Archive: Issue No. 130, June 2008

8.06.08 'Between Meaning and Matter' at Bell-Roberts
8.06.08 'Power Play' at Goodman Gallery Cape
8.06.08 'Prints + Editions' at Whatiftheworld / Gallery
8.06.08 Manfred Zylla and Garth Erasamus at Erdmann Contemporary
8.06.08 Louise Linder at João Ferreira
8.06.08 Sonya Rademeyer at blank projects
8.06.08 'Baring' at AVA
8.06.08 'X marks the spot' at AVA
8.06.08 'Abstraction' at João Ferreira
8.06.08 Paul Blomkamp at Rose Korber
8.06.08 Leonie Castelino at Irma Stern

11.05.08 'Disguise' at Michael Stevenson

6.04.08 Cecil Skotnes at Iziko SANG

STELLENBOSCH

6.08.08 'Abstract South African Art from the Isolation Years: Volume II' at SMAC

13.05.08 Chris Diedericks at the Dorpstraat Galery

PAARL

10.02.08 Andy Goldsworthy and Ouattara Watts at Glen Carlou

'Between Meaning and Matter' will be the Bell-Roberts' inaugural exhibition in their new premises in Woodstock. The exhibition will feature all new works from artists within the Bell-Roberts stable and certain invited artists. Focusing on current developments in South African art, and founded upon a commitment to transforming traditions, 'Between Meaning and Matter' brings together an exhibition of dynamic works which are grounded in the tension inherent in the relationship between meaning and matter.

'Between Meaning and Matter' includes a pixellated mural by 2008 Mercedes-Benz South Africa Art Award winner, Kevin Brand; a two-metre laser-cut tondo based on internet generational patterns by Lyndi Sales; and Lynette Bester's sculpture encapsulating hundreds of toys collected by the Hell's Angels. There are also new sharp-focus paintings by Nigel Mullins, paintings from movie-stills by Tanya Poole (joint winner 2004 Brett Kebble Art Award), and a community-based performance by 'alt-pop' artist Jacques Coetzer, recently completed on a residency in Scotland. Further participants are Johann van der Schijff (winner of two awards at Dak'art 2008), Berco Wilsenach (2005 Absa l'Atelier winner), Kudzanai Chiurai, Fahamu Pecou, Svea Josephy, Anthony Strack and Phillipe Bousquet.

Opens: June 25
Closes: August 8

'Power Play' brings together emerging and established artists who employ strategies of play, with serious or subversive intent, to investigate areas that range from ideological issues, religious convictions and cultural ambiguities to public space, sport and carnival.

Moshekwa Langa's portfolio of photolithographs, drawing on media imagery, explores complementary and contradictory aspects of desire and sexuality, migration and trafficking, sport and art. Twins Hasan and Husain Essop construct and perform roles in staged scenarios that explore sibling rivalries, opposing beliefs and cultural systems, the politics of public space in Cape Town and larger global conflicts from the perspective of Muslim youth.

Dan Halter presents new work reflecting on the crisis of power that has precipitated extremes of poverty, famine and large-scale migration in and from Zimbabwe, the country of his birth, on the eve of the run-off elections that will determine its future. China Dolls, the last in the 'Brown Europe Pageant', directed by twin brothers Jean and Zinaid Meeran, focuses on the post-colonial contradictions of what they term 'The Third World Aristocracy' - an aristocracy not of wealth but of celebration.

Play, participation, action, games and intervention are key elements in Anthea Moys' art practice. On view are videos and stills documenting earlier works, such as It's What You Want, staged in the Johannesburg Stock Exchange for the sensational Joburg Art Fair party, while Moys is on site to create a new work specifically for this show. The District Six Hanover Minstrels and Street Band, winners of the coveted Champs of Champs trophy at the 2007 Kaapse Klopse Karnival, will welcome visitors at the opening in a performance choreographed with Anthea Moys. A second performance takes place on June 7 at 12pm. Performances are free and no booking is required.

Opens: June 5
Closes: June 28

Whatiftheworld / Gallery will be hosting a group exhibition titled 'Prints + Editions'. The show features a selection of works that are contextualised through the medium of prints and the concept of editions rather than a single unifying idea or 'theme'. Participating artists are encouraged to explore the idea of editions and multiples in new ways. For example, the creation of an eventual print object may be the result of a performance or installation, an indicator of a larger artistic experiment, or a unique object or project in its own right.

This show is also intended as an exploration of the idea of the edition, either as an extension of the print manifested in digital or sculptural form, or as a multiple. In short, the print or edition is an interesting object capable of exploring many different aspects of cultural production simultaneously.

Selected participating artists include Avant Car Guard, Doing it for Daddy, Julia Rosa Clark, Cameron Platter, Daniel Halter, Stuart Bird, The President, Rowan Smith, Georgina Gratrix, Lizza Littlewort, Robert Sloon and David West.

Opens: June 5
Closes: June 28

Well-known anti-apartheid artist Manfred Zylla has been active in the South African art world since 1970. Zylla works in a wide range of media including painting, drawing and woodcuts. As a social commentator Zylla uses his art as a tool to demonstrate and illustrate shortcomings and inequalities within his society. With this series of work Zylla re-visits the methodology, narrative content and style of his earlier work. These paintings were all produced in the final quarter of 2007. The scale of the images not only ensures that the artist's statement has impact but also frees him up to work with rich layers and much detail.

Garth Erasmus' continuing series The Xnau (a Khoi word meaning initiation) explores issues of ancestry, identity and heritage and how these impact on his experience as a 'Coloured' South African. Fuelled by his passion about his Khoi roots and the meaning of healing post-94 South Africa, Erasmus has embarked upon a restless quest for alternative forms of expression and materials. The Xnau series is no exception, consisting primarily of ethereal images created by means of fire and sand. In this context the images take on primal and metaphorical meaning. Rather than a formal, physical initiation, this process is more spiritually inclined, a self-initiation of sorts, emerging along the route to self discovery.

Opens: May 26
Closes: June 28

Louise Linder's new series of oil paintings, entitled 'From Here to Eternity', continues her interest in recovered anonymous family photographic archives. One of these sources is an album which chronicles events in the life of 'Iris' from childhood, through her frolics with girlfriends in her teenage years to large formal wedding photographs: snapshots of personal histories seemingly unconnected to the larger picture of History. The small-scale figures, primarily women and children, float in an atemporal space. A disquietude stems from the tension between an intense transient present, and the remembrance of things past adumbrating an uncertain world-to-be.

Opens: July 2
Closes: August 2

Sonya Rademeyer shows her DVD I am an African for the first time in South Africa. She explains: 'The genesis of creating this work lies embedded in searching for what it means to be white and African. By requesting that my skin be smeared in with black shoe-polish by a fellow African artist (Assane Sar from Senegal), I hope to raise issues regarding identity within a diverse African cultural environment. Being a soundless video I attempt to force ocular engagement with the work, thereby accentuating the visual surface of skin, and by it being looped I am addressing identity as an ongoing and (as yet), unresolved issue.'

Sonya Rademeyer was one of five South African artists selected to participate in Dak'art 2008. Screening of the DVD will take place on June 4 at 6pm, June 6 at 10 am, June 11 at 6pm and June 13 at 10am.

Opens: June 4
Closes: June 13

'Baring', curated by Eunice Geustyn, employs all four gallery spaces. It is an exploration of the human response to the self from the uncovered to the revealed, using the body as a metaphor. This diverse exploration of the engagement between the artist and the human body is examined in the context of the physical, the psychological, the spiritual and the metaphysical.

Participating artists include Sanell Aggenbach, Lynette Bester, Kevin Brand, Justin Brett, Karen Cronje, Heike Davis, Chris Diedericks, Carol-anne Gainer, Adam Letch, Marlise Keith, Paul Painting, Eris Silke, Pamela Stretton, Adrienne Van Eeden, Louis Van Vuuren and Judy Woodborne, amongst others.

Opens: June 23
Closes: July 11

'X marks the spot' is a selected group exhibition of submissions received around the theme of the South African landscape. The exhibition presents a mixture of accomplished pieces by established artists alongside more tentative attempts at art-making. This exhibition will showcase professional as well as amateur works, art practitioners with formal training as well as self-taught aesthetes.

Opens: June 2
Closes: June 20

'Abstraction' comprises work by both local and international artists who engage abstraction at various levels. Participants include Anton Karstel, Mark Hipper, Kevin Atkinson, Mark Francis and Douglas Portway.

Opens: 4 June
Closes: July 28

'Highveld Windveld' is the title of Johannesburg artist Paul Blomkamp's new oils on paper. They form part of an ongoing series of works inspired by his profound, almost obsessive, fascination with the Magaliesburg mountain range in Gauteng. The influence of Blomkamp's early stained glass works is still evident in these paintings, which appear to transmit rather than reflect light. They have a transparency, clarity and sharpness akin to glass, and often appear to be made of coloured light rather than paint. His relationship with colour and energised line is an attempt to 'confront the subconscious' he maintains, 'and to expose and bring into the light that mystery, that primal force, that may give us clues that existence on our little planet is worthwhile and meaningful, after all'.

Opens: May 25
Closes: June 30

An exhibition of textile works by Leonie Castelino, from Mahwah, New Jersey, will be on view at the UCT Irma Stern Museum in Cape Town. 'Metamorphosis' shows the characteristic ways cloth is transformed with dye, brush, resists, needle, thread and imagery into paintings, hangings and sculpture. Castelino's passion for the lost arts of ancient cultures - Japanese shibori (shaping cloth with resist and dye), and rozome (painting with dye and wax), as well as Korean pojagi (piercing cloth) - finds its presence in a complexity of layers and techniques from this rich background. Her work is infused with an Asian aesthetic that entwines the interplay of song and poetry on fabric.

Castelino's textiles have been displayed in solo and group exhibitions in New York, auctioned by Sotheby's at the Arader Gallery in New York, and are found in private collections across the globe. Her recent pojagi Land of Dreams was exhibited at the Cheongju International Craft Biennale 2007 in Korea.

The artist will conduct three walkabouts at 11am on June 4, 5 and 6.

Opens: June 4
Closes: June 21

'Disguise: The art of attracting and deflecting attention' is curated by Joost Bosland and marks both the opening of the gallery's new premises in Woodstock and the gallery's fifth birthday celebrations.

The show brings together artists from South Africa, the continent and beyond for whom attracting or deflecting attention is central. In popular culture, the archetypal disguise is Superman's pair of glasses, which turn him into Clark Kent. This particular case reveals something: often that which is disguised is hidden in plain view. Everyone familiar with the movies or comic strips has wondered, at some point, why Lois Lane does not recognise that her two love interests are one and the same. The implications of outward appearance are amplified in the case of Africa and its diaspora because of the historical significance of skin colour. Perhaps as a result, there is a profound engagement with disguise in the work of many artists with links to the continent.

The exhibition explores threads of pageantry, trauma, drag, political pretence, fashion and stealth in the work of, among others, Candice Breitz, David Goldblatt, Simon Gush, Nicholas Hlobo, Pieter Hugo, Lunga Kama, Mustafa Maluka, Nandipha Mntambo, Zanele Muholi, Youssef Nabil, Athi-Patra Ruga, Claudette Schreuders and Yinka Shonibare.

Opens: May 15
Closes: July 5

Whilst Skotnes is undoubtedly an icon of the South African art world, this exhibition moves beyond the artist's public face to reveal a more personal view, focusing on such aspects of his extensive output as his drawings, cartoons, watercolours, prints and works of art on paper. Also on display are a number of letters and documents collected over five decades as well as objects, personal memorabilia and a collection of objects from Skotnes' home and studio.

Skotnes played an important pioneering role in art education in South Africa. He was highly involved with the Amadlozi group that sought to work at the intersection of African and European art. He was generous towards, and nurturing of, young artists. For many years, his Johannesburg home served as an 'open house' and hub for artists from different parts of the city and, indeed, the world.

In Cape Town, this spirit of creative hospitality continued. The exhibition therefore offers insight into the country's creative community, of which Skotnes was such an integral part, and highlights the many ways in which he helped shape a vibrant period in South African art history.

Opens: April 19
Closes: June 18

'Abstract South African Art from the Isolation Years: Volume II' is the second in a series of exhibitions to focus exclusively on the generation of post-war avant-garde artists who consciously embraced the modernist idiom and produced art of an abstract or non-figurative nature during the 60s, 70s and 80s.

The history of abstract art in South Africa is diverse and complex, comprising various influences that cannot be reduced to a single linear and chronological narrative. The exhibition has therefore been curated in an inclusive manner to represent a unique body of work which highlights the different styles and exponents that made a significant contribution to the abstract movement in South Africa.

Some of the artists included in this year's collection are Lionel Abrahams, Bill Ainslie, Kenneth Bakker, Charl Buchner, Walter Battis, Bettie Cilliers-Barnard, Joan Claire, Christo Coetzee, Nel Erasmus, Barbara Burry, George Boys, Nils Burwitz, Charles Gassner, Cecil Higgs, Erik Loubscher, Dumisani Mabaso, Louis Maqhubela, Dirk Meerkotter, Georgina Ormiston, Douglas Portway, Fred Schimmel, Larry Scully, Cecily Sash, Henry Symonds, Gunter van Der Reis Edoardo Villa, Gordon Vorster and Anna Vorster. Also forming part of this exhibition is a unique collection of Ernest Mancoba's early paintings from Kattinge, Denmark.

Opens: June 19
Closes: August 29

Much acclaimed, award-winning artist Chris Diedericks will be bringing his exhibition 'Indigo Boy' to the Dorpstraat Galery on 10 May 2008 after showing at the University of Johannesburg Art Gallery and before travelling to New York later in the year. Chris Diedericks presents 'Indigo Boy' to Cape audiences after showing at the University of Johannesburg Art Gallery and before travelling to New York later in the year. 'Indigo boy' is an ongoing collaborative project, incorporating photography, digital web-based art and traditional printmaking. As an ongoing process it has travelled to such diverse places as New York, Morocco, Spain and Zanzibar. Largely inspired by Robert Bly's 'Iron John', the resulting work is a richly textured collage of imagery, text, photographs and drawing which explores notions of identity and gender, specifically around ideas about masculinity. Each work takes on the appearance of a diary page or an extract from a travel journal relating personal experience, constant questioning and explorations. Idea and image are in constant dialogue raising questions rather than giving answers and challenging the viewer through the open-endedness of meaning, context and interpretation.

In 2000 Diedericks completed his Master's in Fine Arts with a practical Cum Laude at the University of Pretoria. He lived and worked in New York for four months in 2006 after receiving the prestigious Ampersand Foundation Fellowship and has lived and worked at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris where he has also exhibited. Some of his numerous awards and achievements include winning the Kanna Award for Best Visual Artist at the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees in 2006 and being awarded a residency at Gallery 24 in Berlin for 2008.

Opens: May 10
Closes: June 17

Land artist Andy Goldsworthy has travelled to South Africa to oversee the installation of three of his pieces into the collection of the Swiss magnate Donald Hess, owner of Paarl winery Glen Carlou. Goldsworthy is a world famous environmental sculptor who explores and experiments with various natural materials such as leaves, stones, wood, sand, clay, ice and snow. The seasons and weather determine the materials and the subject matter of his projects. With no preconceived ideas of what he will create, he relies on what nature gives him. One piece Hard Earth was originally created by plastering the inside of a room with white clay which as it dried and cracked began to take on a vastly differently aspect. Hard Earth and other Goldsworthy pieces in the Hess collection will be going on show.

Alongside Goldsworthy, a key diasporan artist, Ouattara Watts, will also be showing work at Glen Carlou. Watts has been featured in a number of blockbuster shows including Okwui Enwenzor's 'The Short Century', 'Documenta' in 2000, the Whitney biennale and the Venice biennale. On display will be 11 of his paintings and watercolours from 1992 until 2006.

Opens: January 29