Archive: Issue No. 78, February 2004

15.02.04 Two Eritrean artists at JAG
15.02.04 Morkel, Berman and Czech lithographs and etchings at Gordart
15.02.04 Sam Nhlengethwa at Goodman Gallery
15.02.04 Natalie Western at the Old Traffic Office
15.02.04 Barker, Buthelezi, Dietrich and Maswanganyi at Artspace
15.02.04 Looking at South Africa at Zuva Gallery
15.02.04 John Moore at Merely Mortal
15.02.04 Prints and Multiples 2 at Warren Siebrits
03.02.04 Greg Kerr at Zuva Gallery
03.02.04 Celebrating Johannesburg in pictures at the Absa Gallery
03.02.04 Zander Blom and Marcel Waldeck at Artspace
03.02.04 Big names at Gallery on the Square
03.02.04 Johannes Segogela and Eliza Kentridge at the Goodman
03.02.04 Claudette Schreuders' 'Long Day' at Warren Siebrits
06.01.04 Exploring the mutability of traditions, at the Standard Bank Gallery
06.01.04 Michelle Booth at PhotoZA

PRETORIA

03.02.04 Live sound sculpture at Pretoria Art Museum
03.02.04 Sue Williamson at Outlet

The Johannesburg Art Gallery presents painting, video and digital works by two Eritrean artists, Alazar Asgedom and Laine Blata Kiflezion. Alazar Asgedom's work is titled 'Leaves War', and Laine Blata Kiflezion's 'Transformation from Imitation to Self-expression'.

For guided tours please call (011) 725 3130/3184.

Exhibitions presented in association with the University of the Witwatersrand School of Arts, Department of Fine Arts.

Opens: February 10, at 5.30pm
Closes: March 7

Three shows in one space. CJ Morkel will show his latest airbrush paintings, funky furniture and spiky balls. The Czech Embassy will show a selection of lithographs and etchings, which have been touring South Africa alongside prints from the collection of Mona Berman featuring many prints created by artists from Artist's Proof studio.

Opens: February 14

'Glimpses of the Fifties and Sixties' is an exhibition of new works by Sam Nhlengethwa. Says the artist: "This exhibition is a culmination of a thought that began ten years ago. Perhaps on some subconscious level it is very fitting that parallel to this show is the year we celebrate ten years of democracy."

"I have chosen to work in the style to which I have become accustomed (collage) and to also explore my printing via the photogravure process. I think one of the reasons I like this process is that it has an element of collage in it, but the process is more physically involved and delicate. It entails digitizing an initial collage and working through at least five plates before even considering the trial print to be used for the series.

"I sourced material from the Drum magazine archives and I also looked through my own family albums. The use of my own archive was important because I wanted to reflect an intimacy and a familiarity that would make the images accessible. Looking through the albums I reminisced about growing up in my grandmother's house and how I always found the dining with the wedding photograph so intriguing.

"I also recalled enjoying a softball match in Westonaria (a small mining community on the West Rand) amidst the many dompas and curfew laws. Today these images have now been revived in the music videos of Mafikizolo and the Stoned Cherry fashion label. I think I'm lucky in the sense that I have used art as an outlet for the frustrations I encountered during this time. My visual expression through painting was therapeutic and has now been transformed into what I believe to be a historical retrospective."

Opens: February 19
Closes: March 13

Wits MA student Natalie 'Rat' Western exhibits recent video and photography at the Old Traffic Office, also known as the Nunnery, at Wits University.

For more information, contact 073 144 5461.

Opens: February 20, at 7pm

Wayne Barker, Mbongeni Richman Buthelezi, Keith Dietrich and Collen Maswanganyi, four very diverse artists, will be exhibiting on a show titled 'Evidence'. The show will present work that spans a diversity of media: watercolour, oils, mixed media, plastic and wood sculpture.

Wayne Barker will be presenting multi media work based on 'knowledge' and the 'evidence' will be visible for the viewer to interpret. "In my new body of work I question the idea of knowledge and how we as Africans have accepted a European framework. How great we were that ' we' massacred the Indians and almost wiped out the Bushmen and aboriginal people. When we look at old encyclopaedias we see the naive way in which the history of the world is often told about man's great progress. By means of recycling I try and make images that provoke change in deconstructing and altering every day objects and ideas. These works are my evidence of reality".

Mbongeni Richman Buthelezi, a young man with a sparkling personality, produces paintings on plastic which he paints with melted plastic using materials such as plastic bags, plastic waste, etc. No colour is added as the colour is in the 'bag' he uses for his paintings. The end result is very unique to his style of painting and the scenes he depicts are mainly township scenes and non-figurative themes in beautiful colour. His work has been exhibited in many overseas countries and is housed in many international collections. Buthelezi's work is sought after and well worth viewing.

Keith Dietrich, a professor in fine arts at the University of Stellenbosch, and previously from Johannesburg, will be presenting watercolours as a visual commentary on and response to a collection of San drawings and watercolours made between 1875 and 1881 under the patronage of Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd.

Collen Maswanganyi, son of the well-known Johannes Maswanganyi, will entertain us with his colourful painted sculptures of the modern African black man and woman.

The show is curated by artist, curator and educator Gordon Froud.

Opens: February 22, at 5.30pm
Closes: March 20

Paris-born photographer Patrick de Mervelec launches his new book Looking at South Africa 1994-2004 with an exhibition of photographs from the book. This book launch and exhibition celebrates the first decade of democracy in South Africa. It follows de Mervelec's acclaimed book Regard sur l'Afrique du Sud that he, together with the Mayor of Paris, personally presented to Nelson Mandela in Paris in 1996.

The Zuva Gallery, in the plush Africanist mall of Melrose Arch, is Johannesburg's newest gallery. The gallery is owned by Michael Obert, and specialises in a diverse range of pan-African art. There is indeed two Zuva Galleries, the second gallery located in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Opens: February 26, at 6.30pm
Closes: March 7

Acclaimed printmaker John Moore presents 'Recording history', 15 colour woodcut images that portray a history of Southern Africa. The works start with the Khoi-San people and end with our country in its present state. On exhibition are various other prints, including lithographs and linocuts. Each work covers a specific part of Southern African history and features an animal indigenous to South Africa and artefacts related to that specific time frame.

Dennis Beckett will open the show.

Opens: February 26, at 6.30pm
Closes: March 26

The second prints and multiples exhibition at Warren Siebrits, this exhibition includes works by Jane Alexander, Walter Battiss, Marlene Dumas, Robert Hodgins, Wopko Jensma, William Kentridge, Judas Mahlangu, Azaria Mbatha, John Muafangejo, Dan Rakgoathe, Cyprian Shilakoe and Vuminkosi Zulu.

The latter artist is represented by a particularly striking print Awaiting Trial, an overtly political etching depicting the detention of agonised figures. Jensma's Vertigo Man is another highlight of this show.

Opens: February 26
Closes: April 3

The Zuva Gallery, in the plush Africanist mall of Melrose Arch, is Johannesburg's newest gallery. The gallery is owned by Michael Obert, and specialises in a diverse range of pan-African art. There is indeed two Zuva Galleries, the second gallery located in Scottsdale, Arizona. The Johannesburg gallery's next exhibition will be with Greg Kerr, and is titled 'Decade * Century * Millennium'.

The exhibition will be opened with an address from Karel Nel.

Opens: February 12, at 6.30pm
Closes: February 24

'Picture Perfect Works' is the title to a group show celebrating Johannesburg. Participating photographers include Jurgen Schadenburg, Chris Kirchoff, Hugh Fraser, Bettina Andrag, Robert Rich and Leila Amanpour. Former HH Gallery curator, Meredith Randall, curates the show.

Please RSVP to Ronel Eckley (011) 350 4245 before February 2. Secure parking available on request.

For further information on the show, contact Meredith Randall by email: merecohen@hotmail.com

Opens: February 9, at 6pm
Closes: February 26

Call it a changing of the guard. Marcel Waldeck, son of Ian Waldeck, is exhibiting on a two-person show titled 'Etc.', with Zander Blom. Described as "two young new dynamic conceptual artists" by the press release, one wonders whether these young birds have even learnt to fly. Both Blom and Waldeck matriculated in the past year or two. Not that their youth immediately disqualifies them.

Quite befitting his youth, Blom works with a variety of mediums. His works include video, printmaking, sound - and sculptural installation. "Because his work is conceptually based," it says in the press release, "the medium is determined by concept, in the same way that an advertising campaign is built around an idea or concept. A painting, print or photograph becomes the same as a billboard ad or advertisement in a magazine. A video, sculpture, or installation becomes the equivalent of a promotional item. Everything is part of a branding strategy that the viewer might or might not be aware of."

Not surprisingly, Waldeck too works in a variety of mediums, including wax, oil, plaster, printmaking and sound. The ghosts of Duchamp and Magritte have been invoked in explaining his approach to art, which seems a tad overwrought, or simply overzealous. It is probably best to ignore all the preceding, and simply allow their Artspace debut the power to make the necessary first impression.

Willem Boshoff will open the show.

Opens: February 8, at 5.30pm
Closes: February 14

Somewhat befitting the heft of the wallets strolling around Sandton, the Gallery on the Square is hosting a Valentine's Day show with some well-known brand name artists. The list includes: Marc Chagall, Jim Dine, Michael Heindorff, Damien Hirst, Allen Jones, Marino Marini, Henry Moore, Victor Pasmore, Pablo Picasso and Frank Stella. Aren't you wondering about the inclusion of Hirst?

Opens: February 14
Closes: March 7

Johannes Segogela's naively carved wood sculptures depict both human figures and animals, which are often grouped within a hand carved environment. Using natural wood found in Sekhukhuneland, the artist finishes his works with an oil stain varnish, while others are painted expressively in vivid colours.

Some of the work included in the exhibition uses religious narratives to illustrate current issues in South Africa, including the HIV/ AIDS pandemic. Segogela's work posits interesting oppositional strategies, the artist using the traditional medium of carving and religious metaphor to present somewhat confrontational issues.

Also appearing on the same exhibition is Eliza Kentridge. Kentridge's pictures are explorations of line and colour, narrative and pattern. Having used gouache, charcoal and pastels for many years, she now works predominantly with fabric. She has derived influence from diverse textile traditions, such as Ghanaian Fante Flags, European samplers, Indian cutwork and the Bayeux Tapestry, as well as from her own bank of drawings and paintings. Her needle picks its way along the art/craft tightrope; there is a tension in the thread between the quick line, the burst of colour, and the slowness in their making.

For Kentridge, the humble, domestic stitch mediates between herself and her drawings and her thoughts. She is interested in the way the craft changes the linear sketch or painting, and also likes the endless, cheap versatility of thread: it feels like chalk on a wall, like a stick scratching a pavement, yet it can be crumpled in the hand and carried from place to place.

Her imagery is largely concerned with domestic contexts, which are lifted from the pedestrian by the inclusion of something startling, yet undisruptive. Strange angels jostle with household paraphernalia; animals get mixed up with the furniture. Her work is an attempt to look at beauty and fragility, security and wildness.

Opens: January 24
Closes: February 14

Recommended: 'The Long Day', Claudette Schreuders' solo show at Warren Siebrits (the first ever solo in this space), is a beautiful mix of recent prints and one-off sculptural works. The prints consist of individual studies of various archetypal figures, complemented by two large narrative driven prints. These latter prints verge on being comic book in style, yet nonetheless possess a magical otherness, which keeps them distinct.

The comic book flatness of the comic seems to even insinuate itself into her three-dimensional sculptural works, which include a large head, titled Boyfriend, as well as a number of smaller works. There is something unsettling about the totality of these sculptures, particularly the blank monotones of the figures staring straight ahead.

Opens: January 29
Closes: February 14

The Standard Bank Gallery presents three diverse and engaging exhibitions.

The highlight must be the curatorial team of Anitra Nettleton, Julia Charlton and Fiona Rankin-Smith's 'Engaging Modernities: Transformations of the commonplace', an exhibition of commonplace African objects. As the curators assert: "When different cultures meet, values are inevitably transformed and inverted. The west has long raided the rest of the world's cultures for their perceived 'exotic' qualities, and the resulting cultural collisions have also impacted on those raided cultures. Since pre-colonial times African societies too have drawn on cultures from far and wide to create new symbols."

Working from this simple premise, that there has been a reciprocity of influence, 'Engaging Modernities' displays a number of everyday objects that were created and exist in the cracks, in-between strict tradition and high modernity. "They engage with the modern world and appear engaging to the viewer familiar with the spaces from which they draw their material and images," the curators assert.

Some objects use the detritus of consumer culture, such as discarded medicine vials, metal snuff boxes, and used rubber gaskets, as metonymic equivalents for more traditional materials. Others refigure aspects of modern dress or objects of everyday use, for example waistcoats or tennis racquets, by incorporating or representing them in objects which have traditional uses. Still others, such as plastic front aprons and capes, remake traditional items using materials and images drawn from modern western sources.

In all these objects the west finds itself mirrored in surprising ways. Yet to the indigenous makers and users of these items, they are powerful statements of their belonging to the modern world of a cash economy, of safety pins, locks, keys, electric lights, tin cans and rayon or lurex thread. Images which invoke particular forms of power such as guns and telegraph poles, national flags, judges' wigs and kings' crowns are incorporated into the repertoires of African political symbols. Objects made in traditional or imported techniques grapple with contemporary issues such as Aids, imaging the realities of African modernity.

The objects on this exhibition remind the viewer of the flexibility and frailty of cultural constructions of identity, and the 'porousness' and mutability of traditions. But they also open up the vistas in which purposeful modern uses for objects are found, where an apparent whimsy masks a complete engagement with the ironies of global culture.

'Decorating the damaged' is the name of Gina Waldman's show, downstairs at the Standard Bank Gallery. Waldman's labour intensive and excessively repetitive art deals with "an inner, psychological human condition of the fa�ade, the mask, perfection, idealism and beauty". Sin her attempts to make 'beautiful' things out of the ugly - hence the title 'decorating the damaged' - Waldman attempts to turn the unsanitary, or that which is considered peripheral (or deemed 'low' art), into the sublime and the beautiful.

Art that intended as a kind of anaesthetic, to be beautiful, but to encourage a catharsis as well, Waldman's production invokes a particular catharsis for the artist, which is important to communicate her belief in the therapeutic and healing potential of the creative process.

'Tying the Knot: Courtship & Marriage in southern Africa' is a new permanent exhibition of traditional Zulu and Ndebele wedding regalia worn by women during courtship and engagement.

Opens: January 27
Closes: March 6

The title of Michelle Booth's new solo show at PhotoZA gives something away about its subject matter, if not its underlying thematic. 'Seeing White' is about whiteness, particularly racial connotation implicit in this colour. Grounded in contemporary polemic, the show sets out to unearth the "embedded racism" in the supposedly normal depiction of white subjects.

Says Booth: "The images are not portraits, nor are they intended to be representative of white life, in a documentary sense. It is an attempt to turn 'the critical gaze from the racial object to the racial subject', to look afresh at what appears to be normal, ordinary, insignificant moments of being white in South Africa and to recognise what Richard Dyer calls 'their particularity'". In short, it's all about making whiteness strange.

Citing Jo Ractliffe, Booth says: "The deliberate use of a plastic camera with very limited technical capabilities is an attempt to further suggest the ordinariness of the images and to remove as much as possible the intervention of myself as photographer. I wanted images that portrayed the deliberate normality of scenes, which do not appear to have been interpreted, manipulated or contrived by the artist". That said, Booth is keen to direct our thoughts in explicit ways, hence the use of large graphic lettering aimed at "directing the intention of the viewer".

If it sounds a tad overwrought, Booth's images speak of an emerging approach to photography locally that is overtly concerned with the relationship between form and content, as was evident in both Brenton Maart and Stephen Hobbs' recent exhibitions.

Opens: January 17
Closes: February 14

   SEE REVIEWS

The Pretoria Art Museum breaks the mould somewhat with this show. 'Excogitations' is a live sound sculpture. Artists working in disciplines ranging from classical music, electronica, performance art, and multimedia will contribute to an improvised installation of audio and visual media.

The work seeks to explore the relationship between various models of sound production and their respective histories as emergent natural phenomena: tensions between (wo)man and machine, harmony and dissonance, production and reception, structure and chance. These are all abstractions that may be collapsed by placing emphasis on their shared nature as inscribed gestures.

(Wo)mankind inscribes itself audio-logically in all its activities, the effect of which is not an ordered unity but an everyday occurrence akin to the seemingly random sounds of nature. There is no score, no conductor, only a processed-based art that explores sound as material: post music. Precursors of sound installations like this include Dada, Fluxus, Futurism, Japanese Noise Music and individual artists like John Cage, David Tudor, Luigi Russolo, Laurie Anderson and Nam June Paik.

The list of participating artists is: Cobi van Tonder, Gito Baloi, James Webb, Jo�o Orreccio, Johan Thom, Justice Mokoena, Maire Langley, Nathaniel Stern, Neil Langley, Shane de Lange and Thomas Barry.

The performance takes place on February 7, between 2 - 5pm.

The event coincides with the opening of artist Anton Karstel show '108314N'.

Opens: February 7
Closes: March 14

Sue Williamson pays a visit to Abrie Fourie's gallery space devoted to new and experimental work.

Opens: 3 February
Closes: 2 March