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Archive: Issue No. 38, October 2000

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MONTHLY MONTHLY ISSUE NO. 38 OCT 2000



Durban
24.10.00 Fine Art Staff from Vaal Triangle and Natal Technikons in joint show.
10.10.00 MEDIATEK - a selection of recent multi-media works
10.10.00 The 'Rotary Art Exchange' Exhibition
10.10.00 Old Rijks Academy students plan exhibition and conference
03.10.00 'Outpost' in the NSA Main Gallery
03.10.00 Tender Moments - An exhibition of recent works by Pascale Chandler in the NSA Mezzanine Gallery
03.10.00 The Inner City - Photographs by Graeme Williams in the NSA Park Gallery
26.09.00 October Red Eye @rt


Jan Jordaan

Jan Jordaan
Angel
Oil on canvas

Jan Jordaan

John Roome
Wreath
Watercolour on handmade paper




DURBAN

Fine Art Staff from Vaal Triangle and Natal Technikons in joint show.

This joint exhibition by the Fine Arts Staff from the Vaal Triangle Technikon and the Technikon Natal showcases the variety of work produced in the two institutions and indicates the skills and strengths of the teaching staff. It also creates links between the different tertiary institutions and sets up points of reference and comparison between them. A number of the Vaal Triangle staff originally hailed from Natal and this gives viewers of the Natal art scene a chance to view the development of their work affected by new influences. Kiren Thathiah (previously of the University of Durban-Westville and now Head of Department, Vaal Triangle ), Avi Sooful and Gabriel Mazibuko all trained and worked in Natal and their work continues to carry the political and spiritual concerns that engaged them whilst they were resident here.

Exhibitions of this nature are rarely curated. Rather than creating a theme to be explored they provide an overview of artists coming from diverse cultural backgrounds, working in the various disciplines and in a range of media. This exhibition, in its diversity, has something to please everyone. Displaying a range of approaches from the highly sensual, figure drawings of the late Jeff Chandler to Richard Strydom's still animation videos of magnified skin surfaces which explore issues of wounding/healing in the post-patriarchal male body, it embraces both the traditional and the contemporary. John Roome's watercolours on handmade paper which refer to AIDS, violence and death, Jeremy Wafer's minimalist shapes on glass, Lola Frost's vaginal 'horror vaccui' paintings and Ian Marley's digital hybrids speak of a complex world with many approaches.

This show includes prints, drawings, paintings, digital images, ceramics and sculpture and disproves the old adage 'those who can do, those who can't teach'.

Artists include: From the Vaal Triangle Technikon: Kiren Thathiah (Head of Department), Ian Marley, Eunice Botes, Reshma Maharajh, Richard Baholo, Richard Strydom, Avi Sooful, Gabriel Mazibuko, Annette Schutz, Rodney Hopley, Basie Koen and Daleen Steyn. From Technikon Natal: Jeremy Wafer (Head of Department), Virginia MacKenny, John Roome, Lola Frost, Jan Jordaan, Stavros Giorgiades and the late Jeff Chandler.

Closes: November 2, 2000

Technikon Natal Art Gallery, Library Complex, Berea Campus (off Mansfield Rd)


Mediatek

Mediatek invitation




MEDIATEK - a selection of recent multi-media works

Featuring works by Mediatek (a digital design training centre) and its most promising students, this exhibition is a showcase for some of the hottest young graphic designers in the province. The exhibition will consist of interactive multimedia work, product design and web design. Exhibited work was subject to a curatorial process which forms part of an ongoing synergistic association between Mediatek and the NSA Gallery. This began in 1996 when Mediatek presented the first digital art exhibition in Durban with the 'All Things Digital' competition with entries from around the country being shown at the NSA Gallery. Most recently, the NSA website was designed and produced by Ashling McCarthy, one of Mediatek's final-year DGD students.

This show highlights the variety of approaches that digital technology provides the visual designer and also encourages the more traditional visual artist to reconsider the computer as a flexible and many-faceted tool. It will also highlight the latest developments in design, software and creative trends in Digital Graphic Design (DGD).

This exhibition received BASA Matching Grant Funding

Opening: Sunday October 14 at 6 p.m.
NSA Galleries, Main Gallery
Closing: October 20, 2000

For more information please contact Steffie Betts at MEDIATEK
Tel: +27-31-305-4200, steffie@mediatek.co.za
Website: www.mediatek.co.za

N S A Galleries, 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood, Durban, South Africa, 4001
Postal address: P.O. Box 37408, Overport, Durban, South Africa, 4067
Tel: (031) 202-2293
Email: iartnsa@mweb.co.za
Website: www.nsagallery.co.za




The 'Rotary Art Exchange' Exhibition

Early in 2000 the Rotary Club of Durban organised an art exchange between local school children and their peers in Romania. This was done in collaboration with a Rotary Club in Romania. The motivation behind this project was to encourage youth to become aware of children in other countries, in a manner similar to that of pen-pals. Themes explored by the children included 'Our community', 'The environment' and 'Peace'.

The four schools in the greater Durban area that participated include Durban Girls' High, Durban High, Kingsway School and Zwelibanzi High in Umlazi. Artworks from these schools were sent to Romania and recently returned after a highly successful exhibition. The show here will include works by the Romanian children, from Constanza, Romania.

Organised by the Rotary Club of Durban

Opening: Tuesday October 17 at 6 p.m.
NSA Galleries, Park Gallery
Closing: October 20, 2000

N S A Galleries, 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood, Durban, South Africa, 4001
Postal address: P.O. Box 37408, Overport, Durban, South Africa, 4067
Tel: (031) 202-2293
Email: iartnsa@mweb.co.za
Website: www.nsagallery.co.za


Pulse

Pulse invitation



Paul Edmunds

Paul Edmunds
Kernel 1994-99
Plastic
38cm in diameter



Old Rijks Academy students plan exhibition and conference

The RAIN (Rijks Academy International Network) project is an initiation by the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Attempting to maintain links with past students and to expand the Rijks Academy's involvement beyond Europe, RAIN consists of a network of south-south countries which includes Argentina, India, Indonesia, Mali and Mexico and South Africa.

Pulse is the South African component in the RAIN network, and is supported by the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten and the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The local initiative was set up by Greg Streak, a past student at the Rijks, who is now based in Durban, and who is currently in India on a RAIN project there. The objective of PULSE is to create a forum in Durban for artistic cross-pollination. Envisaged as a continuing process this will occur in the form of inter-cultural debate through projects organised on an annual basis. Both South African and international cultural producers will participate in these events and the focus of these projects will shift each year so as to accommodate issues or debates that might carry credence at the time.

This year, Pulse has orchestrated two primary events - a one-day conference and a group exhibition consisting of both South African and international artists and guest speakers. The title 'open-circuit' has been given to both the conference and exhibition - conveying the idea of a free and unconstrained arena for exchange it also evokes the idea of an interrupted energy transferal thereby alluding to the hierarchical relationship of centre to margin. Issues such as the interface between Hi-tech and Lo-tech will be addressed as well as the collision between First and Third Worlds' technology and traditions. Artists include amongst others; Mark Bain (USA/Netherlands), Isaac Carlos (Portugal/Netherlands), Stephen Hobbs (South Africa) and Sharmila Samant (India). The conference will be spear-headed by a South African contingent including Alexander Sudheim, Virginia MacKenny and Paul Edmunds.

Conference: October 27, 2000, 9 a.m. - 2 p.m., at Mansfield Hall, Room ms064, in Mansfield Road, Technikon Natal campus

Exhibition Opening: October 27, 2000 at 6 p.m., NSA Gallery, 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood, Durban.
The show closes on November 22.

     See Reviews

For more information contact Greg Streak, Pulse, +27-83-368-8902, smoke@ion.co.za or Storm Janse van Rensburg, NSA Gallery, +27-31-202-3686, iartnsa@mweb.co.za.


Red Eye

Put your best butt forward
for the Butt photo booth
at Red Eye @rt



October Red Eye @rt

This month's Red Eye @rt sees the circus come to town with a host of carnival delights lined up for the evening. Local band Sideshow plus Johannesburg bands Never Machine Forever & Miss September will bring the house down in the Main Gallery while Trancentral DJs Smileyant and Trancemaster spin hard house and uplifting trance in the Circular Gallery.

The Linea Fashion Academy is set to wow the crowds with funky, fresh fashion and don't forget to check out this year's 'Heritage Day 2000' exhibition in galleries 3 and 4.

Performance includes a fire-show by the fabled Roots and Wings Dancers, clowns, stilt walkers, snake performers, the Ocean Rhythmic Gymnastics Team and acrobatic contortionists Nicholas and Jacob Nell of the Rainbow Brothers. Be sure to wear your best boxers and sexiest bikinis as the Butt Photo Booth is back with a vengeance and look out for tattoo/ piercing demos and giveaways by Dave Edwards of Body Art Studio.

Red Eye @rt takes place on Friday, October 6 at 6 p.m. in the Durban Art Gallery. Cover charge is R10 for students and members and R15 for non-members.

Durban Art Gallery, 2nd Floor, City Hall, Smith Street
Tel: (031) 300-6234/5/8
Gallery hours from 09:00 to 12:00


Clive Hardwick

Clive Hardwick
Shows in 'Outpost' in the Main NSA Gallery



'Outpost' in the NSA Main Gallery

'Outpost', curated by NSA director Storm Janse van Rensburg and artists and critic Virginia MacKenny, is back from its Pretoria showing and up in the Main Gallery. It's the first in a series initiated by the NSA Gallery - with the aim of promoting contemporary art from Kwa-Zulu Natal elsewhere in the country. Kwa-Zulu Natal is sometimes affectionately, sometimes disparagingly, known as the 'last outpost' of the British Empire. Its administrative capital, Pietermaritzburg, is still graced with statues of Queen Victoria, still has a street named after Her Majesty and a gentlemen's club which not only takes its name from her, but also adopted the Union Jack as its club flag in order to be able to fly it outside the front door.

In this exhibition, the term 'outpost' is used as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the legacy of KZN's colonial past. At the same time, it refers to, amongst other things, a more contemporary issue: isolation, or perceived isolation, from other centres. Situated between Cape Town and Johannesburg, Durban, instead of occupying a central position on a visitor's journey, is often bypassed. Here, ironically, geographical centrality becomes practical peripherality.

Whilst by no means claiming full representation, this exhibition attempts to dispel myths regarding contemporary practice in this province. A small, selected show, it endeavours to reveal alternative approaches. Most young artists are mobile and transgress boundaries easily, they bring a range of national and international ideas and approaches to the province. In doing so the 'outpost' becomes a frontier edge, able to examine its own boundaries, redefine conventions or inherited presumptions. Less binary readings of 'outpost' allow 'margin' to become a possible place of redefinition; a place of 'in-betweeness', a place of interchange, of 'here' and 'there', inside and outside, a place where old meets new and distinctions between things begin to blur.

Artists include Jeremy Wafer, Langa Magwa, Greg Streak, Lisa du Plessis, Kwezi Guhle, Michael McGarry, Seodin O'Sullivan, Clive Hardwick, Carol Ann-Gainer, Jaap Jacobs and Tito Zungu.

'Outpost' is a NSA Gallery project, and received funding from the KwaZulu Natal Province Arts and Culture Council.

Until October 12
Main Gallery

N S A Galleries, 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood, Durban, South Africa, 4001
Postal address: P.O. Box 37408, Overport, Durban, South Africa, 4067
Tel: (031) 202-2293
Email: iartnsa@mweb.co.za
Website: www.nsagallery.co.za




Tender Moments - An exhibition of recent works by Pascale Chandler in the NSA Mezzanine Gallery

Pascale Chandler, one of Durban's most prolific contemporary painters, is presenting a new body of work in the Mezzanine Gallery. Chandler has put her stamp on the Durban cultural scene as an artist and curator. The series of works takes its cues from ongoing concerns in the artist's oeuvre - Chandler ferociously documents and collects throw-away and everyday objects - in a continuous search of meaning in the discarded and everyday. This documentation and these objects are then mediated - they turn up as provocative paintings and collages. By layering the canvas surfaces with similar images a re-reading of these objects are possible: beautiful, threatening, vulnerable. The new works take its cue from old industrial and household gloves. A series of approximately 30 small paintings are presented to suggest a narrative. This allows for the interpretation of the glove as a symbol of vulnerability and protection. The treating of the subject matter also raises the Victorian ideals of femininity: socially required to signify a lady. With this a series of found objects will be presented.

Until October 12
Mezzanine Gallery

N S A Galleries, 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood, Durban, South Africa, 4001
Postal address: P.O. Box 37408, Overport, Durban, South Africa, 4067
Tel: (031) 202-2293
Email: iartnsa@mweb.co.za
Website: www.nsagallery.co.za


Graeme Williams

Graeme Williams
Johannesburg Zoo 1997
Photograph



The Inner City - Photographs by Graeme Williams in the NSA Park Gallery

Graeme Williams is presenting a body of work recently published in book form ("The Inner City" by Graeme Williams, published by Ravan Press) - and exhibited over two days at Emmerentia Park in Johannesburg. The photographs are a sharp and quirky look at Johannesburg between 1989 and 1999, although most were taken between 1996 and 1998. Surreal and witty, they reveal an underbelly of urban living and experience in Johannesburg. Williams states that "my reason for photographing these particular aspects of Johannesburg was not so much to document the city as to reflect a time in my life".

Williams currently works as a freelance photographer for magazines, newspapers and corporations both in South Africa and abroad. His work has been exhibited locally and internationally and in 1996 he published "The Floor", a book documenting the last days of open outcry trading on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

Until October 12
Park Gallery

N S A Galleries, 166 Bulwer Road, Glenwood, Durban, South Africa, 4001
Postal address: P.O. Box 37408, Overport, Durban, South Africa, 4067
Tel: (031) 202-2293
Email: iartnsa@mweb.co.za
Website: www.nsagallery.co.za


Alan Alborough

Alan Alborough
Standard Bank Young Artist Award Show
Installation detail



PIETERMARITZBURG

Standard Bank Young Artist Prizewinner at the Tatham

Alan Alborough is fulfilling his promise to have his work evolve as it moves around the South African exhibition circuit. In each space, and the Tatham is the third stop for the show, the work, elusive, difficult, and beautiful looks somewhat different. The passage of time is allowing certain images to become imprinted on parts of the work. Check out www.alanalborough.co.za for pictures of the installation as it now is, and reviews and comments from visitors.

Until October 8.

Tatham Art Gallery, Cnr Longmarket St and Commercial Rd, Pietermaritzburg
Tel: (033) 342 1801
Gallery hours: Tuesday - Sunday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.


Cape Gauteng KZN International REVIEWS NEWS ARTBIO WEBSITES PROJECT EXCHANGE FEEDBACK ARCHIVE SEARCH