Archive: Issue No. 134, October 2008

18.09.08 'Too Close for Comfort': SA video art in Berlin
19.09.08 Candice Breitz on 'Worlds on Video - international video art', Florence
7.10.08 Robin Rhode at The Hayward

7.09.08 Ed Young on 'Ha Ha Road', Bank Street Arts, Sheffield
7.09.08 'Palinsesti 2008': Colleen Alborough at San Vito al Tagliamento
7.09.08 'Odd Conversations' and 'Life After' at artSPACE berlin
7.09.08 'Beyond Matter', six South Africans at a chocolate factory, London

9.08.08 David Goldblatt at Museu Serralves in Porto, Portugal

THE AMERICAS

18.09.08 'Not So Black and White 2008' at Kyle Kauffman

7.09.08 Mikhael Subotzky at The Museum of Modern Art
7.09.08 'Matter', Carol-anne Gainer and Ledelle Moe in Baltimore
7.09.08 'Signs of Change': Social Movement Cultures 1960s to Now

9.08.08 Nicholas Hlobo at the Boston ICA

ASIA

7.09.08 Guangzhou Triennial: Farewell to Post-Colonialism

9.08.08 Joachim Schoenfeldt and Jo Ractliffe at the 7th Gwangju Biennale

AFRICA

2.10.08 'I love Jozi !' photography, video and Johannesburg in Reunion

David Krut Art Resource, in collaboration with the University of Johannesburg's Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture's Research Centre, are participating in the 'Performing South Africa' festival by touring an adapted version of the video programme that formed part of the Megacities Colloquium curated by Leora Farber and Lee-At Meyerov.

The colloquium was a three-day event which dealt with Johannesburg and ways in which the city interfaces with megacity phenomena. Megacities embody a host of new or intensified urban phenomena which not only affect the future prosperity and stability of a city, but also unsettle many traditionally held concepts about cities.

'Too Close for Comfort: Belonging and Displacement in the Work of South African Video Artists' will be screened at the Hebbel Theatre in Berlin. The programme is curated by Lucy Rayner, Leora Farber and Lee-At Meyerov and comprises works by some of South Africa's most prominent visual artists: Stephen Hobbs, Nadine Hutton, Sam Nhlengethwa, William Kentridge, Mocke Jansen van Veuren, Anthea Moys, Ismail Farouk, Steven Cohen and Minnette Vári.

Opens: September 18
Closes: September 27

Curated by Anita Beckers,'Worlds on Video - international video art' offers a survey of the most exciting international work to have made an impact in major cities throughout the world. The exhibition presents work which gives expression to social, political or personal issues and conflicts.

The exhibiting artists have already been widely recognised or have recently made a successful debut in video art on the international scene. 'Worlds on Video' presents a vast overview, allowing the public to compare the various conceptual and technical approaches in video art production today. This will be the first time most of the work in the exhibition is presented in Italy.

Artists on show include Marina Abramovic, Victor Alimpiev, Laura Belem, Candice Breitz, Rä di Martino, Nathalie Djurberg, Kota Ezawa, Harun Farocki, Charlotte Ginsborg, Philippe Grammaticopoulos, Cao Guimarã es, Frank Hesse, Runa Islam, Alfredo Jaar, Jesper Just, Clare Langan, Zhenchen Liu, Domenico Mangano, Jenny Marketou, Bjoern Melhus, Almagul Menlibayeva, Sarah Morris, Guy Ben Ner, Julia Oschatz, Isabel Rocamora, Marinella Senatore, Eve Sussman, Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung, Gillian Wearing, Arnold von Wedemeyer, Clemens von Wedemeyer+Maya Schweizer, Suara Welitoff, Sislej Xhafa, Zimmerfrei.

The Hayward presents South African artist Robin Rhode's first UK exhibition 'Who saw Who'. A recognised talent on the international art scene, Rhode has a growing reputation for inventive performances, photographs and drawings.

Using simple materials such as chalk, spraypaint and charcoal, Rhode turns the pavements, streets and walls of the city into his paper, canvas and backdrop, creating his own reality in the heart of urban society. These two dimensional drawings are then brought to life by performance and captured on film or photograph, as the artist or a döppelganger tries to blow out a chalk candle, juggle with charcoal balls or ride a chalk bicycle.

The Hayward exhibition will give an overview of Rhode's work drawn from the last ten years as well as showing new pieces. The installation brings together photographs, animations and film projects, sculptures and wall drawings. Rhode will also create new commissions for the show in the form of outdoor site-specific works on and around Southbank Centre, turning the whole site into his working 'studio'. These works will be documented and incorporated into the exhibition. In Rhode's work, racial, social, class and geopolitical elements take a central role in the critical reworking of the nature and value of materials and in the action of making art.

Opens: October 7
Closes: December 7

Bank Street Arts, Sheffield, launches its newly converted studio and gallery complex with 'Ha Ha Road'.

This exhibition of contemporary art features local, national and international artists whose work utilises or reflects upon humour in unique and unexpected ways. Through their rule-breaking antics, leaps of imagination, twisted reasoning, clever punning, or simply their buffoonery, the artists seduce with their capacity for comic trickery. Featuring works in video, drawing, installation, sculpture and performance, the exhibition attempts to pin down and make sense of that most slippery and unpredictable quality of the artwork: its ability to make us laugh.

Artists on show include Bruce Allan, David Blandy, Alice Bradshaw, Colin Guillemet, Philippa Hadley Choy, William Horner, Candice Jacobs, Nina Lassila, Tobias Sternberg, Oleg Timchenko, WebsterGotts, Bedwyr Williams, Dan Witz and Ed Young

'Ha Ha Road' is curated by Dave Ball and Sophie Springer

Opens: September 11
Closes: October 12

'Palinsesti 2008' is an exhibition which gathers works and site-specific installations which focus on the topics 'knot' (node) and/or 'net'. These selected works have been conceived by Italian and international artists for the spaces of the town San Vito al Tagliamento. By exploring the art of a younger generation, this exhibition compares the artworks with the structure that shapes the communication between people and media, particularly since the invention of Internet.

Artists invited include Colleen Alborough, Luc Mattenberger, son:DA, Vera Fedrigo and Franco Del Zotto, Simone Racheli, Maria Elisabetta Novello, Carlo Gloria, Maria and Natalja Petschatnikov, Cédric Hoareau, Mauro Ciani and Anja Puntari.

Opens: September 13
Closes: November 11

Andrew Verster and Araminta de Clermont exhibit side by side under the theme of tattooing at artSPACE berlin this month. Verster presents 'Odd Conversations' whilst de Clermont exhibits 'Life After' fresh from its Cape Town manifestation at João Ferreira Gallery.

Commenting on this exhibition Verster says, 'The works continue my interest in questions of identity. We are all many people in one body. And we are all made up of a multitude of disparate elements. In an age where growing uniformity threatens to destroy difference and uniqueness, people express their individuality in numbers of ways. I am fascinated by the resurgence of tattooing and other body-marking as a means of asserting personality and difference.' 'Odd Conversations' brings together the tissue paper works 'impregnated with wax of decorated bodies' and 'a series of works of naked figures clothed in tattoos' as oil on canvas pieces.

De Clermont describes her work thus: 'This body of work, undertaken between April 2007 and April 2008, started as the documentation of a cultural phenomenon: the "chappies" of the notorious South African Numbers Gangs, the 26s, 27s and 28s. These prison tattoos are, I believe, works of art and culturally significant in their own right, being the preferred art-form of an especially disenfranchised and marginalised group.'

Verster's and de Clermont's works play off one another in a hard/soft manner akin to the tattooing of bodies.

Opens: September 19
Closes: October 18

Myerson Fine Art presents 'Beyond Matter', an exhibition of new works by six contemporary South African artists who take widely varying approaches to art-making. Media include oil paint, beeswax, bronze and wool dust, as well as the elements of fire, water and air.

In the search for the essence or the 'real' matter of life, each artist's work reflects a constant flow between inner reflection and external searching. By exploring beyond the physical and material and by challenging perceptions of our world there is a possible reinterpretation of what is considered to be reality. The theme is multi layered, encompassing ideas and the exploration of quantum physics, spirituality, the imagination and desire. With this in mind each artist has been invited to go 'Beyond Matter'.

Opens: October 20
Closes: October 25

Goldblatt revisits, revises and extends his pairings of photographs first shown at Michael Stevenson, Cape Town for this exhibition in Portugal. Photographs selected from essays produced during apartheid years are compared and contrasted with images from his post-apartheid work.

'Intersections Intersected' is accompanied by a catalogue which contains essays by Ivor Powell and the exhibition curator Ulrich Loocke.

Guided tours of the exhibition will take place at the gallery at 6.30pm on September 11 and 30.

Opens: July 25
Closes: October 12

The Kyle Kauffman Gallery presents 'Not So Black and White 2008: South African Contemporary Art'. To mark the Gallery's first anniversary, they are exhibiting some of their latest acquisitions, works that highlight recent trends in contemporary African painting, photography, sculpture, prints and new media.

Featured on the exhibition are pieces by Willie Bester, William Kentridge, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Karel Nel, and Kudzanai Chiurai.

This second incarnation of last year's 'Not So Black and White', continues its focus on the great versatility and diversity of contemporary African art practices, aesthetics and thematic concerns.

Bester's robust metal works, with their subtle yet biting allusions to post-apartheid life, are juxtaposed with Mthethwa's bold, photographs, whose subjects are portrayed as almost regal in their poverty. Kentridge's conceptual and formal explorations of human vision hang beside Nel's minimalist sculptural allusions to life lines broken in the time of Aids. To round out the show, the Gallery features works for the first time by Zimbabwean Chiurai, the outspoken, young revolutionary artist willing to take on the political establishment in Zimbabwe, from which he is prohibited to return under the current regime. His prints, with their gritty urban aesthetic, blatantly address the upheaval in his own strife-ridden country.

This exhibition marks the beginning of a new season which will feature several solo exhibitions and accompanying catalogues by Paul Du Toit and Marlene Dumas amongst others.

Opens: September 18
Closes: October 12

'New Photography', The Museum of Modern Art's annual showcase of significant recent work in photography, this year features Josephine Meckseper and South African, Mikhael Subotzky. Subotzky's work is an expression of his experience of post-apartheid South Africa's social condition. By placing himself in an extraordinarily wide range of social situations, he allows his own experiences to formulate a vision of the social world around him.

Subotzky's most recent body of photographic work, 'Beaufort West (2006-2008)', portrays a transit town in which, according to the artist, many of the obscured social dynamics that scar South Africa seem to converge and reveal themselves. The photographer was drawn to this subject by the local jail, situated in the centre of the town, within a traffic circle on the main highway between Johannesburg and Cape Town. His images of the town's various populations - inmates, outcasts, families, residents, bureaucrats and passersby - present a unique vision of South Africa's strained post-apartheid condition.

Opens: September 10
Closes: January 5 2009

Area 405 presents an exhibition of new and existing work by Ledelle Moe and Carol-anne Gainer. These South African artists were two of the founding members of FLAT Gallery, an artist-initiative and alternative space from Durban in the early 90s. Moe now lives and works in Baltimore, Gainer in Cape Town. Their work draws from their identity working through personal understandings of material and form to explore issues of destruction and fragility.

Gainer's installation 'Drawn' includes a series of digital prints, nickel-plated childhood mementos, as well as drawings and video installations. Moe's installation comprises large scale concrete sculptures. In response to memorials and monuments, Moe explores ideas of collapse in new works titled 'Erosion'.

The artists will present a discussion of their work on September 24 at 1pm.

Opens: September 13
Closes: October 26

'Signs of Change', a major exhibition opening at Exit Art , chronicles 50 years of the cultural productions of international social movements. Curated by Dara Greenwald and Josh MacPhee, the exhibition features over 600 posters, prints, photographs, moving images, audio clips, and other ephemera from over 30 countries.

'Signs of Change' provides a dialogue with the past and an engagement with the present about the important cultural work of social movements. From the American Indian Movement to Women's Liberation, the South African anti-apartheid struggle to Portugal's Revolution of the Carnations, German Autonomen and squatters, to South Korea's Kwang Ju uprising, this exhibition carries us through the whirlwind of people taking action to change the world.

A number of special events have been arranged in conjunction with the exhibition. For further details, contact the gallery.

Opens: September 20
Closes: November 22

For 'Momentum 11', Nicholas Hlobo's first solo museum exhibition in the US, the artist has created a new sculptural installation, large-scale drawings, and a gallery performance that explore how 'notions of nature / difference / foreignness / dominance / submission are forced to live side-by-side.'

Suspended in the gallery, a large rubber and ribbon sculpture resembling a bodily organ or growth connects by a canal to an opening in the gallery wall. The entire room is lit from above with a soft pink glow, expanding the allusions to the gallery as a bodily interior of generative activity and growth, whether malignant or benign.

Accompanying this installation, Hlobo also presented a live performance Thoba, Utsale Umnxeba. Translated to mean 'to lower oneself and make a call', the title describes how Hlobo sat in a meditative posture with a headdress of multiple ribbons and hair extensions fastened like suction cups to the gallery walls. The performance introduces perspectives to the space where the private body, public ritual, and cultural engagement align.

Opens: July 30
Closes: October 26

The curatorial discourse of this year's Guangzhou Triennale proposes to say 'Farewell to Post-Colonialism'. The Triennial attempts to open new frontiers for creativity with a critical review of the role cultural discourses of Post-colonialism and Multi-culturalism have played in contemporary art. While affirming Post-colonialism's achievements in exposing hidden ideological agendas in society and inspiring new art, this Triennial also critically examines its limitations for creativity, and calls for a fresh start. <'p> GZ Triennial will host 181 artists from over 40 countries around the world, including 50 films/videos from the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Africa.

The Triennial Exhibition is structured into four sections - Projects in Progress, Thinking Room, Free Radicals, and Independent Projects which includes 'Middle East Channel', curated by Khaled Ramadan; 'East-South: Out of Sight', curated by Sopawan Boonnimitra; 'Now in Coming', curated by Guo Xiaoyan and Cui Qiao; 'Tea Pavilion', curated by Dorothee Albrecht; 'Mornings in Mexicos', curated by Steven Lam and Tamar Guimaraes; 'Mapping Currents for the 3rd Guangzhou Triennial', curated by Stina Edblom and Asia Art Archive; and 'Organising Mutation', curated by Leung Chi-wo and Tobias Berger.

A full list of programmes and events is available from the Office of the Guangzhou Triennial at the Guangdong Museum of Art.

Opens: September 6
Closes: November 16

The 7th Gwangju Biennale taking place in South Korea has this year adopted the theme 'Annual Report' which is developed around three principal components.

The first part, 'On the Road', a series of travelling exhibitions, will serve as a report on cultural manifestations occurring between 2007 and 2008. The second component, 'Position Papers', is a platform dedicated to a series of five focused, small scale curatorial proposals and experiments in exhibition practice by a diverse group of curators. The third element, 'Insertions', will take the format of a series of new projects commissioned or invited specifically for the biennale.

'Annual Report' has Okwui Enwezor at the helm as artisitic director as well as Hyunjin Kim, Ranjit Hoskote as co-curators. Curators for 'Position Papers' are Patrick D. Flores, Jang Un Kim, Abdellah Karroum, Sung-Hyen Park and Claire Tancons.

The 'Annual Report' artist line up of over 100 local and international artists includes South Africans Joachim Schoenfeldt and Jo Ractliffe alongside the likes of Bani Abidi (Pakistan), Mario Benjamin (Haiti), Gerard Byrne (Ireland), Abdoulaye Konaté (Mali), Thomas Demand (Germany), Chen Shaoxiong (China), Daniel Faust (USA), Peter Friedl (Austria), Marlon Griffith (Trinidad and Tobago), Tamar Guimaraes (Brazil), Hassan Khan (Egypt), Steve McQueen (UK), Koki Tanaka (Japan) and Sislej Xhafa (Kosovo).

Opens: September 5
Closes: November 9

French gallery Béatrice Binoche presents 'I love Jozi!' at the Reunion art and residency space [espacegounod].

This exhibition explores social, political, economic and personal perceptions of the urban fabric of Johannesburg by artists who focus particularly on this space. Exhibiting are Stephen Hobbs, Ismail Farouk, Lawrence Lemaoana, Nomusa Makhubu and Rat Western. Through photography and video these artists present a combination view on the factual but also emotive visions of the African city they love.