cape of Good Hope)'

Jane Alexander at Cathedral of St. John the Divine

The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, together with the Museum for African Art, New York, presents 'Jane Alexander: Surveys (from the Cape of Good Hope)', an exhibition of tableaux, sculptures, and photomontages by South African artist Jane Alexander.

This site-specific exhibition allows audiences to experience the familiarity and mutability of Alexander’s universe. Her human-animal hybrid sculptures and dramatic installations speak of lasting disfigurations in her native South Africa, yet raise issues about human nature that resonate with viewers internationally. Acting as a nonjudgmental surveyor, Alexander maps the forces, interests, and passions at play in human behavior. Her work reveals the disparity felt around the world between the rhetoric of peace and decorum and the unruly human capacity for oppression and violence, throwing into relief the asymmetric relations and practices that preclude access for so many people to a free and dignified existence.

'Jane Alexander: Surveys (from the Cape of Good Hope)' is guest curated by Pep Subirós.

18 April 2013 - 29 July 2013