Archive: Issue No. 38, October 2000

Warrick Sony, who will deliver this week's lecture, has worked in the electronic media as a composer, producer, DJ and sound designer on a multitude of films, documentaries, art events, theatre, dance and album projects. He is the founder and sole member of the legendary Kalahari Surfers who recorded with Shifty Studios in the mid-80s, producing five albums of politically radical musical song/satire which were eventually released through the London label Recommended Records. The Kalahari Surfers toured Europe and played in East Berlin, Moscow, Riga and (then called) Leningrad as well as in Brazil.

Sony's other recording projects over the years include an album with acclaimed Sowetan poet Lesego Rampolokeng and two albums with Brendan Jury under the name 'Trans-Sky' . He also produced albums for the Original Evergreen, the Honeymoon Suites and worked on remix projects including Busi Mhlongo and Noise Khanyile. Sony also engineered the Brian Eno workshop sessions in Cape Town.

Pan African music has always been an interest of Sony's and three years at BMG specialising in this field gave him the opportunity to work as a DJ as well as playing mixtures of world and African sounds. Recent projects include music for the Handspring Theatre Company's production The Chimp Project, an album collaboration with Greg Hunter from 'the ORB', soon to be released on MELT, as well as a 13 part series of wildlife films for the Discovery Channel. Visit www.kalaharisurfers.co.za for more.

1 - 2pm, Thursday October 12

This week's lecture will be given by Eric Miller who is widely regarded as one of the most experienced photojournalists working in South Africa. Having spent several years working for the wire services, Reuters & Associated Press, he now works freelance, mostly on assignment for a variety of European newspapers and magazines. He also works for a number of local and international non-government oganisations.

In the 1980s Miller documented 'the struggle' against apartheid, and in the 1990s he has covered various aspects of the transformation process in the country. Miller has also accumulated an extensive archive of documentary images from Cuba, Vietnam and a number of African countries including Congo, Liberia, Nigeria, Rwanda and Senegal amongst others where he has photographed in the last few years.

Thursday October 5, 1 p.m.

Peet Pienaar is a Cape Town based artist known best for his performance work. He was invited to participate in the group exhibition 'uBudoda' (which takes place simultaneously at the AVA), but withdrew after his proposal created a storm of controversy. In defence of his proposed work, which he will produce here instead, Pienaar says, "It's not about what I want to do, it's what other people bring to it that's important. My work operates on many levels". He will now undergo his proposed ritual circumcision by a black female doctor. The performance will be filmed and shown in installation form in the gallery. Pienaar intends to auction his foreskin on the internet. He has entitled the show, which will include other work as well, 'Tell Me Something'.

Show openins October 18, 7 p.m.

October 18 - November 15

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A live auction will be conducted at the Assocation of Arts in Bellville on Wednesday, October 11 when four paintings completed by artists in their studios under the gaze of webcams will go on the block. 'Signatures', is the first interactive live art event of its kind in South Africa, and features as ArtThrob's October website of the month.

Web cams installed in each artist's studio have given Internet users and cyber art enthusiasts the opportunity to witness the progress of work as it unfolds by logging on to http://signatures.mweb.co.za. The online chat sessions drew in the crowds as the selected Signature artists, Peter Binsbergen, Bronwyn Findlay, Jacques Fuller and Johan Louw, chatted directly with interested supporters, giving them the inside information on their creations.

"We hope to develop Signatures into an annual event and incorporate the expertise of not only recognised artists but the creative minds of the young talent in SA," says Stefanie Hefer, executive producer of M-Web Studios. "The Internet is a powerful medium which can be harnessed to create great opportunity and exposure for the South African art community and the general public." The four artists were chosen by a panel of art critics: for Gauteng: André Naude, artist and lecturer; Natal: Andrew Verster, artist and lecturer; Free State: Sharon Crampton, curator Oliewenhuis Kunsmuseum, Bloemfontein; Cape Town: Cobus van Bosch, artist and art critic.

The finished art works will be auctioned online live from the Arts Association, Bellville, through M-Web's auction site http://www.thelot.co.za on October 11, 2000. The event opens at 8 p.m., and bidding will start shortly thereafter.

Also on view will be New Signatures 2000, this year's annual exhibition of 60 new artists to the South African art scene, which has been in operation since 1979. Currently, Internet users can see the New Signatures productions online at http://signatures.mweb.co.za and offer their support in an online vote.

Opening on October 4, this show includes Mark Hipper's controversial 'Body Masks'. These strange carved wooden works, depicting ovoid forms with penises, caused quite a stir when they were exhibited in Grahamstown this year. Hipper, no stranger to controversy, has lectured at both Rhodes and Michaelis art schools and has exhibited extensively in Germany and South Africa. His work is held in several corporate and private collections here.

'Endless Renovations' is a sculptural installation by Leora Farber, and is described by her as "a material site at which the physical body is surgically dissected, stretched, carved and reconstructed according to cultural and ideological standards of physical appearance". In this work, which is a visual tour de force, she explores how, at the hands of cosmetic surgeons and in the face of personal surveillance, an internalised image of a fractured and fragmented body is generated in women. The very technologies which offer women the ability to reconstruct their bodies and identities actually produce bodies that are very traditionally gendered. Farber has exhibited extensively in group and one-person shows across the country and her work is held in several public collections across the country.

Jen� Gindl was born and schooled in Germany. He studied and worked there, collaborating as a printmaker, with, amongst others, A.R. Penck and Richard Serra. Gindl will be showing a collection of platinotypes.

Wednesday October 4 - 28

On October 2 Bang the Gallery will open their new premises in a converted warehouse space in Pepper Street. The gallery's owners intend to continue using their space as a platform for young artists as well as operating as a venue for art events. The gallery will be launched with an exhibition entitled 'Big Bang; The Theory of Art'. The show features eight artists interpreting the Big Bang Theory. The list includes Craig Foster, Shany van den Berg and Alex Hamilton. The highlight is likely to be Johnny Foreigner and the Bread Fairy's Every Dog has its Day Entertainments production. This is Part II in their proposed trilogy of static cinema photo stories.

October 2 - 30

Max Liebermann, Max Slevogt and Lovis Corinth are regarded as the finest exponents of Impressionism in Germany. The German Institute of Foreign Relations has put together this show of 105 graphic works as part of the 6th Annual German Cultural Weeks. Although beginning his career as a painter Liebermann is best known for the lithographs he produced after 1896. Slevogt was also a painter but was instrumental in reviving lithography in Germany. His oeuvre comprises more than 2000 such works. Corinth, like Liebermann, spent some time in France where he absorbed the influence of leading French painters of the time and this lead to his fame as a German Impressionist. It is his later lithographs, which are more expressive and impulsive, that are more powerful.

September 26 - October 19

Musa Xaba was born in Durban, studied at the Natal Technikon and has lived and worked in Cape Town since 1993. This exhibition, entitled 'Remembering My Dream', will be his first solo show. It consists of black and white figurative drawings, which he describes as "The visualisation of a feeling" and the "realisation of a dream".

October 1 - November 30

Last described as a "sublime illuminist", Peter van Straten's latest show is described as "that naked breakdance through The Mind". This show is entitled 'Falling Awake'. Van Straten's bizarre paintings are rendered in highly refined, near-invisible brushstrokes which give the paintings a naturalistic quality despite the somewhat fantastic nature of their subject matter.

Thursday October 5 - November 17

This time last year, Johannesburg artist Kay Hassan was named the first prizewinner of the Daimler/Chrysler prize, thus winning a large cash award, overseas residency and exhibition opportunities, and the support for a major travelling exhibition accompanied by a catalogue. This exhibition, which opened at the Pretoria Art Museum, is currently being installed at the South African National Gallery, and will open on September 30. Hassan is known for his installations, which focus on aspects of daily life in South Africa, and in this case, the installation elements will be accompanied by large scale collage works. It should be considered as required viewing.

South African National Gallery, Hatfield Street, Gardens, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 465-1628
Email: swing@gem.co.za

Curated by Carol Kaufmann, this exhibition celebrates the achievements of three satellites of a major trading empire situated along the Limpopo River and the north-eastern reaches of southern Africa. Musuku is the Luvenda word for gold, which was mined, worked and traded over vast distances by the Vhavenda and their ancestors for over 1000 years. Wealthy and powerful trading communities established themselves at sites known as Mapungubwe (c. AD 850 - 1250) Great Zimbabwe (c. 1300 - 1750) and Thulamela (c. 1350 - 1750). The inhabitants built complex stone-walled settlements and traded extensively with Indian Ocean merchants. They imported luxury goods from as far afield as Egypt and China, but most significantly created exquisite prestige objects for their own use in ivory, ceramic, stone and metals including some in gold.

For the first time the South African public will be able to view a selection of these works, including a newly proclaimed National Treasure - the golden rhinoceros from Mapungubwe. The only original soapstone bird from Great Zimbabwe remaining in South Africa will also feature on the exhibition. The opportunity to present these African icons results from a long-standing collaboration involving the SANG, University of Pretoria, the Venda and Shangaan communities, and Anglogold.

From September 24

Defining identity develops into a complex and often frustrating process for individuals caught between cultures. Although hardly a new phenomenon, it is becoming an increasingly common experience. Susan Hefuna's exhibition examining cross-cultural navigation is the South African National Gallery's (SANG) contribution to the Cape Town One City Festival, whose theme this year is Celebrating Difference. The exhibition is also a part of the German Cultural Weeks as Hefuna is of German and Egyptian heritage. As an artist, she explores her cultural diversity through new media such as digital photography, video and installation, and teaches as Professor of Multimedia at the University of Pforzheim, Germany.

Susan Hefuna's month-long artist residency at SANG is the eventual outcome of a meeting with curator Emma Bedford and Cape Town artist Berni Searle at the Cairo Biennale in December 1998. Since her arrival in Cape Town at the end of July, Hefuna has been teaching at Stellenbosch University twice a week and visiting various Muslim communities.

Navigation Xcultural will include a series of drawings, digitally manipulated colour photographs, black and white images, and an interactive installation. What ties the exhibition together is the recurring grid-like pattern that Susan Hefuna identifies as mashrabiya: Egyptian window screens, intricate and detailed in design. But while the images can be interpreted as studies in abstract pattern, a closer examination hints at a presence behind the screens. The mashrabiya delimit indoor and outdoor space, allowing patterns of sunlight to filter through the grid while sheltering the interior from the unwelcome gaze of strangers. This sense of intimacy is carried over to the series of black and white photographs of village life in the Nile delta and of the streets of Cairo, obtained with an old type of pinhole camera that was once popular in Egypt.

Hefuna has also built a 2 cubic metre grid installation of palmwood, like the smaller structures that many Egyptians use to carry their daily needs. The complex pattern of the grid recalls once again the design of the mashrabiya. The installation is Hefuna's gift to the people of Cape Town, who are all invited to contribute something of personal significance, whether an object or text, which is somehow connected to cultural identity. Hefuna began the process by bringing clay from the Nile delta, the area from which many of her family originate. She then added some herbs acquired from a healer on Long Street. Offerings will be accepted for the duration of the exhibition, after which the "finished" work will remain in Cape Town.

Susan Hefuna is also running a new media workshop in the facilities of the SA Centre for Photography at the University of Cape Town. The participants all stem from different cultural backgrounds, and range in age from early twenties to 78. The premise of the workshop is to initiate an exploration of individual life stories by returning to old family photographs and oral histories, and creating work with new technologies on those themes.

Susan Hefuna's Navigation Xcultural opens at the Annexe, South African National Gallery, on September 23, and runs until November 12.

Wednesdays from August 23, 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. and 2 p.m. - 5 p.m.

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The public is being offered the unique opportunity of viewing a selection of the Sanlam Art Collection's most recent acquisitions. Begun in the late 1960s, the Collection has slowly grown to be one of the largest corporate collections in the country. The collection has always striven to build a representative collection of South African art and consequently this exhibition showcases works by acclaimed artists of the present as well as the past.

Stefan Hundt, curator of the collection is hosting a series of walkabouts of the exhibition. These take place, at 12.30 p.m., on the following days:

Thursday September 7, Tuesday September 19, Wednesday September 27 and Wednesday October 3.
In response to requests from the public, the exhibition has been extended to November 15. Walkabouts of the show can be arranged for groups.

Until November 15

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