Archive: Issue No. 32, April 2000

Clare Menck
Nude on a table

Clare Menck at Harris Fine Art

Clare Menck, showing in Cape Town after some time since she went to in Dresden in 1998, is exhibiting seven new paintings. Capetonians will be familiar with the progression of her work from the esoteric early still lifes to her more accessible work from Cape Town and Dresden in 1998. Her particular and skillful use of oils and choice of subject matter has led her to the nude, and this show gives us a glimpse of the new direction in which her work is going.

Monday April 17 - Friday May 12

Harris Fine Art, 4 Riebeeck Street, Wynberg, Cape Town

View of the Greatmore Studios

Cycle of Fives at Greatmore Studios

A collaborative installation by South African Greatmore resident Garth Erasmus and Scottish artist Susan Leask, entitled Cycle of Fives, is on show at the studios from April 20.

April 20 onwards (closed 25,26,28 April & public holidays)

Greatmore Studios, 47 - 49 Greatmore Street, Woodstock, Cape Town

Cecil Skotnes
Captive
Painting on incised panel

'Crossing the Divide': The influence of the Polly Street and Rorke's Drift Art Centres on South African Art.

This exhibition, drawn from the permanent collection of the SA National Gallery, shows the work of artists who studied at two art centres which have proven to be of great influence on the course of black South African art. The artworks on show will illustrate the many differences between the art centres and focus on work produced during the early years of their existence. Basic differences arise from the fact that Rorke's Drift (formally known as the Evangelical Lutheran Church Art and Craft Centre) in KwaZulu/Natal was rural and more African in context, while Polly Street, situated in downtown Johannesburg, was urban and more Eurocentric in its approach. Other differences were more circumstantial- At Rorke's Drift, women played a central role, while Polly Street was dominated by male artists. Rorke's Drift also had a more diverse cultural influence through its Swedish and American teachers. The exhibition illustrates the different cultures of these art centres and their students' responses to the changing conditions of black experience, with the increase in Christian influence and pressure from a white-controlled economy. The theme of the show is designed to accommodate a specific section of the matric art syllabus and provide access to original artworks for teachers and students.

Artists whose work features on the exhibition include John Muafangejo, Cecil Skotnes, Durant Sihlali, and Azaria and Gordon Mbatha.

The show runs until August 6. For more information contact Zola Mtshiza at (021) 465 1628

Natale Labia Museum, 192 Main Road, Muizenberg.

A photograph from Craig Foster's Earthworks exhibition

This new exhibition of photography, sculpture and video by geo-artist / photographer / filmmaker Craig Foster was inspired by personal experiences while filming in the Kalahari. Using these experiences, Foster has produced a series of photographs capturing the marks of animals, rain and himself in the Kalahari. He has further created a new series of rock engravings and sand "sculptures". The exhibition appeals directly to various senses with sound, texture and vigorous visual energy. Using private and personal symbols on the rocks, these "ancient" sculptures are given a contemporary twist.

Open until May 5

Bang the Gallery, 92 Bree Street, Cape Town

The Association for Visual Arts Gallery is one stop on the new Art Walk Route

From Adderley to Bree Streets, venues along Church Street will be open for an evening featuring exhibitions, poetry readings, video projections, a portable art gallery, live performances and buskers. Restaurants, including Bukhara, Mesopatamia, and Floris Smit Huis will be open and most venues will be serving their own refreshments. The Jazz Profiles will be playing in the mall section of the road. Galleries and antique stores which will be taking part are African Image, The AVA, The Cape Gallery, Herman Noy, Antiques Forever, Peanut Gallery, Peter Visser Gallery, Antiques International, Antique Hardware and Lighting, The Coffee Lounge, Lutge Gallery, Burr and Muir, DC Art and the Mark Coetzee Fine Art Cabinet.

As part of the evening, a portable gallery, the Doos Gallery, will show small sculptures by 18 Cape Town artists, called "It's art but you can buy it!" Participants are Kevin Brand, the Bread Fairy, Conrad Botes, Tom Cullberg, Gareth Davies, Brendan Dickerson, David Duminy, Paul Edmunds, Sarel Eloff, Johnny Foreigner, Zan Louw, Marion Naisby, Ruth Sacks, Gregg Smith, Allun Turner, Cobus van Bosch, Mary Visser, Max Wolpe. Art snacks and drinks on sale.

Secure parking will be available on Riebeeck Square and at the City Park

Monday April 17, until 8pm.

For more info, contact The AVA:

Jo O'Connor
Installation view

Jo O'Connor's installation, her second at the venue, is entitled 'Muscle'. O'Connor has made hundreds of life size tongues out of soap, clay, ceramic, dough and other materials, and these will be strewn across the gallery floor. Exhibited in this way they take on references to fallen leaves, body parts which have suffered some violence being ripped from their host, vaginas and also highly sensitive sculptures. O'Connor's work has for the past few years concerned itself with our relationship to food and our rituals of ingestion and preparation of nourishment. She looks at the highly charged relationship between eating and comfort, security, control and sensuality.

April 17 - May 10

See Reviews

Mark Coetzee Fine Art Cabinet, 120 Bree Street, Cape Town

Christopher Slack
'Trans-Love-Highways' invitation

In the Main Gallery, Christopher Slack presents 'Trans-Love-Highways'. In his work he rather ambitiously sets out to "capture the raw essence of experience before it becomes defined within any conceptual framework, thus limiting it through subjective interpretation". Slack also reveals his own vulnerability in the face of Western consumer culture which shapes our perceptions and reduces everything to the same value.

In the Long Gallery Phillipa Duncan, a recent printmaking graduate from Michaelis is showing an installation which engages with her involvement in the myriad possibilities of the discipline.

Michael Chitter, on The Artsstrip, exhibits a selection of paintings made over the last few years. Chitter is also a Michaelis graduate who has both taught and practised as a professional artist during this time.

Monday April 17 - May 6

AVA, 35 Church Street, Cape Town

Visiting lecturer at the Michaelis School of Fine Art on Wednesday, April 12 at 1 p.m. will be artist, writer and curator Olu Oguibe. Oguibe graduated from the University of Nigeria and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London where he received his doctoral degree in contemporary and African Art. He taught African literature at SOAS and critical theory at Goldsmiths College before moving to the USA to teach at the University of Illinois, Chicago. From 1996-1999 he was Chair of African Art at the University of South Florida where he taught contemporary art and arts of Africa and the African Diaspora.

He has published widely on contemporary art, exhibited extensively as an artist, and curated a numberof international exhibitions. He co-edited the recent publication 'Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Marketplace, and is co-curator of Authentic/Ex-centric: Africa in and out for the 2001Venice Biennale'.

Olu Oguibe is also editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary Africa Art.

Kuru Art Project showing at the Chelsea Art Gallery

Naro artists from the Kuru Art Project in the Kalahari desert region of Botswana present oil paintings, graphics and crafts on an exhibition at the Chelsea Gallery, Wynberg.

April 17 to May 13

Brendon Bell-Roberts Art Gallery

Brendon Bell-Roberts
One of the works currently on show

The Brendon Bell-Roberts Fine Art Gallery opens on Thursday March 30 with a group exhibition entitled 'Itheko Llokuza Nethemba Elithsha' (A Celebration for Bringing New Hope). The exhibition will feature works by Louis Jansen van Vuuren, Nadja Daehnke, Brendhan Dickerson, Tyrone Appollis, Luke Young, Xolile Mtakatya,The Ardmore Ceramic Art Studio and Brendon Bell-Roberts. Conveniently situated at 199 Loop Street, in the Graphic Centre, the gallery space is modern, exciting and extensive, covering an area of approximately 350 square metres. There is ample, secure parking available and the street level situation makes it accessible to all visitors. The gallery intends holding monthly exhibitions of work by established and emerging South African artists.

Brendon Bell-Roberts Art Gallery, 199 Loop Street, Cape Town

The topic of this seminar is 'Power, Authorship and Representation', and begins with the screening of a 30 minute video, Babaqueeria, produced in 1986 at the time of the controversial bicentenary of white occupation in Australia. This mockumentary is a simplistic but hilarious look by Aboriginal people of Australia at white people and their customs. The screening will be followed by a facilitated discussion by Prof. Crain Soudien (Education Dept. UCT) on the topic of power, authorship and representation in a Cape Town context. Entrance, this time, is free and open to all.

View BLACONLINEhttp//blaconline.mweb.co.za celebrating the achievement of black artists, get up-to-date information on events in Cape Town and more info on the BLAC project and seminars

Tuesday April 4, 5.15 for 5.30pm

Centre for the Book, 62 Queen Victoria Road, Cape Town

Tel/ fax: 465-4996
Or 083 530-1912

Tom Culberg
'In Between North and South'

An exhibition of paintings by Tom Cullberg entitled 'In Between North and South' opens on April 3. Cullberg, who is from Sweden but who studied and graduated from Michaelis, and is living here at present describes his work as follows- "Each painting is a moment of suspended time - some well-remembered moments, some speedy glimpses, like stripes before my eyes. The paintings form an unplanned story, connecting fiction, fantasy and memory to create a different reality ". The paintings vary greatly in scale and borrow freely from both representational and abstract modes. Capetonians will be familiar with Cullberg's Featherdome, a large, immersive snowdome-like sculpture, which has been exhibited at various events around the city, most recently the Maynardville Community Chest Carnival.

See Reviews

Monday April 3 - April 29

João Ferreira Fine Art, 80 Hout Street, Cape Town.

David Riding
New Works can be seen at the 3RD i GALLERY

Paradoxically constructing his figurative works from modern materials, such as fibreglass and urethane, Riding takes inspiration from his natural surroundings and the realm of myth-making and ancient art. Having given up a successful career in commercial design, Riding now practices art full time, creating works which are described as "playful and vibrant".

March 23 - May 5

Lisa Brice
Somewhere over the rainbow 1997
Vinyl, resin, foam
Dimensions variable

Satisfying this rather tall order is a striking selection of work by a number of artists who have shown at this gallery during the three years of its existence. Artists include South Africans Lisa Brice, Beezy Bailey, Steven Cohen, Rodney Place and Roelof Louw and Germans J�rg Immendorf and AR Penck.
Until end April 2000

A work by Cleone Cull on 'Ha di da'

'Ha di da' at the Ibis Art Centre

The Ibis Art Centre, that cultural oasis of the Eastern Cape, opens a new exhibition on March 20 entitled 'Ha di da' (the common name for the copper ibis) digressions from an ibis, filling an Eastern abyss'. The exhibition features the work of Cleone Cull, Jennifer Ord, Trevor Melville, Graham Jones, Ethna Frankenfeld and Amanda de Wet. Curator Mark Wilby writes: "Six eastern Cape artists present a body of two and three-dimensional work, the diversity of which suggests the idiosyncratic properties of an ibis"
Come again? In any case, there will be painting, printmaking and sculpture, and the Centre does indeed 'fill an Eastern abyss', and for those headed for the Klein Karoo Kunstefees, 'Ha di da' would make an interesting and worthwhile stopover point.

March 20 to April 29

Invitation to the launch of Margaret Waller's photojournalism training manual, A Bigger Picture

Margaret Waller's A Bigger Picture at the Market Theatre Photo Gallery

A Bigger Picture is not an exhibition as such, but a training manual on photojournalism in Southern Africa. Written by Margaret Waller, the manual collates the work of some 40 photographers from six Southern African countries. Over two hundred photographs are included, a selection of which will be on show at this week's launch of the book. A Bigger Picture sounds like a timeous and invaluable resource that needs to be on the shelves of practitioners, historians and fans of photography alike.

Thomas Baines
The Falls from the West end of the chasm 1862
watercolour

Probably the most significant exhibition of its kind in South Africa, 'Stained Paper' explores the medium of watercolour as it has been used to image South Africa from the 18th century through to contemporary postmodern practices. Curators Dr Keith Dietrich and Professor Karin Skawran have made a conscious attempt to locate all manner of water-based works across all genres, from landscape to still life and abstract works, as well as works by black artists not made public until now. The exhibition is as much an overview of water-based works as it is an exploration of the changing face of watercolour over three centuries.

April 18 - June 10

Invitation for Jurgen Schadeburg's 'The Naked Face'

Following up on the popular success of 'Artichoke', the Sandton Civic Gallery presents another potential crowd pleaser: Jurgen Schadeberg's latest exhibition of rich black and white portraits, shot on site at Sandton Square. His subjects are the cosmopolitan shoppers, lunchers and general human traffic that populates the square day and night. Exhibiting alongside the photographic veteran are young students from Alexandra who have completed a beginners' course in photography. And Dolly Rathebe will perform at the opening - I wouldn't miss this one.

Opens April 13 at 6pm

Tracy Gander
Claire 2000
Colour photograph

Tracy Gander explores stereotypical views of women, taking the female stars of 1950's pin-up magazines as a starting point. She reinterprets the well-known stock poses of these dated images by photographing modern women who have all agreed to pout, prance and toy with her camera.

"These pictures, I hope, embody a feeling of enjoyment, confidence, and a sense of freedom - I try to create a space where it is permissable (and safe) to be sexy and beautiful (and intelligent), to role-play, on each individual's own terms. The images are, therefore, a result of a collaboration between myself and the individuals who have agreed to model for me."

Gander's project looks to subvert the derogatory connotations of the term "babe", instead reappropriating it as a suitable title for a sexually confident, mature woman.

'Babes' opens on Sunday 9 April at 6pm, the show runs until 6 May.

Rosemarie Marriot
Invitation to her show at the ABSA Gallery

Marriot creates unusual sculptural constructions from all manner of found organic objects, ranging from tree stumps to branches and seed pods. Her method of working results in unexpected juxtapositions of materials and methods that often contrast the 'natural' (unmediated) with the 'mediated' (carved or synthetic additions). Sometimes sinister and threatening, they have a palpable presence that is sophisticated and aesthetic.

6 - 19 April

Upper Ground Level
ABSA Towers North
161 Main Street, JHB

Norman Catherine in his studio

Joburgers can finally relish this long-awaited and much-anticipated solo show by Norman Catherine, as well as the celebration of a monograph published by Goodman Gallery Editions, which will be launched at the opening. Catherine will present all-new interactive sculpture, small figurines and graphic work in his trademark style. And the Goodman have gone all out, with three different versions of the monograph available: Standard, De Luxe and Collectors. The latter comes boxed, with an original sculpture and gouache, as well as a signed bottle of pinotage. David Bowie wrote the foreward to the book, so what more could you ask for? The exhibition will certainly make for an entertaining and arresting experience.

See Reviews

Alan Paton
Showing at the JHB Civic

David Paton presents a body of work concerned with the hermeneutics of images and text. He is currently a lecturer in the Fine Art Department at Technikon Witwatersrand and has worked extensively in Art Education. This mixed media collection of works, which includes sculptures, prints, video, photography and an Artist's Book, try and engage with the diverse forms of meaning we encounter when we consider images as text and text as images. Until May 10

Harry Trevor
Self Portrait 1944
oil on canvas
Sanlam Art Collection

Touted as a "radical painter of the 1940's rediscovered", this show comes to the JAG from the Pretoria Art Museum. Johannesburg-born Trevor worked in Cape Town and JHB for a short but intense seven years and is deemed to be one of our greatest expressionists. This exhibition hopes to afford Trevor greater recognition than his name has previously enjoyed. Be that as it may, this project smacks of a grand modernist enterprise, with words like "genius", "non-conformist", "idealist", and "rediscovery" used to describe the 'untrained' artist. Stephan Welz, Chairman of the Friends of the Johannesburg Art Gallery, will open the exhibition on March 22, at 5.30 p.m. for 6.00 p.m.

March 17 - May 15, 2000

Paul Emmanuel's 'Pages from Cathexis' at the Open Window

'Cathexis' is a psychological term referring to the concentration of mental energy in one channel. In this exhibition, master printmaker Paul Emmanuel presents original etchings, lithographs and an installation of an artist's book in progress. His labour-intensive working method and attention to detail gives rise to luminous graphic work that is quiet, sophisticated and introspective. 'Pages from Cathexis' will be opened by Jo Ractliffe on Sunday April 30 at 6.00 p.m.

April 30 - May 27

Invitation for the show at the Millenium Gallery

The Millennium Gallery presents Jaco Benade, Ferdie Hartzenberg and Francois Oosthuizen

The Millennium Gallery continues an eclectic series of exhibitions with a three-man group show of mixed media offerings from Benade, Hartzenberg and Oosthuizen. For more information, email Linza at mgallery@mweb.co.za

April 14 - May 9

In what should prove to be a dynamic pairing of talents, Diane Victor and Frank Ledimo probe the seedy underbelly of socio-political realities in a collection of graphic work, including etching, mezzotints, lithographs and silkscreens. Victor's work covers the last 10 years of a prolific career, while Ledimo presents new work mostly executed at the Artist's Press and Caversham Press.

April 5 - 26

Kim Burman
from 'Fires of the Truth Commission' series

It has been said that printmaking, by its nature, is collaborative, and Johannesburg's Artist Proof Studio has been proving this to be true. The studio has proven itself to be a necessary resource, helping nurture young talent and provide printing facilities and expertise to artists, as well as host local and international exchange programmes.
This exhibition showcases the network of relationships that have been established and that exist between various people associated with the studio, stemming from a portfolio exchange between the Artist Proof Studio (JHB) and their 'mother studio' in Boston (now called Mixit Print Studio). Biographies, essays and porfolios provide a context in which to consider these interrelationships.

Andries Botha
White Skin Blue 1998
(detail of simulated skin)

Andries Botha
'Home' interior 1997
lead sheets on steel walls

'divine' - a one-week installation by Andries Botha and Greg Streak

In a break with tradition, the NSA Gallery will present a one-week only exhibition by Andries Botha and Greg Streak. There will be no opening, and interested members of the public should make sure not to miss this rare opportunity to acquaint themselves with the work of two powerful artists whose work is more often seen internationally than locally.

Botha is one of four South African artists selected for the Dakar Biennale (DAK/ART 2000) which takes place next month, and is the featured artist in ArtThrob's artbio this month. On 'divine', Botha will exhibit two recent works titled "White Skin - Blue (Page One)" and "Pages from the TRC". The latter consist of aluminum sheets covered in lead and inscribed through a "branding" or etching process with text culled from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings. "White Skin - Blue (Page One)" is a series of pieces made of latex and cotton paper, resembling skin; once again branded with markings reminiscent of tattoos or a scarification process. Both these installations evoke the subjectivity ofb the artist within a context of flux, mediation and change. Botha states that "for the last three years I have been interested in the archival process; rendering contemporary facts that become emotional signifiers that adjust my place in the South African landscape".

The NSA Gallery hosted Greg Streak�s first solo exhibition in 1996. Since then he has participated in numerous group exhibitions in South Africa and Europe including "Video Views" at the South African National Gallery; "The Mind on Scale: The Lava Edge" at the Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam and "Semi Detached" in Toadsmoor Mill, Stroud, UK. In 1997 and 1998 Streak was resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. He is currently living and working in Durban, South Africa.

Streak�s video-based work on the exhibition consists of a triptych projection containing three distinct pieces; each incorporating liquid and one of the primary colours. These meditative pieces become metaphors for transition, introspection and uncertainty. Streak states that "I am interested simultaneously in aggression and introspection, bright light and dark shadows, muted tones and dreams, symmetry and chaos. I do not believe in truths" as this would imply something finite and "truths vary from situation to situation and are usually enforced by one position of power. I vacillate between the emotional extremes of disillusionment and faith, of irrationality and coherence and it is therefore difficult to categorize the work absolutely."

28 April - 5 May 2000

For more information please contact Storm Janse van Rensburg

Lambert Moraloki

'UNDER COVER' Revelations and Editions - an intercultural collaborative installation project

'Under cover' is a project utilising the umbrella as its embracing motif. Historically the umbrella has been a tool for protection and cover, but in African, Oriental and Latin-American countries it has also been used as an important ceremonial object which conveys authority and status. On a more structural level the shape of the umbrella is suggestive of the global sphere, kites, domes, trees, shelters and arches. In this exhibition the obvious material function of the umbrella is re-interpreted and transformed to communicate a range of cross-cultural interpretations. Drawing on artists from the UK (Maureen Bell), Greece (Ioannis Lassithiotakis), Peru (Luis Arias Vera), Indonesia (Ivan Sagito), Zimbabwe (Voti Thebe)and South Africa (Brigitte Hertell, Anthony Makou, Rudolph Tshie, Lambert Moraloki and Moses Mohoroe) the exhibition reflects a wide cultural diversity and the umbrella, as an emblem, unifies and unites. The project was conceived and co-ordinated by Lambert Moraloki and Brigitte Hertell and has been travelling South Africa since 1998.

Until May 25

Angela Buckland

With the demise of the Durban Photography Centre at the NSA (due to lack of funding) resourceful Durban photographers are resorting to alternative venues to show their work. Teaming up with The Barber Shop, another innovative enterprise where you can get your hair trimmed watching TV and drinking cappuccino, some of Durban's top photographers have given the public a teaser. Tightly selected, stylishly presented, the work of Angela Buckland, Brigitta Gaylard, Lance Slabbert, Mark Lanning, Renelle Rampersad and Sally Chance gives the public a chance to view contemporary photographers from the comfort of the barber's chair.

Until end of May

The Barber Shop
446 Windermere Rd
Morningside
Durban

Every year the NSA gives its constituency a chance to hang work in the Annual Members Exhibition - it is one of the perks of being a member. This year it invited its members to submit works around the theme of "Interiors". The annual event attracts considerable interest every year, and is an opportunity for the public to acquaint themselves with the practice of the very active membership base of the organisation. Given that this base includes a complete range of talents, from amateur, student and respected professional members of the Kwa-Zulu Natal art scene (such as Jeremy Wafer and Andrew Verster), the show is always a hybrid creature - one with some fairly expected habits, but also the possibility of some interesting offspring.

In conjunction with this exhibition the gallery presents an exciting selection of recent works by members of the Association of Potters, Southern Africa (A.P.S.A). The exhibition will be opened by renowned ceramicist David Walters (recently returned from the UK), who is also guest exhibitor. The exhibition will include works by well known KwaZulu Natal potters Barry Dibb, Carol Hayward-Bell, Maureen Holmes, Lindsay Scott, Andrew Walford and Martha Zettler. Students and lecturers from the Technikon Natal and University of Natal have also been invited to participate in the exhibition.

Opening: April 9, 2000 at 4 p.m.
Closing: April 27, 2000

MORE INFORMATION:
Storm or Nathi
TEL: (031) 202-3686 FAX: (031) 202-2293
Email:iartnsa@mweb.co.za

Annelieke Grob
Daily Life in a Suitcase
Multimedia installation

"Daily Life in a Suitcase", a multi-media installation currently showing at the Durban Art Gallery, is the culmination of a ten-year project by Dutch graphic designer Lieke Grob. Taking on trust the co-operation and collaboration of two complete strangers, Grob sent two small wooden suitcases to Rev. Nico Smith in Pretoria, requesting that they be passed on to women in or near the city. That was 1989. Each suitcase contained a camera, an empty notebook, a set of pencils, and the story of Grob's own life in Holland and Grob's request was that each woman fill the suitcase with pictures and life stories. Who the women were and how they responded to this challenge may be discovered at the Gallery

Until April 30.

See Reviews.

Zwelethu Mthethwa
Sacred Homes1999

The Las Palmas Building
An old sugar warehouse serves as the main venue

Foto Biennale Rotterdam 2000 opens.

'Positions, Attitudes, Actions: social and political commitment in photography' is the title of Foto Biennale Rotterdam 2000, organised by the Nederlands Foto Instituut under the directorship of Frits Gierstberg.

Spread over 30 venues, this year's Biennale seeks to provide some answers to the question of whether there is still a role for photography 'as a medium that critically informs and communicates on social matters'. An artist coming from Africa might have thought there was little debate on the continuing importance of socially engaged photography, but some Dutch commentators apparently found the theme inappropriate and irrelevant in modern Europe.

The NFI building in central Rotterdam is host to a fine retrospective exhibition by the American artist Martha Rosler, but the main venue is the Las Palmas Building, an old sugar warehouse in which very basic lighting is more than compensated for by the full, soft light which enters the vast spaces from windows on the harbourside. Here can be found the shows by the guest curators, including South African Clive Kellner, with his show 'Emotional Geographies.'

The warehouse space is broken up by a series of open 'rooms' constructed of three- meter high dividing drywalls, and each of these has provided a space for one artist, or in the case of the Bailey Archives, a series of Drum posters, photographs and a CDRom of some of the vast photographic holdings of the Archive, selected by Marie Human. Next door is the interactive video projection piece on moments of confrontation at the TRC, Can't forget, can't remember, by Sue Williamson, made in collaboration with Tracy Gander and Arnold Erasmus. Stepping out of this room, one is confronted with a banks of television sets, the cases painted white, the screens registering infinite variations of snowy interference. This is Fernando Alvim's piece, and it is tellingly entitled Post Traumatic Stress Disorder 3.

Santu Mofokeng's grim and masterly photographs of Auschwitz and other damaged landscapes fill the next room, to be followed by Kendell Geers' 48 Hours - reproductions of printed listings of all the hundreds of crimes which take place in the Gauteng area in that short period of time. These bleak views are offset by the largest ever blowup of a Zwelethu Mthethwa photograph, a new one from his Sacred Homes series, of a woman in a blue robe seated on a bed in a blue room. Her serene and dignified presence is visible right from the back of the exhibition space, through all the openings of the intervening screens, and provides an uplifting and spiritual final note to Kellner's presentation.

April 1 to May 7.

More information : Nederlands Foto Instituut, Witte de Withstraat 63, Rotterdam

Santu Mofokeng

A silkscreened photograph by Santu Mofokeng is the current image on the illuminated billboard outside the house of revered sculptor and printmaker Käthe Kollwitz in Berlin. The billboard project came into being in 1997, when Argentian artist Pat Binder, who now lives in Berlin, won a public competition to honour the site of Kollwitz's home. Her proposal was to erect the billboard, and present quarterly art posters by invited international artists, which would thematically link with Kollwitz's concern with the sufferings of humanity.

Mofokeng's photograph, in soft greys, shows a railroad track. Barely distinguishable on either side, are the towers of Auschwitz. The artist has this to say about his work: "I don't think I exagerate when I say The Holocaust and Apartheid are the two most memorable evils which hypnotized the world, this century.

"The demise of apartheid in South Africa, relatively recent, poses a challenge for the people there. The dilemma is how to deal with the memory of the past. For instance: who owns this memory? what is re-memoried (re/membered) and how? how long is the memory? what do we do with the memory? do we need this memory? who can be trusted with this memory?

"This work is a journal of my exploration of landscapes associated with spectacular events of horror in Europe and Asia in search of answers to some of these questions."