Archive: Issue No. 138, February 2009

05.02.09 'Beauty and Pleasure in South African Contemporary Art', Stenersen Museum, Oslo
20.02.09 'Bigwood Berlin' at artSPACE Berlin
24.01.09 'Kuckei + Kuckei presents 'why not? - Contemporary South African Art' in Berlin
27.02.09 Johan Thom collaborates in 'The View From Here', Slade School, London

16.01.09 Vulindlela Nyoni at artSPACE, Berlin

09.12.08 Nicholas Hlobo at the Tate Modern
23.11.08 Urban Reflections, Santu Mofokeng in Edinburgh

24.09.08 'Short Stories in Contemporary Photography', Tillim in Zürich

THE AMERICAS

09.01.09 Test Patterns: Recent Video from South Africa in San Francisco
29.01.09 'Johannesburg to New York', Samson Mnisi in Brooklyn
31.01.09 'Black Womanhood: Icons, Images, and Ideologies of the African Body' at the San Diego Museum of Art
11.02.09 Pieter Hugo in 'Unbounded: New Art for a New Century', New Jersey

19.11.08 Guy Tillim in New York
16.12.08 Marlene Dumas at Kyle Kauffman, New York
13.01.09 Deborah Poynton in Savannah, Georgia

22.11.08 Liquid Identities Video Art and Architecture in Brooklyn

20.09.08 'Beyond the Familiar' photography in Massachusetts

AFRICA

22.01.09 'Like a Virgin...' Zanele Muholi and Lucy Azubuike in Lagos

Kay Hassan, Lawrence Lemoana, Athi Patra Ruga, Andries Botha, Langa Magwa, Berni Searle, Nontsikeleo Veleko, Nandipha Mntambo, Senzeni Marasela, Frances Goodman, Nicholas Hlobo and Dineo Bopape are included on 'Beauty and Pleasure in South African Contemporary Art' at Stenersen Museum, Oslo in Norway.

Work on show explores identity issues, individuality, sensuality, sexuality and gender issues through a wide variety of media - photography, installation, video, works on paper, textile works, performance and sculpture.

The selected artists share an interest in expressing provocative themes within highly tactile and formally orientated works. The works in this exhibition are not only decorative and visually appealing, but also speak on a very poetic level about the beauty that is found in everyday life not only in Africa but all over the world.

As a strong counterpoint to the socially engaged, politically entrenched art often featured in exhibitions of contemporary art from Africa, the theme of this exhibition is linked to notions of beauty and pleasure.

Opens: February 5
Closes: May 10

The conceptual focus of of 'Bigwood Berlin' is the idea of 'wood', as in forest and all things that live in it.

The first 'Bigwood' exhibition was held at Manna in Durban in 2007. The second installment, 'Bigwood 2', expanded its scope by including grafitti artists along with graphic designers, fine artists and illustrators who came together to create something unique, fresh and memorable.

The 19 participating artists, from all over South Africa, are: Vonkberg (Werner Viljoen), Liezel Prins, Wesley van Eeden, faith47, Daniël du Plessis (daan), Louis Minnaar, Mitchell Horn (Reddprime), Ulricke Lourens, Richard Phipson, Justin Southey, Yvette Terblanche, Gabriel Metcalfe, Trevor Paul, Hylton Warburton, Paul Senyol, Ross Turpin, Tempest van Schaik (Ellomennopee), Christiaan Nagel and Maaike Bakker.

The success of 'Bigwood' is largely due to an underlying element of fun that runs through all the work on show.

Opens: February 20
Closes: March 21

'why not?' is the second of two exhibitions on contemporary South African Art at Gallery Kuckei + Kuckei in Berlin. The first show, 'A Look Away', was dedicated to photography and included works by Pieter Hugo, Sabelo Mlangeni, Mikhael Subotzky, Lolo Veleko and Guy Tillim.

Part two focuses on the latest developments in the field of sculpture, installation, performance and conceptual art. Artists included are Avant Car Guard, Zander Blom, Michael MacGarry and Nandipha Mntambo. The exhibition is curated by Christian Ganzenberg.

Opens: January 24
Closes: March 14

'The View From Here' is a collaborative project between UCL's Slade School of Fine Art, the Bartlett School of Architecture and the BBC. The project is part of the annual 'Research Spaces' collaboration between the PhD students from each school.

The collaboration explores notions of cultural translation and transpositioning by artists working in different media, drawing from the three key project terms: transmit, translate, transmute. These terms also signal the three consecutive stages into which the project is loosely divided.

For 'Transmit' four artists, from Australia, China, Israel and Uganda, have each filmed a 12-minute video in a locale connected to their work, under the title The View From Here. These works were each sent to a writer in their country to author a drama inspired by it. These dramas have been recorded for broadcast on the BBC World Service on February 28, 2009 in the final stage of the project. The artists, Barbara Bolt (Australia), Xioapeng Huang (China), Shuli Nachshon (Israel), and Daudi Karungi (Uganda) were pared with writers Noelle Janaczewska (Australia), Dinos Chapman and Simon Wu (Hong Kong/UK), Katie Hims (Israel/UK) and Charles Mulekwa (Uganda).

Eleven PhD students from the Slade and Bartlett made a series of works, in response to either those four works or the theme. The works will further inspire other students, invited to the event as respondents, to reshape, translate, transpose the original works through a text/image/audio/performance piece of their own.

The final event, 'Transmute', will be a combination of a BBC Broadcast and a Live Event on February 27. This final event will combine the broadcast, the original films and the resulting re-interpretations.

Artists involved include Elly Thomas, Johan Thom, Laura Malacart, Michael Delacruz, Tim Long, Sam Belinfante, Alex Zambell, Emma Cheatle, Nina Vollenbroker, Popi lacovou, Sophie Handler and Tat Lam.

Opens: February 27
Closes: February 28

artSPACE berlin presents 'Form>FUNKTION', an exhibition by Vulindlela Nyoni. In this series of prints Nyoni explores his fascination with the understated simplicity and banality of objects that he encounters.

In many cases, the function of these objects determines their form, but within these works, the forms resonate for other reasons. Rather than focus on a particular event or grand narrative, Nyoni takes glimpses of possible occurrences, meetings and juxtapositions that may or may not resonate with one another. He does this in the hope of inducing dialogue in the quiet spaces of the mind of the viewer, and physical format of the artwork itself. It is in these intimate conversations that the artist's search for meaning/context begins.

Opens: January 16
Closes: February 14

Nicholas Hlobo's 'Uhambo' marks the Joburg-based young artist's debut solo in the UK, at the Tate Modern no less.

In this exhibition Hlobo intricately stitches together a massive organic form that appears to have invaded the gallery. This new commission, together with a series of works on paper, is layered with bodily references, sexual innuendo and Xhosa fable.

Opens: December 9
Closes: March 1

'Urban Reflections', an exhibition curated by Kirsten Lloyd and Christine Nippe, presents five different artistic positions which reveal a range of contemporary responses to the idea of the city.

The development of industrialised modernity in the 18th and 19th centuries brought a fascination with new technologies, speed and progress. Population explosions resulted in new types of urban environments while advances in optics and chemistry gave birth to photography and film. Since then the lens and the city have been bound together in artists' imaginations as they attempt to represent, comment upon and re-imagine their everyday environments through documentary, avant-garde experimental approaches, photomontage and film.

Drawing references from pop culture, urban studies, literature, and the documentary genre, each of the five exhibiting artists seeks to explore a different facet of contemporary urban realities. A concern with the fragmentation of perception runs through the works: images are overlaid, spaces and emotions are distorted. In these places there are no fixed horizons; boundaries between imagination and reality are blurred, everything reflects and nothing is truly transparent.

Exhibiting artists are Nina Fischer & Maroan el Sani, Germany; Dan Graham, USA; Sabine Hornig, Germany; Santu Mofokeng, South Africa; and Rhona Warwick, Scotland.

Opens: November 23
Closes: March 22, 2009

'Short Stories in Contemporary Photography' presents various approaches by international artists to the strategy of contemporary photographic storytelling, and thus becomes a space of very distinct narratives.

In literature, the short story is a concise fictional narrative often perceived as an ideal form for modern storytelling. One can see parallels between the short story and contemporary photography in which distinct narrative possibilities emerge: documentary photography, in which a story is condensed visually; staged photography, in which a plot is developed as in the theatre; video stills that condense a complex story in a single image; and photography mixed with different media that distorts or transforms into a new storytelling form.

Contributors to this exhibition include Harry Gruyaert, Bertien van Manen, Aernout Mik, Erwin Olaf, Eric Stitzel, Guy Tillim and Erwin Wurm

San Francisco Camerawork presents 'Test Patterns: Recent Video From South Africa', a new exhibition that brings together the work of nine contemporary South African video artists who explore ideas of citizenship and belonging in the post-apartheid era.

Artists included are Churchill Madikida, Penny Siopis, Berni Searle, Simon Gush, Jo Ractliffe, Ismail Farouk, Ruth Sacks, Steven Cohen and Usha Seejarim.

Video's breakaway from its exclusive use as a television broadcasting tool into the hands of activists and artists is significant, and in South Africa, even more so. With rigid government controls even on consumer electronics, South African artists' videos are primarily a post-apartheid medium.

The racialisation of space from colonialism to apartheid had enabled the State to control the ways in which people perceived their own citizenship. And television provided further means to perpetuate the racialised divide. As television had largely been the preserve of white people, video is a tool for amending traditional notions of identification in relationship to the transformation of space in South Africa.

In these videos, the artists have developed alternative narratives about South Africa's sordid past and are grappling with the country's current relationship to the issues that are transforming the landscape and creating new forms of identification.

The exhibition will be presented in two parts. 'Part One' explores ideas of memory and identity under colonialism and apartheid. 'Part Two' surveys post-apartheid South Africa as it struggles to define a new national identity amidst the significant challenges of skyrocketing unemployment, HIV/Aids and Xenophobia.

Opens: January 8
Closes: March 25

The Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art (MoCADA), the first and only contemporary African Diasporan Art museum in Brooklyn, New York, presents 'Johannesburg to New York'.

Curated by Kimberli E. Gant, the show is the first retrospective of the collaborative work between South African artist Samson Mnisi and New York artist Cannon Hersey.

Combining their various perspectives on the changing cultural dynamics of South Africa and its emergence onto the world stage, these artists have created mixed media imagery that is socially conscious while also being visually stimulating.

Mnisi incorporates ancient Zulu symbolism and rituals with Hersey's captivating photography to give viewers insider and outsider perspectives on contemporary South African societies.

Opens: January 29
Closes: May 17

The San Diego Museum of Art, presents 'Black Womanhood: Icons, Images, and Ideologies of the African Body', a major travelling exhibition, curated by Barbara Thompson, that explores the historical roots of a charged icon in contemporary art - the black female body.

Originally presented in Dartmouth at the Hood Museum of Art, the exhibition explores the complex perpetuation of icons and stereotypes of black womanhood through the display of over 100 sculptures, prints, postcards, photographs, paintings, textiles and video installations by artists from Africa, Europe, America and the Caribbean.

Presented in separate but intersecting sections, 'Black Womanhood' reveals three different perspectives - the traditional African, Western colonial, and contemporary global - that have contributed to current ideas about black womanhood. These three sections explore themes such as ideals of beauty, fertility and sexuality, maternity and motherhood, and women's identities and social roles, and examine collectively how these overlapping perspectives penetrate the complex and interwoven relationships between Africa and the West, male and female, and past and present, all of which have contributed to the inscription of meaning onto the black female body.

Zanele Muholi, Senzeni Marasela, Nandipha Mntambo, Penny Siopis and Berni Searle exhibit contemporary representations of black womanhood which, in contrast to the historic representations of the African female body on display, dissect the layers of social, cultural, and political realities that have influenced the creation of stereotypes about black women.

Also expected to feature in the exhibition are well-established contemporary artists living in Africa and Europe such as Hassan Musa, Ingrid Mwangi, Robert Hutter, Sokari Douglas Camp, Emile Guebehi, Magdalene Odundo, Fazal Sheikh and Maud Sulter.

Opens: January 31
Closes: April 26

'Unbounded: New Art for a New Century' opens at the Newark Museum, New Jersey in February. This provocative exhibition presents 50 masterworks created in the past 15 years by more than 30 contemporary artists.

The exhibition is drawn from the Museum's African, American, Native American, Asian and Decorative Arts collections and encompasses painting, sculpture, ceramics, fashion, jewellery, textiles, photography and video.

A dynamic thematic display highlights the universal concerns and ideas that inspire artistic creativity, creating unexpected connections or groupings that transcend traditional divisions based on geography, genre or media.

Opens: February 11
Closes: August 16

Pratt Manhattan Gallery presents 'Zones of Conflict', an exhibition that assembles key examples of photographic and video-based artworks that focus on contemporary war, particularly in the Middle East.

The exhibition includes multiple artistic approaches, including those that document experiences of conflict that fall below the radar of the mass media. The exhibition explores work by contemporary artists who have challenged and recalculated documentary conventions in critical and creative ways, such as by blurring the boundaries between truth and fiction, giving expression to traumatic situations, and raising discord to the surface of representational structures. The result is not only a displacement of photography's erstwhile mission as the objective and neutral transmission of fact, but also an imaginative recalibration of the documentary mode in order to generate new models of 'truth'.

The exhibition, guest-curated by T. J. Demos, features work by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad (Iraq), Sam Durant (USA), Andrea Geyer (Germany) and Simon J. Ortiz (Acoma Nation, USA), Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige (Lebanon), Thomas Hirschhorn (Switzerland), Emily Jacir (Palestine), Lamia Joreige (Lebanon), An-My Le (USA), Walid Raad (Lebanon/USA), Ahlam Shibli (Palestine), Sean Snyder (USA), Hito Steyerl (Germany), and Guy Tillim (South Africa).

The exhibition is the second in a series of three at Pratt Manhattan Gallery that will focus on politics and media.

Opens: November 19, 2008
Closes: February 7

The Kyle Kauffman Gallery launches the new year and its new space with an exhibition by Marlene Dumas.

The newly renovated and larger space will house an exhibit of the most comprehensive survey of Dumas' prints and editioned works to date. It runs concurrently with Dumas' retrospective of paintings and drawings at the Museum of Modern Art, 'Marlene Dumas: Measuring Your Own Grave', running from December 14, 2008 to February 16, 2009.

On view at Kyle Kauffman are over half of the editions the artist has produced so far. The works range from her earliest prints dating from the early 80s to her most recent 2007 work The Fog of War, a set of four images and one accompanying text, the latest in a series of images of heads and bodies commenting on the nature of death, loss, identity and war.

Opens: December 16, 2008
Closes: February 28

Deborah Poynton's paintings will be on view for her first solo exhibitions in North America at the Pei Ling Chan Gallery in Savannah, Georgia., and the ACA Gallery of SCAD in Atlanta.

'Everything Matters' ties a selection of Poynton's most recent paintings together to exercise these physical and relational connections within her complex tableaux. A gallery talk will take place February 13 at 5pm as well as a reception which will take place February 13 from 6 - 8pm as part of the Savannah gallery hop. The exhibition, gallery talk and reception are free and open to the public.

Opens: January 13
Closes: February 13

Micro Museum, an independent arts space in Brooklyn, New York, presents two new shows: 'Metaphoric Sunrise/Sunset' and 'Liquid Cities - Video Art & Architecture'. The latter is the second instalment of an exhibition curated by Luca Curci and features South African video artist and painter Alison Williams alongside approximately 40 others including Stefano Fanara, Italy; Tamara Erde, Israel; Achilleas Kentonis & Maria Papacharalambous, Cyprus; Renata Szulczynska, Poland; Ane Fabricius Christiansen, Denmark; Verika Kovacevska, UK and Gregory Steel, USA amongst others.

Opens: November 22
Closes: February 21, 2009

'Beyond The Familiar: Photography And The Construction Of Community' is one of a four part programme at Williams College Museum of Art which focuses on the role of photography and film as it reflects, and potentially constructs, cultural identity.

The exhibition brings together 10 photography projects from around the world that span the history of the medium. These projects portray individuals from distinct cultural, economic, and professional groups.

Each of these artists has defined a group - whether by race, class, occupation, or neighborhood - and depicted individuals in a manner that moves beyond portraiture. Instead, each artist explores personal identity in the larger context of social groups.

Artists included in the exhibition are Felice Beato and Peter Henry Emerson from the 19th century; Edward Curtis, August Sander, and Aaron Siskind from the first half of the 20th century; Robert Frank, Barbara Norfleet and David Goldblatt from the second half of the 20th, and recent work by Tina Barney and Zwelethu Mthethwa.

Opens: September 20
Closes: March 8, 2009

Zanele Muholi and Lucy Azubuike, two female African photographers, show for the first time to a Lagos audience at Centre for Contemporary Art.

'Like a Virgin... ' explores identity, sexuality and the body within an African context. It touches on the taboos and restrictions of societal expectations in a way that questions not only our hypocrisy, but also our humanity and is curated by Bisi Silva.

Opens: January 22
Closes: February 21