Archive: Issue No. 91, March 2005

04.03.05 Peter Engblom, Aryan Kaganof and Nicola Deane at artSPACE durban
04.03.05 Anawana Haloba at the NSA Gallery's Multimedia Room
04.03.05 Grace Kotze at the NSA's Main Gallery
04.03.05 Thando Mama at the NSA Galleries
04.03.05 'Through the Looking Glass' curated by Brenda Schmahmann at the Durban Art Gallery
04.03.05 'First Touch' at the Menzi Mcunu Gallery, BAT Centre
 

For the month of March artSPACE durban presents 'recent work', a collaborative exhibition featuring Aryan Kaganof, Nicola Deane and Peter Engblom.

Born in South Africa, Kaganof left the country in 1984 to avoid military conscription and was granted political asylum in the Netherlands where he studied film direction and screen writing at the Netherlands film and Television Academy. Winner of the 2002 Milan Festival of African Film, he is now working on a feature film based on his novel HECTIC!.

Kaganof and Deane have been working together in various media since 2001. In 2002 they created a stir at the NSA Gallery in Durban when Deane, as part of her show entitled 'Home Economics' created chocolate casts of her vagina before a stunned audience. She did a repeat performance in Paris during the L'Etrange Festival where Liberation newspaper dubbed her 'The Venus of Chocolate'.

Deane is back in South Africa with her most recent body of work. These pieces have developed out of the art book she has been working on for the past two years. Digitally assembled and re-designed, the work consists of fragments of found images veiled by text poems that terrorise aesthetic expectations concerning feminine psycho-sexual identity and post-feminist critique.

Kaganof does the usual mopping, adding text onto Deane's pieces and also presenting his recent video work including A Perfect Day , a finalist at last years Brett Kebble Art Award. He also presents a collaboration with Kendell Geers, Prodigal Son and with Matthew Barney, The Murder Mystery.

Engblom is a lecturer in photography at the Durban Institute of Technology and is well known for his fictional historical concept 'Zulu Sushi' series. He is back from a series of shows at The Generator in Cape Town with his recent work from the series 'Retro Girls'.

Opens: 6.30pm, March 9
Closes: March 30

Anawana Haloba is a Zambian artist currently living in Oslo, Norway. She completed a diploma in Fine Arts at the Evelyn Hone Collage of Applied Arts and Commerce, Zambia in 2000, and is currently completing a BA Fine Arts degree at the National Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo. Haloba has participated in numerous group exhibitions and workshops in many places including Zambia, the USA, Senegal, Norway and Finland.

Haloba will present a recent work comprising two video pieces shown together. The installation is largely a commentary on the biased economic world system, and how 'third world' countries are affected, the role they play and how poverty in these regions is ignored.

A particular force for Haloba is the effect of this marginalisation on women living in poverty, and how they might be part of the living world. She uses her body as a medium to display thoughts which she terms 'mind noises' with an intention to make a statement and be heard.

Haloba is the fourth participant in the 2004 Young Artists' Project (YAP), an annual, ongoing initiative by the NSA Gallery to support and nurture new and experimental work. The project is funded by the National Arts Council, Pro Helvetia, The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and the Royal Netherlands Embassy.

Opens: 6pm, March 8
Closes: March 27

Grace Kotze presents an exhibition of large-scale and smaller oil paintings. Resident in Durban, Kotze studied at the Durban Institute of Technology where she received a Higher Diploma in Fine Arts. Kotze works as an artist and muralist, and has completed numerous large-scale commissions for private and corporate clients. This is her second solo exhibition.

The exhibition is an exploration of the emotive qualities of landscape, and the human body and 'heavenly' formations are constant references.

Kotze states that, 'I find it easy to fall into a safe way of painting that is showy, presenting a well painted image with an accurate representation of the subject. One of the ways I try and break away from this is to introduce an element of chance mark-making and to make colour and structural decisions from an emotional level. Marks created through running paint, liquid paint left to dry on a flat surface, splatted and smeared paint in the making of a very specific form, add a level of painting that incorporates the abstract.'

The exhibition is funded through a grant from the National Lotteries Distribution Trust Fund.

Opens: 6pm, March 8
Closes: March 27

'Next Movement' is video artist Thando Mama's second solo show, an installation of recent work and a new series of digital prints. Mama has gained stature as an important young South African artist and has been traveling and showing in numerous international exhibitions in the past year.

He is a founder member of 3rd Eye Vision, a Durban Artists' collective that has shown on various group shows locally. In 2003 he received The MTN New Contemporaries Award and has since been included in group shows in Belgium, the USA, Senegal, New Zealand, Switzerland and France. In Senegal, during the 2004 Dakar Biennale he received the Prix de la Communité de Belgique.

Mama's practice as a video artist is framed by his awareness that his chosen medium is largely marginalised within the South African art market and gallery system. He champions the use of video as a legitimate and important aspect of contemporary South African art.

Mama's work grapples with the uneasy representation of the black male, and how its depiction is often fraught with ideological ambiguity. He draws from Pan-African writings, popular print and television media, digital developments and his own experiences. Often his own body is used as a starting point and reference in his work, and he shares an interest with artists who use their own experience and bodies as a canvas on which larger social political issues play themselves out.

Mama states: 'My body forms part of or is a reference to issues arising from socio-political discourses in the contemporary African society and its Diaspora. Thus my face, my voice, my skin texture, the audio levels of the video, the installations become a tool and a space for the audience to engage in, to identify with and hopefully give and take meaning from my work.'

Opens: 6pm, March 29
Closes: April 17

'Through the Looking Glass' is a traveling exhibition that has been mounted to celebrate the centenary of Rhodes University and is complemented by a book of the same name. Brenda Schmahmann, professor and Head of Fine Art at Rhodes University, is curator of the exhibition as well as author of the book.

The exhibition examines representations of self by South African women artists and comprises of a wide range of significant works that have been borrowed from public and private collections. It explores the many intriguing ways in which paintings, sculptures, prints, photographs and work in other media speak of women's relation to their communities as well as a broad range of social concerns.

The title of the exhibition alludes to the title of one of the celebrated works of Lewis Carroll revolving around the character Alice. Equally, it refers to the mirrors that artists have historically used to make images of self. But, as the show reveals, women artists in South Africa do not produce self-representations that are uncritical reflections of traditional ideas. If Alice traverses a universe that inverts or defies convention, South African women artists likewise unsettle and challenge inherited norms.

Artists featured in the exhibition include Penny Siopis, Kathryn Smith, Terry Kurgan, Tracy Rose, Juliette Armstrong, Angela Buckland, Bongi Bengu, Lallitha Jawahirilal, Dorothy Kay and Berni Searle among others.

The accompanying book, published by David Krut Publishing is illustrated in full colour and with lucid and substantial text and discussions of self-representation in light of themes and issues that are of contemporary concern, such as memory and body politics.

Opens: 5.30pm, March 2
Closes: April 12

'First Touch' is an exhibition of works by the Sibambene Group which comprises six ceramists in their second year of study at the Durban Institute of Technology (DIT). The students' keenness to explore various cultural issues through this unique medium is inspired as much by contemporary design as organic material.

Siyabonga Khoza, winner of various local competitions has been working with clay and grass since the tender age of seven. The skill was encouraged by his mother who also worked with grass. This has inspired the young artist to pursue the various languages these materials use through tertiary study as a Fine Art student.

Nozipho Zulu's artistic involvement also started at a young age. Siyanda Makhathini has mostly relied on intuition when approaching his oeuvre which includes ceramics and drawing. Sibonelo Luthuli, whose work shows influences of renowned ceramist Nesta Nala, developed his love of art in high school.

Mxolisi Sithole first studied art at Ogwini High School in Umlazi Township, one of the few and first schools offering art as a subject since 1988. Here he displayed passion about the interpretation of cartoons and has stated that some of his best work was done in this medium. It is after enrolling at DIT that he discovered his enthusiasm for ceramics.

Founder of the group Armstrong Masondo began his art classes with the Velobala group, a project run through the African Art Centre. He has taught art and worked for local newspapers since finishing the course and in 2003 was awarded the Best Student Award for the Velobala Group and received a bursary to study art at DIT.

'First Touch', as the title alludes, showcases the fresh but exciting early stages of what promises to be the bright future of Ceramic Art from this institution.

Opens: 2pm, February 26
Closes: March 18