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Archive: Issue No. 38, October 2000

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MONTHLY ISSUE NO. 38 OCT 2000



24.10.00 Arlene Amaler-Raviv and Dale Yudelman win prize in Commonwealth Photographic Awards
24.10.00 Jeff Chandler 1947-2000
24.10.00 The 34th AICA Conference in London
17.10.00 Winners of 'New Signatures' announced
17.10.00 Willem Boshoff wins Aartvark Award
17.10.00 S A Crafters for Ougadougou
10.10.00 Artist battles failed gallery for payment due.
03.10.00 UBS Art Award 2000 national winners announced at Camouflage.
03.10.00 Paris Conference on the State of Visual Arts in Africa and the Diaspora.
03.10.00 Student work gets a first internet showing in 'New on the Block'.


The Din of Daily Life
Arlene Amaler-Raviv and Dale Yudelman
This series of four images form part of an animation that uses newspaper billboards to communicate with the public on a daily basis.

Guy Tillim

Guy Tillim
Received a Highly Commended award for his photograph of a teacher working under a tree in the hot Eritrean lowlands, communicating under extremely difficult conditions.



Arlene Amaler-Raviv and Dale Yudelman win prize in Commonwealth Photographic Awards
by Sandra Brewster

South African regional winners of the Commonwealth Photographic Awards are Dale Yudelman and Arlene Amaler-Raviv, both from Cape Town. Yudelman, a professional photographer, and Amaler-Raviv, an artist, have been collaborating, combining painting, photography and digital imaging, and exhibiting together for the past three years. Born in Johannesburg, Yudelman has a lot of experience in photojournalism, covering South Africa's social and political issues from 1979 until 1985. He has worked in London and Los Angeles and now lives in Cape Town. Amaler-Raviv has taught and lectured at the University of Pretoria, Fuba and Vaca in Katlehong. After living and working in the Netherlands she moved to Cape Town where she now lives and paints images of modern city life. Although recently being misquoted in the Cape Argus as having won R32 000 rather than the actual R3 000 which was their prize, they are very proud of their win and excited about the exhibition coming up on January 30, 2001 in London.

Utilising the theme of 'communication', the photograph chosen is part of a short animation film entitled The Din of Daily Life, recently shown in the Association of Visual Arts in Cape Town - one of 200 works shown in this exhibition. Amahler-Raviv and Yudelman, taking the risk of being rejected from the competition, used four images as one - a series of scenes of the city with a newspaper billboard attached to a street pole in each, and a passer by. In one a homeless child is wearing a mask of Madiba, the billboard reads 'Mandela's last session'. Other billboards read 'Baby's amazing bus stop birth', 'Take a walk through the city' and 'Life after dark on city's streets'. "The piece is about the information gathered as one walks through the streets... about communication between people and the communication between a photographer and an artist", stated Amaler-Raviv.

Two other South Africans received Highly Commended awards - Brenton Maart and Guy Tillim. Maart's image shows verbal and body language in the inner-city of Johannesburg - men and women in discussion. Tillim's, a temporary school at a displacement camp in Eritrea, May 2000. A teacher is working under a tree in the hot Eritrean lowlands, communicating under extremely difficult conditions.

The event was sponsored by The Commonwealth Press Union (CPU), the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association (CBA) and the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation (CTO). The overall winners are Jamaican-born Clay Davidson from Toronto, Canada, and Anjan Sarkar from Calcutta, India.

Work was chosen from 600 entries from over 20 commonwealth countries and judges included World Press Photographer of the Year Award winner Tim Page, Malaysian born photographer, Cat de Rham, and former British Telecom Managing Director, Sir Michael Bett.

The winning photographs will be displayed in London from 30 January 2001 for two months and can be viewed on the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association website at http://www.cba.org.uk/1awards.htm


Jeff Chandler

Jeff Chandler
Ink drawing

Jeff Chandler

Jeff Chandler at work



Jeff Chandler 1947-2000
by Virginia MacKenny

Jeff Chandler was a reassuringly constant presence on the Natal arts scene for the last twenty years or so. Born 1947, in Molteno, in the Karoo, he continued to refer to himself as 'just a simple boy from the Karoo', and retained an earthy straightforwardness that actively eschewed the artifice of city sophistication. His humble claim, however, belied the diversity of his engagement and activity within the South African arts arena.

Gaining his MAFA at Rhodes in 1975 he moved to Natal in 1977 to lecture in drawing and painting at Technikon Natal. Passionate about his disciplines, eager to instill a similar enthusiasm in his students, Jeff's drawing classes were often challenging for both students and models alike as demanding poses with rope and suspension devices filled the drawing studio. His enjoyment of the female form was legendary and the model's budget was often overtaxed as more and more female figures filled the studios. Frequently challenged by feminist critics he held unswervingly to his enthusiasm, undeterred by theoretical constraints or the restrictions of political correctness.

It was a similar undaunted devotion which kept him constantly attempting to find a vehicle for the voices of artists in a country where arenas for cultural discourse are limited Jeff was involved in a number of initiatives to create an arts magazine. Editor of GDUNK, inspiration behind the single edition of 'Ventilator' and finally man at the helm for Newsart, the mouthpiece for the Natal Society of Arts, he successfully bullied and cajoled contributors to give up their time and energy to write and thus help stimulate debate in the service of the arts.

Seeing himself able to contribute on other fronts, Jeff's unstinting involvement at both provincial and national level meant he spent innumerable hours on numerous committees. President of the Natal Society of Arts for many years and later the national president for the South African Association of Arts, because he believed it needed to address the damage of apartheid, he applied himself to the needs of disadvantaged communities. This saw him spearheading the development of the 'Outreach Programme' at the NSA and successfully setting up art programmes for street children at Mariannhill, children's hospital wards and girls at Wylie House.

His belief in the NSA itself, a place that artists could call their own, saw him as the driving force, along with Mike McMeekan, in the establishment of one of the finest non-profit galleries in the country which continues to supply a diverse calendar of local, national and international exhibitions to the Natal public.

Jeff's commitment to the arts was self-evident. His persona epitomised that of the romantic artist: sensual, engaging, poetic, passionate and embattled. He spoke, wrote and lived art and will be remembered more than fondly by those that knew him or who benefited from his energy, his acute eye or philosophical view on the world.




The 34th AICA Conference in London: Virginia MacKenny reports back.

The International Association of Art Critics in conjunction with the Department of Visual Arts, Goldsmiths College and the Tate Modern held its 34 th Conference in London in September. The conference brief was to 'examine the relationship between art and the wider visual culture, with particular reference to the living and evolving model of the metropolis and its institutions'. To this end, the programme was divided into 11 sessions with the key topics:

i) Art and Representation of Visual Culture
ii) The Role of the Museum of Modern Art: Priests? Educators? Iconoclasts?
iii) The City as a Vehicle for Visual Representation
iv) The Cultural Power of the Curator
v) Art Criticism - Triangular Mutterings
vi) Art Education - Giving Permission for What?

Charles Jencks' inaugural address in the Sainsbury wing at the National Gallery set some of the parameters for the broad categories of discussion for the conference. His topic 'Museum: Between Cathedral and Shopping Mall' attempted to examine the role of the museum in contemporary society. He gave the museum seven basic functions:

i) preserve artifacts
ii) memoralise events
iii) educate and spread values
iv) substitute for church/religion
v) entertainment centre
vi) venue for spectacle and profit - note blockbuster exhibitions
vii) bank - holder of authenticity and value

Jencks, presumably aiming to set up some controversy, criticised what he termed the 'Monty Pythonesque' thematic hanging at the Tate Modern and the plague of large art museums across the world, coining a term derived from the Guggenheim in Bilbao - 'bilbaoism'. Much energy was expended on the first day discussing the functions, both practical and symbolic of such museums and Jencks, himself reinforced the traditional distinction between artist as experiencer and curator as interpreter. He did not, however, engage in what was to become a central theme of the next day's programme - the rise of artist-curators.

Throughout the conference the breakdown of traditional distinctions or hierarchies formed a central focus of discussion. Alexander Jakimovich, Visiting Professor from Russia at the Free University, Berlin, spoke convincingly of the art and literature of the twentieth century as one of collapse and breakdown - a failure of civilization. Citing Walter Benjamin's version of modernity as a catastrophic process which encapsulated downfall, crepuscule and disintegration and the modernist artist as one who saw the cultural landscape as one of ruin, he described the Western cultural paradigm as a degenerate, but grandiose one where the artist needs to be meta-human, extra-human or super-human in order to meet such denial of meaning and absence of value. Ironically he noted that the success of institutions, such as Tate Modern, is built on the very artifacts that signal such collapse.

Many of the papers analysed, reassessed and provided alternative readings to our tendency to polarise the world into traditional binaries. Papers dealing with post-feminism and the post-human (Michael Jackson being used as an exemplar of such a condition) abounded. The hierarchies though often remained - parallel sessions which ran for many of the topics were assigned to a room which was not equipped as well as the Starr Auditorium where the main sessions ran. Ironically, for instance, it failed to provide translation for speakers where it was most needed. Often coming from developing countries, speakers battled their way through their papers in an English that at times was almost incomprehensible and which would have been far better served by being read in their primary languages and translated.

Some papers such as Annie Paul's 'The Enigma of Survival: Travelling Beyond the Expat Gaze in Caribbean Art' had a particular relevance to South Africa. She questioned her own politics of location and practice as an art critic from India living in the Caribbean. She noted that in the Caribbean, much as in South Africa, most critics come from an expatriate community and therefore a white dominance in cultural visibility continues. Speaking from a position both inside and outside her cultural context her observations highlighted the problem of 'external' eyes on the cultural production of any country. Many of the speakers, particularly those coming from peripheral countries outside the core of the US or central Europe, felt that visiting curators come to such countries with a fixed and marketable idea that would 'sell back home'. In this way stereotypes tend to be proliferated and there was an increasing sense of frustration that visiting curators were insensitive to the complexities or nuanced readings of a situation. Such a position it was generally felt could be avoided with greater consultation.

Answering some of these issues, Professor Sarat Maharaj's paper 'Dislocations: On Cultural Translation' was one of the highlights of the conference. Delivering it fluently, he gave a nuanced and insightful view into ways of thinking about cultural transfer. Since cultural transfer has to fit into a 'mega-circulatory' system that necessitates exchange many difficulties spring from translating 'self' to 'other' and vice versa. Using the metaphor of the mythical island of Serendip where the sand from one side is continually blown over to the other in a process of constant self-transformation, he spoke of cultural translation as one of dynamic 'double production'. Attempting to translate any 'original' is virtually impossible as it is already in a process of transmutation. Whilst national stereotypes are, on the one hand, being endorsed and underlined, at the same time there is dissent against such national cliches. Such 'double production' is evident in the 'McDonaldisation' of the world. McDonalds establishes itself everywhere; on one level instantly recognisable, it, at the same time, is changed by its different contexts. In India, for instance, it becomes Indian - Indians resist the use of beef (at the heart of the MacDonald's self-image) in their burgers so soya is used instead. Thus whilst a global system appears to homogenise the world, dissent and resistance produce and maintain difference.

Ever prone to digging up and revivifying arcane vocabulary, Maharaj used the medieval word 'stochacity', which means 'speculative', to describe the process of cultural transfer or translation. Instead of attempting to fix meaning one is involved in a conjectural process - a process not necessarily concerned with the finding of truth, but the play of probabilities. Such an approach avoids the delegitimisation of traditional and indigenous forms of knowledge in colonised countries and is a counter to the 'homicidal nature' of Modernism with its goal of the erasure of difference in the search for the universal. Seeing cultural identity as a state of continual constitution or 'becoming' a translator's job is to engage with the process of continuing difference. To avoid 'readymade consciousness' we need to approach the world with a xenophilic response - where the love of the other allows for more positive possibilities of exchange.


Huntley Reid

Huntley Reid
The Great Bliss
Acrylic



Winners announced in MWeb 'New Signatures' Competition

'New Signatures' is an exhibition of work selected from submissions by artists who have not yet had a solo show, and the idea is to encourage emerging talent. This year's exhibition opened on October 11 at the Association of Arts Gallery in Bellville, and the winners in various categories were announced.

The prize of R1 000 for best overall work went to Huntley Reid, with winners in other categories each receiving R500. These were: Kilmany-Jo Hunt, Jeanette Blignaut, Kirby van der Merwe, Taryn Cohen and Jacki McInnes-Graham.

Also on exhibition is work by four established artists chosen to each produce an art work in their individual studios. M-Web relayed the progress of their work from inception to completion by means of specially installed webcams. These works can be viewed and bids placed online at http://www.thelot.co.za

Visit the exhibition at www.signatures.mweb.co.za

Exhibition closes November 2

More info: Debbie Odendaal: 918-2287

The Arts Association of Bellville
Library Centre
Carel van Aswegen Street
Bellville
7530


Willem Boshoff

Willem Boshoff
(B)Reachings
Mixed media
Installation view


Willem Boshoff wins Aartvark Award in Potchefstroom

An installation entitled (B)Reachings in which Willem Boshoff investigates different divination practices in Africa and Europe has won the artist the Aartvark Award at this year's Aardklop National Arts Festival in Potchefstroom.

The Aartvark Award, presented on the last evening of the festival, Saturday September 30, rewards the most innovative contribution in any medium to the festival and was instituted last year by Plus, arts and entertainment supplement to Beeld. "My work is much less popular than theatre productions and it is incredible even to have been considered. I feel happy to have won," the artist said.

Boshoff not only got a unique trophy for his efforts, but also R5000. Neil le Roux, convenor of the panel of judges, said that Boshoff's work did indeed push the envelope at the festival - the primary criterium for the award.

For more info, call Dirk Jordaan at (011) 713-9695
E-mail: djordaan@beeld.com




South African Crafters to Ouagadougou - SA Cultural industry launches itself in West Africa

South Africans will soon be raising the dust at the Salon Internationale de l'Artisanat de Ouagadougou in a threefold participation: a high profile national stand at the salon's main pavilion; representation at an All African craft exhibition/competition and a series of performances by the Victory Sanqoba Theatre Company from Alexandra Township, Gauteng.

In the Pavillon de la Creativite's exhibition/competition, eight South Africans have been selected to honour Panafrican excellence. In total, 80 crafters' work from all over the African continent will represent six different categories: jewelry, ceramic, furniture, decorative objects, leather and textile.

South African finalists are: Simon Masilo (Katlehong), Madoda Fani (Cape Town), Charmaine Haines (East London), Majolandile Dyalvani (Cape Town), Sibongile Nkomo (Durban), the Ndwandwe Family (Hlabisa), Charles Norman (Wilderness) and Justin Richardson (Johannesburg) representing the categories of ceramics, basket weaving and decorative objects. Substantial cash prizes are on offer with winners in each category receiving 10 000 French Francs. Runners up will either receive cash prizes or bursary awards. South African Richard Sparks of the well known design retail chain, Bright House has been invited by exhibition curator, Cristophe de Contensen of Fondation Olorun, an art centre in Ouagadougou, to join a bench of eminent jurors who will select the prize winners for SIAO 2000.

On the national stand, fifteen craftworkers from all over South Africa have been selected to travel to Ouagadougou to represent the country at this its inaugural exhibition of craft promotion. The salon, arguably Africa's most prominent platform for arts and craft, offers an opportunity for professional buyers, collectors and art lovers from Europe, the United States and Africa to interact with Africa's craft community and related industries. The fifteen craftworkers that have been selected to represent South Africa will be part of a 'living exhibit' stand demonstrating their skills during the Salon. In addition, the mission aims to export to the Salon a library of information about the South Africa craft industry and asks those who would like to take advantage of this unique opportunity, to send, to the Mission Co-ordinator, information in the form of pamphlets, posters and catalogues that they wish to be included in the stand.

SIAO 2000 is in its twelfth year and takes place in a spacious fairground on the outskirts of Ougadougou. Funding is provided by the Department of Trade and Industry, the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology, the National Arts Council, the SIAO Administration and the European Commission.

SIAO 2000 runs from October 27 - November 5, 2000. For further information or if you would like to travel to Burkina Faso, please call Rachel Browne (Badia Trading) Tel: 011 487 1458, Fax: 011 487 1406, Email: rachel@pix.co.za or Joseph Mathe (DACST) Tel: 012 337 8073, Fax: 012 328 7530.


Sean Slemon

Sean Slemon


Artist battles failed gallery for payment due

When Artsupermart was sold in summer 1998 to Michael Willemse and Grant Griffiths, the goal of the new owners was to promote younger or marginalized artists in Cape Town by allowing them access to the market. This goal failed to materialise when the gallery ran into financial trouble and had to close down in March this year after falling into debt. These problems included the pulling out of a Cape Town company that agreed to partially sponsor the rental of the premises as of November 1, 1999. After making this agreement in March the company pulled out in October. Willemse stated that "this proved to be a devastating blow from which we attempted, through to lease-end of March this year, to recover."

Artist Sean Slemon is presently trying to retrieve money for his two works that were sold by Artsupermart in November, 1999. It appears that Slemon's and other artists' works were sold without any money going to the artists. Slemon wrote to ArtThrob's feedback column, and later spoke to the press. In the August 23 and 24 issues of the Cape Times, reports suggested that the pair had absconded with money due to artists, and could not be traced. A letter to the press was subsequently written by the gallery owners, aiming to present an accurate picture as they believe that media reports were not based totally on fact. This was never published. Griffiths writes that Willemse was hijacked by a notorious Cape Flats gang. Because of this and other financial reasons, the gallery had to close down and artists were contacted to pick up their work. "Of a total of around 400 works, only 10% remained uncollected by closure." The letter denied media claims that they (Willemse and Griffiths) "fooled" and "destroyed" artists, and "defrauded the industry". Willemse writes that efforts were made to contact the artists to the extent that other galleries were contacted where they have also exhibited. The remaining works in the gallery, after closure, were being stored at a friend's flat.

The Artsupermart system had been to issue each artist a receipt with the artist agreeing to make monthly rental payments on art stored at the gallery. This brings to light another reason why the gallery fell into debt. Apparently some artists were not making their payments. Rather than chasing them down, it seems Artsupermart was simply losing more money.

Taking everything into consideration, Slemon is still very angry. After trying to get in touch with Willemse and Griffiths for quite some time, Willemse finally called Slemon with what the artist described as a "sob story" about not having any funds at all. In a recent correspondence, Slemon informed Willemse that "he is not willing to wait much longer before he goes to a solicitor. Others are keen on going also." Slemon is in touch with approximately 25 artists who haven't been given any payment for their work. And quite a few artists haven't been given their work back. An approximate range of how much is owed to each artist is R8 000 to R10 000.

People are still phoning Slemon about this issue and some artists have retrieved their work. Although Slemon respects the fact that Willemse and Griffiths may have had prolems with business, he believes they did not take responsibility for their actions and simply took advantage of the artists. Slemon can be reached at 083 340 7381.

Presently a list of artists who still have work stored with Artsupermart is published on www.artsupermart.com. Michael Willemse and Grant Griffiths can be reached by email: noartstolen@hotmail.com. Artwork/s not claimed by September 30, 2000 are incuring storage costs of R50 per month effective from October 1. Work that is not collected by December 31, 2000 will be sold to defray costs.


Mandla Mabila

Mandla Mabila
Behind the Shadow in Front of the Light
Painting


UBS Art Award 2000 national winners announced at Camouflage

The UBS Art Award is a brand new international prize for painting. Instigated by the eponymous Swiss bank, entries are solicited through prestigious art schools, of which two in each of the ten eligible countries are invited to submit work by senior or postgraduate students. The University of the Witwatersrand and Michaelis Art School at the University of Cape Town are the two local 'hot spots', and between them, managed to scrape together fourteen entries (Japan's two selected art schools had a combined total of some 250 entries!), most of which are medium to large-scale. The national winners and overall winners are selected at an exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in London in December this year. Of the entries submitted, the three chosen artists were clearly deserving. Mandla Mabila's Behind the Shadow In Front of the Light; Dorothee Kreutzfeldt's When I Was a Boy I; and Kevin McCauley's Great Big Portrait were the three paintings selected for round two. All artists travel to London for the final show. The winner receives 30 000 Swiss francs, the remaining nine national winners receive 10 000 Swiss francs, and the remaining twenty finalists receive a commemorative gift of 2 000 Swiss francs.

September 30 - October 7

Camouflage Art.Culture.Politics nucleus johannesburg africa, 140 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, 2193
Tel: (011) 447 5461,br> Fax: (011) 447 0651
Email: gallery@camouflage.org.za
Website: www.camouflage.org.za


Paris

Networking: Sonia Boyce (London) and Charlotte Elias (Trinidad)


Paris

Ecole des Beaux Arts, St. Germain
site of the conference


Paris Conference on the State of Visual Arts in Africa and the Diaspora
by Sue Williamson

To what extent are the artists of Africa and the African diaspora marginalised on the world art scene? Can long term goals for increasing the visibility of these artists be set? How can the consciousness of the rest of the world towards Africa be shifted? These were some of the issues debated at a three-day conference held at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris last month.

The conference was organised under the coordination of Florence Alexis by the AFAA, Afrique en Creation, a Paris-based organisation dedicated to showcasing the culture of Africa in Europe, and supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation. A number of the big name speakers originally scheduled did not arrive - including Olu Oguibe, Okwui Enwezor, who called in from Chicago to apologise, and Jean Hubert Martin, curator of the current Biennale de Lyons, but perhaps this gave a greater opportunity for lesser known speakers to make their voices heard. under the overall direction of Salah Hassan of Cornell University, editor of NKA magazine.

The major topics set out for discussion were theoretical and philosophical issues related to contemporary African art, artists workshops and residencies; festivals and biennales; museums and galleries, public and private funding; documentation, publishing and archiving; art criticism, and the market for African production. An interesting mix of topics - and as is so often the case with conferences, perhaps too far reaching. No sooner had one panel completed its papers and a few questions been raised, than the next speakers took their place on the podium.

Certain points were made in different ways by a number of speakers - one of these being the importance of developing a discourse based in Africa and the diaspora. As Pieter Tjabbes, director of the Sao Paulo Biennale said, "... the involvement of local art critics and academics is essential for gaining a more profound vision of African art, instead of always relying on foreign critics who judge Africa from a Western point of view." Filmmaker Mbye Cham warned against the buzzword, globalisation, asking, "What options and strategies are available for people, Africans, in general, and African filmmakers and artists in particular, in the face of a seemingly triumphant globalisation shot through with large dose of Americanisms? Capitulation? Engagement? Rejection? At what costs and benefits?"

African American artist Emma Amos asked, "Will we artists, the multi-national multi-racial descendants of the African diaspora, ever find ourselves in the blithe art world of the purely conceptual, expressive and minimal? As a black artist, I continually question my content-centred work, and despair that it is not 'serene' and 'cool'. The old question, 'What is black art? Is never settled, nor is the larger question, 'Who's looking?' "

On the publications panel, Barbara Murray of Zimbabwe called for each country in Africa to try and produce at least one magazine to document the art of that country, and I delivered a paper called Art and Documention: how cyberspace can fill in the gaps - an attempt to evaluate the important contribution a site like ArtThrob can make in this area, while pointing out that the web is still available only to a relatively small and privileged group.

An extremely useful panel was one from representatives of funding agencies, Els van der Plaas of the Netherlands based Prince Claus Fund, established in 1996 to support cultural activity in Latin America, Africa and the Caribbean, and Damien Pwono of the Ford Foundation. A highlight of the second day was the showing by Brit artist Keith Piper of his video on the subject of slavery and an irony of the conference was that though Piper was on a panel looking at new media in a city which is a centre of the art world, no computer was available to allow his interactive CDRom to be projected.

On the final morning of the conference, the proceedings and main points made by the speakers of the previous two days were summarised by Hassan and Ivoirean curator/critic Yacouba Konate. A great deal of valuable and thought-provoking information and commentary came out in this way, but the proposing and evaluating of long term goals did not take place.

However, the second major goal of the conference was to facilitate networking amongst the delegates, who represented many of the countries of Africa, some of the Caribbean and Latin American countries, and black artworld people from Britain and the United States. On this score, at least, many new and potentially fruitful connections were made. And as a book of the conference papers is planned, doubtless some of the points made will find their way into shaping the thinking on art in Africa in the future.


Jurie Senekal

Jurie Senekal
Untitled
Video still


Jurie Senekal

Jurie Senekal
Untitled
Video still


New on the Block
by Sue Williamson

Who are the future up and comers of the art world? For this story, final year students at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town were invited to submit images and statements on their current work. ArtThrob made a selection, using freshness of approach as a guideline. In a few years time, these students may be young art stars, gaining a foothold on the international circuit. Or you may never hear of them again. See what you think.

Jurie Senekal

Statement: "The reality of the landscape has changed. We are no longer invited to savour the true perspective of our lives. We live as outcasts of our own consciousness. Stilled in the oncoming headlights we have acquired an artificialized sensitivity. Lingering in a plasticized dream."

ArtThrob comment: The stills look interesting. In spite of the copy.Look forward to seeing the video.

Edward Young

Edward Young
Shooting From the Hip


Edward Young

Edward Young
Shooting From the Hip


Edward Young: performance documented with photographs

Greg Smith conducts an interview:

GS: In one of your recent projects you have been noticed brandishing a tape-measure in various social situations. Could you tell me more about this project?

EY: Yes Greg, I label this project Shooting from the hip'. What I was doing basically was walk around in public spaces, measuring the respective distances between myself and randomly chosen individuals. I then added up the distances of my study, which came to be a total of 16,574 metres. I now know exactly how much I have been distancing myself from other people lately and I can start working on my

GS: You have stated in the past that your work deals in part with ' intimacy'. Do these empirical gestures have a personal or emotional dimension?

EY: I suppose that people have problems. I don't know what they are really. But, I think it has something to do with love and guilt and forgiveness.

GS: If you could dip into your statistics, could you tell me in what situations your smallest and largest measurements were obtained.

EY: My smallest distance was 71.4 cm. It was a girl called Carla. I don't think that she had a lot of problems with love at that stage. She seemed very happy and eager. She even held the other end of the measuring-tape for me.

My largest distance was 131 cm. It was a security officer standing next to a traffic officer. He was a very angry man. I had to convince him that it was not for any newspaper.

ArtThrob comment: Nice performance, but get a better photographer, Edward.

Frances Saunders

Frances Saunders
Daniel 2000
Oil on canvas
80 X 80cm


Frances Saunders

Frances Saunders

Enamel on board
80 X 80cm


Frances Saunders

Statement: "Optical-candy. Fleeting, delicious, elusive, aesthetic pleasures. Blissful sentiments."

ArtThrob comment: For those with a sweet tooth.

Cameron Platter

Cameron Platter
Untitled
Oil on canvas
25 x 30 cm each in a series of 50


Cameron Platter

Cameron Platter
Care
'Returning the Gaze' series commissioned for
Cape Town One City Festival in September 2000.


Cameron Platter

Statement: "I prefer not to describe my work - letting it speak on my behalf."

ArtThrob comment: The concept behind the 'Returning the Gaze' project was to examine racism - making an anagram of the word 'race' and turning it into 'care' was a sharp idea.


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