Archive: Issue No. 100, December 2005

9.12.05 Gerard Marx at Warren Siebrits Contemporary
9.12.05 Helen Joseph at Afronova
9.12.05 Johannes Phokela at Gallery Momo
9.12.05 Abrie Fourie at JAG
9.12.05 Peter McKenzie at JAG
9.12.05 Brett Morris at The Premises
9.12.05 Beezy Bailey at the Everard Read Gallery
9.12.05 'Oppitafel IV': Miniatures at Artspace
9.12.05 'David' at the Michelangelo Towers

5.08.05 Jurgen Schadeberg at Museumafrica
 

Gerhard Marx has been creating drawings composed of map fragments for the past five years. These works are created in a private realm away from the frenetic environment of the theatre world in which he makes his living, designing sets and costumes. The relationship between drawing and map allows for a more intimate language to develop between the image, process and material. Drawing with map fragments is an extremely slow process, a complex work of scale taking weeks to complete. It is a process of lingering on a line or shape, causing the artist to draw on memory and other external reference points, often found hidden in the map itself.

Maps were originally the domain of artists working during the Renaissance, but have evolved over the centuries into functional plans that have become the terrain of the surveyor and city planner, rather than the artist. Marx writes: 'My interest in the maps stems back to a year spent working in a cartography unit in Pietersburg, during my two years of compulsory National Service in 1987 and 88. I was part of a team of six cartographers whose job it was to collate and add new information to the existing 1: 50 000 topographical maps used by the SADF.'

Marx's work is profoundly linked with issues relating to memory and geography and as a result he works predominantly with maps of South Africa. This in a sense brings the wheel full circle, placing the map back in the terrain of the artist, offering us a visual experience of the South African landscape that a conventional painting or photograph cannot achieve.

Opened: November 15
Closes: December 15

The female figure has always been symbolic of fertility and regeneration, sexuality and eroticism. A woman's form is usually depicted as either enigmatic and titillating or motherly and protective. In 'Bound', Helen Joseph divorces the figure from its usual associations with beauty, femininity, maternity and sexuality to expose the vulnerability and dehumanisation that results from the violence, both psychological and physical, of abuse.

Joseph works in multiple media. Here she shows drawings and paintings, as well as sculpture, digital prints and digital film. Her sculptures explore the three dimensional aspect of the female form and allow her to take her literal use of binding and tying onto another plane.

Opened: November 29
Closes: December 7

'Imagine where you'll be', an exhibition of new work by Johannes Phokela at Gallery MOMO, defines the process of change in terms of time and space. Phokela's beautifully painted manipulations of iconic images by Old Masters such as Rubens, Van Dyck and others, weave a personal history into this historical canon.

Characters of key protagonists are often altered from their Northern European settings, resulting in unsettling images that challenge Eurocentric narratives around contemporary and historical art. Undoubtedly Phokela's experience and subsequent move to the UK are intrinsically linked to his reinterpretation of the Golden Age. Although his interests lie in parallel histories of the Enlightenment and the African continent, his paintings are as much about the violent and twisted history of the Dutch in Africa as they are about the history of painting.

An accomplished artist, Phokela was recently awarded the world renowned Decibel Award painting prize and a BP National Portrait Gallery Award. His work has featured on numerous exhibitions and biennales and his work is held in many collections including the National Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian in Washington.

Opened: December 3
Closes: January 12

End of the World

Abrie Fourie is a Pretoria-born and based artist. His photographic images of urban South Africa highlight both the immediate context and overlooked beauties of the urban environment. In whatever format they are presented they exude a meditative effect on the viewer. Fleeting moments become timeless impressions of the imagination, doubling up as spiritual metaphors of sorts. The flapping of plastic bags in the wind lures the viewer away from the hustle and bustle of city life and into a space where quiet reflection is a key to survival. Gazing upon the horizon at Cape Point where the earth meets heaven, elicits a similar response. This is heightened by the halo-like glow of fluorescents that illuminate his photographs which are presented in lightboxes.

Fourie's new show, 'End of the World', presents images which draw a viewer into a place of stillness where judgement is suspended and one is asked merely to witness traces of the sublime in a timeless sphere of pondering on the ordinary being extraordinary. Though the images in no way dictate an interpretation, they tend to guide the spectator down paths that lead to still waters amidst the hustle, bustle and distraction of physical existence. Akin to the spirituality evoked by the work of the modernists like Rothko, Fourie's abstractions of everyday observations appear to question our preoccupation with accumulating philosophies that are intended to enrich our inner being, when all around us, our environment is whispering its secrets to those who are attentive.

Fourie has shown in solo and group exhibitions in places as diverse as New York, Columbia, Brussels, Antwerp and Tokyo. He currently lectures at the University of Tshwane and is curator of Outlet which is housed on that campus.

Opened: November 8
Closes: February 27

Wentworth is a township 20 km south of Durban. With a population of 35 000 residents, it is one of the smallest in Durban yet also one of the most overcrowded. Like many similar areas, crime, gangsterism, drugs, and poverty born out of unemployment as well as lack of recreational facilities plague Wentworth. Wentworth is also located in the heart of Durban's industrial basin and residents suffer from all of its attendant health problems. In light of all this it is easy to lose sight of the area's indomitable sense of community, its history of anti-Apartheid activism and continuing resistance in the face of incredible odds.

'Vying Posie (Going Home)', the title of a photographic exhibition by Peter McKenzie, is an expression that encapsulates Peter McKenzie's personal and photographic journey back to the streets of Wentworth where he grew, and is a common expression amongst the working class people of Wentworth, many of whom have to work long shifts in the nearby petroleum refineries.

McKenzie has worked as a photographer for the Sunday Tribune, Afrapix Collective (which he co-founded) and Drum Magazine where he was chief photographer. In recent years he was facilitator and co-ordinator of the photojournalism department of the Institute for the Advancement of Journalism. McKenzie has been published and shown his work in France and Guyana and also curated a photography exhibition at the Photography Biennale in Bamako, Mali.

Opened: November 8
Closes: February 27

'The Disposables' is an exhibition of limited edition prints of some of the photographs that appear in a book of the same name. The photographs were taken on disposable cameras by members of South Africa's 'disposable' society - those who beg for small change, sweep floors, mind cars and so on to survive. The collection of these into a book is the result of five years work by Brett Morris, executive creative director at FCB Johannesburg, one of the country's largest advertising agencies.

He explains: 'I see many of this book's contributors every day. You might see some of them too. If not the very same people, then others like them. They live on the fringe of privileged society. Filling its nameless and faceless peripheral roles. They are, to coin a politically incorrect term, society's 'disposables''.

'The idea for this book came from the idealistic notion that I might be able to help these people earn some money the same way I do, by expressing myself creatively while offering society a look at the lives that are lived beyond its manicured borders. I bought 15 disposable cameras and set about recruiting the participants. My offer to them was this: I would give them R10 at the outset to go off and take photographs. When they were finished they would phone me and I would collect the camera and give them another R40.'

Opens: December 3
Closes: December 17

'Whimsical, wistful, mystical, mercurial' - these are some of the epithets describing the work of Beezy Bailey. They also aptly encapsulate Bailey himself, whose multiple artistic personae mingle and merge fluidly with his art.

In his latest exhibition Bailey demonstrates his chameleon-like mastery of various visual media and genres. Naturalistic landscapes are displayed alongside primitive, fantasy figures rendered in frenzied hues. Sensuous forms co-exist with cartoon-like characters and classical nudes on delicate rice paper interact with deliberately crude canvases depicting decadent dances of revelry and angst. His work alternates between seemingly chaotic zones and more meditative spaces, in which the commonplace and the imaginary converge, as though performing an impromptu pas de deux. These are some of the more overt traits of his visual choreography: syncopated, quirky compositions executed in molten swathes of colour, rendered from a child's eye-view. Yet beneath the seemingly naäve veneer resides a remarkably disciplined, sophisticated eye that revels in exploring and manipulating medium and meaning, and stripping both of them bare.

Opened: November 23
Closes: December 6

'Oppitafel IV' is a group exhibition of miniature works that is now in its third annual incarnation. The exhibition consists of works no larger than A4 and includes such artists as Guy du Toit, Diana Hyslop, Lionel Smit, Gordon Froud, Cobus van Bosch, Wilma Cruise, Antoinette Murdoch, Reney Warrington, Cheryl Gage, Chris Diedericks, Nina Romm and Johann du Plessis.

The gallery is closed from December 16 - January 15.

Opened: November 27
Closes: end February 2006

Curator and art dealer Liza Essers has been appointed to curate an exhibition entitled 'David', set to open in conjunction with the launch of the new Michelangelo Towers. Top emerging and established contemporary South African artists are being commissioned to reinterpret the legacy of Michelangelo's David.

The artists selected include Clive van den Berg, Tracey Rose, Angus Taylor, and Peter Schütz. Italian-based artists Rose and Claire will be creating their work in Florence. Johan Thom, Gina Waldman, the Trinity Session (Stephen Hobbs and Marcus Neütstetter), Antoinette Murdoch, Kim Lieberman, Kudzenai Chiurai, Mbongeni Buthelezi as well as Hannelie Coetzee and Strangelove are also taking part.

'Buonarroti Michelangelo had a profound influence on Western art', said Essers, 'Legacy and the Michelangelo Towers strive to create a parallel influence on hotel development in South Africa, where original contemporary art set them apart in style and innovation.' Some works from the exhibition will become part of the Michelangelo Towers' permanent collection and the remaining pieces will be auctioned to raise money for charity.

Opened: November 25
Closes: December 16

An exhibition with photographs from Jürgen Schadeberg's publication Voices from the Land will be opened by the Honorable Dr. Z. Pallo Jordan, Minister of Arts and Culture, with music by McCoy Mrubata.

Opens: August 7
Closes: late 2005