Current Review(s)
Wandering Styles in Yonder
Lien Botha at Barnard GalleryIt’s hard to place your finger on exactly what Lien Botha’s recent show ‘Yonder’ is all about. What can perhaps be said about it, is that it seems to be a purposeful sleight of hand, a shifting of meaning away from the concrete, which is at odds with the indexical nature of the photograph. This ‘sleight’ is in part achieved by a wandering style, a trawl through multiple modes of photographic representation. Throughout these styles, there seem to be four major themes.
21 March 2014 - 01 May 2014
Listings(s)
'Parrot Jungle'
Lien Botha at Erdmann Contemporary'Parrot Jungle' is Botha's ninth solo exhibition, and signals a new direction for the photographer. Based on a narrative and ornithological theme, the show comprises 45 images which Botha took largely in and around the Western Cape.
Lien Botha will also be participating in a one-day residency on the 8th October at the Irm Stern Museum, Rosebank, from 10 am to 5pm
01 October 2009 - 31 October 2009
'For a Sustainable World': Recontres de Bamako 2011
Jo Ractliffe, Lien Botha, Brent Meistre, David Goldblatt, Hasan and Husain Essop, Daniel Naude, Pieter Hugo, Sabelo Mlangeni and Tracey Rose at Bamako Photography BiennialThe 2011 edition of the 'Rencontres' offers a reflection on the quest for a sustainable world, with special attention to the signs and forms of resistance possible. The strong adherence to the theme proposed only confirmed the social and political commitment of African artists. Environmental concerns, once limited to a small circle of visionaries, are now part of our daily lives and are at the heart of all debates. If economic liberalism, based on the consumer society, emerged to improve productivity and development, it also, and above all, increased inequality at the expense of basic respect for people and their environments.
In 2010, many African countries celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of their independence. For many, this event was the time to take stock of national achievements and to look critically at political and social structures, as well as the distribution of wealth. For these 'Rencontres', we invited photographers and videographers to witness, to denounce, but also to identify areas for action, evidence of resistance or prevention, and the possibilities for the construction of a sustainable world. The variety of themes and languages ??chosen by the artists provides a survey of the diverse artistic production today on the continent and in the diaspora.
The Pan-African Exhibit, in the temporary exhibition rooms of the National Museum of Mali, brings together 45 photographers and 10 videographers from 27 countries, including a number from South Africa. Other South African artists, including Tracey Rose, appear in 'A World Beyond the World': The Sindika Dokolo Collection, and there is also a 'Monograph' exhibition of David Goldblatt's work.
01 November 2011 - 01 January 2012
'Yonder'
Lien Botha at Barnard GalleryLien Botha’s work has gained a reputation for being enigmatic, for provoking questions, and, in the last resort when words fail, for being poetic. Viewers in the South African context, habituated to the strong tradition of socio-political documentary photography that dominates the photographic realm here, are tested by the apparent elusiveness and inscrutability of her work.
However, if one reviews Botha’s production over time, there are certain consistencies that reiterate throughout her apparently diverse interests. Certain motifs recur, certain formal considerations are central, and limited colour palettes appear regularly to provide clues to her central concerns.
Scanning her writings on her own work, a persistent project of loss and the capitulation of memory is evident. Phrases such as 'keepers of lost collections… the stain, the damage to the beloved, pages removed' (‘Library Hours’ 2004) and 'an attempt at binding the distance' (‘Moundou’ 2008) provide an indication of memory as embedded in, or marked on paper and cloth.
Photography, as indexical of whatever was in front of the camera when the image was taken, traditionally carries the stain of its moment. A purveyor of the disintegrating instant, even in the digital age, it is a medium that Botha, as many commentators have noted, uses to create taxonomic collections of images. She does not often document the publicly significant, but creates a private inventory in which her images/objects do not easily reveal their place in a specific narrative. Rather they seem to act as an index or even co-ordinates of her travels across the country that give a sense of her bearings, rather than fix location.
‘Yonder’ is no exception. The very title of the exhibition indicates distance. It implies that something is being pointed out, in the direction indicated, but that it is ‘over there’, beyond our direct reach or view. Botha asks her audience to mentally join the dots, to attempt to make sense of what we see much as we might try to make sense of our own lives which come to us in fragments of encounters, part of a larger whole which we cannot quite discern.
(excerpt from Virginia MacKenny's essay 'Beyond What One Can See')
Accompanying the exhibition there will be a signed, limited edition, cloth bound, full colour publication which includes essays by Virginia MacKenny and Sonja Loots.
21 March 2014 - 01 May 2014
