North West University (Building E7, next to the library entrance) Main Campus Potchefstroom
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Listings
'The Retrospective Year'
Maureen Quin at NWU Gallery‘Sculpture is my passion. It’s an extension of myself, reflecting my thoughts, my loves, hates, joys, and fears. Whether I am involved in representational wildlife studies, realistic figure studies or abstractions, I put my heart and soul into it. Each sculpture is an exciting journey. Starting with a vague concept, sketching it to achieve a visual form, building the armature, fleshing it out and having it cast in bronze are the elements which ultimately are to me the most rewarding and satisfying.’
'Maureen Quin: The Retrospective Year' is made up out of a large body of bronze sculptural artworks and is meant as a celebration of the artist’s career over the last 60 years. Quin is ranked as one of South Africa’s most outstanding sculptors as her impressive career with over 400 works, 40 commissions, 52 solo exhibitions, 26 group exhibitions, and several national awards (such as the Silver Medal award for her contribution to sculpture in South Africa, awarded by the University of Pretoria in 1990) clearly substantiates.
Etienne du Plessis describes her work as in all aspects alive and flowing, whether the subject be realistic or modern expressive, and says that her keen sense of observation of the human and animal forms makes her outstanding.
‘My works are the result of deep emotional responses to the world around me. They are illustrative, conveying their message to the viewer in a more subtle way. My sculptures are triggered by human relationships and predicaments and they find expression through the human figure.’
08 May 2014 - 20 June 2014
'wolf in sheep's clothing'
Ann Marie Tully at NWU GalleryAnn-Marie Tully’s art is concerned with the lives of animals, the reciprocal relations of humans and non-humans, and the representation of animal beings.
The tendency of human beings to express themselves through the metaphoric and physical vehicle of animal beings is considered and disarticulated in this visual body of work including oil paintings, textiles and ceramics.
27 March 2014 - 02 May 2014
'BLEEK'
Richardt Strydom at NWU Gallery'... there remains in the early twenty-first century a postcolonial whiteness struggling to come into being, or rather a number of post-empire, post mastery whiteness attempting to examine themselves in relation to histories of oppression and hegemony of their others in order to learn the difficult, never mastered skill that Heidegger used to call Mitsein - Being with' – Lopez
'BLEEK' encompasses a number of photographic series that sets out to interrogate the performance of white masculinity from different points of entry. Masochistic violence and self-interrogation are recurring themes in the body of work. Strydom is especially interested in the manner different traditions and contexts are embodied in particular power rituals.
The historically hegemonic position of whiteness makes it difficult to comprehend the notion of a marginal whiteness. The difficulty to articulate a non-hegemonic whiteness often leads to uncertainty and suspicion. A public questioning of whiteness may pose a dilemma since whiteness, even in a postcolonial context, retains its hegemonic status and prestige that might serve to perpetuate what Mohanty calls 'the white man as spectacle'.
This notion of whiteness as spectacle has led to the artist’s personal interest to examine and make visible the strategies used in the performance of postcolonial whiteness in the South African context.
27 March 2014 - 02 May 2014
'Venus at Home'
Usha Seejarim at NWU Gallery'Venus at Home' is an intensely personal project, in which the artist aims to explore the places she finds herself in and the various roles she undertakes.
Explaining her previous work Seejarim states, 'The trajectory of my work shows a fascination with the everyday. Subsequent works have used household and ordinary objects like toothbrushes, toothpaste tubes, bus tickets, soap bars, kwiklocks (plastic clips that close bread packet), earbuds, stoep polish and safety pins. The everyday features also in video works where the practice of daily activities has been explored. Works have been made about daily travel to work and back, washing dishes, mowing the lawn and making roti'.
Henry Lefebvre, in Clearing the Ground, 1961 describes a housewife as being immersed in the everyday, needing an escape, and a mathematician being distant from and needing a return to the everyday. 'This phenomenon of ‘escape from’ and ‘return to’ the everyday co-exist in my life as a house/home-keeper and artist. It is this dual relationship that I wish to explore in this body of work', says Seejarim.
'As a home-maker/housewife/mother of two, and an artist, I seem to straddle between daily chores like washing the dishes or changing diapers to the seemingly glamorous act of making art. These two distinctly female roles in my own life came together in this body of work that uses ordinary household objects as materials to create a series of sculptures and installations'.
Seejarim is a young woman of Indian descent whose experience is as a South African. Yet her artistic voice has been nurtured and informed by the rich heritage of her (South African) diasporic Indian environment and culture. She asks pertinent questions about identity, nationality, culture and the concept of ‘home’- but rather than seek universal truisms that society so often uses in rhetoric, Seejarim looks to this project for personal resolution. Her work explores issues of identity and is informed by a fascination with the apparent mundane and the ordinary. This body of work extends Seejarim’s previous preoccupation with the ‘ordinary’ and explores her position in her various persona and roles – that of an Indian/ South African woman, a wife, mother, home keeper and artist.
06 February 2014 - 20 March 2014