Archive: Issue No. 82, June 2004

01.06.04 'A Place Called Home' curated by Zayd Minty at the NSA
01.06.04 'Snapbox Studio' by Sean Laurenz at artSpacedurban
01.06.04 'Work in Progress' by Heleen Verwey at artSpacedurban
01.06.04 Siphiwe Zulu's 'Human Rights: Hopes and Dreams' at the African Art Centre
01.05.04 Bronwen Vaughan-Evans's 'One Zero One' at the NSA Gallery
01.05.04 John Roome's 'Courage' at the NSA Gallery
01.05.04 The Freedom Fortnight -'Ties that Bind' and 'Ten Out of Ten Democracy' - at the Durban Art Gallery
01.04.04 'Ties that Bind' at the DAG

'A Place Called Home' is an exhibition of photographic, print, video, web-based and installation works by artists of Indian/ South Asian descent. It is bound to resonate in South Africa where over a million people originally hail from the Indian subcontinent.

Curated by Zayd Minty, the show documents what contemporary artists of the South Indian Diaspora have produced in the process of making 'home' the place of their birth or by adopting as 'home' the place to which they have chosen to move.

The show includes work by both local and international artists, amongst them: Sunil Gupta (India/ Thailand/ Canada/ UK), an artist who uses his own history as a gay HIV positive person who has lived in three continents; Chila Burman (UK) who was active in the black British arts movement of the 80`s and the renown collective Moti Roti (Trinidad/ Pakistan/ UK) whose dynamic and visually lush projects, inspired by the carnival traditions, engage subtly in transformative social commentary.

The South African contingent includes key artists such as Omar Badsha who rose to prominence as a lyrical documentary photographer during apartheid days. Badsha, together with younger upcoming artists, Usha Seejarim, Durban-based Faiza Galdhari and Zen Marie were all commissioned to produce new work for this show.

Zayd Minty is a cultural producer and organiser who was born and educated in Durban but has worked, since 1991, in Cape Town, particularly around issues of culture and transformation. He was previously artistic director of the Cape Town Festival (2002) and is presently deputy director of the District Six Museum. Amongst his curatorial achievements are 'Isintu' (1998) which showed at the SA National Gallery and 'Returning the Gaze' (2000), a public art project. He is a fourth generation South African of Gujerati/ Indian descent.

'A Place Called Home' was developed by Minty while he was a Rockefeller Fellow at Emory University in USA. The exhibition runs concurrently with the 25th Durban International Festival, which will screen a number of related films. An educational programme forms part of the project and includes engagements with schools as well as a set of discussion forums around issues affecting people of Indian descent in South Africa

Opens: 6pm, June 15
Closes: July 11

Laurenz has just returned from Johannesburg having won the Mondi Paper Magazine Award 2003 for photography. 'Snapbox' will occupy the main space of the gallery and will run until June 19. Laurenz photographs people in the studio or on location believing in "letting the process evolve, to watch it, follow it and capture it with unpredictable results of beauty or damage for that matter".

The photographs in this exhibit are a combination of instances and processes that were generated through commerce and art. The two are mutually inclusive in Laurenz's approach to everyday life.

Opens: 6pm, May 28
Closes: June 19

Heleen Verwey's exhibition of works in progress form part of an exhibition she will be taking to Europe later this year. Verwey is a Dutch artist living and working in South Africa. She incorporates into installations, her paintings on doors, records and other available objects. She claims to be influenced by "informal artists" from Latin America and Spain.

Verwey is represented by agents in Europe, South Africa, and Mozambique. She has also been assigned to produce works for the new building for European Union in Namibia.

Opens: June 24
Closes: July 14

Siphiwe Zulu's acrylic paintings attest to his involvement in Human Rights issues and organisations. His early childhood experiences of humiliation and spiritual torture have led him to scrutinize issues of Human Rights in a creative way. Through the medium of painting he explores his and the mass' experience of the past, present and future aspirations.

Zulu's work is influenced by traditional beaded crafts. Using small coloured dots placed on top of apparently flat blocks of colours and images, he creates interestingly rich textural forms. He has exhibited consistently since 1995 and recently his work was chosen for the new Constitutional Court in Johannesburg, where a carpet designed by him adorns the research library

Opens: May 19
Closing: June 5

Bronwen Vaughan-Evans will be presenting an exhibition of detailed small works (each measuring 13cm X 13cm) making up large-scale composite pieces. Each panel is intensely detailed and laboured and each has an iconic feel, incorporating everyday images from the artists` environment and life history. They are also, to an extent, an investigation into the nature of nationality and identity as well as reference to childhood memories, which are often visual rather than verbal.Some of the works are historical, and contain images from junior school textbooks; others make reference to nursery rhymes or resemble pop-art depictions of common South African products. Many of the works include found objects which range from small plastic toys to old badges and emblems that reflect fragments of our past.

Vaughan-Evans' subject matter is chosen almost at random, like a flow of thought in which no single image is more or less significant than any other. Through this, the works acquire the shifting qualities of small flashes of memory and dream.

The title of the exhibition 'One Zero One', refers primarily to the number of small works that make up the composite piece, but also makes reference to binary systems. Each work, like the zeros and the ones that make up the binary code, has an alternating level of significance that is dependant on its position relative to the other works. It is only when the individual digits of binary are grouped together that fluctuating patterns begin to emerge and acquire meaning.

Vaughan-Evans received her Masters of Arts in Fine Art in 1995 from the University of Natal. She has lectured there part time and is also a qualified art teacher. She is currently a full-time artist, and was last year seen on the Brett Kebble Art Awards show in Cape Town. This is her first solo exhibition.

Opens: May 25 at 6pm
Closes: June 13

John Roome is a Durban-based artist who has exhibited regularly both locally and internationally since 1976. He is known for his paintings and prints, which have found their way into numerous private and public collections in South Africa and abroad. Roome is currently head of the department of Fine Arts at the Durban Institute of Technology, where he has lectured for many years.

His up-coming exhibition at the NSA Gallery is titled 'Courage' and represents a departure for the artist. Roome has moved on from the exploration of urban landscape and the overt socio-political concerns for which he is known. His focus has become an inward journey in which he uses natural objects of the outside world as the reference for an investigation of the metaphysical concerns of the inside world. Humble objects such as seed pods and fragments of natural forms are transformed into images that have humorously have been described as being "half-way between botanical art and Zen".

There are broader references such as architectural forms, monument-like structures and the element of fire, which link back to his earlier work, but he has moved away from the narrative. He is now more concerned with expressing the verbally inexpressible in watercolours on hand-made paper. Papermaking is a passion which the artist has pursued, developed and taught over the past two decades.

Opens: 6pm, May 25
Closes: June 13

Opening on Tuesday April 27 is 'Women Artists and Poets Advocating Children`s Rights', a multiple portfolio exhibition celebrating Freedom Day, which was conceptualised by Art for Humanity. This exhibition features the 'Images of Human Rights' portfolio now installed at the new Constitutional Court in Johannesburg; the 'Break the Silence: HIV/Aids' portfolio endorsed locally and internationally and the famed 'Universal Declaration of Human Rights' international print portfolio. To coincide with the exhibition, Art for Humanity - which recently changed from Artists for Human Rights - launches its new name and announces its new agenda.

Opens: April 27

Opening on April 29 is 'Ties that Bind' a multimedia exhibition which examines relationships and families that are not always the nuclear mother, father and child unit. The exhibition coincides with the South African Association of Marital and Family Therapy Conference being held at the International Convention Centre. Curated by the Gallery director Carol Brown, the exhibition attempts to address some of the more controversial and socially complex issues that galleries have tended to shy away from-including the many contemporary variations of what was a traditional nuclear family. Cross-cultural, multigenerational and same-sex families are examined. The exhibition features works by Terry Kurgan, Jean Brundit, Clive van der Berg, Zamani Makhanya, Mamatakane Makara, Val Adamson and others.

'Ten Out of Ten Democracy' showcases the richness of South African creativity with 100 works from the Durban Art Gallery's permanent collection including works purchased with Red Eye funds like Red Eye Angel by Sibusiso Maphumulo.

'Ties that Bind' opens at 5.30pm, April 29
'Ten Out of Ten Democracy' opens at 5.30pm, May 5

Carol Brown, curator of the Durban Art Gallery, has put together 'Ties that Bind', an exhibition focusing on the family. Generated in anticipation of the SA Association For Marital and Family Therapy Conference (April 17-19) to be held at Durban's International Conference Centre (ICC), the exhibition interrogates traditions, constructions and implications of traditional and alternative families.

As well as drawing from the permanent collection of the DAG (utilising work by Bafana Mkhize and Alfred Thoba amongst others), Brown has included AIDS orphan dolls from Kate Wells' ongoing AIDS projects. Despite the presence of such objects the exhibition is largely photographic. Brown has thus chosen to invite a number of photographers whose interest in family matters is central to their work. Obvious candidates such as Terry Kurgan, Val Adamson and Jean Brundit are all included as well as less expected selections such as Ian van Coller (who has just completed an MFA at University of New Mexico). Photos from the HSRC's Fatherhood Project round off the show.

A catalogue, with writings by Jerry Coovadia and family therapist Frieda Rundell, will accompany the exhibition.

Opening: April 15
Closing: June 6