Archive: Issue No. 91, March 2005

04.03.05 Wim Botha at Michael Stevenson Contemporary
04.03.05 Malcolm Payne at Irma Stern Museum
04.03.05 Norman Catherine at 34 Long
04.03.05 'Girls Night Out' at João Ferreira
04.03.05 Jennifer Lovemore-Reed at Bell-Roberts Gallery
04.03.05 'The Spirit of Ubuntu' at Nonjingi Gallery
04.03.05 'Sex, Love and Suicide' at the Shot Gallery
04.03.05 Vivienne Kohler at 3rd i Gallery
04.03.05 Michael Pettit, Mandla Vanyaza and Tracey Derrick at the AVA
04.03.05 Gabriel Clark-Brown at UCT
04.03.05 Giovanni Agresti Fiumara at Bell-Roberts Gallery
04.03.05 Jurgen Schadeberg at Photographers Gallery za
04.03.05 Margaret Malan shows ceramics at Irma Stern Museum
04.03.05 Jan Verboom at DIRT

04.02.05 Jan van der Merwe at Sanlam Art Gallery
04.02.05 Muzi Kuzwayo at Photographers Gallery za
04.02.05 Sean Wilson at Photographers Gallery za
04.02.05 David Goldblatt at Michael Stevenson Contemporary
04.02.05 'Sweet Nothings' and 'Rugby vs. Soccer' at Bell-Roberts Gallery
04.02.05 Vanessa Cowling at 3rd i Gallery
04.02.05 Slack, Geustyn and O'Flynn at the AVA
04.02.05 'Democracy X' re-opens at the Castle of Good Hope

07.01.05 'Ilifa Labantu Heritage of the People' at SANG

05.11.04 'The Muse of History': Helmut Starcke at the Old Town House
05.11.04 Guy Tillim - DaimlerChrysler Award winner at the SANG
05.11.04 'Curiosity CLXXV' at Hiddingh Hall, Michaelis School of Fine Art

STELLENBOSCH

04.03.05 Norman Catherine retrospective at Sasol Art Museum

04.02.05 Villa and Skotnes at Lanzerac

Capetonians will catch the first glimpse of Wim Botha's latest work before the Standard Bank Young Artist for 2005 hits the Grahamstown Festival and commences his national tour later in the year with another new body of work.

Botha is known for multiple media artwork that often reflects on the symbolic imagery of power, religion and art history. One of his more recent pieces called Mieliepap Pieta was a life-size mirrored replica of Michelangelo's original, but modelled in maize meal and epoxy resin. It was exhibited as part of the 2004 New York show, 'Personal Affects'.

'Cold Fusion - gods, heroes and martyrs' promises new work that fuses imagery based on Western precedent with local resonance, 'incorporating elements of the meta-reality present in popular science fiction and Japanese anime'.

According to MSCG, the show will attempt a larger scope by referring to global concerns and the effects of ideologies on individuals and groups in conflict. The title itself is a clue to the content. Cold fusion refers to electrochemistry: the combination of certain elements that result in a chain reaction where the end is more than the sum of the component parts.

The artist will conduct a walkabout at 1pm on Thursday March 17 (call Nombini at (021) 421 2575).

Opens: March 16
Closes: April 30

Malcolm Payne, who is Professor at UCT's Michaelis School of Fine Art, has worked over the past 35 years in a diversity of media and exhibited extensively both here and abroad.

In 'Illuminated Manuscripts', Payne exhibits new brilliantly coloured prints of commonplace objects of material culture. Although they have no explicit signification, Payne says a possible meta-text could reflect on a post-9/11 'warrior state mindset' and other representations of global disquiet.

He adds, 'This is achieved through dissonance, both in the improbable affinities or groupings assigned to these (non-menacing) objects and how they are refashioned in powerful software applications that causes damage to their structural coherence.'

One of Payne's new works, Q54Spell, was included in the International Print Center New York's New Prints 2004/Autumn publication. It featured 45 prints by 40 artists selected from a pool of over 1200 works.

Opens: February 23
Closes: April 2

This commercial exhibition of Norman Catherine's work, entitled 'Past 2 Present', coincides with the travelling national touring retrospective 'Now and Then', which is this month on show at the Sasol Art Museum in Stellenbosch (see listings below).

Catherine is widely regarded as a leading South African contemporary artist. This exhibition will contain new work and selected older pieces in various media to present a thoughtful overview of Catherine's oeuvre. The exhibition will feature painting, sculpture in wood and bronze, graphic works and some 'huge surprises'. A catalogue will also be published.

Opens: March 1
Closes: April 9

'Girls Night Out' is a thematic group show of invited artists to be held at the João Ferreira Gallery as part of the third Cape Town Month of Photography. The show, curated by artist Tracy Lindner Gander, is to feature a wide-ranging selection of photography-based work by various local artists. The theme regards the experience of women living within a South African context. It is designed to encourage individual response and interpretation.

The promising line-up includes painters, printmakers, photographers and installation artists: Bridget Baker, Lien Botha, Claire Breukel, Katherine Bull, Arnold Erasmus, Brigitta Gaylard, Tracy Lindner Gander, Dorothee Kreutzveldt (with Ingrid Masondo and Keropetse Mosimane), Sarah Nankin, Senzeni Marasela and Sue Williamson.

Opens: February 28
Closes: March 26

The first video work on show, called 45 Minutes as Object, is set in Cape Town and Paris, where Jennifer Lovemore-Reed recently completed a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts. In this part video work and part performance piece, the artist lies completely still for 45 minutes at different locations in each of 10 video segments.

Public reaction and interaction forms part of the work. The experience of the artist is also important: Lovemore-Reed experiences the world mostly through sound and temperature. She says: 'This piece speaks about human nature and universality, kindness and indifference, vulnerability and self-awareness, weakness and strength, pain and beauty, fear and surrender, and the awareness of experience.'

Also on show is another video work called Straddle, which is described as 'photographic sculpture'. The piece does indeed straddle the divide between 'African' and 'European' ways of life and ways of seeing, commenting along the way about consumerism and the historical objectification of women as well as stereotype versus reality.

Opens: March 8
Closes: March 14

Bateau Laveau, a group of young Cape Town artists with a studio in Paarl, are holding their first South African group show at Nonjingi Gallery to coincide with Night Vision, part of the Cape Town Festival.

The members of the group are Bevin Davis, Thembinkosi Kohli, Bongani Mohapi and Thembinkosi Mzinzi. They decided in 2002 to pool their resources and devote themselves full-time to creating art. Since then, they have sold their works to buyers in Hong Kong, Zurich, Atlanta and Miami. Now, it's time for locals to get a glimpse of their painting.

Opens: March 11
Closes: April 9

This exhibition of multi-dimensional photography from Durban features three artists: Brigitta Gaylard, Devin Bauermeister and Tamlyn Martin. They all play with the notion of the photographic image as an objective representation of reality and the idea of the photographer as narrator or author of the documented subject.

Gaylard, a visual artist and commercial photographer, takes a tongue-in-cheek approach to issues of self-representation using slick studio lighting in a 'Gainsborough-meets-Vogue' style. Her work, which conveys a struggle between the domestic and the professional, is self-critical yet playful.

Bauermeister creates delicate cardboard and triplex constructions of photographic scenes sourced from the internet that deal with sites of civic destruction and rupture. He reconstructs the scenes using architectural model building techniques to bring into focus vulnerability in the face of mass destruction.

Martin bases her work on Joseph Beuys' notion of social sculpture. She experiments with new ways of working as an artist, which has led her to many multi-disciplinary collaborations and public engagements. Her photographs 'Home is where the Heart is' are part of a larger body of work, entitled 'Public Love Project', that tracks her engagements with the general public.

Opens: March 7
Closes: April 7

Vivienne Kohler produces multi-media paintings that juxtapose typical Cape sentiments with rough collage to evoke an entirely different reality. According to 3rd i, he represents the new breed of 20-something artists who impress with 'sheer brilliance of technical virtuosity and insight'.

Opens: March 10
Closes: April 16

Michael Pettit exhibits in the main gallery with new oil paintings on canvas, featuring 'the theatrical, surreal and fantastical'.

In the long gallery, Mandla Vanyaza is inspired by Gerard Sekoto whom he met and visited regularly in Paris in 1992 during a five-month residency at the Cité' Inernationale des Art. Vanyaza regarded Sekoto as a master and he describes meeting him as 'a moment that would stay with me all my life'.

Vanyaza has created new work that he hopes will contribute to keeping Sekoto's memory alive, based on photographs he took. Vanyaza says: 'If [over] these three weeks Sekoto's contribution can be alight in people's consciousness and talk about him, I will have made a contribution in paying tribute to this great pioneer.'

Upstairs, Tracey Derrick exhibits black-and-white photographs of farm labourers in the Swartland in a show called 'Earthworks'. Despite the advent of democracy, many practices of abuse and exploitation still persist on the farms. She says this complex heritage has left behind various forms of entrapment and problems including land tenure, poor housing, low wages, racism and change. Derrick documents this struggle to show the beauty and hope of individuals and their communities.

Opens: March 7
Closes: March 26

This exhibition comprises nine works in print media by Gabriel Clark-Brown, a graduate of Michaelis School of Fine Art. The artworks relate the social construction of disability in South African society. Clark-Brown says their current position in the UCT Senate Room Foyer provides a platform to convey thoughts and messages to both the members of the Senate as well as university policy-makers.

The exhibition forms part of UCT's Transformation seminar series, which relates to the introduction of disability studies into all curricula. The work on show replaces the former formal portraits of previous vice chancellors of the university. The portraits are currently part of another exhibition at Hiddingh Hall, called 'Curiosity', which marks the university's 175th anniversary.

Opens: February 28
Closes: April 30

This ongoing project is an exhibition of black-and-white portraits of residents of Cape Town entitled 'Capetonians'. In a home studio setting the photographer set up a control situation by restricting the number of shots and creating a constant technical parameter in order to reveal the 'Capetonian nature' of each subject.

The exhibition has no overt social or political agenda. It is described as a simple form of portraiture to show the very nature of the artist's relationship with Capetonians. The project will culminate in a book of the same title.

Opens: February 23
Closes: March 19

'Witness' is an exhibition and book launch that commemorates 52 years of pointing a lens at life. The publication presents an overview of Schadeberg's photographic collection. Some of the photographs are distinctly South African; others are of a more international nature. They are presented here together with previously unpublished photographs.

Opens: March 23
Closes: April 16

Margaret Malan exhibits her ceramic works at the Irma Stern Museum. Malan, a graduate of both Michaelis and Hornsey College of Art in London, worked with Marike van der Merwe in Cape Town and at an art centre in Mpumalanga. Now, from her studio in Hout Bay, she creates functional pieces with a delicacy of expression that has become her hallmark.

Opens: March 12
Closes: April 9

Jan Verboom exhibits his black-and-white landscapes of Namibia and the Northern Cape alongside his images of classic cars, captured before historical buildings in Cuba. His show forms part of the Cape Town Month of Photography, which is now in full swing in venues across the city. 'Journey' was shown last year at the Photographers Gallery za.

This is DIRT's inaugural exhibition under new ownership. Rory Palmer and Elodie Hainard have taken over from Heike Davies.

Opens: February 24
Closes: March 18

Jan van der Merwe exhibits a series of installations in this exhibition called 'Unknown'. Curator Stephan Hundt says the show will be of particular interest to students and scholars because 'it successfully demonstrates a contemporary approach to art-making without being obscure or deliberately complicated'.

Van der Merwe works primarily in rusted metal with found objects that he collects and transforms into sculptures or installations. Hundt says: 'Van der Merwe has developed a language that speaks subtly yet eloquently of the South African psyche and society. His works, fashioned from familiar objects unlike much tendentious installation art in South Africa, are deliberately accessible and encourage the viewer to pause and reflect.'

Professor Gavin Younge of UCT's Michaelis School of Fine Art will open the exhibition at 7pm on February 1.

Opens: February 1
Closes: March 24

Nicholas Hales' show entitled 'Portals' promises to be an interesting exploration about 'blocked energy, releasing of energy and entrances to a different dimension'. Although it sounds fairly obtuse, Hales has grounded his work in gritty reality.

The starting point is Manenberg. Hales became aware, while working on a project in the area, of the dark energy over this Cape Town suburb with its boarded windows and doors, violence and social imprisonment. Shortly thereafter, Manenberg was struck by a tornado and Hales became interested in the way energies attract one other and how energy blocks can become a catalyst for change.

He says: 'I'm interested in that brief moment when a shift in consciousness occurs when one can get a brief glimpse of the perfect structure to all things.'

Also running at the gallery this month is a group show called 'Girls Night Out', which forms part of the Cape Town Month of Photography. It features an intriguing mix of artists, including Bridget Baker, Lien Botha, Claire Breukel, Katherine Bull, Geeta Chagan, Tracy Lindner Gander, Dorothee Kreutzveldt, Senzeni Marasela, Sarah Nankin, Varenke Paschke, Claire Sarembok, Penny Siopis, Sue Williamson, Arnold Erasmus and Lance Slabbert.

Hales opens: February 2
Hales closes: February 26

'Girls Night Out' opens: February 15
'Girls Night Out' closes: March 22

Muzi Kuzwayo, a published author and partner of King James advertising agency, is a graduate of the New York Institute of Photography. In this exhibition, he presents a series of photographs of his childhood hometown of Payneville near Springs in Gauteng.

The area has been reduced to a pile of stones after the inhabitants were subjected during apartheid to forced removals. The result is a series of landscapes that evoke both pain and beauty. Kuzwayo has also written text, which accompanies the images.

He says: 'These are images of my own private Egypt. When I get impatient with the imperfections of the present, they remind me of where this whole journey started. That way, I can focus on the progress instead of perfection because trying to be perfect can wear you down.'

Opens: February 23
Closes: March 19

Sean Wilson shows 15 colour portraits of regular traders at the Milnerton flea market in this exhibition entitled 'One man's waste is another man's want'. The series reflects a life-long fascination for the artist.

He says: 'Flea markets provide a welcome relief from the antiseptic malls and their mass-produced and over-priced tacky merchandise - For me, the piles of old stuff carried layers of meanings and associations that seemed to resonate endlessly onwards and outwards. 'Junk' was not so much the discarded artifacts of a society but rather a kind of distilled essence of its character.'

Opens: February 21
Closes: March 19

David Goldblatt continues his exploration of the intersections between people, values and land in post-apartheid South Africa in this latest exhibition entitled 'Intersections'. A major body of work focuses on the landscapes of the Northern Cape. Alongside, he turns his lens to public and private memorials as well as South African towns in the time of AIDS. A new series of portraits of 'municipal people' responsible for local government comprises the final element.

Goldblatt will conduct a walkabout of this exhibition at 11am on February 10 (cost: R30). A book, also called Intersections, will be published by Prestel in mid-2005 to coincide with Goldblatt's solo exhibition at the prestigious Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Opens: February 7
Closes: March 12

Two shows run side-by-side this month in the new Bell-Roberts Gallery as part of the Cape Town Month of Photography. 'Sweet Nothings', curated by Sanell Aggenbach, is a group show of five women artists who each interpret romance in their own way. Jean Brundrit, Jillian Lochner, Svea Josephy and Dorothee Kreutzfeld as well as Aggenbach deliver a humorous and somewhat irreverent take on the theme in their individualistic ways.

Alongside, in an interesting juxtaposition, Pieter Badenhorst exhibits his photographic work entitled 'Rugby vs. Soccer'.

Opens: February 9
Closes: March 5 ('Sweet Nothings'); March 14 ('Rugby vs. Soccer')

In 'Strings and Flight' Vanessa Cowling explores the complexities of human attachment and detachment through her provocative and haunting imagery of flight and entanglement, according to 3rd i Gallery.

Photographer Jean Brundrit will open the exhibition at 6pm, followed by the Simon van Gend band at 7.30pm. Cowling will give a walkabout at 6.30pm on Wednesday February 23.

Opens: February 3
Closes: March 4

Christopher Slack exhibits new paintings in the Main gallery, using his trademark enamel paint. He deals with issues of life in a burnt-out, fast-tracked world in this show called 'B*Grade'.

Alongside in the Long gallery, printmaker Eunice Geustyn shows new mixed works on paper. Upstairs, Norman O'Flynn exhibits a series of colourful abstract painting.

Opens: February 14
Closes: March 5

This highly successful exhibition, visited by about 55,000 people last year, will be re-opened by Iziko Museums for two months due to public demand. The exhibition traces the long history of our country from the earliest cultural manifestations of human behaviour to contemporary post-apartheid South Africa.

'Democracy X' won the Western Cape Arts and Culture Award for the best urban museum project in 2004 and was also listed by London's Royal Academy as among the top 15 exhibitions worldwide.

A recently published catalogue with full-colour illustrations of all the objects on show, as well as essays, is now available. Democracy X: marking the present; representing the past is edited by Andries Oliphant, Peter Delius and Lalou Meltzer. Writers include Keorapetse Kgositsile, Bill Nasson, Muff Anderson, Guy Berger, Rosalie Finlayson, Pallo Jordan, Jeremy Cronin, Edward Lahiff, Mike van Graan, Rayda Becker, Patricia Davison, Duncan Miller and Simon Hall.

Opens: February 1
Closes: March 31

This exhibition, which opened on Heritage Day (September 24), showcases 150 African artworks acquired by the gallery over the past decade. 'Ilifa Labantu Heritage of the People' is curated by Carol Kaufmann, Iziko's African art expert. She says: 'The post-1994 sense of freedom has encouraged South Africans to look to the north to rediscover cultural affiliations with the rest of the continent.'

'Ilifa' includes textiles from Ghana, beaded crowns and gold-weights from Nigeria, Kuba ceremonial beadwork from the DRC and 'repatriated' works like engraved Nguni cattle horns depicting scenes from the Zulu war of 1879.

The show reflects Iziko SANG's post-1994 policy of purposefully collecting and purchasing African art. Traditional beadwork, basketry, textile and ceramics, carvings in wood, leather and other materials now form a significant part of the Iziko Art collections.

There will be a series of organised tours. Contact Carol Kaufmann on (021) 467 4672 or email ckaufmann@iziko.org.za

Opens: September 24
Closes: April 2005

Helmut Starcke, a former lecturer at Michaelis School of Fine Art, shows a series of reworked celebrated Dutch masterpieces in this exhibition at the Old Town Hall. He juxtaposes classical figures from the Golden Age of 17th century art with characters and artifacts from Africa.

According to the artist, the show comprises 'mediations and meditations on the Dutch colonial adventure, with specific reference to Africa and the history of the Cape of Good Hope, colonised by the Dutch in 1652'.

The Old Town House, which houses the famous Michaelis Collection of 17th Century Netherlandish art, is therefore an appropriate exhibition context and setting. According to curator Hayden Proud, many of the interiors evoked in Starcke's works resonate with the proportions, lighting and architectural details of the venue itself.

Opens: November 17
Closes: April 2005

Photographer Guy Tillim is no stranger to Cape Town gallery enthusiasts. Michael Stevenson Contemporary Gallery hosted in June a series of works called 'Leopold and Mobutu' from the Congo region.

Tillim's reputation, however, extends way beyond the Mother City. He is the most recent recipient of the prestigious DaimlerChrysler Award for Photography and this month the SANG exhibits his photographic work.

Tillim began taking photographs professionally in 1986 and has built up a strong reputation for his documentary-style work. In this show, Tillim turns his photographer's gaze from conflict-ridden sites in Africa to the inner-city life of Johannesburg. A catalogue accompanies the exhibition.

Opens: November 27
Closes: March 21, 2005

Curated by Pippa Skotnes, Gwen van Embden and Fritha Langerman, this exhibition, part of the University of Cape Town's 175th anniversary celebrations, seeks to 'celebrate curiosity and scholarship, and the symbolic and narrative power of objects.' Historical treasures, curious paraphernalia of bygone days, teaching equipment, unique research materials and academic vestments will all be brought together in a vast installation at UCT's original campus, currently the home of its Art School.

The curators have scoured every old cupboard and every nook and cranny of the departments that make up the University. From these sometimes neglected and dusty locations they have taken objects that resonate with historical importance or are unusual, bizarre or are simply curious or strange. 175 cabinets fill Hiddingh Hall, echoing the 'cabinets of curiosity' of adventurous collectors and researchers of the past. According to Skotnes, who heads the Michaelis School of Fine Art, 'Objects have an extraordinary mobility of meaning. We hope that this act of curatorship will generate new ideas about UCT collections.'

Numerous staff members, artists and academics of the University have contributed objects or even 'curated' an individual cabinet. The exhibition promises to draw attention to the way in which material objects are intimately entwined in the creation of other forms of knowledge.

Opens: Tuesday November 23
Closes: April 1, 2005

'Now and Then' is a travelling retrospective of about 35 years of this prolific artist's work of fantasy, humour, horror, satire and pain. It has already been show at the Pretoria Art Museum and Oliewenhuis Art Museum in Bloemfontein in 2004.

The long-awaited exhibition provides an interesting retrospective of Norman Catherine's output, from his first airbrush successes in the 1970s through surrealistic images of mutilation as he became more aware of the inequities of apartheid South Africa.

His lithographs of the early 1980s captured the hopelessness and absurdity of this unjust social system, leading to apocalyptic works and later the embrace of found objects, oil paints and canvas. In the 1990s, his work explored new areas of tension in the New South Africa through satire and humour.

Opens: February 17
Closes: March 19

Edoardo Villa (89) and Cecil Skotnes (78) are both renowned artists in their own right. Together, they also established a new movement in South African art that paved the way for an avant-garde group who reinterpreted their African artistic heritage for a contemporary market.

In 1957, the duo founded the Amadlozi group that included artists like Sydney Kumalo. They were very influential in the development of other artists - in particular at the Polly Street Centre where the careers of many black artists were launched. Skotnes recently received the Order of Ikhamange from President Mbeki in recognition of his role in the arts and the development of black artists.

This exhibition includes 60 sculptures by Villa in the front and back gardens of Lanzerac Manor and Winery in Stellenbosch. They range in height from 30cm to 3m. Skotnes' works are hung in the Manor House.

Opens: December 10
Closes: March