Archive: Issue No. 59, July 2002

17.06.02 Brett Murray - Standard Bank Young Artist 2002
17.06.02 William Kentridge's Confessions of Zeno
17.06.02 Terry Kurgan - 'Lost and Found'
17.06.02 Fiona Kirkwood - 'Coats and Coverings'
17.06.02 'Male Order' curated by Carol Brown
17.06.02 East Cape Art Stokvel
17.06.02 'Rebellion and Uproar'
17.06.02 Standard Bank African Art Collection
17.06.02 'The Art of Tapestry'

17.06.02 Christine Dixie - 'Hide'
17.06.02 Maureen de Jager - 'Resurfacing'
17.06.02 Vusi Khumalo - Collograph prints
17.06.02 Greg Schultz - 'Landscape Reviewed'
17.06.02 Rhodes University Fine Art Students
17.06.02 Fuba Students - 'Township Culture/Lifestyle'

All exhibitions run from June 29 to July 6

See also Grahamstown preview under News

A glimpse of Brett Murray's catalogue, with text by Ivor Powell, reveals that this year's SBYA pulls no punches in his solo show of new work. Murray's pop-inspired, graphic steel cut-outs take on white guilt, racism, corruption and other issues besetting the country with a sharp, dark wit, and are guaranteed to put a few noses out of joint among mainstream festival visitors. The show will tour major galleries throughout the country after Grahamstown.

Monument Gallery

Walkabouts: June 30 at 12pm and July 1, 3 and 5 at 10.30am

Confessions of Zeno's South African premiere follows hot on the heels of Documenta11, where the multi-media opera was received less enthusiastically than could be expected. A collaboration between artist/director William Kentridge, composer Kevin Volans, writer Jane Taylor and the Handspring Puppet Company, the opera is based on the novel by Italo Svevo and explores the world of work and erotic pleasure that sustained Europe's bourgeoisie before World War I.

July 3 and 4, Monument Theatre

Winter school lecture by Jane Taylor - 'Taking Stock: The making of a bourgeois life in Italo Svevo's The Confessions of Zeno': July 2, 10.30am, Blue Lecture Theatre, Eden Grove, Rhodes Campus

Terry Kurgan's 2000 FNB Vita Art Prize winning work occupies the Goodman Gallery's traditional Grahamstown slot, the Gallery in the Round. The work, which has travelled to Reykjavik in Iceland but has not been widely seen in South Africa, features anonymous family snapshots enlarged and printed onto ethereal swathes of organza, in a reflection on memory, childhood and familial relationships.

Gallery in the Round, Monument

Walkabouts: June 29 at 12pm and June 30 at 5pm

Previously shown at the NSA Gallery in Durban, textile artist Fiona Kirkwood's 'Coats and Coverings' combines art and weaving to create series of garments that reveal/conceal aspects of new South African identity. The 'South African News Coats' series, for example, comprises 27 hanging life-size PVC coats with woven video and audio tape, film strips, paper and plastic together with a video display.

Ntsikana Gallery, Monument

Walkabouts: June 29 at 12pm, July 1 at 10.30am, July 4 at 12pm

Carol Brown, director of the Durban Art Gallery, has curated a show drawn from the permanent collection of the gallery that highlights the place of the masculine in our society (see News for an essay by Carol Brown on the rationale behind the exhibition). The show is situated historically with works by Pierneef, whose views of virgin territory are well-known for emphasising white masculine domination in South Africa. Signals of the early crumbling of apartheid are addressed through the damaged male body in Paul Stopforth's Elegy and contemporary artists such as Moshekwa Langa, Hentie van der Merwe, Langa Magwa, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Andrew Verster and Wilma Cruise engage with less determinate masculinities. Issues such as identity, violence and sexuality are highlighted.

Two performance art pieces performed by Peet Pienaar and Greig Coetzee at the opening will remain on show as videos. The exhibition will be on view at the Albany Museum until August 7, after which it will be shown in Durban, Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Grahamstown Gallery, Albany Museum

Winter school lecture by Carol Brown - 'Male Order: Changing views of male identity in the visual arts': June 30 at 12pm, Blue Lecture Theatre, Eden Grove, Rhodes Campus

Walkabouts: June 29 at 11.30am (performance), June 30 at 5pm, July 1 at 10.30am, July 3 at 5pm

The story of Xhosa warrior-prophet Makana inspires a third exhibition of narrative prints by artists from Grahamstown's Egazini Outreach Project, working with local historians and Rhodes University's Fine Line Press. The first exhibition, 'Egazini: The Battle of Grahamstown', has travelled the country to critical acclaim. Following its unveiling at Grahamstown, the new collection will move to Robben Island.

Military Gallery, Albany Museum

Walkabouts: June 30 at 12pm, July 3 at 12pm, July 5 at 5pm, July 6 at 12pm

A regular feature at the festival, the Standard Bank African Art Collection includes exemplary traditional art and artefects from all over the continent in an exhibition curated by the University of the Witwatersrand Galleries.

Standard Bank Gallery, Albany Museum

Walkabouts: June 30 at 10.30am, July 1 at 12pm, July 5 at 12pm, July 6 at 10.30am

Another festival staple, the Marguerite Stephens Studio translates works of South African art into huge Gobelin tapestries, woven in mohair on looms more than four metres wide, with 60 metres of warp. This year's exhibition includes recent tapestries from originals by William Kentridge, Karel Nel, Tito Zungu, Robert Hodgins and Hentie van der Merwe.

Thomas Pringle Hall, Monument

Walkabouts: June 30 at 10.30am, July 1 at 12pm, July 5 at 12pm, July 6 at 10.30am

Previously shown at the Millennium II in Johannesburg and the US Art Gallery in Stellenbosch, Dixie's exhibition uses relationships between landscape, land and the body to speak of trauma, dispossession and "ownership". See review by Kathryn Smith.

Alumni Gallery, Albany Museum

One of the artists included on Colin Richards' 'Graft' exhibition for the 1997 Johannesburg Biennale, Maureen de Jager here looks at problems of temporality, permanence and impermanence, using light and rust as primary metaphors. The works comprise large steel plates attached to 2 and 3-dimensional structures, the surfaces of which have been drawn onto using power tools, found objects, heat and rust.

Main Fine Art Building, Rhodes University, Somerset Street

Vusi Khumalo exhibits graphic works reflecting the ever-changing nuances of daily life in South Africa. Khumalo's prints were produced in collaboration with the Fine Line Press, a project that hosts visiting artists to the Rhodes University School of Fine Art.

Fine Line Press, St Peters, Rhodes University

Greg Schultz exhibits oil paintings, incorporating materials such as copper, gold-leaf and wax, looking at natural phenomena on the Eastern Cape coast - cliffs, rivers, flora; colour, light, texture. Schultz writes: "The expansion of ideas (such as the use of medicinal plants, with healing properties or the expression of the spiritual in the material), colour and other media has been undertaken in 'series of paintings'. Some begin with an exploration of an alternative support (other than canvas) and others, such as the 'Earth-Warning' series, have developed over a period of a few years. Shaped wooden supports and multiple images, form part of the compressed, miniture paintings." The show will move to the Cyler Street Gallery in Port Elizabeth from July 9-20.

Green Gallery, Albany Museum, Somerset Street

Rhodes University students engage with issues around identity as well as social and political currentsin South Africa. The exhibition includes works in traditional media as well as drawing on new technologies or using found materials in innovative ways.

Side Gallery, Main Fine Art Building, Rhodes University, Somerset Street

Students from the Fuba academy of visual arts exhibit paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints depicting some of the issues surrounding township life, including politics, culture and AIDS.

Good Shepherd