Archive: Issue No. 138, February 2009

05.02.09 Brett Murray at Goodman Gallery
05.01.09 'Swamp Eyes' at David Krut Projects
17.01.09 Group Exhibition at Gallery Momo
10.12.09 Alexandra Ross and David Ross at Resoution Gallery
02.01.09 Moses Seleko, Bevan de Wet and Ulricke Lourens at Gordart Gallery
07.02.09 Gordon Froud, Eric Duplan and Frieda Sonnekus at Fried Contemporary
14.02.09 'Ilima III' at Springs Art Gallery

03.02.09 Johannes Phokela and David Andrew at Standard Bank Gallery
27.01.09 'Prints, Multiples and Photography VI' at Warren Siebrits
15.01.09 Robyn Penn at Brodie/Stevenson

30.11.08 Thami Mnyele and the Medu Art Ensemble at the Johannesburg Art Gallery

26.10.08 'Disturbance - Contemporary Art from Scandinavia and South Africa' at JAG

Brett Murray's 'Crocodile Tears' is up at Goodman Gallery this month. As one has come to expect from this titan of SA art, the work provides a humorous, satirical, and sometimes tragic reflection on notions of renaissance within a South African context.

Through this new body of bronze sculpture, two-dimensional cut-outs and works on paper, Murray explores the complex relationships between power and its subjects with his signature critique and incisive wit.

Provocative portraits cut from mild steel and coated in Fool's Gold representing the seven deadly sins and toy-like bronze poodles address notions of power, patronage and sycophancy, and comment on the times in which we live and the seemingly farcical appearance of political players and dispensations, venal bureaucracies and fallible business ethics.

Opens: February 5
Closes: February 28

David Krut Projects' kick-off show for 2009 is 'Swamp Eyes'', a curated exhibition of works on paper that seeks to 'contemplate the external, natural world from a set of aesthetic dimensions'. The works 'explore the natural and cultural with wit and sensitive observation. From the raised surface of the etched line to thoughtful use of colour, the works are emphatically physical and intricate'. Artists participating are Ryan Arenson, Willem Boshoff, Wim Botha, Gail Behrmann, Willie Cole (US), Claire Gavronsky, William Kentridge, Kim Lieberman, Alice Maher (UK), Suzanne McClelland (US), Colin Richards, Michelle Segre (US), Rose Shakinovsky, Sean Slemon, Kiki Smith (US), Nathaniel Stern and Sandile Zulu.

Opens: February 5
Closes: March 16

Gallery Momo presents a group show during January and February, featuring the work of Marco Cianfanelli, Gabrielle Goliath, Theresa-Anne Mackintosh, Aida Muluneh, Sue Pam-Grant, Johannes Phokela, Lyndi Sales and Andrew Tshabangu.

Opens: January 17
Closes: February 16

'In camera' is a legal term meaning 'in private' and derives from the Latin 'in a chamber'. This photographic exhibition by artist Alexandra Ross and photographer David Ross unveils two complementary private chambers - one dark and erotic, the other light and sensual. Though their work shares the subject of the female nude they present two quite different viewpoints. 'In Camera' reveals their reflections not only on intimacy and privacy, sensuality and eroticism, but on memory and history too.

Both have used 'low-tech' digital cameras contained within other tools to produce their work. Alexandra used a built-in laptop camera and David shot with his cell phone. An interesting tension exists between the immediacy of the digital medium and the nostalgic aesthetic of the final images which recall other periods in history when photography was both time-consuming and hands-on.

The themes of intimacy, relationship and memory emerge with quiet restraint in the David's work. His private chamber is a bedroom flooded with daylight - a place where a lover's narrative unfolds. Often drawing attention to the ephemeral qualities of light in his work, he imbues these grainy monochromatic images, enlarged from low-res files almost to the point of disintegration, with a sensual and tactile quality. They are reminiscent of 60s pin-ups but even more, they offer an elegiac statement that bears witness to the transitory nature of light, beauty and memory itself.

Alexandra's dimly lit, illicit night scenes draw the viewer into a more erotically charged interior. Here the female nude poses provocatively and consciously for a male viewer who is included as a prop within the pictures themselves, for viewers outside the frame and for the artist herself - the nudes are self-portraits. Her small scale, intimate images were produced using both digital and archaic photographic printing processes (salt printing) and finally printed onto metal plates. These densely coloured, dark images shift ambiguously between the contemporary and the historical, referencing early Victorian erotic daguerrotypes but also subverting stereotypes of the female nude through parody and wit.

Opens: December 10
Closes: February 28

Gordart Gallery announced its move to the unofficial 'art strip' in Rosebank on Jan Smuts Avenue early in January 2009.

The gallery's first show in the new space is 'Fetish Object' features the work of the late great Moses Seleko (1962 - 2006), Bevan De Wet and Ulricke Lourens.

Seleko's work is comprised of used found objects and detritus of society frequently wrapped in skin or rubber, and encrusted with nails. De Wet, through his use of shaped etching plates, explores objects and bodies made mysterious by their fetishisation. Lourens examines the female body as site of contention corseting, projecting images and altering the physical shape of human form through waist training shown as a series of intimate digital prints.

Opens: January 24
Closes: February 7

In 'Suburb' the artists deal with urban space in various ways. Suburbs are spaces where both the best and the worst of modern social life are visible. Suburbia plays a dominant role in people's lives - it's a place of work, commerce, worship, education or leisure. Urban critic Lewis Mumford describes suburbia as a 'multitude of uniform, unidentifiable houses, lined up inflexibly, at uniform distances, on uniform roads', yet many different stories are playing out in these seemingly uniform spaces.

The physical environment of suburbia conveys past, present and future ideas about us and the world. In Frieda Sonnekus's digital works the female city stroller and the shopper, the fláneuse, is depicted. From an aerial and geographic perspective and almost mathematically, Eric Duplan renders space in terms of site and place in his paintings; while the city as artifice and designed space is rendered in Gordon Froud's sculptures and functional objects.

Opens: February 7
Closes: March 7

'Ilima' is a Zulu term which, loosely translated, means a team or a group of people working together. In this spirit, the Springs Art Gallery presents an exhibition of work from the Ekurhuleni Eastern Art Development School Programme, which covers the geographical areas of Kwa-Thema, Benoni and Springs. The exhibition features a selected body of works, drawings and paintings by young and promising artists from programme, which is itself a unique empowerment project aimed at demonstrating the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality's responsibility and commitment to supporting young artists in the region.

The works deal with a variety of social and personal issues. Curator Thabo Sekoila believes the works 'have a sense of innocence', and yet 'provoke conversation in many ways, engag[ing] the viewer with glimpses of strength, diversity, creativity and ambition.''

The Art Development School classes run full time, six times a week at the Kwa-Thema Library, the Van Rhyn Place of Safety in Benoni and the Springs Community Hall (Saturday art classes).

Opens: February 14
Closes: February 28

The Standard Bank Gallery kicks off the year with a duo of shows sure to get you fired up. Critically-acclaimed painter Johannes Phokela's 'I like my neighbours' features a body of new work as well as recent works from numerous private and public collections.

Phokela continues his exploration of cultural and political consumption of pictures, a process mirrored in his own voracious consumption of images. Phokela draws on iconic paintings from European art history, works by Rubens, Van Dyck and Caravaggio, but just as readily on newspapers, magazines and web-based sources. His paintings marry the gravitas of art history with the apparently endless stream of media and popular culture images.

David Andrew's concurrent show, 'Misc (Recovery Room)' is a furthering of this artist's interrogation of the relationship between art-making and teaching. Drawing together a number of threads, the show speculates on how art teaching may be pursued in non-traditional forms. The central philosophical and practical question Andrew posits is 'how can the teacher perform more like the artist?', considering which particular patterns present in classrooms and schools could allow for a more 'artful' learning and teaching experience. The show explores these notions and plots a course to such a reality through a 'miscellany of drawings, notebooks, objects, photographs and installation'.

Opens: February 3
Closes: March 21

Warren Siebrits Modern and Contemporary presents 'Prints, Multiples and Photography VI' as its first exhibition this year. The show is sure to have more of Siebrits' rare gems of SA and international printmaking and photography.

Opens: January 27
Closes: March 6

Brodie/Stevenson starts the year with an exhibition of paintings by Robyn Penn entitled 'A Brutal Year'. The show explores illness, loss, pregnancy, the lapse of time and 'the space you inhabit when you are very ill or when someone very close to you is very ill', which the artist states 'is like a twilight zone or a perpetual noon, the place where light and shadow meet or morning shifts into afternoon'.

Opens: January 15
Closes: February 14

'Thami Mnyele and the Medu Art Ensemble' aims to give an overview of the artistic output of this ANC-initiated cultural organisation which was founded by Dr Wally Serote in 1978. Medu was disbanded after a SADF raid left Mnyele and 11 others dead in 1985.

Of particular importance to Medu's visual art contribution is the 1982 'Symposium on Culture and Resistance', which was a major gathering of South African and international cultural activists in Gaborone, Botswana. The symposium was accompanied by an exhibition of South African exiles' work entitled 'Art towards social development', which was curated by Thami Mnyele and Gordon Mentz.

Opens: November 30
Closes: March 31

'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