Archive: Issue No. 135, November 2008

06.11.08 Wim Botha at Brodie/Stevenson
20.11.08 Jodi Bieber at the Goodman Gallery
02.11.08 Judith Mason at the Standard Bank Gallery
06.11.08 Stefanus Rademeyer at Warren Siebrits
06.11.08 'The Rationalism of Nationalism?' at Warren Siebrits
26.10.08 Kudzanai Chiurai at Obert Contemporary
26.11.08 Phillemon Hlungwani, Vusi Mfupi and Thabo Molapo at Gallery on the Square
09.11.08 Liam Lynch at the Rooke Gallery
04.11.08 Susan Woolf at Artspace
16.11.08 Ryan Arenson at David Krut Projects
14.11.08 Billie Zangewa at Afronova
06.11.08 Dumisane Mabaso and Manfred Zylla at Gallery Momo

26.10.08 'Disturbance - Contemporary Art from Scandinavia and South Africa' at JAG
9.10.08 Willie Bester at the Goodman Gallery
25.10.08 Usha Seejarim at Gallery Momo
19.10.08 Kim Lieberman at Gallery AOP
15.10.08 Jenny Stadler at Gallery on the Square

6.07.08 Kay Hassan at the Johannesburg Art Gallery

Formerly known as Art Extra, Brodie/Stevenson presents Wim Botha's first solo gallery exhibition in Johannesburg. The show will include a new sculptural installation, large and small individual drawings and recent large-scale prints.

Botha's works for this exhibition are primarily concerned with the passage of time and make reference to both inverted and non-chronological time and the resultant relativity of a personal point of view. The central installation uses images from art history and historical visual culture, which are presented in a semi-structured constellation that seems to suggest a non-linear time line.

Using as original source motif the standard illustrated depiction of time as a linear sequence of events, the work adapts and perverts this format in three-dimensional space - turning back on itself. This sequence with its various elements suggests a type of system, a volatile organism with high entropic possibility.

Opens: November 6
Closes: December 13

For Jodi Bieber's solo at the Goodman Gallery she photographed and interviewed ordinary women regarding their perceptions of beauty and self. 'Real Beauty' is the resultant body of work.

Says Bieber of the work: 'I felt a strong need to create a body of work that goes against what the media has depicted as beautiful. Even within a complexed society such as South Africa, across all communities, women hold unneccesary perceptions of self doubt around themselves and their beauty from an early age... The work deals with reality and no photoshop has been used to remove blemishes, scars, cellulite and any other form of "mperfection", but also touchesÔøΩon fantasy.

'The photographic shoot was a collaboration between myself and each woman, whom I photographed at their homes. The setting within their surroundings was my choice but each woman's pose was pretty much self- directed. I wanted each woman to project her personality or her fantasy into her shoot. The shoot created a space for each woman to explore her own identity in relation to beauty and to live for a couple of hours in an environment of elements of fantasy.'

Opens: November 20
Closes: December 12

Judith Mason's retrospective exhibition, 'A prospect of icons', covers the expanse of her oeuvre and includes paintings, drawings and installations, as well as artist books.

According to the show's curator Wilhelm van Rensburg, the exhibition is 'an inventory of her icons'. Mason's personal iconography includes recurrent and ambiguous symbols, and while the work draws extensively on religion, it is also informed by her exploration of mythological figures and creatures.

In Mason's work there is a constant interplay between beauty and the abject and as Van Rensburg states '... it can be argued that Mason's "psychological insight" might be detected in her concern with the bodily drives in relation to life and death in her work, might be suggested in notions of the damaged body, in a fascination with trauma, both personal and collective, reinforced by her interest in the "abject" body. Equally strongly it can be argued that Mason paints an "exulted" body. And it is in this paradox that the genius of Mason's work resides.'

Opens: October 2
Closes: December 6

'Crystalline Variations' is Stefanus Rademeyer's third solo exhibition at Warren Siebrits, and further develops themes explored in his previous two shows.

Rademeyer constructs crystalline symmetries with a range of different angles and curves. The light-box Hexagrid consists of nested hexagons that create a tessellation similar to that of a honeycomb. This structure is dominated by 60 degree angles and presents an array of hexagonal and triangular shapes. Wavegrid, shows the first use of curves in the light-box series and consists of visually modulating sine-waves creating complex interference patterns. Hybridpentagrid consists of two symmetrical pentagons that are stacked with two different triangles creating a whole variety of clusters in the three-dimensional reflections. It is possibly Rademeyer's most complex light-box in terms of its multiple symmetries. Hexagridpoints shows a reduction of its twin work, Hexagrid, to floating points, revealing the nodes connecting the vectors.

The four prints on exhibition are further explorations of works created in 'Ideograph', presenting hybrid crystalline structures that resemble organic formations. They are introductions and blueprints for sculptures to follow in 2009 and 2010.

Opens: November 6
Closes: December 10

'The Rationalism of Nationalism?' is a curated exhibition which considers the dangers of nationalism particularly when fuelled by powerful propaganda devices such as a national flag and/or a coat of arms.

The majority of the works on exhibition focus on atrocities committed during the apartheid years, but works that look at the Holocaust, the Rwanda genocide, and the torture and humiliation of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison also feature.

The show includes works by Wim Botha, Kendell Geers, Pieter Hugo, Carmen Jerrard, Ezrom Legae, Santu Mofokeng, Jo Ractliffe, Harold Rubin and Paul Stopforth. It is, however, the collection of 59 artist-designed and hand-printed resistance posters by the Medu Art Ensemble that is the focus of the exhibition. Included are posters designed by Albio Gonzalez, Heinz Klugg, Thami Mnyele, Judy Seidman and other members of the Medu Art Ensemble in exile in Botswana during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Opens: November 6
Closes: December 10

'Yellow Lines' is Kudzanai Chiurai's fourth solo at Obert Contemporary and features 19 variously scaled mixed media works that explore issues of urban rejuvenation, xenophobia and identity. Chiurai uses stencils, airbrushing techniques, drawing and painting to build up the surfaces of his large scale works. Chiurai comes from Zimbabwe and his work is invariably harshly critical of the Mugabe regime, currently hanging furiously onto the last vestiges of its power.

'Yellow Lines' runs concurrently with Chiurai's participation in the acclaimed 'Africa Now' group exhibition, which is currently touring Scandinavia.

Opens: October 26
Closes: November 12

Gallery on the Square presents an exhibition of new work by three young artists. Hlungwani studied at various institutions, including the Artist Proof Studio in Newtown, Johannesburg. He now teaches professional printmaking classes there. His work is predominately self-expressive in light of his background and Christian beliefs. His landscape images refer to self, family and history, thus functioning as a type of documentation of his background.

Vusi Mfupi's work celebrates youth and mobility, as well as aspects of human life that affect people globally. He works in collage, using newspapers, magazines, found objects and pigments, feeling that it raises the awareness of the intrinsic aesthetic qualities of mundane materials.

Thabo Molapo employs traditional weaving as an expression of his creative talents. His portraits, reminiscent of early works by Gerard Sekoto, capture people from the townships, while linking the past (ancestral), the immediate and the future.

Opens: November 26
Closes: December 10

Liam Lynch's work focuses on counter-culture as an ongoing project. The title of this exhibition, 'A Claude Glass', refers to the painter's tool fashionable in the late 18th and early19th century, which became synonymous with a certain 'picturesque aesthetic '. The convex, dark or coloured hand-mirror, used to concentrate the features of the landscape in subdued tones, was named after Claude Lorrain, the 17th-century landscape painter.

Lynch tries to draw parallels between photography and paintng, and particularly notes Caravaggio as inspiration for this body of work.

Opens: October 9
Closes: November 31

Susan Woolf's 'Jacob's Ladder' looks at the figures of Jacob Zuma, Evita (Pieter Dirk Uys), Winnie Mandela, Robert Mugabe and PW Botha using the biblical story of Jacob and the ancient Hindu morality game of Moksha-Patamu (Western Snakes and Ladders).

Woolf has been documenting taxi hand signs in South Africa for sighted and blind people and these are the focus of her current doctoral thesis in Anthropology and Art at Wits University. For 'Jacob's Ladder' it is a carved wooden sculpture of Jacob Zuma's hand as he throw's a victory sign during his rape trial which forms the central image from which other narratives are explored.

Opens: November 4
Closes: November 27

Ryan Arenson's 'Book of Ruth' draws on works by Dürer and Picasso that he translated into a series of his own highly detailed drawings and then into etchings, linocuts and monotypes produced at the David Krut Print Workshop.

In his quotation of Picasso's Child with a Dove, Arenson used a series of circles to create the body of the girl. Once the girl, now Ruth, had been constructed through a combination of etching, drypoint and pochoir she seemed to carry some of the weight of her history and Arenson, quite literally, began to take her apart, circle by circle, until her head lay beside her. This series, called 'Resurrection', can be viewed from right to left or left to right, which means that the viewer can either decapitate the girl or put her back together again.

Opens: October 16
Closes: November 10

An exhibition of new work by Billie Zangewa is showing in November at Afronova.

Zangewa, who was born in Malawi and now works and lives in London, rose to prominence when she won the Gerard Sekoto Absa L'Atelier Award in 2004. Her signature autobiographical silk tapestries have been exhibited widely since.

Opens: November 14
Closes: December 13

Gallery Momo presents an exhibition of new works by Dumisane Mabaso and Manfred Zylla.

Mabaso's body of work, entitled 'Life and Life's Agony', particularly focusses on female portraits, while Zylla, in his large-scale works entitled 'The Painful Earth, looks at globalisation and the social and political circumstances in South Africa.

Opens: November 6
Closes: December 1

'Disturbance - Contemporary Art from Scandinavia and South Africa' aims to examine the relationship that Scandinavian and South African artists have with respect to identity and notions of place. The project's thematic will focus explicitly on 'disturbance' as a concept to explore ruptures in society.

Curated by Clive Kellner and Maria Fidel Regueros, the show will include work by Torbjørn Rødland, Goksøyr & Martens, Bodil Furu, and Urstad, with South African artists including Anthea Moys, Lerato Shadi and Siemon Allen.

Opens: October 26
Closes: February 28

Willie Bester shows a new body of work this month at the Goodman Gallery.

Bester is a Cape Town-based artist who has become well known for his muscular, hard-hitting assemblages which address socio-political issues. His work is to be found in all of the country's major public collections and he is frequently featured on large international shows. This will he his first solo show at the Goodman for a while.

Opens: October 25
Closes: November 15

Usha Seejarim opens this month at Gallery Momo with her fifth solo exhibition to date. In this body of work Seejarim continues her interest in repetition and the cyclical nature of life.

Seejarim was born in 1974 and currently lives and works in Johannesburg. She obtained a B-Tech degree in Fine Arts from Technikon Witwatersrand and is currently completing a Master's in Fine Arts at the University of Witwatersrand. She works in various media including video, photography, installation and printmaking and continues to participate in various group exhibitions and art projects locally and internationally.

Opens: October 9
Closes: November 3

Kim Lieberman's second solo exhibition at Gallery AOP is entitled 'Human Constellations', and continues her examination of human interaction, albeit in a different media. For this show Lieberman has taken up lace making. Delicate lace circles are positioned on the necks of found antique bronze figures, the lace forming an intricate structural web, radiating outward from the figure.

The silhouette remains a central motif through which Lieberman explores the complexity of human relationships, but the figures being explored here have shifted from those culled from the media, to images of people who have had a direct influence on the artist's life.

Gallery AOP was known, until recently, as Art on Paper.

Opens: October 19
Closes: November 8

Gallery on the Square presents an exhibition of paintings by Jenny Stadler during October and November.

Opens: October 15
Closes: November 3

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