Short Cuts
by Michael Smith
During May, Durban's KZNSA hosted a week-long art critics' writing workshop in conjunction with the Royal Netherlands Foundation and Art South Africa editor, prolific writer and all-round nice guy Sean O'Toole. ArtThrob was out in force, with no less than three of the 12 chosen candidates coming from our virtual offices. International Editor Rat Western, Durban Editor Carol Brown and I all attended. Big-ups to AT! Represent!
As a result, I missed some Jozi shows this month, but caught one in Durban, which will be part of this month's mini-Short Cuts.
David Koloane at Goodman Gallery
I've seen this SA art titan's work consistently photographed and reproduced to disappointing effect: Koloane's paintings, drawings and prints only really work in real life. Which I guess is appropriate, since they're very much about the viscerality of the city. This show cements his authority as an astute yet sympathetic observer and interpreter of urban sprawl's more squalid hangovers. Koloane, now 70 (we got cake at the opening! Ta, Linda), is apparently raging into his golden years, paintbrush on high.
'Aftermath' at Art Extra
Lots of these tightly-curated exhibitions read a bit like high school history projects: source 10 pics of the Vietnam War, all different but all on the same theme; stick pics onto cardboard; write a neat heading; add captions; hand in. The successes of this show lie in how far beyond its own brief it ventures. Sure, some of the works, like Natasha Christopher's and Guto Bassab's feel rather didactic, and the inclusion of Sandile Zulu's interminable fire-wrought AE-lite paintings (tracing, presumably, the 'aftermath' of the flames' violence) seem more opportunistic than considered. But then works like Stephen Hobbs's seminal 1999 video 54 Stories culled from a handycam dropped down the centre of Ponte City, and Joni Brenner's quiet ruminations on mortality's ground zero, the skull, go way beyond trite truisms.
Stephen Hobbs' 'High Voltage' at Bank Gallery, Durban
Hobbs' assault on Durban's leafier suburbs (see Carol Brown's review of his KZNSA show 'D'Urban') continued with this show at Bank. The installation of a valley of mirrors, angled to beam the gallery light back up onto the ceiling in diffuse grids reminded me of a Sonic Youth interview I read a while back. Thurston Moore said of the band's tympanum-perforating volume, that the purpose of making live music for them was to activate the space in which they were playing. A similar logic seemed to underpin this thrilling exercise. There were also some sharp slice-of-life photos that looped back into the installation's concerns with the urban experience. Is Hobbs poised for world domination, a la Candice Breitz?
Pieter Hugo 'Messina/Musina' at the Standard Bank Gallery
Roger Ballen isn't worried by these colour retreads of his seminal works. Nor should he be.
