Archive: Issue No. 109, September 2006

1.09.06 Norman Catherine at Goodman Gallery
1.09.06 Gerard Sekoto at Standard Bank Gallery
1.09.06 Brenden Gray at gordart Gallery
1.09.06 SASOL New Signatures at Pretoria Art Museum
1.09.06 Ranjith Kally, Senzeni Marasela and Ruth Motau at Goodman Gallery
1.09.06 'Kickin' Up Dust' at Imaging Hub Gallery
1.09.06 Chris Diedricks, Angus Taylor and Merwelene van der Merwe at gordart Gallery
1.09.06 Ryan Arenson at ABSA Gallery
1.09.06 Retha Buitendach, Bronwen Findlay and Gina Waldman at Artspace
1.09.06 Zhane Warren at Art on Paper
1.09.06 Greg Marinovich at Everard Read Johannesburg
1.09.06 Dorothee Kreutzfeldt at the Parking Gallery
1.09.06 Waste at Work at Hollard House

4.08.06 'Rembrandt (1606 - 1669), 400 Years' at the Johannesburg Art Gallery
4.08.06 'New Painting: a Group Exhibition of Recent South African Art' at the Johannesburg Art Gallery
4.08.06 'Photography - Manuel Alvarez Bravo to Pieter Hugo' at Warren Siebrits Modern and Contemporary Art
4.08.06 'Cruise at Krut: Wilma Cruise Works on Paper' at David Krut Arts Resource

7.07.06 Jan van der Merwe at Pretoria Art Museum
 

Billed as a 'three-woman show', 'Succulent' presents a diverse range of contemporary practices by Retha Buitendach, Bronwen Findlay and Gina Waldman. The show endeavours to explore succulent plants, and features painting, mixed media and installation, as well as a once-off line of accessories made by the artists.

Buitendach, a painter from Pretoria, has produced a series of naturalistic paintings of succulent flora for this show. The works combine visual precision with botanical accuracy to express the beauties of nature.

Findlay, formerly Durban-based but now residing in Johannesburg, is already known for her works that use innocuous-looking patterns to make relevant social observations. Her work on this show continues this interest, utilising patterns from a variety of cloth sources, including Kaiser Chiefs and Orlando Pirates memorabilia.

Waldman's wry 'girlie' take on Arte Povera leads her to produce work from glitter, silk flowers, cigarettes and found objects. Her work for this show approaches floral still life with the strategy of deconstruction, using, among other things, strands of hair that destroy the illusion of perfection. Waldman's work deals with concepts of decoration, taste and excess.

Opens: September 10
Closes: October 7

Young firebrand Brenden Gray presents a new body of work at gordart Gallery this month. Originating from a series of photographs taken of the displays and structure of Johannesburg's Apartheid Museum, the work seeks to unpack the 'staged memories' on offer. The resulting works, made predominantly with collage and etching, seek to problematise the process by which 'public, "historical" images are commodified, privatised and converted into new forms of capital in a post-apartheid context.'

Opens: August 16
Closes: September 1

1999's ABSA l'Atelier winner Ryan Arenson presents a show of work this month at Johannesburg's ABSA Gallery under the title 'Drawn to Beauty'. Arenson states that this body of work explores the connection between desire and identity, i.e. what we are attracted to and who we are. Arenson has chosen to work with images he finds beautiful, distasteful or ambiguous, using the disciplines of painting and drawing to explore the interplay between attraction and repulsion. In relation to his working process, Arenson quotes Tao master Kakuzo Okakura who said: 'Those who cannot feel the littleness of great things in themselves are apt to overlook the greatness of little things in others.'

Opens: September 7
Closes: September 22

The legacy of the great Gerard Sekoto continues to prove its durability with a show at the Standard Bank Gallery this month. The show seeks to cement Sekoto's position as South African cultural icon. Works on show span this important artist's career, focussing specifically on his production while in Paris. It is fitting that the Standard Bank Art Gallery, which has seen several retrospectives by European masters in recent years, should host this return of work by one of South Africa's seminal painters.

Opens: August 8
Closes: September 30

Important and influential South African artist Norman Catherine returns to Johannesburg this month with a show at the Goodman Gallery entitled �eDualities�f. Catherine, whose work frequently mines the area between nightmare and satire, continues to explore the �gblack humour�h that writer and scholar Ashraf Jamal identified as a central trope in a 2000 monograph on the artist. In keeping with the exhibition title, the work on show parodies the internal relationship one has with the self, and allude to the duality of human nature.

Works on show include paintings on canvas, life size sculptural figures, oilstick works on paper and digital graphics.

Opens: 16 September
Closes: 7 October

Billed as 'three exhibitions under one roof', the show's title 'Corpus Colossus' (roughly translating from Latin as 'majestic body') was selected to refer to all three artists' fascination with the human body.

Still interested in notions of masculinity, Diedricks' new work deals specifically with homophobia, death, friendship, grief and illness. He overlays images, emotions, feelings and sensations iconically in textured juxtapositions of visual experiences. These concepts are coalesced and separated continuously in his work. The body of work on show sees Diedricks employing an interdisciplinary approach in an attempt to avoid repetition of former imagery. He has worked in conjunction with Silvertone International, a company that specialises in fine art digital printing of archival quality.

Taylor creates larger-than-life-size sculptures, often portraits and busts, but then takes them further by drawing into their surfaces. He eschews the belief that sculptures should accrue 'process' marks, and instead artificially creates the imperfections. In doing so, Taylor turns the traditionally symbiotic relationship between drawing and sculpture into a parasitic one, the drawings relying on the defacing of the sculptures for their existence.

Merwelene van der Merwe's career has centered around photographing humans and spaces. Her range of subjects has included hotels and lodges, landscapes, babies and sensual nudes. The body of work she presents on this show uses human skin and other substances to explore textures. By recording the ways these surfaces interact through the lens, van der Merwe attempts to create a new way of looking at the human form.

Opens: August 27
Closes: September 16

The Imaging Hub Gallery in Pretoria presents a photographic exhibition that documents Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Island cultural festivals. Presented by the Australian High Commission, this show reveals the diversity and richness of cultural festivals amongst sections of this region's population that are often incorrectly homogenised. However, all the festivals shown share a common bond: the ongoing maintenance and celebration of culture to ensure the survival and identity of the next generation of Indigenous Australians.

Opens: August 24
Closes: September 16

A photographic show at the Goodman Gallery this month showcases the work of artists Ranjith Kally, Senzeni Marasela and Ruth Motau. Works on show broadly deal with urbanisation, marginalisation and identity.

Opens: August 19
Closes: September 9

The exhibition of 2006's entrants to the SASOL New Signatures competition is up at the Pretoria Art Museum until October 2. The top 100 entrants into this year's competition are represented on the show. See NEWS TEMS for details on winners.

Opens: August 16
Closes: October 2

Zhane Warren presents a show of photographic works at Art On Paper Gallery this month. Warren's works focus on (and are named for) sections of the body, usually photographed in motion and blurred. The intense richness of their tones, combined with the sense of urgency lent them by the movement gives these works a dramatic quality.

Opens: August 30
Closes: September 22

Famed South African photographer Greg Marinovich presents a new show of work entitled 'Scars' at Everard Read Johannesburg this month. Sites of conflict continue to occupy Marinovich, as the image from the invitation attests.

Opens: August 24
Closes: September 10

Known for her work in the field of painting, Dorothee Kreutzfeldt once again proves her flexibility with a show she has called 'Adversary'. The exhibition includes painting, an installation and, believe it or not, 'local middle distance runners'. The show/event runs for one night only.

Opens: 6 - 9pm, September 5

Waste at Work is an ongoing, collaborative art and waste minimisation project. The 2006 exhibition documents paper waste minimisation within some of South Africa's leading companies and showcases art created from the participating companies' paper waste by well-known local artists. Participating business-art collaborations are: Telesure Investment Holdings and Lien Botha; Coeo and Johan Thom; Spier and Nandipha Mntambo; and Hollard Insurance and Nomthunzi Mashalaba.

As an extension of the collaboration between Waste at Work and the business sector, a number of crafters have created corporate gifts with a waste paper component. These products will be showcased in a craft expo at the exhibition. A catalogue on the project will be for sale and an educational guide (free of charge) is available for school groups. The exhibition will travel to Spier in Stellenbosch during November.

Opens: 10am, Saturday September 9
Closes: Sunday September 10

Walkabouts at 11am, and guided tours by prior booking from 10am - 7pm on Thursday September 8 and Friday September 9

A fascinating show of Rembrandt's work showcasing the JAG's collection of 41 original copper plate etchings, dealing with the genres of portraiture, biblical scenes and landscapes, runs from July to September. The incredible delicacy and variety of mark remind (if any such reminder were necessary) of Rembrandt's authority in this area. The works 'serve as a window onto the Dutch Golden Age (and) provide glimpses of aesthetics and situations at that time.'

The show has particular resonance with numerous contemporary artists represented in the JAG collection, like William Kentridge and Diane Victor, for whom etching has been a cornerstone discipline. This exhibition reveals Rembrandt to be a consummate storyteller, with his dense and visually complex style employed to render images of powerful emotional impact.

Opens: July 15
Closes: September 17

The international trend towards reinvestigating the medium and processes of painting manifests on our shores in this show, 'New Painting', showing at the JAG from July to September. Curated by Storm Janse van Rensburg, the show seeks to present a survey view of current practitioners' work in the medium, and to reveal the multitude of languages present. As Janse van Rensburg states, 'For the past three years the idea to compile an exhibition of new South African painting has steadily grown, and resulted in this exhibition.'

Originally conceived as a way of bringing current relevant painting to Durban 'to show that the medium is still relevant', the show generated much interest elsewhere in SA. Says Janse van Rensburg, 'The interest in the exhibition from other centres has also confirmed that surveys such as these can positively contribute to the deepening of debates around the nature and substance of South African art-making.' The show features work by artists such as Ryan Arenson, Conrad Botes, Jan-Henri Booyens, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Kuzanai Chiurai, Tom Cullberg, Dorothee Kreutzfeldt, Moshekwa Langa, Mustafa Maluka, Colbert Mashile, Tracy Payne, Johannes Phokela, Deborah Poynton, Tanya Poole and Dinkies Sithole.

Opens: July 23
Closes: September 3

What often makes Warren Siebrits interesting as a curator is his willingness to contextualise South African contemporary art within existing local and global trends and histories. This show is no exception, as Siebrits' acumen as a buyer has enabled him to assemble an important survey show of both international and South African photography. Stretching as far back as the work of celebrated Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo, whose picture Striking Miner Murdered was taken in 1934, to the very current work of South African Pieter Hugo, whose chilling and visceral Rwanda Series from 2004 documents the mass burial sites of 1994's genocide of Tsutsis by Hutus, the show seems concerned with exploring photography's dual purpose as art and reportage.

The cityscapes of Jurgen Schadeberg and David Goldblatt, from the late 50s and early 60s respectively, hang alongside those of Leon Krige and Bob Cnoops from the mid-80s and early 90s. Paul Alberts' bleak homeland landscapes are pitted against Jo Ractliffe's studies of the Port Nolloth area from half a decade later. Elsewhere, George Hallett's portraits of James Matthews and Gerard Sekoto, and Patrick de Mervelec's moody shot of Alfred Thoba all resonate well with Harold Chapman's pictures of beat-era William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, and Christopher Makos' frank image of Andy Warhol looking allergic to life in a rowing boat.

On a formal level, the viewer may become involved in making their own connections between international works here and local artists not represented: for example, it is arresting to spot the formal similarities between André Kertész's Distortion 33 from 1964 and some video works by Minette Vári. This in itself makes the show a worthwhile exercise.

Opens: August 1
Closes: September 29

'Cruise at Krut: Wilma Cruise Works on Paper' heralds the artist's first foray into printmaking. Wilma Cruise is best known for her potent life-sized figures in bronze and ceramic, their commanding presence a testament to her power as image-maker. While Cruise's preparatory work has always included writing, sketching, and reworking thoughts on paper, she never considered these works on paper art-making, but a means to an end. Here these 'preparatory' sketches and drawings have become, through incorporation into printmaking, the works themselves. The monotypes and prontoprints that constitute this show, flow from writings, visual diaries, photographs, photocopies, and ephemera that Cruise has accumulated over the months spent working at David Krut Print Workshop. They reflect themes expressed in many of her sculptural works but translated and altered by the print media with which she and printer and Workshop Manager Jill Ross have been experimenting.

The show continues Cruise's exploration of the body and, as she calls it, 'the idea of subliminal communication - the in-between space - the tension that emanates from bodies and between bodies.'The finished works owe much to the collaboration between Cruise and Workshop Manager Ross. Cruise calls their work together 'a collaboration in the best of traditions - a partnership between artist and printmaker'. The show will be opened by Elfriede Dreyer.

Opens: August 5
Closes: September 23

Working as an 'archaeologist' excavating the stories and memories of and references to the past that hide in the objects others throw away, Jan van der Merwe presents a show entitled 'The Archaeology of Time' this month. Van der Merwe gives existing objects 'archaeological' status by covering them with layers of rusted steel cans. These objects become remnants of a way of life, a civilisation fallen into decay and fossilised by the passage of time and by rust. He places objects in an archaeological time capsule, thereby commanding intensive study, as is the case with real archaeological finds.

Van der Merwe's installations focus on the human situation, on victims of violence, political events and social realities.

Opens: June 28
Closes: October 29