Archive: Issue No. 66, February 2003

15.02.03 Old and New at the Sanlam Art Gallery
15.02.03 Thupelo Workshop exhibition
15.02.03 Deryck Healey at the AVA
15.02.03 Bloot at Art. B
01.02.03 YDESiRE at the Castle of Good Hope
01.02.03 Robert Hodgins at Joáo Ferreira
01.02.03 Kevin Brand at Bell-Roberts
01.02.03 Ruth Sacks at Joáo Ferreira
01.02.03 Tours of the Kentridge exhibition
01.02.03 Stefan Carstens at Greatmore Studios
01.02.03 Voices from the Summit by Yasser Booley
01.02.03 New shows at the AVA
16.12.02 Tours of the Kentridge Retrospective for the deaf
15.11.02 William Kentridge Retrospective at the SANG

01.02.03 Spirit of the Place at the US Art Gallery

'Old and new', is the name given to an exhibition of newly acquired and restored works from the Sanlam Art Collection. Over the past two years Sanlam has acquired an impressive 100 works for its already extensive collection. These range from a classical realist bronze by Anton van Wouw to installation works by Leora Faber and Jan van der Merwe. Recently, the collection has endeavoured to acquire more contemporary work, in particular that by younger artists. Restored works to be seen include a series of hand-coloured lithographs by Irma and two paintings by Tretchikoff, possibly the only originals in a South African collection easily accessible to the public.

Opening: 7pm, Tuesday February 11
Closing: March 14

Sanlam Art Gallery, 2 Strand Road, Bellville
Tel: (021) 947 3359
Fax: (021) 947 3838
Email: stefan.hundt@sanlam.co.za
Hours: Mon - Fri 9am - 4.45pm

Thupelo Cape Town will be holding their annual 12 day intensive interactive workshop with 22 artists from South Africa, Egypt, Australia, Congo, Trinidad, France, Lebanon, Morocco, Kenya, Zambia and Botswana. The workshop runs from February 6 to February 20 at the Goedgedacht Trust Conference Centre near Malmesbury. Thupelo workshops are organised by artists and are initiated in response to a need for interaction between themselves. They are aimed at bringing together artists from different regions of South Africa with international artists to create, share and discuss their works, techniques and the different forms that art-making takes.

Following the workshop will be an exhibition the South African National Gallery Annexe.

Opening by artist and trustee of Thupelo, Lionel Davis at 12pm, Sunday February 23

Sunday February 23 - Friday February 28.

South African National Gallery Annexe, Hatfield Street, Gardens
Tel: (021) 447 9699
Email: artmore@mweb.co.za

Deryck Healey is an artist based both in the UK and Durban. His latest exhibition, following 'Objets Trouv�' which was very well received in Durban at the NSA a few years ago, is entitled 'Beach'. Divided into three and taking over the entire AVA, Healey has subtitled each part 'Beach Babes', 'Beached' and 'Bach Spirits'. All are gicle� prints from photographs and photo collages. The first is a series of (you guessed it!) women in bathing costumes with a slight twist. The second part documents curious objects Healey has found on the beach and the last takes a less-defined approach, capturing photographic moments and process, sometimes in an abstract way, sometimes not.

Opening: 6pm, Monday February 24
Closing: March 15

Association for Visual Arts, 35 Church Street, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 424 7436
Fax: (021) 423 2637
Email: avaart@iafrica.com
Website: www.ava.co.za
Hours: Mon - Fri 10am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 1pm

'Bloot' is the name given to this exhibition by three women Kim Boezaart, Marlise Keith and Zhan� Warren. The title is an Afrikaans word meaning 'expose' or 'reveal'. Boezaart works in silver and platinum creating delicate lace-like adornment pieces that explore the female image, and issues such as ownership, chastity, sexual desire, pleasure and beauty. Keith works in various media, especially ink on paper, canvas and board. Her work focuses on everyday objects and images which she uses to contemplate existence itself. Warren produces sculptural-installation pieces that symbolise the processes of revealing, unpacking and dealing with repressed memories and emotions. Her use of hand-made paper emulates the psychological action of confronting hurtful memories and unwanted emotions by deconstructing them.

To be opened by Sandra Hannekom 6.30pm, Wednesday, February 12

Opening: February 12
Closing: March 13

Art.b., Library Centre, Carel van Aswegen Street, Bellville
Tel: (021) 918 2301/2287
Fax: (021) 918 2083
Email: artb@icon.co.za
Hours: Mon - Fri 8am - 8pm, Sat 9am - 5pm

YDESiRE is the 4th Softserve art event, the one-night inter-media art happenings produced under the auspices of Public Eye. Previous events of this kind have been held at the SANG, but the Castle of Good Hope more than proved its worth as a venue with December's MCQP costume party. The Castle's wonderful textures, spaces and history will provide an unmatchable backdrop to this unique event. The venue will be transformed by performance, installation and other wild artistic collaborative hybrids.

YDESiRE takes its name from the generous sponsorship of The Young Designers Emporium (who were the major sponsors of YDETAG, the previous incarnation of the Softserve events), and the theme of the event - desire. initiated by art group Public Eye and co-sponsored by Good Hope FM, YDESiRE seeks to draw new audiences to art and culture, and promote local talent and site-specific public events. Money raised by the project will benefit iziko in the acquisition of new works by young, contemporary South African artists and will go towards a bursary for previously disadvantaged people to study art.

The entire Castle will be used for YDESiRE- the moat, the dungeons, including 4 large indoor art galleries and three outdoor spaces. Participants include: Dorothee Kreutzfeldt, Jean Brundrit, Kevin Brand, Kathryn Smith, Christian Nerf, Doreen Southwood, Pete Eastman, Matthew Hindley, Ed Young, Cobus van Bosch, students from CAP, as well as a number of SA artists living abroad. Collaborations between writers, engineers, hackers, opera singers and architects will abound in one of the most beautiful, culturally loaded and oldest buildings in Cape Town. Artworks to look forward to include Margot Saffer's Six degrees of sexual separation - a text map of the interpersonal connections of Cape Town; Lyndi Sales's Victorian peep-show boxes; The Odd Enjinears in the Donker gat and Japanese noise-artist WA.

James Webb and Kim Stern, both well-known young artists/ curators in their own right, who have taken on the task of planning arguably one of the biggest one-night art parties in the country, are curating YDESiRE. The event starts at 6pm and the after-party will take place within the Castle grounds under the careful ministrations of Cape Town's finest DJs.

Tickets are limited and will be available from February 1 through Computicket. For more information visit www.yde.co.za or contact ydesire@yde.co.za

Starting 6pm, February 22

Castle of Good Hope, Darling Street, Cape Town
Tel: (021) - 797-8002
Fax: (021) - 797-4543
083 285-7571 (Kim Stern)
082 371-833 (James Webb)
Email: ydesire@yde.co.za
Website: www.yde.co.za

Robert Hodgins shows a collection of paintings in oil at Jo�o Ferreira. Hodgins remains one of South Africa's most accomplished and tirelessly innovative painters whose work, in the course of his long career, still retains an extraordinary ability to inspire and astonish, to transform and amuse. Coupled with a distinctive sense of shape, his extraordinary use of colour produces paintings, which are always fresh and incisive.

Chiefly figurative and with subject matter ranging from the traditional to the quirky, his commentaries are insightful piercings into the territories of human desire and the nature of being. Hodgins delights in the human figure, 'how it moves, stands solitary or in groups, how it clothes itself - as well as the easy way it reveals corruption and falsities, despairs and defeats.'

Opening 6pm, Monday February 10
Closes: March 1

See EDITIONS FOR ARTTHROB

João Ferreira Gallery, 80 Hout Street, Cape Town
Tel: 021 423 5403 or 082 490 2977
Fax: 021 423 2136
Email: info@joaoferreiragallery.com
Website: www.joaoferreiragallery.com
Hours: Tue - Fri 10am - 6pm, Sat 10am - 2pm

Kevin Brand's new show '4 X 4' comprises work that he exhibited last year at Aardklop, the Potchefstroom arts festival. The body of work continues Brand's exploration of the 'banal', which began with the bronzes, entitled Balm of Banal, that he showed at the Bell-Roberts last year. Although Brand is best known as a sculptor whose work tackles political and ideological issues head-on, his recent work has seen him retreat from this position and examine issues which are more personal and everyday. He has always felt free to move from one medium or process to another and, as such, painting is not that radical a departure.

Where his Balm of Banal works saw him creating a series of assemblages made from everyday items such as egg boxes and bars of soap, here Brand takes such 'neutral' subject matter and renders it in a series of monochromatic paintings. in what has become a typical device for him, the paintings are pixellated, which is a way he says 'of removing the hand'. That the images are taken from such apparently 'neutral' sources _ mechanical manuals, postcards or the housing section of the newspaper _ seems to further enhance this sort of removal from the source of his production. Brand though, through his acute visual sensibility, engagement in the process of art-making and his strategic approach to this practice, has managed to make a series of works, which are intriguing, evocative and a little unsettling.

Kevin Brand has exhibited widely both in South Africa and abroad and his work is held in many private, public and corporate collections. He is a former winner of the FNB Vita Art award and lives and works in Cape Town.

Opening 6pm, February 5
Closes: March 1

Bell-Roberts Art Gallery, 199 Loop Street, Cape Town
Tel: 021 422 1100
Fax: 021 423 3135
Email: suzette@bell-roberts.com
Website: www.bell-roberts.com
Hours: Mon - Fri 8.30am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 1pm

'Works in Wax and Plastic' by young artist Ruth Sacks comprises a body of sculptural work spanning the last two years, which she spent both in London and Cape Town. Made with wax, plastics and found objects, the sculptures and installations are theatrical and sensuous. They deal with the themes of loss and renewal, and seek to attain the underlying sense of dignity that can be found in banal objects like clothes, furniture and discarded food containers.

Flowers are used as a symbol of endurance and tenacity throughout the artist's work. Sacks draws attention to the various interpretations of 'wax' - a viscous, heat-sensitive material as well as a verb meaning to 'become gradually larger, more numerous, stronger, or more intense' - and plastic - as 'capable of being shaped and formed' and 'easily influenced; impressionable'.

Sacks graduated from Michaelis School of Fine Art in 1999.

Opening: 6pm, January 21
Closes: February 23

João Ferreira Gallery, 80 Hout Street, Cape Town
Tel: 021 423 5403 or 082 490 2977
Fax: 021 423 2136
Email: info@joaoferreiragallery.com
Website: www.joaoferreiragallery.com
Hours: Tue - Fri 10am - 6pm, Sat 10am - 2pm

Friends of the South African National Gallery have organised two more opportunities to get better acquainted William Kentridge's retrospective, currently drawing crowds at the SANG.

5.30pm, 18 February in the Barry Lecture Theatre, S A Museum - Emma Bedford, Head of the Art Division of iziko Museums, presents an illustrated talk on her recent visit to Egypt along with an abbreviated version of her paper - delivered at a colloquium in Alexandria - based on Kentridge's 1999 film Stereoscope. This is Kentridge's 8th animated film in which he, once again, ponders the fate of the nation.

R20 for members and R30 for guests.

10 am, Sunday February 23 - SANG curators Kathy Grundlingh and Joe Dolby will lead a walkabout of the exhibition, discussing - amongst other things - the logistics involved in mounting an exhibition of this magnitude as well as its educational importance. The event is followed by brunch and costs R45 for members and R50 for guests.

There are also two remaining tours of the exhibition for the deaf with a sign-language interpreter at 1.05pm, February 13 and March 6. Call Vuyile 467-4660 or Julia 481-3800.

Inquiries: Lizzie (021) 467-4662 (from Tue - Thur)
Email: cquerido@iziko.org.za

South African National Gallery, Government Avenue, Company Gardens, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 465 1628
Fax: (021) 461 0045
Email: ebedford@iziko.org.za
Website: www.museums.org.za/sang
Hours: Tues - Sun 10am - 5pm

Stefan Carstens presents a collection of sculptures and drawings.

Opening: 6pm, February 3

Greatmore Studios, 47-49 Greatmore Street, Woodstock
Tel: (021) 447 9699
Email: artmore@mweb.co.za Website: www.greatmoreart.org
Hours: Mon-Fri 9 a.m � 4 p.m

Wonder, Mongezi Gum and Lonwabo Kilani and Vivian van Blerk show at the AVA this month. Wonder presents an instalation entitled 'L.T.D.', van Blerk is showing recent photographs, while Gum and Kilani are exhibiting recent work by each of them.

Opening 6pm, Monday February 3 with the only performance of his installation L.T.D. by Wonder

Opening: February 3
Closing: February 22

Association for Visual Arts, 35 Church Street, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 424 7436
Fax: (021) 423 2637
Email: avaart@iafrica.com
Website: www.ava.co.za
Hours: Mon - Fri 10am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 1pm

'August of last year I undertook a train journey at the request of my 82-year-old grandmother to accompany her on the Palestinian solidarity march, taking place along with many others at the World Summit on Sustainable Development. At the end of a very long two-day journey, my grandmother felt exhausted, and with feet swollen from the trip, was unable take part in the nearly 10 kilometre march. Early Saturday morning, cleaning my camera over breakfast, I still had no idea of the scope and extent of the event I was about to attend'.

Yasser Booley's 'Voices from the Summit' is a series of 10 photographs taken on that march. The participants were more, he suggests, 'than an international collection of organisations� (but) represented the actuality of democracy, freedom of expression and a large portion of the population of this planet'.

Booley took his first photographs at the march in Cape Town which followed the assassination of Chris Hani in 1993, when he scraped together R15 and bought a 12 exposure colour film. Since then, his work has been published in Design Indaba magazine, and he recently took part in an exhibition entitled 'Violence - Memory' which took place in Tel Aviv concurrently with the 'Violence, Memory and Mutual Understanding' conference which was organised by the Goethe Institute. Booley lives and works in Cape Town. This show takes place at the outdoor gallery on Long Street where last month Ariel Cohen presented his show 'Push'. Cohen is now managing this as an exhibition space.

Opening 8pm, Monday February 3, with drinks to be served at Marvel

Opening: February 3
Closing: February 28

238 Long Street (adjacent to Marvel Bar and St Martini's church)
Call Yasser Booley 083 691-0798 or Ariel Cohen 082 406-4699
Email: ariel@absamail.co.za

A sign-language interpreter will conduct tours of the Kentridge Retrospective currently running at the SANG for the benefit of deaf viewers.

Times: 1pm, January 16, February 13 and March 6

South African National Gallery, Government Avenue, Company Gardens, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 467 4660 or 481 3800
Email: cquerido@iziko.org.za

William Kentridge has been selected the South African National Gallery as the venue for his major South African solo exhibition. Kentridge, whose importance as an artist scarcely needs to be explained, has an oeuvre that spans film and theatre as much as visual art. Despite his international stature, Kentridge is still based in Johannesburg. He is probably most renowned for his animated films, which explore the complex and often violent history of South Africa.
This retrospective has been curated by the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.
Concurrently with this exhibition, Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones of 'Handspring Puppets' with whom Kentridge has collaborated on many projects, notably Ubu and the Truth Commission, will exhibit a number of their extraordinary puppets from the 10 years over which they have been collaborating.

SEE REVIEW of Confessions of Zeno

Special Opening: 12 pm, Saturday November 30

Opens: December 1, 2002
Closes: March 23, 2003

South African National Gallery, Government Avenue, Company Gardens, Cape Town
Tel: (021) 465 1628
Fax: (021) 461 0045
Email: ebedford@iziko.org.za
Website: www.museums.org.za/sang
Hours: Tues - Sun 10am - 5pm

'Spirit of the Place (genius loci)' comprises approximately 55 works, in various media, produced by both a British collective called Group 75 (comprising nine artists from the United Kingdom) and a number of South Africans. A show featuring the same artists and going by the same name showed last year at the AVA, but it is not immediately clear if this is the same work here. Some of the work was produced during workshops in the UK which were attended by a number of Capetonian artists. The South Africans showing here are Pat Fenn, Ngcineni Sobopha, Donovan Ward and Jill Trappler who have joined 'Group 75' (to articulate their personal responses to the theme.

A walkabout will be conducted at 1pm, February 12 by Margaret Tietze, one of the Group 75 artists.

Opening: 6.30pm, February 6
Closing: February 27

US Art Gallery, corner Dorp and Bird Streets, Stellenbosch
Tel: (021) 808 3524
Email: kh@sun.ac.za
Website: www.sun.ac.za/usmuseum
Hours: Mon - Fri 9am - 5pm, Sat 9am - 1pm