Archive: Issue No. 131, July 2008

6.07.08 Kay Hassan at the Johannesburg Art Gallery
6.07.08 Hentie van der Merwe at the Goodman Gallery
6.07.08 MTN New Contemporaries at the University of Johannesburg Art Gallery
6.07.08 Michael McGarry at Art Extra
6.07.08 Joni Brenner at the Standard Bank Gallery
6.07.08 Jan-Henri Booyens at the Premises
6.07.08 Paul Molete at Art on Paper
6.07.08 Avashoni Mainganye, Lucky Jiyane, Sarah Tabane and Sidwell Rihlamvu at Gordart
6.07.08 Wilhelm Saayman and Jonah Sack at Warren Siebrits
6.07.08 'Marvellous World' at the Bag Factory
6.07.08 Karin Preller at Fried Contemporary
6.07.08 'Africa Remix - Fringe Touring Exhibition' at Alliance Française

8.06.08 Mercedes-Benz Award at the Pretoria Art Museum
8.06.08 Mimi Cherono Ng'ok at the Market Photo Workshop
8.06.08 Anima at Resolution Gallery
8.06.08 Reshma Chhiba at Art Extra
8.06.08 Bronwen Findlay at David Krut Projects
8.06.08 Olaf Bisschoff at Rooke Gallery
8.06.08 Pall Stefansson at Gordart

11.05.08 Pieter Hugo at Standard Bank Gallery

Kay Hassan needs no introduction: his work has been widely exhibited both in South Africa and abroad. Amongst other awards, he received the 2000 DaimlerChrysler Award for Contemporary Art. 'Urbanisation' is a major mid-career solo exhibition hosted by the JAG and composed of aproximately 12 installations of new and recent works. While including Hassan's characteristic collage and installation works, 'Urbanisation' also features paintings, photographs and video.

In the installation The Boxers, old army carry bags are transformed into punching-bags and complemented by a video projection of boxers sparring at a gym in Hillbrow. While 'Urbanisation' deals with the rapid pace of urban life with a particular focus on the disenfrancised, it also includes work that deals with a more interior lanscape, such as Morning Ritual and My Father's Music Room.

Opens: June 29
Closes: September 30

2008 Sasol Wax Art Award finalist Hentie Van der Merwe's 'figuring-' opens at the Goodman Gallery this month. The exhibition considers the archive of Nama folktales the artist recently discovered while travelling in Germany. The stories were collected by Sigrid Schmidt during the second half of the last century around the part of Namibia where van der Merwe grew up. Consequently many of the tales were familiar to him. 'figuring-', however, focuses particularly on the stories that were unknown to him, the ones excluded from Afrikaner oral culture, probably because they were complex, violent and could be perceived as posing a threat to a Christian worldview.

Another narrative running concurrent with the Nama tales is the colonisation of Namibia (then German South West Africa) towards the end of the 19th century, and in particular the figure of the German emperor Wilhelm II. Wilhelm II's body was deformed due to a complicated birth and his complex psychological and sexual make-up is another leitmotif of 'figuring-'.

These complementary sets of stories become a vehicle for the artist's investigations of ideas already familiar in his work, such as the body, violence, power and history.

Opens: July 19
Closes: August 9

The MTN New Contemporaries Award seeks to promote the artists that will define visual arts in South Africa in years to come. The finalists for this year are Dineo Bopape, Daniel Halter, Michael MacGarry and Themba Shibase. These four emerging artists were selected by curator Melissa Mboweni and commissioned by MTN to each produce a body of work which will be on show at this exhibition.

The winner of the 2008 MTN New Contemporaries Award will be chosen by an independent judging committee and announced at the opening.

Opens: July 10
Closes: August 13

Michael McGarry's 'When enough people start saying the same thing' furthers his concern with '... the ongoing ramifications of imperialism on the African continent'. The title refers to the shift of power that occurs the moment a large number people are unhappy with the status quo - irrespective of whether the leadership is democratic or despotic.

MacGarry has in the past produced purely conceptual work, usually taking the form of web-based projects: writing about artworks, or more often than not, unrealised films, on his website www.alltheorynopractice.com. With this exhibition he departs from this working method. It was a pragmatic choice, says MacGarry: '... over time this dogma presented serious challenges to my ability to function as an artist, and ultimately to produce anything at all (ideas included)'. In 'When enough people start saying the same thing', MacGarry translates the ideas for his unrealised films into large-scale photographs (stills) and sculpture pieces (props).

'I use temporal compression, fictional narratives, satire and the grotesque to explore current political concerns, notions of veracity, representational paradigms and the mechanics of political power both at a domestic level as well as across the continent', adds MacGarry.

Opens: July 16
Closes: August 16

For Joni Brenner's latest body of work, entitled 'Collection', she is exhibiting in the permanent cabinets of the Standard Bank Gallery. Brenner has been working with the conventions of museum representation for many years and it is in particular the limited and fragmentary nature of this type of display that interests her. Her portraits of Wilson Mootane - her babysitter of 15 years - similarly engage with that which is left unsaid, and is a series of memento mori.

Brenner adds that, 'Working with portraiture means working with an awareness of time passing and it brings mortality and the fragility of being into sharp focus and I understand, in T.S. Eliot's words, that it is not the "greatness", the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place, that counts'. Quoting Elloit, she says that 'humankind cannot bear too much reality' and that she knows '... living is a process of dying but also that in the knowledge of mortality, is life.'

Opens: May 27
Closes: July 4

'The Matt Sparkle' is young painter Jan-Henri Booyens' first solo exhibition. Booyens describes his method as follows: 'I rely on intuition in my working process and in the act of painting itself, with the outcome seldom being predetermined.'

The resultant works are energetic oil paintings of semi-abstract landscapes, and with titles such as Send in the army, The history of the world and People used to dream about the future, they appear to dwell on geo- and socio-political issues.

'The Matt Sparkle' will travel to whatiftheworld in Cape Town in October 2008.

Opens: June 12
Closes: July 5

In Paul Molete's previous exhibition at Art on Paper, 'First offering after the fire' (May 2005), he referenced the fire that destroyed the Artist Proof Studio and caused the death of Nhlanhla Xaba, likening its destruction swath to such social phenomena as homophobia, child rape, and bestiality (www.artonpaper/artists/molete ). In 'Second Offering' he focuses on such issues as abortion, HIV/Aids and xenophobia.

'Second Offering' explores the role of the artist in contemporary society through Molete's characteristic black and white linocut prints.

Opens: June 14
Closes: July 5

This group exhibiton features the work of Avashoni Mainganye, Lucky Jiyane, Sarah Tabane and Sidwell Rihlamvu.

Mainganye takes a step away from the wood-carving that has preoccupied him for the last two decades to experiment with stone. Mainganye uses his immediate surrounds to speak about the broader issues affecting him.

Jiyane paints what he calls '... a new world, a place where we have not yet been, a place we might discover...', while Tabane's work focuses on suffering. In a similar vein Sidwell Rihlamvu, inspired by living in Johannesburg, depicts scenes from a burglar-barred world, or as he calls them, 'living spaces viewed though the window.'

Opens: July 6
Closes: July 26

Wilhelm Saayman's 'Don't do business with family or friends' and Jonah Sack's 'The evening of the second day' make up this contemporary drawing exhibition. Warren Siebrits, who curated, notes that the idea was to '... highlight and counterpoint the two artists' unique and individual approach to drawing and mark-making.'

Saayman's drawings are immediate, quick and often quite raw. The hundred odd works on show deal with anything and everything in one-liner style, shouting remarks at the viewer. Executed in coloured pencils, marker pen and correction fluid on paper, the drawings are more often than not strident or despondent in tone. In contrast, Sacks' drawings are quiet, contemplative and impeccably crafted, dealings with man's relationship to light and landscape.

The exhibition coincides with the launch of the book, Wilhelm Saayman 98 Drawings which includes an extensive audio interview with the artist, conducted by Siebrits. Also available is Sack's Kageyama III, the third installment of the Kageyama series in artist book form, produced in a limited edition of 50 hand-made copies, each signed and numbered by the artist.

Opens: June17
Closes: July 18

'Marvellous World' features sculptures by Guy du Toit, Richard John Forbes, Sarel Petrus and Paul Cooper, whose work all departs from a found object. The Bag Factory is running a bronze casting workshop coinciding with the show.

Open: June 28
Closes: July 13

In 'Aperture' Karin Preller continues to paint from family snapshots, and this particular set of paintings is based on photographs taken in the Kruger National Park during the late 1950s. Preller considers how nature is made consumer-friendly and how the camera becomes mediator.

Opens: July 5
Closes: July 26

The French Institute of South Africa (IFAS) and the Alliance Francaiçe network in South Africa have produced a small parallel exhibition to the important 'Africa Remix' that showed in Johannesburg last year and travelled internationally prior to that.

The exhibition now concludes its run in Johannesburg. It includes work by 11 artists from nine African countries: Amal Kenawy (Egypt), Cheick Diallo (Mali), Goddy Leye (Cameroon), Jorl Andrianomearisoa (Madagascar), Mohamed El Baz (Morocco), Myriam Mihindou (Gabon), Nasreldin Moataz (Egypt), Barthòlòmy Toguo (Cameroon), Rodney Place (South Africa), Ingrid Mwangi, Robert Hutter (Kenya) and Aimé Ntakiyica (Burundi).

The collaboration of the artists, of Simon Njami (exhibition commissary) and of the Johannesburg Art Gallery has been essential to this initiative.

Opens: June 18
Closes: July 11

The Mercedes-Benz Award, formerly the DaimlerChrysler Award, is now in its eight year. The focus for 2008 is on art projects in public spaces and the exhibition at the Pretoria Art Museum looks at each of the eight nominees' contributions. Vincent Baloyi, Marco Cianfanelli, Jane du Rand, Jan Jordaan, Samson Mudzunga, Strijdom van der Merwe and Usha Seejarim are all included alongside Kevin Brand who scooped the award.

Opens: May 30 Closes: July 13

The Market Photo Workshop in association with AngloGold Ashanti shows Cherono Ng'ok's I am Home, the body of work she created as part of her Edward Ruiz Mentorship.

Of Kenyan birth herself, Ng'ok documented immigrants from different African countries living in Cape Town, exploring what it means to be black, but not South African, in a post-apartheid South Africa. This body of work is particularly timely and Ng'ok hopes to expose stereotypes and to capture the experiences of people who are part of South African society, yet are forced to exist on its margins.

Opens: June 4

Resolution Gallery's new exhibition, 'Ánima', combines photography by Fernando Maquieira and drawings by Pascual Tarazona in a contemplation on death and mortality.

Maquieira is a Spanish photographer who documented the samples of stuffed primates in a Belgian museum of Natural History's basement. Tarazona's delicate ink drawings (translated into print) of tadpoles complement this body of work.

Opens: May 8
Closes: July 5

For her solo at Art Extra, Reshma Chhiba uses the Hindu goddess Kali to challenge patriarchal values and explore specific female stereotypes and gendered expectations, particularly within traditional and contemporary Hindu society.

Defiant and ferocious, goddess of creation and destruction, Kali is traditionally depicted as a dark-skinned goddess who wears a girdle of arms around her waist and a necklace of human skulls with a severed demonic head, a lotus flower and a sword in three of her hands and the fourth making the gesture of 'abhayam' (protection). Chhiba depics Kali and her associated symbols through paintings in earth-based pigments, photographs and video work and 'draws on aspects of sexuality and identity as understood through her embodiment of female defiance and aggression'.

Opens: June 11
Closes: July 12

'Floating and Falling', an exhibition of monotypes and mixed-media oil paintings, is Bronwen Findlay's first solo show in Johannesburg since her major painting exhibition at the Standard Bank Gallery in 2006 and a show of prints at Artist Proof Studio in 2007.

In this exhibition Findlay continues her interest in the everyday, using her doilies, flowers, flowered prints and household objects to revell in rich shades and bright, contrasting colours.

Opens: May 24
Closes: June 21

For his solo at Rooke Gallery, Bisschoff makes paintings of an imagined version of early cartographers' Terra Incognita. The product is oddly melancholic, maybe even sentimental - in rusty oranges and browns it sketches a vague landscape. Incorporating found objects, such as vintage frames, and using projections, Bisschoff disrupts the physical limits of his canvas.

Opens: May 29
Closes: July 14

The Standard Bank Gallery is the final stop of 'Messina/Musina', the body of work Pieter Hugo created as Standard Bank Young Artists 2007, which has travelled the country since its debut in June last year at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown.

Once Messina - a colonial misspelling corrected in 2002 - Musina is named after the Musina people who lived in the region. Musina is the last town en route to the Zimbabwean border and with its proximity to diamond mines, farms and on the major trucking route, much of the disparate populous is migrant labour. The town is in constant flux and Hugo's work, through portraits, interiors and landscapes, examines the larger themes of transition and the indelible scars of race, class and nationality.

Opens: May 27
Closes: July 5