Archive: Issue No. 94, June 2005

3.06.05 The Pink Bunny Project at DIRT Contemporary
3.06.05 Mustafa Maluka at Michael Stevenson Contemporary
3.06.05 Conrad Botes at Erdmann Contemporary
3.06.05 Lucy Cobern, James Reed and 'printtt' at the AVA
3.06.05 Gretchen van der Byl, Tommy Motswai and Corinne Smit at the AVA
3.06.05 Contemporary art auction at 34 Long
3.06.05 Monica Dart at 3rd i Gallery
3.06.05 Daniel Blom at Bell-Roberts
3.06.05 Animation artery at Bell-Roberts
3.06.05 Mareli Esterhuizen at DIRT Contemporary

09.05.05 Berni Searle at Michael Stevenson Contemporary
09.05.05 'Subject to Change' at the SANG
09.05.05 'Art about Art' at the SANG
09.05.05 Watkins Tudor Jones at the Michaelis School of Fine Art
09.05.05 Mary Visser at the UCT Irma Stern

DARLING

3.06.05 Judith Mason at Chelsea on 34

STELLENBOSCH

3.06.05 Prints from the Slovak National Gallery at Sasol Art Museum

FRANSCHHOEK

26.04.05 'Kaleidoscope' at Grande Provence
 

'The Pink Bunny Project' was initially conceived as a very simple exercise in repetitious activity based on the premise of meditative practice. It involves the folding of small origami bunnies out of pink A4 sheets of paper. According to DIRT, the interactive 'Pink Bunny project' focuses on the idea that by successfully repeating a simple activity one is able to facilitate a shift in awareness and therefore perspective.

The concept has subsequently been extended into an interactive project through which the artist, Renée Holleman, intends to create an environment that encourages exchange through the activity of making origami bunnies. Visitors to the gallery are also invited to participate and make their own. The bunnies themselves would essentially become a by-product or residue of the interaction and accumulate to form a representative community of the individuals involved.

The gallery will be used as a work space and collection point. It is not the artist�s intention to exhibit in the space so much as to utilize its capacity as a forum through an open invitation to participate.

Opens: June 1
Closes: June 22

Mustafa Maluka, who last year returned to Cape Town after spending six years in Amsterdam, presents an exhibition of new paintings in his show called 'Accented Living (a rough guide)'. The series comprises head-and-shoulders portraits of people the artist describes as 'invented heroes' interspersed with abstract canvases drawing strongly on the hip-hop aesthetic.

Maluka has a particular interest in urban African youth and their relationship to hip-hop culture and technology. His exhibition also ties into the notion of a globalised world, characterised by large-scale displacement and relocation - with accents being one marker of identification, as indicated by the show's title.

Maluka exhibited internationally in 2004 on the New York group show 'Personal affects: power and poetics in contemporary South African art' at the Museum for African Art and the Cathedral of St John the Divine and at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest, Romania the same year. On his return to Cape Town, he was awarded the annual Tollman prize for a young artist.

Opens: June 8
Closes: July 9

Conrad Botes is holding a solo exhibition before his departure to Paris for four months to claim his Absa Atelier award. The exhibition, entitled 'Devil's Bullets' includes multi-media works on paper and canvas as well as reverse-glass paintings.

Botes says his painting has its roots in comic book drawing, and he approaches it in a very eclectic manner combining cartoon stereotypes with more figurative ways of representation. He also juxtaposes humorous and disturbing subject matter.

The narrative content of Botes' work is usually related to race, gender and violence and their relationship to power and hierarchy. Botes says: 'Rather than delivering future vision or a solution to problems, these narratives try to present situations around power and hierarchy in a very direct and confrontational way. I love to think of my work as a post-mortem of the society and culture from which I have emerged.'

Opens: May 25
Closes: July 2

Lucy Cobern, who currently teaches Fine Art in Grahamstown, shows a series of paintings in the Main Gallery at the AVA, which were submitted for her Master's degree of Fine Art. About to head off to Oxford to embark on his Master's degree, James Reed presents a sculptural installation that employs several media in the Long Gallery. And upstairs, Michaelis School of Fine Art lecturer Andrew Lamprecht curates a small exhibition highlighting innovative notions of printmaking entitled 'printtt'.

Opens: May 30
Closes: June 18

Gretchen van der Byl shows a series of figurative paintings in the Main Gallery, which were completed as part of her Master's degree at UCT's Michaelis School of Fine Art. In the Long Gallery, Tommy Motswai - former winner of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award - exhibits colourful pastels on cotton paper. Upstairs, Corinne Smit presents new sculptural pieces in a show called 'Fetish'.

Opens: June 20
Closes: July 9

34 Long is holding its first auction of 34 lots of contemporary high quality artworks by South African and international artists. Artists will include heavyweights like William Kentridge, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Norman Catherine, Willie Bester, Robert Hodgins, Marlene Dumas and Simon Stone � all works in top condition and appropriately framed or mounted.

Works on auction can be viewed from June 4 at the gallery and online at www.onauction.co.za. Prospective sellers can submit works to the same website address for a free evaluation and possible inclusion in the sale. After the auction, a collection of the gallery's local and international collection will be on show.

6.30pm, June 14

An exhibition of photographs by Monica Dart, called 'Fleeting Childhood', takes an apparently provocative look at the tender age of transition, 'that gut-wrenching passage between adolescence and adulthood'.

Opens: June 16
Closes: July 23

Daniel Blom exhibits an installation of sculptures called 'The Ship of things � study for scribe' at Bell-Roberts this month. Blom says: 'The keel, the prow, these glorious forms groan and strain, and very slowly in the condensing procedure of movement, all aspects of process are controlled. But prior and akin to process, four archetypical figures, or companions, contribute to the peculiar infusion of conquest. Instructed and necessary, they assist its tendency of self-conscious struggle. Defined and differentiated, they help defy the process of destruction, enabling the ship to devour its own history and potential threat.'

Opens: June 1
Closes: July 2

The animation artery presents a video installation called today is an excellent day with installation artists Lyndon Daniels, Katrine Robenhagen, Derek Whitehead, and Jacobus Blake.

The exhibition incorporates several elements of new media art and design, fused together to create 'a sight-specific' piece. The work aims to address idyllic constructs of everyday existence that govern and dictate our logic and understanding.

Opens: 6pm, June 8
Closes: June 25

Mareli Esterhuizen exhibits photographs that explore a change in one of life's seasons using underwater images of a pregnant figure to signify an expectation of the new, while abstract seascapes speak of a future of spacious places. The images layered with textures and grain are printed on unbleached rice paper using archival inks.

The fragility of the paper that floats evocatively in the gallery space suggests lightness and space, building upon Esterhuizen's earlier work concerning emotions. She says: 'My work is about the freedom of expressing the inner-most self, of laying it bare with vulnerability.'

Opens: June 24
Closes: July 8

Berni Searle shows a new body of work at the Michael Stevenson Contemporary Gallery in an exhibition called 'About to Forget'. It comprises a series of photo-based prints and a panoramic three-channel projection, shot on 35mm film.

The Gallery says the works explore the process of remembering and forgetting and the space in-between where our sense of people and events fades and blurs - 'Using a handful of old family photographs as source material, Searle has created silhouette cut-outs from red crépe paper that are submerged in water. The forms gradually lose their definition as the red pigment bleeds into the water, evoking the fluctuations of memory and the fluidity of relationship over time.'

Searle was recently selected to exhibit at the prestigious 51st Venice Biennale. She will conduct a walkabout of this exhibition at 10am on May 6. The cost is R35. Call Nombini on (021) 421 2575 for more info.

Opens: May 4
Closes: June 4

This exhibition, which is drawn from the SANG's permanent collection, 'explores the multiple and complex subjectivities of South Africans through works of art that address the need for change and the process of transformation in South Africa'. The focus of the exhibition is not only on political transformation but also on the transformative power of desire and spirituality.

The exhibition profiles many recent acquisitions made with the gallery's funds from the Department of Arts and Culture's Transformation Budget. These newer works are juxtaposed with earlier works exposing intolerable conditions.

Artists include Jane Alexander, Tyrone Appollis, Willie Bester, Peter Clarke, Randolph Hartzenberg, Nicholas Hlobo, Ranjith Kally, Simon Lekgetho, Leonard Matsoso, Santu Mofokeng, Thami Mnyele, Zanele Muholi, Antoinette Murdoch, Tracey Rose, Philip Rikhotso, Alfred Thoba and Diane Victor.

Opens: March 19
Closes: August 28

'Art about Art' focuses attention on how artists have made use of other artists' work in the making of new images. According to the SANG, it is about how artists draw inspiration from the art of the past and incorporate the subject matter of 'art' into their own work.

The SANG says: 'The exhibition is not about mere copying, for at best, a new artistic synthesis emerges when artists engage with the work of others.' Highlights include work by Alexis Preller, Irma Stern, Christo Coetzee, Stanley Pinker, and Sipho Ndlovu.

Opens: April 8
Closes: June 15

Watkin Tudor Jones will be presenting the latest series of sculptures in his Fantastic Kill range at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in a one-night exhibition. Better known as Waddy Jones, lead singer of the band Max Normal and member of the Constructus Corporation, he will also be launching his new album at the event.

The series of sculptures comprises small stuffed felt animals, mostly based on indigenous fauna, some of which have a definitely sinister undertone. There will also be a small series of digital prints on view.

The exhibition moves on to a video screening in which two works by Jones will be screened. This will be followed by a live concert at 11pm. Waddy Jones is known for his blend of hip hop and electronica but his versatility as an artist is evident from the range of genres across which he works.

The show is curated by Andrew Lamprecht and a team of students from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, who have undertaken the project as part of a course in curatorship. Jones most recently exhibited at Oudtshoorn's Klein Karoo National Arts Festival. Tickets for the concert are R40 (or R30 in advance from Scar, Tel: 021 4225900).

Opens: 6.30pm, June 3

Mary Visser shows a new body of paintings entitled 'Nocturnes'. Visser works here mainly in enamels in a series of cityscapes, landscapes and others which verge on the abstract. These are rendered in a cool smooth palette shot through with warm, incandescent highlights. Alongside painting, Visser lectures in drawing at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology.

Opens: 6pm, May 10
Closes: June 11

This exhibition of drawings, mixed media and oil paintings is centred around a number of themes, starting with 'My Artist's Muse' in various guises from clown to hobby horse. In some paintings, Mason attempts to apprehend the four elements of the universe and the harmony of Empidocle's sphere and ponders 'The God that is within Thee', as Marcus Aurelius described his daemon. A few paintings are laments of one kind or another, and others are pastiches of religious ideas.

Opens: 11am, June 11
Closes: July 9

The embassy of Slovakia in Pretoria presents prints from the collection of the Slovakia National Gallery, 1960-2000, in an exhibition called 'Metamorphoses of the Medium'. It illustrates the development of Slovak visual arts through the medium of graphic art while also demonstrating the character of acquisition policy of the Slovak National Gallery. The exhibition shows the work of leading protagonists of Slovak graphic art, the artists who dedicated their entire creative potential to this discipline, and are representatives of major tendencies.

Opens: May 19
Closes: June 18

A new gallery opens this month at the Grande Provence wine estate in Franschhoek. Art consultant Rose Korber has selected an assortment of artworks in a range of media from painting to sculpture and prints.

Artists represented include Sanell Aggenbach, Peter Eastman, Robert Hodgins, Stephen Inggs, JP Meyer, Xolile Mtakatya, Zwelethu Mthethwa, John Murray, Sam Nhlengethwa, Robert Slingsby, Herman van Nazareth, Avhashoni Mainganye and Louise Gelderblom.

Opens: April 10