Archive: Issue No. 96, August 2005

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DURBAN

5.08.05 Norman Catherine
5.08.05 Positive: AIDS in 2005 at DAG
5.08.05 Siemon Allen at the KZNSA
5.08.05 Kendall Buster at the KZNSA
5.08.05 New exhibitions at BAT centre
5.08.05 'Paean to Paint' at ArtSpace
5.08.05 Five Urban Women's Stories at the African Art Centre
5.08.05 Bernice Stott at ArtSpace
5.08.05 'Women by Women' at DAG
5.08.05 'Memorial (Collapse)': a sculptural installation by Ledelle Moe

1.07.05 'Phantasmagoria' at artSpace
 

DURBAN

Norman Catherine

Norman Catherine
In Sheeps' Clothing, 1999
Oil on fibre glass and metal
245 x 118 x 28cm
 


Norman Catherine at DAG

Norman Catherine is one of South Africa's most prolific and self-disciplined artists. His considerable repertoire of images of fantasy, humour, horror, satire and pain are brought to the public in this exhibition entitled 'Now and Then' which covers approximately 35 years of his output.

From his airbrush paintings of the 70s to the sculptures produced into the 80s, his work slowly evolved, with some influence from Walter Battiss, from light-hearted fantasy into the bizarre and surrealistic. At the same time he became increasingly politically conscientised. This development continued and today Catherine remains a stalwart social commentator through his use of savage satire and macabre black humour, camouflaging foreboding, violence and horror with brilliant primary colours, which seduce and entice.

Catherine does not see his work as having allegiance to any current movement in contemporary art. Primitive, Folk and Outsider art have been his points of reference and inspiration. Today he continues to evaluate all social issues, taking inspiration from a world filled with contradictions. He says 'I try to capture that moment where things aren't quite what they seem.'

Opens: June 23
Closes: August



Positive: AIDS in 2005

'Positive: AIDS in 2005', currently on display at the Durban Art Gallery, deals with the ever-controversial topic of HIV/AIDS in South Africa.

Exhibition curator Carol Brown has chosen to include a range of artists on the show, all of the works focusing on the impact of HIV/AIDS in contemporary South Africa. None of the works were commissioned for the exhibition, but were selected from previous projects and exhibitions. The artworks focus on AIDS awareness, the reality of the disease and its far-reaching deadly grasp on all communities.

The 'Bodymaps' project, previously shown at SANG is here as is work by well known artists such as Langa Magwa, Churchill Madikida, Dineo Bopape, Clive van den Berg, Berni Searle, Gideon Mendel and Brenton Maart amongst others.

Opens: July 20
Closes: September 15


Kendall Buster

Kendall Buster

Kendall Buster
Model City
Installation details
Fibreglass poles, nylon, cables
 


Kendall Buster at the KZNSA

Kendall Buster lives and works in Richmond, Virginia, USA where she is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sculpture and Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University.

This exhibition is her first solo show in South Africa, and follows earlier participation in Pulse Projects' 'Open Circuit' at the same gallery in 2000. Buster's large-scale installation 'Model City', which will occupy the entire Main Gallery, is a continuation of her interest in creating architectural spaces, which are sculptural and experiential. Originally trained as a microbiologist, she references the microscopic world in her work, but re-imagines this as large spaces and constructions.

Buster completed her Masters in Fine Art at Yale University and has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including 'Art Positions' at Miami and 'ARCO' in Madrid. Solo projects include 'Highrise' at the Houston Centre for Contemporary Craft and 'Inventory of Imagined Places' at the Kreeger Museum in Washington.

Opens: August 4
Closes: August 21


Siemon Allen

Siemon Allen
Cards
Installation view
Found objects

Siemon Allen

Siemon Allen
Cards
Detail
Found objects
 


Siemon Allen at KZNSA

Siemon Allen is a Durban, South African-born artist currently living and working in Richmond, Virginia, USA. Allen received his Masters Degree in Technology: Fine Art in 1999 at the Technikon Natal (now the Durban Institute of Technology). He was a founder member of the 'Flat International' initiative, an itinerant contemporary art collective, and has published and exhibited widely.

'Cards', which Allen is presenting at the KZNSA, is one of Allen's signature collection projects comprising over 2000 US military trading cards issued between 1938 and 2001. These trading cards are not official military propaganda, but were distributed and sold through private companies, providing an example of the large cultural consumption of images of war and aggression in the USA. The project is a continuation of Allen's interest in popular culture and media residue, which he reconfigures to comment on contemporary realities.

Recent group exhibitions include 'Re Freedom Salon' at Deitch Projects in New York and, 'Notes on Renewed Appropriationisms' at the Project in Los Angeles. He has held one-person shows at Fusebox in Washington and the Hemicycle/Corcoran Museum in Washington amongst others. His work is represented in the collections of the Durban Art Gallery, BHP Billiton (SA) and the Guggenheim Museum, New York. Opens: August 4
Closes: August 21


xxx

Janet Solomon
Painting
 


'Paean to Paint' at ArtSpace

'Paean to Paint', curated by Dee Donaldson, will feature some of the country's finest painters, including, amongst others, Janet Solomon, Andrew Verster, Bronwen Vaughan-Evans, Pascale Chandler, Audrey Olivier and Grace Kotze.

This exhibition celebrates painting and its enduring ability to engage audiences both cerebrally and emotionally, as well as those who continue to make it their language. 'Paean to Paint' examines the significance of the genre in a world that has been dominated by conceptual practice. The exhibition explores how painting engages contemporary audiences whose main source of information and entertainment is the mass media.

It can be said that Durban has produced some of the most skilled painters in Southern Africa in the past several decades, while on the other side of the world, Londoners are queuing to see the 'Triumph of Painting' series of exhibitions at the Saatchi Gallery.

Opens: August 8
Closes: August 27


Beena Pradham

Beena Pradham
Her Road Ahead
Acrylic on canvas
76 x152 cm
 


'Women by Women' at DAG

'Women by Women' features painting by of women from Kashmir in the North to Kanyakumari in the South, and from Kutch in the West to Kamakhaya in the East of India. Its inspiration comes from a similar exhibition held in New Delhi last year on International Women's Day. Here each of the 60 participants has interpreted their own gender and role in a personal way.

Opens: August 24
Closes: September 6


Bernice Stott

Bernice Stott
Vacpacmuti
250 x 25 cm
 


Bernice Stott at ArtSpace

This is Bernice Stott's exhibition in fulfilment of the Durban Institute of Technology Fine Arts Master's degree. Her work is a journey into both the microscopic female body and the politics of body surrounding it in Southern Africa.

Consensuality between people is a delicate negotiation, which is often torn asunder by violent disregard. The idea that sexuality exists both as a medium of extraordinary beauty and a bringer of death through HIV/AIDS is explored in the work. It features photographic images and installation pieces, where one of the metaphors of choice and safety is the female condom. A sense of searching for mutuality, sustainability and containment permeates the work, yet it is not without the breaking out of containment to achieve beyond what is possible now.

Opens: August 31
Closes: September 10



Five Urban Women Stories at the African Art Centre

The African Art Centre is hosting 'Five Urban Women Stories', featuring mixed media work, video, paintings and installations by young, up-and-coming female artists Dineo Bopape, Yvette Dunn, Simmi Dullay and Zama Dunwya. The exhibition will be opened by performing artist and cultural research consultant Welile K. Thembe.

Opens: August 10
Opens: August 27



BAT Centre's Permanent Collection and winners of the mural competition on show

The BAT Centre will be exhibiting works from their permanent collection in an exhibition to be opened by Ros Sarkin. Opening later in the month is an exhibition of the winners and merited works in the BAT Centre's Mural Competition.

Permanent Collection exhibition
Opens: August 2
Closes: August 15

Mural Competition Winners' exhibition
Opens: August 18
Closes: August 31



'Memorial (Collapse)': a sculptural installation by Ledelle Moe

Ledelle Moe is a Durban born artist. She completed her Masters in Fine Art at the Virginia Commonwealth University in 1996. Since then she has lived and in worked in Washington DC, USA. She has participated in numerous group exhibitions, including 'Untitled' at the Pratt Institute in New York, 'Six Sculptors' at the Long Island University in New York, and 'Drommar Och Moln' at the Kulturhuset in Stockholm, Sweden.

Her last solo exhibition in South Africa was 'Collapse' at the KZNSA, in 2003. The work for her new exhibition consists of a site-specific, large-scale concrete and steel sculpture, made in Durban during the past month. Moe works mostly on a large scale, and her interest in the monumental and heroic is evident in most of her pieces.

Her works reference human and animal forms, and for this show takes the shape of a large, toppled head. Memories of recent world events, and seeing large structures toppled and being brought down (the demolition of the Afghan Buddhas and public statues of Saddam Hussein comes to mind) are implicit in the work. The work ironically also invokes notions of vulnerability and pathos, in spite of its scale.

Opens: Thursday 4 August 2005
Closes: Sunday 21 August 2005



'Phantasmagoria' at artSpace

Vega is a brand communication school, in Durban, and 'Phantasmagoria' is an exhibition by the lecturing staff of Vega. Work presented engages ideas of mythologies and storytelling. It is the creation of stories that enables us to mould our identities and give shape and expression to the world of things that surrounds us.

Opens: July 18 at 6:30pm
Closes: August 6

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