Archive: Issue No. 61, September 2002

18.09.02 Penny Siopis at the Goodman
18.09.02 Penny Siopis at the Gertrude Posel Gallery
18.09.02 Digital 011 at Spark!
18.09.02 Paul Emmanuel at the Bag Factory
18.09.02 Bitterkomix at Art On Paper
18.09.02 Edoardo Villa at Melrose Arch
01.09.02 South African Art 1850 - 2002 at the Goodman Gallery
01.09.02 South Africa goes to Ars Electronica
01.09.02 Arts Alive Festival and Bonani Africa
01.09.02 Visible Visions at the Electric Workshop
01.09.02 Izandla Zethu at Spark! Gallery
01.09.02 'Earth' at PhotoZA
01.09.02 Manuscript Exhibition 4
19.08.02 WSSD Exhibition Programme at the Johannesburg Art Gallery
19.08.02 Launch of Johannesburg Art City
19.08.02 Underground Jozi
19.08.02 'Fantastic Rubbish' exhibition for the World Summit's Ubuntu Village
19.08.02 Bag Factory celebrates ten years on
19.08.02 Perceptions at ArtSpace Gallery
19.08.02 'The Bold and the Beautiful' at the Manor Gallery
19.08.02 !Xun and Kwhe San Art and Craft Project at Upstairs@ Bamboo
01.08.02 Ardmore Ceramic Art Exhibition at Charles Greig Hyde Park
01.08.02 'People, Planet and Prosperity' at the Absa Gallery
01.08.02 Zulu Baskets at Kim Sacks
01.08.02 Ardmore Ceramics at Gallery on the Square
17.06.02 Lori Walselchuk - 'African Nights' at MuseumAfrica

01.09.02 Pandemic: Imaging AIDS at the Pretoria Art Museum
01.09.02 Five minutes of Silence - an exhibition to commemorate losses
19.08.02 Entertainment Technology Students showcase work
19.08.02 Pretoria Art Museum current exhibitions
01.08.02 Sasol New Signatures exhibition at PAM

Penny Siopis shines in two very different exhibitions currently on in Johannesburg, which is a neat device to reflect on past production and introduce new bodies of work. 'Pinky Pinky and Other Xeni' is a very pink exhibition featuring an astonishing quantity or work, mainly paintings (oil, watercolour and found objects) but also including prints. A film project, titled Xeni, contextualises this aspect of the exhibition's title. A Greek word, it used to be used playfully to refer to someone who is 'strange', unusual or odd. Its interpretation has since shifted and is now street slang used pejoratively to refer to 'others' - illegal aliens, non-nationals etc. It is the root of the word 'xenophobia' and can be understood as the Greek equivalent of 'makwerekwere'.

These works are a result of Siopis' ongoing explorations into ideas of strangeness and estrangement over the past few years. In these explorations the story of 'Pinky-Pinky' figures strongly, and gives form to wide variety of quite different experiences. Pinky-Pinky is a mythical character, a local urban legend. This legend is continually invented and re-invented in the telling. Siopis remembers a 'Pinky-Pinky' experience in her own youth, but it is mostly through the stories of her fourteen-year-old son Alexander and his friends that this work has developed. An urban legend that has been dormant for about two generations, Siopis says: "'Pinky-Pinky' is a hybrid creature; half-animal, half-human, half-man, half-woman, half-everything, half-nothing... It has one dog's paw and one cat's claw. It's skin is a dirty pink, like the 'fleshtint' colour of pre-mixed paints and other commodities (like stockings, gloves, underwear...). Or sometimes it is white. Some say it is actually black, but "so black" that it appears "white". Still others say he is an albino, because s/he wears a hat for protection from the sun. Many think he is a white 'tokoloshe' (actually 'pink'). All agree 'Pinky-Pinky' is scary - especially for teenagers who are terrorized by it at school. Girls can see 'Pinky-Pinky' who threatens to rape them if they wear pink underwear. 'Pinky-Pinky' is invisible to boys, but they can feel it by slaps on the face and scratches on the cheek. "

'Pinky-Pinky is the stranger within us... the haunted spectre of current moral panics, and is both victim and perpetrator.

Opens: September 14
Closes: October 5

Goodman Gallery, 163 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood
Tel: 011 788 1113
Fax: 011 788 9887
Email: goodman@iafrica.com
Hours: Tues - Fri 9.30am - 5.30pm, Sat 9.30am - 4pm

Curated by Jennifier Law (SOAS, London), 'Sympathetic Magic' explores the relationship between biography, memory and history in the life and work of Penny Siopis. The show is presented as an installation between the main and basement galleries of the Gertrude Posel Gallery. Her now-famous painting 'Melancholia' hangs in the gallery entrance and installation element reference past exhibitions and projects that form an integral part of her oeuvre.

Drawing upon anthropological theories of 'sympathetic magic' - the art of influencing events through the dual enchanted principles of contact and imitation - this exhibition examines ways in which material objects may establish and maintain relations between individuals across generations. Siopis installs a spread of material objects, traces, and leavings - 'historical fetishes', if you will - which refer to biographical events and memories of events that have featured in her life and work over the past two decades. These animated objects take on individual biographies beyond that of the collector through an ancestral economy of circulation and exchange.

Sympathetic Magic is, in part, a conversation between artist and curator who, by bringing such key-works together in the gallery space and juxtaposing them with textual and other references, hope to facilitate a meditation on the complexity of a specific art practice both in its own terms and as part of a larger social framework.

A catalogue and education pamphlet are available through the gallery.

Penny Siopis will conduct a walkabout of her exhibition on Saturday, September 21 from 2.30 to 3.30 pm. Enquiries, 011 717 1365.

Opens: September 5
Closes: October 4

Gertrude Posel Gallery, University of the Witwatersrand, Braamfontein
Tel: 011 717 1363
Email: gallery@atlas.wits.ac.za
Hours: Tues - Fri 10am - 4pm

A dialling code and a short string of binary code, '011' is also a showcase of digital work by fine artists, graphic designers and animators in support of the South African Scriptwriters' Association. The cavernous and commanding Spark! gallery is the location for this exhibition which also features work by its hosts - acclaimed animation houses Anamazing Workshop, Depth and Triggerfish. One of South Africa's longest standing animation teachers, Sarienne Kerch, alongside technical director Ron Major, who worked on Kirikou and the Sorceress, will host an afternoon workshop on animation. Sarienne and Ron hosted the first International Animation Festival in South Africa, which attracted 13 participating countries. The workshop and seminar will include a history of animation in South Africa, going back some 100 years, and will include a screening of 'Kirikou'. SASWA members pay R10 and non-members pay R20.

Opens: September 20 at 7pm
Workshop: September 21 at 2pm
Closes: September 27

SASWA for booking information
Website: www.saswa.org.za
Tel: 678-3838

Spark!, 10 Louis Road, Orchards
Tel: 011 622 8297
Pieter Vorster 082 574 2152; Glynnis Jackson 083 836 1210
Email: orchardsproject@yahoo.com
Hours: Mon - Sat 10am till café-bar closes, Sun 10am - noon

Acclaimed printmaker Paul Emmanuel won this year's inaugural Sasol Wax Art competition. He showcases his work 'Air on the Skin' for a limited period.

Closes: September 20

Bag Factory, 10 Minnaar Street, Newtown
Tel/fax: (011) 834 9181
Email: bagfactory@acenet.co.za
Hours: Mon - Fri 10am - 3pm, Sat 10am - 1pm

"Unmasking our spawn of brutes," is how writer Henry Miller once described the role of German satirist, George Grosz. The same can be said about Bitterkomix founders Anton Kannemeyer and Conrad Botes. Now ten years' old, Bitterkomix is still going strong and a selection of artists, including Joe Dog, Konradski and Lorcan White present original artwork and prints in an exhibition that also marks the launch of the Comics Galore Festival of International Comic Art and Best of Bitterkomix Volume 2. With commentary that is caustic, bold, a little bitter. a little comic - and most of all, free of ideological censure, Best of Bitterkomix Volume 2 includes comic strips by Konradski, Joe Dog, Lorcan White, Ina van Zyl, Paddy Bouman and Karlien de Villiers.

Comics Galore is a 6 month long programme of events dedicated to Comic Art in South Africa: exhibitions, an international conference, workshops, lectures, book launches, signing sessions, sales of books. Detailed programmes will be available at the galleries. It is presented and curated by Pro Helvetia / Arts Council of Switzerland, the French Institute of South Africa, Bitterkomix, the Durban Cartoon Project, in association with the Technikon Witwatersrand.

Anton Kannemeyer (Joe Dog) hosts a discussion of work and a slide show on Thursday September 26 at 6.00 p.m. (booking essential).

Back issues and other publications of Bitterkomix will be on sale.

Opens: September 21 at 6pm
Closes: October 9

Art on Paper, 8 Main Road, Melville (next to Outer Limits bookshop)
Tel: (011) 726 2234
Email: mwartonp@mweb.co.za
Hours: Tues - Sat 10am - 5pm

Melrose Arch is a new suburban/urban development in Illovo combining apartments, corporate parks, leisure and retail facilities. It is an upgraded version of what Le Corbusier used to fantasise about and even built, and which failed miserably as a viable and uplifting live/work/never-leave-your-home space. JG Ballard's novel 'High Rise' is yet another testimony to the breeding ground of social pathology that these places are, but still the developers persist. Spread out as opposed to stacked high, Melrose Arch is well-supported by customers and pleasure-seekers and now sculptor Edoardo Villa has chosen it is the architectural setting for a new collection of sculptures produced over the past two years. The 15 metal sculptures range in height from 86 centimetres to over four metres.

Opens: September 17

Tel: 880 2213 / 083 453 6668

An extensive collection of Southern African art, from nineteenth-century headrests carved by anonymous Nguni and Tsonga artists to the paintings and sculpture of twentieth-century figures such as Walter Battiss, Norman Catherine, William Kentridge, Strat Caldecott, Bertha Everard, Robert Hodgins, Sydney Kumalo, Ezrom Legae, Maggie Laubser, Sam Nhlengethwa, Alexis Preller, Cecil Skotnes and Irma Stern, feature in this rich and textured exhibition curated by The Goodman Gallery, and Michael Stevenson and Deon Viljoen Fine Art.

William Kentridge fans will be intrigued by his 'Three Graces'. Kentridge decided to renew his penchant for sculpture in 1999. The Three Graces is one of the first group of works in this cycle and makes use of found objects. Which in this case are Italian wine-bottle openers from the seventies.

The exhibition also includes two impressive Stanley Pinker paintings, two works by Pierneef and three works from the Everard clan.

Opens: August 30
Closes: September 7

To view further images please visit www.michaelstevenson.com.

Goodman Gallery, 163 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood
Tel: 011 788 1113
Fax: 011 788 9887
Email: goodman@iafrica.com
Hours: Tues - Fri 9.30am - 5.30pm, Sat 9.30am - 4pm

Since its inception in 1979, the annual Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria, has become one of the world's foremost digital and electronic gatherings, attracting artists, musicians, academics, critics and electro-heads from across the globe. This year, the festival tackles the complex politics of technology and globalization with the theme of 'Unplugged: Art as the scene of global conflicts.'

The issue of art as the scene of global conflict celebrates the return of the political power of art, relying on art's capabilities to cross international borders and come up with alternative conceptual models, strategies and approaches to counteract and critique the presumptions of the global village.

For the Ars Electronica Festival 2002, Johannesburg-based contemporary art agency The Trinity Session, in conjunction with _sanman (Southern African New Media Art Network) are partners in two distinct aspects of the festival: - project developers and managers for 'Search' in the electrolobby, and contributors to and satellite supporters of the weirdly named 'Open Air A Radiotopia'.

The concept of 'Search' is a workshopping, discussion and collaborative production platform that will start in South Africa, extend to Linz and return to South Africa as a network of relationships and new partnerships to South Africa.

In South Africa, The Trinity Session will establish remote stations through partnerships, runs workshops and facilitates a live link-up to Radiotopia at the Linz Festival on September 10.

South African participants are James Webb, Fran�ois Naudé, Damian Stephens, Maria McCloy, Zubz Ndabaningi Mabuye, Stacy Hardy,and Dineo Mokgoasi.

Sound artists and technicians will facilitate limited participation sound creation workshops to take place in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban.

Partners in Cape Town (Public Eye), Johannesburg (Vega: The Brand Communications School) or Durban (NSA Gallery) will digitize submissions for uploading to the relevant websites.

Johannesburg's Horror Café in Newtown is the host venue for this link-up event on September 10.

For more information, please contact The Trinity Session (Marcus Neustetter or Michelle Ticknor) on 011 403 5967 or email trinity@onair.co.za.

With the World Summit just days away from over, exhibitions and events that align themselves with the ideals of this contentious event are still going on, showcasing the talents of local artists and craftspeople.

The Bonani Africa Photographic Festival and Arts Alive both cash in on the Summit, with some exhibitions, even existing ones launched a while back, publicised as being under the auspices of both festivals. This makes it unclear whether they are to be seen as two independent events. Where Arts Alive is concerned, their past track record of not doing much for the visual arts is reinforced - few of these shows seem specially organised for the festival, which is again very music-heavy. Bonani is an absolute feast of South African photography, organised by South African History Online but give yourself some time - the exhibitions are spread across Johannesburg and Pretoria, and will require some concentration and dedicated looking.

>> Click through for the complete schedule

Visible Visions brings together photographs by twenty 'ordinary' women from Mpumalanga and work in painting, collage, mixed media, video/sound and installations by Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi, Bongi Dhlomo-Mautloa, Ruth Seopedi Motau, Fikile Skosana, and Ilse Pahl from South Africa. They are joined by Milica Reinhart, Marjan Verkerk, Elisabeth Lumme, Holger Schwetter, Moze Jacobs (writer) from Europe and Viga Gordilho from Brazil in a collective effort dubbed the DPSD (Daily Producers of Sustainable Development).

Opens: September 1
Closes: September 5

Electric Workshop, President Street, Newtown
Tel: 072 3123813

It's a mixed bag at Spark! during September with the launch of Izandla Zethu (our hands), a new label for South African crafters including fashion, furniture and traditional and contemporary craft. Also on view is the Market Photography Workshop's 'Waiting for Change', the product of working with a dozen students, all unemployed youth living in Alexandra between the ages of 18 and 27, teaching them basic technical photography and the power of narrative images. Children's work from the competition entitled 'My dreams for the river' will be shown, as well as pots from Zululand and sculptures from the Limpopo province.

The performing rites contemporary dance company will open the exhibition with Ngoni and Amandawe ritual glimpses and illustrate how the 12 rituals relate to modern commerce.

Tthis local economic development initiative was supported by the National Arts Council. Proceeds from sales will be utilized to set up a fund to support creativity and talent.

Opens: August 30, 7pm

Spark!, 10 Louis Road, Orchards
Tel: 011 622 8297
Pieter Vorster 082 574 2152; Glynnis Jackson 083 836 1210
Email: orchardsproject@yahoo.com
Hours: Mon - Sat 10am till café-bar closes, Sun 10am - noon

Pierre Croquet, Hannelie Coetzee, Jurgen Schadeberg, Michael Meyersfeld and Thinus Matthee show work looking as different aspects of landscape, both populated and desolate, physical and metaphysical.

The exhibition is on view from August 25.

Opens: September 1 with guest speaker Karin Bowler
Closes: October 4

PhotoZA, The Mews, Rosebank
Cell: 082 533 7143 (Michelle Rock)

The fourth Manuscript Exhibition will be held at the Boekehuis in Melville/Auckland Park. The exhibition features manuscripts from visual artists, writers and poets.

Opens: September 7, 2.30 pm
Closes: September 28

The JAG has designed a series of concurrent exhibitions that tackle the mandates of the WSSD from various angles and with a variety of outcomes. The programme has been given the umbrella title of '[re]vision: Art From South Africa'. While the programme does include a broad spectrum of contemporary and traditional practices, those bracketed titles that indicate an intertextual and referential specificity, only to be followed by an all-encompassing subtitle are predictable and annoying.

The exhibitions open consecutively from 10.00 a.m. on August 29. Each opening is followed by interactive walkabouts and discussions by artists and curators with a traditional African lunch at 1.00 p.m.

>> Click through for the complete schedule

Johannesburg Art Gallery, corner Klein and King George Streets, Joubert Park
Tel: 011 725 3130
Fax: 011 720 6000
Hours: Tues - Sun 10am - 5pm

The Johannesburg Art City Project, which aims to transform the centre of Johannesburg into the world's largest outdoor art gallery, has begun installation with enormous billboards featuring South African artworks popping up on the sides of buildings and above existing structures.

Although receiving good press thus far, the project has been somewhat cash-strapped, falling short of the required budget to complete the project, which has involved a national call for entries as well as selecting works from existing corporate collections around the city.

A cellular provider who is simultaneously launching a new campaign using specially-commissioned billboard artworks has since joined the Art City party, providing some necessary funding. The two projects now have a combined launch planned for August 27 at 6.30 p.m. at Newtown's Electric Workshop.

Andrew Lindsay, artist and owner of Spaza Art Gallery, and Tamiko Sher, marketing consultant and writer, have designed 'Underground Jozi', the map of "real" Johannesburg.

Looking to draw people to Spaza Gallery as well as celebrate and promote the lesser known, but no less fabulous, attractions Jozi has to offer, Lindsay and Sher created their own kind of tourist map, with the gallery featuring loud and proud.

Drawing on many years of experience and with help from friends, the partners walked the streets of Newtown, downtown Jo'burg and Troyeville, researched the history and listened to the fascinating stories of the background of old Jo'burg. The map is a genuine (and legal) Underground Jozi, a celebration of downtown Johannesburg, nitty gritty, moments of glamour, a mixture of cultures, class, history and everything else thrown in.

The only standards employed in the creation of the map was that it had to offer something special, either historically or currently, and they prioritised the arts and included artists' houses or workshops and art sites.

The map was fully funded by Lindsay and Sher and is available at Spaza Art Gallery, 19 Wilhemina Street, Toryeville.

Ice Station Johannesburg, an accredited parallel event to the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) 2002, will host the 'Fantastic Rubbish' art exhibition, located in Ubuntu Village (at Wanderers), and will showcase the successful and sustainable efforts and achievements of global environmental group, Mission Antarctica. In addition, the venue is available for corporate functions in the evening, and will host groups of pre-arranged scholars during the day.

Exhibition co-ordinator Jeanne Hoffman says the exhibition will transgress the boundaries between traditionally recognised fine art and craft, with a common concern to economise and preserve. Visitors to Ice Station Johannesburg will be encouraged to engage in informal workshops with the artists. Hoffmann says: "Instead of isolating and boxing individuals in separate exhibition spaces," she continues, "the unique approach of each participant will be integrated to create a stimulating experience. The intention is to provide a platform for communication between the artists and crafters on the one hand, and the general public on the other, and to inspire thoughts and discussions around the environment and waste specifically."

The exhibition seems to be designed with a journey or progressive experience in mind. The outdoor sculpture garden features work by Willem Boshoff. Lien van der Linde is responsible for the design and construction of a three-pillar archway entrance of the Ice Station. The entrance represents the three pillars of sustainability (social, environmental, economical) as described by Minister Valli Moosa.

Collaborative artworks feature artists represented by the Mukondeni Fine Arts Gallery; Jan van der Merwe in collaboration with Gozololo (Aids orphan shelter); and Chris Gous in collaboration with learners from Heuwel Primary (Pretoria West).

Ice Station boasts installations by Mbongeni Buthelezi; Gordon Froud; Liza Grobler; Moses Seleko, Vusi Mfupi and Jeff Nkabinde; Thulani Shongwe and Johan Thom.

Marna Hattingh; Ferdi Hartzenberg; and San Sibiya, Erique Motheysi and Simphiwe Belle from the BAT Centre, Durban show free-standing sculptures.

Finally visitors will exit through the 'Talking House', part of Mari-Mira, a collaboration between French artists and inventors and popular artists from Kwa-Zulu Natal. The team includes Guy-Andr� Lagesse, Pat Khanye, Jabulani Mhlabini, Sibusiso Mbhele and Doung Anwar Jahangeer as performing guide.

Opens: August 12
Closes: September 6

Contact: Jeanne Hoffman
Tel: +27 (0) 83 299 6645
Email: icestation@attglobal.net

'10/10' is both the title of the new Bag Factory exhibition, and a pretty accurate score on how the artists' studios have rated during their ten year lifetime. To mark their ten year anniversary, the studios (a.k.a. Fordsburg Artists Studios) are hosting an exhibition featuring their permanent artists-in-residence and showcasing newcomers. These newcomers are by no means newcomers to their particular visual arts fields, including sculptor Claudette Schreuders, painter Diana Hyslop and contemporary jeweller Verna Jooste. The studios were established to encourage and develop exchange between artists, both among local artists and artists from abroad. In conjunction with founding organisation the Triangle Arts Trust, the Bag Factory has performed an important function, particularly in breaking down some of the boundaries imposed by cultural boycotts. It runs successful international residency programmes, hosting artists from across the world in the Fordsburg complex, and can boast some of the finest and well-established contemporary art talent. Other permanent residents include Ben Arnold, Bongi Bengu, David Koloane, Dominic Tshabangu, Joachim Sch�nfeldt, Kay Hassan, Pat Mautloa, Paul Emmanuel, Rookeya Gardee, Sam Nhlengethwa, and Stephen Maqashela. Information on individual artists and the Bag Factory programme is available on their website at www.bagfactoryart.org.za.

Opens: August 20 at 5.30 pm
Closes: September 6

Bag Factory, 10 Minnaar Street, Newtown
Tel/fax: (011) 834 9181
Email: bagfactory@acenet.co.za
Hours: Mon - Fri 10am - 3pm, Sat 10am - 1pm, or by appointment

Mandla Mabila, Magda Joubert, Franci Cronj�, and Zach Taljaard come together on this group show entitled 'Perceptions', featuring works in a range of media including oil paintings, sculpture, and digital imagery. The press release accounts for their cohesion as a group that "all of them are trying to live with certain perceptions that society places on certain aspects of their existence."

Mabila works with perceptions of disability, creating very large works that seem at odds with the abilities of an artist that is not 'able-bodied'. Mabila cerates these large works (reaching 2.5 metres across) by abandoning the wheelchair and working on his studio floor.

Magda Joubert has been working with imprints or 'mindsites' of personal and visual recordings of places, impressions, perceptions and feelings, finding equivalents for these in oil, encaustic and various other mark-making materials.

Franci Cronje comments on the perceptions media impose on women, looking at the changes on the construction of body image and roles women are expected to play in both domestic and career environments.

Zach Taljaard finds a parallel between human intellectual and perceptual development and climbing a ladder. Even before one gets to step onto this ladder there already exist fixed factors that will influence decisions along the way. Realisation will lead to personal growth leading to another rung on the ladder, which will hopefully state a lesson learnt. Through different sculptural media he explores the fragility of these stages of realisation and disillusionment. Focusing on children in the pre-school phase, he derives his inspiration from personal memories combined with critically rethinking these memories. The unavoidable factor of gender plays a role in his angle of approach, focusing mainly on these moments of disillusionment life brings.

Opens: August 18 at 5.30 pm
Closes: September 21

The Art Space, 3 Hetty Avenue, Fairland
Tel/fax: (011) 678 1206
Cell: 082 651 4702

As huge fan of soap opera, I was somewhat disappointed to see that the members of the Watercolour Association had not in fact paid tribute to the stars of slush TV in this exhibition. Instead, a group of female artists exhibition paintings in a variety of media, alongside sculptures, ceramics and ornamental glassware.

Artists include Marina Aguiar, Nelly Byrne, Celia de Villiers, Linda Fourie, Ana Flores, Carla Heyns, Ruth Kloppers, Barbara Poultney, Fiona Rowett, Jill Smulders and Maike Vermaak.

Although the official opening is on September 1, the exhibition is open to the public from August 30.

Opens: September 1 at 3.00 pm
Closes: September 29

The gallery has extended opening hours during the opening weekend

Manor Gallery, WSSA, Norscot Manor Centre, Penguin Drive, Fourways
Tel: 011 465 7934
E-mail: gallery@wssa.org.za
Website: www.wssa.org.za
Hours: Mon - Fri 10am - 4.30pm, Sat 10am - 1pm

Hosted by South African interior design and lifestyle store Bright House and Art on Paper gallery to coincide with the WSSD, this exhibition of San Art and Craft is emblematic of people displaced through conflict, having to sustain themselves from land that is not fertile and dealing with change as far as traditional lifestyle is concerned.

The exhibition will consist of Lino cut prints produced in a joint workshop, between the Kuru and the !Xun and Khwe groups; ceramics and textiles produced by the San on the Platfontein farm; and oil paintings painted by individual artists.

The exhibition's origins stem from Catharina Meyer's work with the Kuru art programme in Botswana. She had observed the natural artistic ability of San shepherds despite the lack of formal training and convinced local authorities to introduce an art programme concentrating on job creation and self esteem. De Beers Consolidated sponsored the print workshop that took place in July 2002.

The artists interpret the mythical tales of their history and ancestors. These stories have passed down orally for centuries from one generation to the next. They also find inspiration in the decorated artifacts that their ancestors made and the mythical tales create a dream like quality to their painting.

Opens: August 20
Closes: September 4

Upstairs@Bamboo, Melville
Adrienne Sparks, Bright House
Tel: 011 726 5657; 083 309 4275
Email: brighthouse@yebo.co.za

The famous Ardmore ceramic studio founded by Fee Halsted-Berning in KwaZulu Natal, and giving rise to the astonishing talents of Bonnie Ntshalintshali, among many others, is being profiled by one of South Africa's foremost jewellery design houses. Hand painted platters, teapots, vases and bowls retain their functionality but look too good and too precious to use. The exhibition then moves to Charles Greig Sandton.

Charles Greig Hyde Park dates
Opens: August 19
Closes: August 24

Charles Greig Sandton dates
Opens: August 26
Closes: September 6

Tel: (011) 325-4477
e
: hydepark@charlesgreig.co.za

Curated by Boudiccea Castings under the directorship of sculptors Kay Potts and Sanna Swart, 'People, Planet and Prosperity' presents artists' interpretations of the aims of the World Summit, being their "positive solutions, their awarenesses and healing images regarding the environment, sustainable socio-economic development and the pressing and at times awesome needs of the developing world."

Also featured will be glass-works by the Lynette Naudé and paintings by a group of South African artists including Joe Maseko and Andre Naudé.

Opens.: August 26
Closes: September 20

Absa Gallery, Absa Towers North, 161 Main Street, Johannesburg
Tel: 011 350 4588
Email: juliemc@absa.co.za
Hours: Mon - Fri 9.30am - 3.30pm

Another exhibition that is cashing in on all the attention generated by the World Summit is one featuring Zulu basket weaving at Kim Sacks Gallery, curated by Jannie van Heerden. Van Heerden, who is employed by the Department of Education and Culture in Durban, has spent many years documenting, researching and working with basket weavers in rural KwaZulu Natal. The show includes a range of basket styles, eating mats, izimbenge (beer pot covers) and objects made from contemporary materials including telephone wire.

Opens: August 24 from 10.00 am
Closes: September 10

The prolific Ardmore ceramic studio presents another selection of work at the Gallery on the Square, this time profiling the work of men resident at the studio, including Zeblon Msele and Wonderboy Nxumalo, among others.

Opens: August 15 at 6.30 pm
Closes: September 14

Gallery on the Square, Sandton Square, Sandown
Tel: 011 784 2847
Fax: 011 784 2849
Email: gots@mweb.co.za
Hours: Mon - Thurs 10am - 6pm, Fri - Sat 9am - 5pm, Sun 10am - 2pm

While travelling on assignment through Africa, documentary photographer Lori Waselchuk produced this collection of images that reflect African nightlife in a frank, fervent and often poignant way. A documentation of human interaction, pleasure-seeking, recreation and entrepreneurship across the continent, Waselchuk's subjects are shot with available light on standard film with quite astonishing results. A riot of colour, glowing light and shadow, 'African Nights' present a very collectable interpretation of contemporary urban life in Africa that manages to avoid all the usual clichés. Also showing until July 14 is Gideon Mendel's 'A Broken Landscape', an intimate account of responses to living with HIV/AIDS.

Opening: June 20 at 6pm
Closing: September 22

MuseumAfrica, 121 Bree St, Newtown
Tel: (011) 833 5624
Fax: (011) 833 5636
Hours: Tues - Sun 9am - 5pm

Pandemic: Imaging AIDS is a powerful collection of international photographic works on the topic of AIDS by award-winning, international photographers. This exhibition presents images that have been crucial to confronting the disease, to memorialising the lives of those lost, and most important, to sounding an urgent call to action. From reportage to portraiture, agit-prop posters and expressive pieces by some of the finest photographic artists of the last twenty years, the exhibition is designed for emotional impact as well as a challenge to make a world without AIDS a reality. Participating photographers include Nan Goldin, Annie Leibovitz, Robert Mapplethorpe, Gideon Mendel, Nicholas Nixon, Cindy Sherman, Joao Silva, Rosalind Solomon, Graeme Williams and David Wojnarowicz. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and editor and curator Nan Richardson write text panels to guide viewers through the show, which was hosted by former US president Mr Bill Clinton at the 2002 International AIDS Conference in Barecelona. He hosts the exhibition again in South Africa, after which it tours New York, Washington, Paris, Moscow and Rio de Janeiro.

Closes: October 27

Pretoria Art Museum, corner Schoeman and Wessels streets, Arcadia
Tel: 012 344 1807/8
Fax: 012 344 1809
Email: artmuseum@pretoriagov.za
Website: www.pretoria.gov.za/pam
Hours: Tues, Thur - Sat 10am - 5pm, Wed 10am - 8pm, Sun 12pm - 5pm

Mind�s I Artspace will be hosting a group exhibition to commemorate the event which scarred the consciousness of the planet as much as it scarred the face of a city. Five minutes of silence will be centred around a collection of photographs of New York by Rudolph Buitendach, a South African filmmaker living in London. These portraits of the city were taken during the week preceding the attacks on the World Trade Centre: Buitendach left New York on 11 September.

Other works on the show will ponder on the theme of loss and how people experience and cope with it. The WTC disaster, because of its physical scope, caused people to dwell on romantic philosophical thoughts like the frailty of man, of society, of civilization. Disasters, even when small and personal, tend to make one re-examine values, priorities, purposes, relationships. Participants will be, amongst others, Diek Grobler, Retha Buitendach, Michèle Nigrini, Dianne Victor, Gordon Froud, André Naudé, Daniel Mosako, Gustaf Vermeulen, Cecile Heystek and Franci Cronj� and Tamara Girke.

Opens: September 11, 7pm by a representative of the US embassy

Mind's i Artspace, Shop 63 Brooklyn Square, Brooklyn, Pretoria
Tel: (012) 346 5131
Email: minds-i@lantic.net
Website: www.minds-i.co.za

Celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, the department of entertainment technology at Technikon Pretoria is a "display window" of work produced in the department the past year and includes big decor panels, properties, marionettes, costumes, textiles, animatronics, make-up, sound and lighting. A show of period costumes and make-up will accompany the opening. Special videos of scenes from productions through the years will be shown as well as slides of make-up and hairstyling.

You might think, "but this is not very contemporary art", but Vita nominee Jan van der Merwe is a lecturer in the department, and we only need to think of the theatrical cross-overs in William Kentridge�s oeuvre to realise the potential for artists to apply these skills in installation, performance and public projects.

Opens: August 27
Closes: September 10

Department Entertainment Technology, Technikon Pretoria
Arts Campus, 24 Du Toit Street, Building 25
Contact: S du Plooy
Tel: (012) 318 6153 / 4
Email: duplooys@techpta.ac.za

Art by a selection of artists represented in the school syllabus Grades 9 to 12 is on display together with basic information on the artists. The Corobrik Collection, previously housed at the Sandton Civic Gallery, is also on show.

Both close end of September.

Pretoria Art Museum, corner Schoeman and Wessels streets, Arcadia
Tel: 012 344 1807/8
Fax: 012 344 1809
Email: artmuseum@pretoriagov.za
Website: www.pretoria.gov.za/pam
Hours: Tues, Thur - Sat 10am - 5pm, Wed 10am - 8pm, Sun 12pm - 5pm

The Sasol New Signatures exhibition takes places once again at the Pretoria Art Museum. It's the last big one on the competition circuit for the year with a first prize of R10 000 and two judges' awards of R5 000 each. The competition attracted over 200 entries with the judging task taken up by Franci Cronje (chairperson), Marco Cianfanelli, Peter Binsbergen, Abrie Fourie and Kathryn Smith. Independent judges are Neil Dundas and Marcus Neustetter.

The People's Choice Prize will be announced on Friday August 30 at 6.30 p.m.

Opens: August 7 at 6.30 pm
Closes: September 7

Pretoria Art Museum, corner Schoeman and Wessels streets, Arcadia
Tel: 012 344 1807/8
Fax: 012 344 1809
Email: artmuseum@pretoriagov.za
Website: www.pretoria.gov.za/pam
Hours: Tues, Thur - Sat 10am - 5pm, Wed 10am - 8pm, Sun 12pm - 5pm