'Alliances: two curated exhibitions'
Various artists at outoftheCUBE'Torrent’ in the sandpit’ curated by Emma Willemse;
‘Assemblage Studios – an experiment’ curated by Anthea Pokroy and Louise Van Der Bijl of Assemblage
'The etymology of the word ‘curate’ is an intriguing one. Skeat suggests a late Latin source, curatus, a priest or curate, or more succinctly: ‘one who has the cure of souls.’' (Joseph Grigley).
outoftheCUBE identified three independent artist/curators who we felt assisted early-career artists in a spirit of generosity – Emma Willemse, an experienced and committed Cape Town-based art educator; and Louise Van Der Bijl and Anthea Pokroy, co-founders of Assemblage, a fresh and dynamic artists’ community organization in Johannesburg. We offered them the opportunity to curate two exhibitions, giving them carte blanche, waiting with open minds for our own curatorial theme to emerge. Ultimately each grew to reflect certain aspects of the other, and we brought them together under the title ‘Alliances’.
Although these two exhibitions show very different curatorial processes – one, the intimate and the other, the inclusive - they share in common a genuineness in the curators’ care for their artists. Both challenge the controversy around the way some contemporary curators are considered to impose their own meaning onto various artworks merely to fulfill their own curatorial vision, and both relate rather to the understanding of the curator as an insider with an awareness of artists’ concerns and challenges.
‘Torrent in the sandpit’ features the multimedia work of just two artists, Hanne-Lize Delport and Christel Liebenberg; while ‘Assemblage Studios – an experiment’ features at least one work by each of twenty artists who have studio space at the Assemblage premises in Newtown Johannesburg.
30 April - 15 July
