Listing(s)

'In Living Colour'

Lonwabo Kilani and Ndikhumbule Ngqinambi at Barnard Gallery

The Barnard Gallery presents an exhibition of recent paintings by Ndikhumbule Ngqinambi and Lonwabo Kilani. Although their works differ markedly in stylistic interpretation, both artists were raised on the nutrients of resistance art - a genre of creative expression explicitly directed at the apartheid government and its increasingly oppressive exercise of power. Now artists-in-residence at Greatmore Studios in Woodstock, both were trained at the Community Arts Project, which played an important role during the anti-apartheid struggle by employing art as a vessel for social transformation. And both artists, having experimented with different media and genres, have returned to the tradition of figuration to articulate their artistic vision.

Ngqinambi's work is evolving from cultural and spiritual to political reflections, with imagery  inspired by the political posters printed by the South African Communist Party and trade union movements, whose vivid hues and strident imagery derive from both African art and Russian constructivist paintings. Monumental in scale with swathes of crimson cutting through marching crowds, they recall the colourful, dramatic agitprop posters printed to mobilise the masses. But these works do not only speak of a nostalgia for a halcyon era of revolutionary possibility; they also depict the contemporary socio-political context in which strikes, service delivery protests and other expressions of anger, frustration and disillusionment have become unfortunate features of the post-apartheid landscape.

Although proficient in animation and digital, interactive media, Kilani has returned to the raw, gritty painterly realism of his earlier work. But instead of perpetuating the prettified stereotypes of poverty found in much township art produced during the 1970s and 1980s, Kilani’s exploration of this idiom is more metaphorical. In his work a corroded zinc dish – the signature utensil of the South African township - serves as recurring, central motif, as a porthole to, and reflection of, an inner world. His figures perform syncopated dances against a flat background or manoeuvre masks of well-known politicians as one would a kite. Yet their shadows evoke a sense of marginality, suggesting that in reality they exert little control over the machinations of political power. And for them, as with Ngqinambi’s masses, the promise of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow nation has proven, sadly, elusive.

14 March 2012 - 11 April 2012

'Muse'

Tracy Payne at Barnard Gallery

Simply entitled 'Muse' this show embraces Payne's enduring concerns with sexuality, spirituality, the dualities of the feminine and masculine; loss and reclamation. Muse is as much a spiritual quest for synthesis and self-integration as it a homage to a subject and object of erotic love. It is as cyclical as it is evolving and as intimate as it is archetypal.

06 July 2011 - 31 August 2011

'In Our Backyard'

Willie Bester at Barnard Gallery

Resistance art icon Willie Bester shows a selection of his characteristic paintings and sculptural assemblages that incorporate recycled material and found objects in a continuing interrogation of political injustices and human rights issues, focussing specifically on the position of children.

 

 

24 November 2010 - 26 January 2011