Archive: Issue No. 89, January 2005

07.01.05 Coral Spenser Domijan at artSPACE durban
07.01.05 Brent Meistre at the NSA Gallery
07.01.05 Jane Strode at the NSA Gallery

04.12.04 'Tangencya' in Durban

05.11.04 BUZZART: Shining stars at the NSA Gallery

'Like a cuckoo in your nest I consume your time. When your children were being looked after by others you took care of me, as if I were your own. You could have neglected me, but you did not. You could have resented me, yet it never showed. I, the cuckoo, was the one strapped to your back every day, not your own, and yet you loved me as much as if I were. I was an innocent then and I thank you'.

This is a first paragraph of a written tribute by Coral Spencer Domijan accompanying her exhibition 'Maid in Africa - A Tribute to the Domestic Worker'. The artist sees this exhibition as a sincere, albeit naïve tribute to the woman who took care of her as a child.

Opens: 6pm, January 19
Closes: February 5

Brent Meistre is a photographer and academic living and working in Grahamstown. A lecturer in photography at Rhodes University, Meistre has participated in numerous exhibitions, and was nominated for the prestigious Daimler Chrysler Award for Creative photography in 2003. 'Sans' was first presented during 2004 at the Grahamstown Festival.

The exhibition consists of photographic works, each made up of composite images, displayed in ornate frames and grouped to form grid-like structures. The exhibition also includes a sound installation and a DVD projection.

Meistre uses black and white images to quote and interrogate the idea of the photograph as a document of historical fact against the medium's possibilities for suggesting the unsaid. As the title (French for 'without') would suggest, the exhibition evokes notions of a phantom, a secret that may be known or unknown but that is unconsciously carried through generations of a family.

Meistre states, 'Throughout my different projects, I continue to investigate the possibilities of single and multiple images as cinematic and thereby playing with the veiling of narrative. Across all the bodies of my photographic work is a sense of loss, longing, melancholia or malaise. I see the photograph as a visual image that needs to be continually unpacked and read on many levels and it is from this departure point that I approach all my projects.'

Opens: 6pm, January 25
Closes: February 13

'Dream-works' is Jane Strode's second solo exhibition and consists of paintings installed in a chronological order, a series of works that charts her artistic practice of recent years.

Strode is visually disabled, the result of an hereditary eye disease. Recently she was also diagnosed with related eye dystrophy. Regardless of this she has continued to produce work, exploring her interest in light and abstraction.

Her interest and artistic endeavour is summed up in a statement by Patrick Heron, who once said, 'The best abstraction breathes reality, it is redolent of forms in space, of sunlight and air'.

Strode states, 'Although my paintings are not pure abstractions, I am impulsively and obsessively drawn to the effect of light in nature. I use my camera, an old Nikon, to help me, sometimes manipulating the images on my computer before I finally begin painting. I am drawn by the texture of nature, the roughness of bark, the silkiness of a petal, the crisp fragile-ness of a dried leaf'.

Opens: 6pm, January 25
Closes: February 13

Tangencya, a project by Create Africa South, is an inter-disciplinary arts-based initiative with site-specific interventions happening throughout Durban over the festive season. The project features artists from South Africa, Mozambique, Angola and Botswana .

Conceptualised and curated by Andries Botha (SA) and Miguel Petchkovsky (Angola/Amsterdam) the initiative aims to project the city of Durban nationally and internationally as a place of heritage and cultural and artistic significance. It also aims to develop Durban as a place that showcases African creativity as well as creativity that is drawn from the South geographic vector.

'Tangecya' is a synthesis of the English word tangency and Portuguese word tangencia and also embodies the Zulu word thinta which alludes to touch. Once two bodies touch, an essential part of our humanity is defined as interdependent. The initiative refers to how local creativity can be both a multidisciplinary cultural experience as well as a response to conceptual challenges at regional, national, international and global levels. Artists taking part include Maria van Gass (SA), Richard Shange (SA), Dineo Bopape (SA), Themba Shibase (SA), Fernando Mabota (Mozambique), Jeremy Wafer (SA), Miguel Petchkovsky (Angola/Holland), Greg Streak (SA), Gabi Ngcobo (SA), Fiona Kirkwood (SA) and John Monnakgosi (Botswana).

Partners of the initiative include the African Art Centre, NSA Gallery, Durban Art Gallery, artSPACE durban and KwMuhle Museum.

Interventions will take place at an inner city taxi rank, the Durban Art Gallery, Cato Manor, Documentation Centre, the kwaMuhle Museum, Wentworth, Umlazi and the Workshop shopping centre.

The work will be showcased in a way that will interrogate some fundamental and visceral aspects of African identity through public art and grassroots cultural practices.

From: December 16
Exhibition opens: December 31
Closes: January 7

BUZZART is an annual 'Christmas exhibition' held at the NSA Gallery Complex where innovative, original, quirky, affordable selection of stunning festive season gifts are available under one roof.

Taking up the challenge the NSA has decided to offer something quite different from other retailers and has taken the idea of Christmas shopping and placed it into an art gallery context. Dozens of outstanding artists and crafters are producing ceramics, jewellery, woodwork, wirework, mosaic and beadwork.

This is complemented by the 'Shining Star' exhibition of artworks and collectables in the Mezzanine and Park Galleries, featuring top crafters including Johnny Foreigner, Monkeybiz, Tim Dlamini, Trayci Tompkins, Martha Zettler, Chris de Beer and Barry Hartley.

Opens: November 21
Closes: January 10