Wim Botha

Current Review(s)

Wim Botha, Simon Gush and Zineb Sedira

Wim Botha, Simon Gush and Zineb Sedira at Stevenson in Cape Town

'Let no one destitute of geometry enter my doors.'

Entering Wim Botha’s fourth solo exhibition, the immortal phrase adorning the doors to Plato’s Academy seems appropriate. Indeed whilst the conjunctive nature of the title (‘Joburg Altarpiece & Amazing Things from Other Places’) seemingly implies that the show is composed of two separate bodies of work (enforced by their visual disparity), the intrinsic presence of Platonic visual motif finds itself functioning as a homogenising agent to Botha’s latest assortment of befuddlement and iconographic subversion.

06 August 2009 - 26 September 2009

Listings(s)

Wim Botha, Simon Gush and Zineb Sedira

Wim Botha, Simon Gush and Zineb Sedira at Stevenson in Cape Town

Botha will exhibit a new monumental print work, along with an installation of his signature mixed media sculptural pieces. Young artist, Simon Gush, holds his first major solo show, comprising video, text pieces, sculptural installations and interventions. Zineb Sedira meanwhile, shows Middlesea, as part of Stevenson’s ongoing FOREX exhibition series.

06 August 2009 - 26 September 2009

'Work in Progress' and 'Animal Farm'

Wim Botha and Daniel Naudé at Stevenson in Cape Town

Wim Botha: 'Work in Progress'

Wim Botha presents two large-scale sculptural installations in his fifth exhibition at the gallery. The first installation, carved from polystyrene and incorporating clusters of fluorescent tubes, is an epic figurative group in the tradition of scenes of battle and conflict, as depicted in paintings and sculpture through the ages. Though the subject matter is violent, the brightness and lightness of the materials bring an almost otherworldly atmosphere to the installation, imbuing it with a dream-like quality. The second group, by contrast, is dark, dense and heavy, consisting of composite figurative sculptures carved from encyclopaedias and wood, in a continuing evolution of the paper busts for which Botha is known.

Daniel Naudé: 'Animal Farm'

Daniel Naudé's series of photographs focusses on the relationship between human beings and domesticated animals, and the way in which the histories of people, animals and the landscape have become entwined and indivisible over centuries. Begun during a road trip from Cape Town to Mozambique in 2008 Naudé subsequently spent extended periods in rural South Africa exploring local stories and cultural myths including the Xhosa legend of Nongqawuse. Naudé's images locate the animal centrally in both idea and format, challenging our gaze and reminding us of our uneasy dominion over them.

20 January 2011 - 26 February 2011

'Alptraum'

Ed Young, Ian Grose, Wim Botha, Ruth Sacks, Linda Stupart, Zander Blom and Various Artists at Deutscher Kunstlerbund

Like George Orwell with his 'Room 101' in his predictive tale 1984, we all have our own version of what constitutes a nightmare, and for this reason, the project has been opened to a large number of artists whose many and varied personal nightmare versions, or visions, act to reflect this hugely variable human state of fears and fobias, pain and panic. 'Alptraum', the German for 'nightmare', is an artist-led project. It is a model which utilizes global communication between localized artist hubs and clusters to form an international grouping with the intent of opening a dialogue about this subject across borders and cultures in order to delve into the stuff and mind-murk that is collectively shared or completely random and unrelated, or individual and specific within the syndrome of 'The Nightmare'. Each artist draws on their own personal experience in order to visualize those anxieties, which take them beyond everyday dreams.

Working within the remit of the ‘artist-curated project’, all of the works in 'Alptraum' have been restricted in size and material in order to facilitate the low-cost postal transportation of the show from country to country. With each exhibition site taking responsibility to pass the show on to the next host, the number of works and artists may change or grow, and the approach to interpreting and hanging the show vary from space to space as the body of works meanders on from country to country. Having started in Washington DC and transferred to London, the exhibition is currently showing in Berlin. It will travel to Los Angeles next, followed by its arrival at blank projects in Cape Town. The Berlin iteration extends the exhibition to include the work of 19 South African artists, such as Sanell Aggenbach, Zander Blom, Ian Grose, Ruth Sacks, Linda Stupart, Wim Botha and Ed Young.

11 March 2011 - 15 April 2011

'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

'Pandemonium - Art in a Time of Creativity Fever': The Goteborg International Biennial

Wim Botha at Goteborgs Konsthall

In John Milton’s epic Paradise Lost (1671), Pandemonium is the castle built by Lucifer and his band after they had been booted out of heaven. It is the base camp from which they plot against the ‘old order’. But it is also a platform from which they seek to launch the project of another creation, a new kind of world albeit a ‘devilish’ one.  Through ‘Pandemonium’, Milton reflects on the turbulence and topsy-turvy of civil war England. Was this only chaos and hurly burly? Or was it also the birth of the modern world, of modern values and experience? It ushered in Atlantic and European modernity and Enlightenment— and the promise of a variety of paradises and utopias to come.

The term, therefore, has both positive and negative connotations. From William Blake to Derek Jarman, from punk to pop bands and everyday ‘hubbub’ of street sound and speech, it has been used to explore chaos and disorder that is at the same time about the emergence of new worlds, alternative global modernities, other possibilities. The Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art is an occasion for artists, thinkers and writers to mull over the turbulence and turmoil that is today’s world. Is it only about a sense of hurly-burly, disorder and dismal confusion — of ‘sheer pandemonium’? Or is it also about transformation and creative emergence — the making of new worlds, possibilities and paradigms?

The Biennial takes place at several venues around Göteborg: Wim Botha will be exhibiting at Göteborgs Konsthall.

10 September 2011 - 13 November 2011