Ashraf Jamal writes on the !Kauru African Contemporary Art Project

!Kauru: Rerouting Dialogue 1994-2014 at the UNISA Art Gallery until the 27th June 2014.

Project: !Kauru: Rerouting Dialogue 1994-2014  

Event:  Touring exhibition project
Date:   22 May 2014 – 27 June 2014
Venue:  UNISA Art Gallery Pretoria

The !Kauru African Contemporary Art Exhibition opened on the 22^nd of May at the UNISA Art Gallery, to positive audiences. The !Kauru project has already brought together Africa in 2014 through a variety of events, stimulating conversation between international artists, dignitaries, embassies, academics, arts professionals and the Department of Arts and Culture. Events which took place in the past week include an artist’s meet and greet evening hosted by the French Ambassador Elisabeth Barbier, the official exhibition opening at the UNISA Art gallery, an Artists Walkabout and a stimulating Round Table discussion. Facilitators who took part in the the Round Table discussion included Prof. Simon Mapadimeng, Ashraf Jamal, Bongani Mkhonza and Gordon Froud.

 The !Kauru exhibition will be open at the UNISA art gallery until the 27^th of June.

This is the third year of this project which aims to stimulate conversations within Africa and internationally to facilitate a change of perceptions about the continent through its contemporary art. Events still to come as part of the !Kauru African Contemporary Art project include youth day activities and a community outreach and development program.  The youth day activities will be hosted by UNISA’s Art Departments Students. A community outreach program includes walkabouts for community art groups and educational institutes. Additionally there will be a development seminar for up-and-coming artists by Art Source South Africa, which will give them the opportunity to think strategically about their career direction.

In 2014 the !Kauru African Contemporary Art project celebrates 20 years of South African democracy through the voices of artists across the African continent. According to !Kauru 2014 Curator Avitha Soonful “about unveiling the African truth.” This exhibition explores the continent of Africa as an integral player within the global village. Twenty artists from SADC and East African countries have been selected to take part in the exhibition. Artists selected to participate in the exhibition include Thame Kaashe from Botswana, Endale Desalegn from Ethiopia,Patrick Rorke from Lesotho, Alpheus Mvula from Namibia, Pierrot Man from Madagascar, Nirveda Alleck and Krishna Luchoomun from Mauritius. Three Mozambican artists, Anesia Zefenias, Gemuce Pompillio Hilario and Lourenço Abner Tsenane, Christine Chetty from the Seychelles and Mohau Modisakeng, Diane Victor and Churchill Madikida ahowcasing from South Africa. Reheme Chachage and Safina Kimbokota from Tanzania, Victor Mutulekesha and Kenneth Zenele Chulu from Zambia. As well as Nancy Mteki and Israel Israel from Zimbabwe.

Project Director, Tshepiso Mohlala of Back2Back Experiential Marketing says, “my vision is for this project to become a bi-annual event which will showcase the artworks of top African contemporary visual artists, starting with the SADC region. Thereafter touring four regions of the African continent. Ultimately the future plans are to tour these exhibitions internationally”.

Supported by the Department of Arts and Culture’s international relations department, !Kauru provides a platform for African contemporary artists and cultural practioners to engage around a showcase of contemporary art from the continent. The strategy aims to incorporate all the regions of Africa over the lifespan of the project, which began in 2012. The project promotes visual arts as a viable career choice and showcases the maturity and significant contemporary art voices of Africa.

GALLERY TIMES

UNISA GALLERY

10am – 4pm Mondays - Fridays.     

Note:The gallery is not open on weekends.

For media enquiries:

Art Source South Africa
Kelly McErlean
011 447 2855
kelly@artsourcesouthafrica.co.za

or

UNISA Art Gallery

Nana Tshangana

012 441 5876

tshannn1@unisa.ac.za / www.unisa.ac.za

!Kauru Contemporary Art Exhibition Opening

The !Kauru African Contemporary Art project is in full  production for the 2014 exhibition that will open at the UNISA Art Gallery on the 22^th May 2014. This is the third year of this project which aims to stimulate conversations within Africa and internationally to facilitate a change of perceptions about the continent through its contemporary art.

Through a series of talks, walkabouts, lectures, seminars and other programmes aligned to the exhibition, the project aims to sensitize and mobilize South African and African audiences as well as the media, in the appreciation of contemporary African visual arts. Art is seen as a means to promote inter Africa /Diaspora cultural exchange in a direct and meaningful way.

Supported by the department of Arts and Culture international department, !Kauru provides a platform for African contemporary artists and cultural practioners to engage around a showcase of contemporary art from the continent that will travel 5 regions of the African continent. The strategy aims to incorporate all the regions of Africa over the lifespan of the project, which began in 2012 with artists from the SADC region and east Africa. The exhibition will promote mid-career to established artists and will showcase the maturity and exceptional wealth of talent to be found within the region.

According to Project Director, Tshepiso Mohlala of Back2Back Experiential Marketing, “my vision is for this project to become a bi-annual event which will showcase the artworks of top African contemporary visual artists, starting with the SADC region, thereafter touring 4 regions of the Africa continent. Ultimately the long term future plan will be to tour these exhibitions internationally”, she says.

In 2014 the !Kauru African Contemporary Art project celebrates 20 years of South African democracy through the voices of artists across the African continent. Titled Rerouting Dialogue 1994-2014, the exhibition will open at the prestigious UNISA Art Gallery on 22 May 2014. The exhibition provides a platform for artist’s to engage issues which talk to who we are as Africans today. Attention is focused on our current identities, informed by our rich histories, cultures and contemporary experiences, which contribute to Africa as a dynamic continent.

The curatorial vision for Rerouting Dialogue 1994-2014, is according to !Kauru 2014 Curator Avitha Soonful “about unveiling the African truth.” This exhibition celebrates the continent of Africa as an integral player within the global village.  More than 18 artists from to SADC countries have been selected to take part in the exhibition.

Artists which will be in the 2014 exhibition include, Endale Desalengn from Ethiopia, Patrick Rorke and Stephen Mashaobathe from Lesotho, M. Alpheus Mvula from Namibia, Anesia Zefenias Filipe, Gemuce and Lourenco Dinis Pinto from Mozambique and Mohau Modisakeng, Dian Victor and Churchill Madikida from South Africa to name a few.

A Round table discussion will be held on the 23^rd of May as well as an Artists Walkabout on the 24^th at 9:30am-11:00am which will be open to the public. Other events which surround the !Kauru Contemporary Art project and the 2014 exhibition include the initiation of the prestigious African Collectors club on the 30^th of May. The collectors club aims to promote African art and create a platform where African collectors can gain knowledge of African art as an investment vehicle. Events which will be initiated in June include a community outreach programme which allows underprivileged Art students to interact with the !Kauru exhibition and take part in conversations and a youth day celebration driven by the UNISA art department students.

GALLERY TIMES

UNISA GALLERY

10am – 4pm Mondays - Fridays.     Note:The gallery is not open on weekends.

For media enquiries:
Kelly McErlean
011 447 2855
kelly@artsourcesouthafrica.co.za

or

UNISA Art Gallery

Nana Tshangana

012 441 5876

tshannn1@unisa.ac.za / www.unisa.ac.za

Bernice Stott, Litmus Skin

Bernice Stott, Litmus Skin

Durban artist Bernice Stott will be opening her exhibition titled Litmus Skin at Gallery on Leviseur, Bloemfontein in association with Art Source South Africa. The exhibition will open on the 13th of May at 18h30 and run until the 2nd of June 2014. 

Stott’s career has been centred on the human narrative and her intrigue with the female body in contemporary South Africa. Stott’s primary media are sculpture and painting, although Stott says that “photography has led me to into the media of video and performance art”.

Bernice has created a series of paintings based on photographs titled Litmus Skin. The body of work evokes a childhood that is mixed with horror and delight. The motif of a circle in Litmus Skin indicates a symbol of protection: the circle a child draws around her/himself and the circle of protective love a caring mother traces around her children. A circle can also refer to a cycle, in this context a cycle of deprivation, which can be disrupted and replaced with roundness and fullness of being. The cycle of deprivation can be broken by an individual becoming conscious – loving, enacting new behaviours and ritualising new events – and through a supportive community. 

In Litmus Skin red is primary colour, a symbol of violence, blood, passion, victimhood and wounding. When discussing her work Stott quotes respected Durban based art critic, Peter Machen, “Stripped of our skin, we are all the same colour underneath. Adrenalin tastes the same to everyone. Whiteness might be pinkness but pink is not whiteness”. 

Bernice Stott has completed a post graduate degree in Drama which was followed by a Masters in Fine Arts at Durban University of Technology. She has been teaching in the Drama and Performance Studies Department (UKZN) for several years. Stott says that “Art making feeds my soul: it is a place of meditation yet it provides me with an engagement of both my internal and external life”.

Opening speaker of Stott’s exhibition and director of Art Source South Africa Les Cohn says that, although the work deals with incredibly difficult and painful subject matter, Stott has created works that are sensitive, evocative and intimate. Art Source South Africa an art project consultancy is working in association with Gallery on Leviseur to present Bernice Stott’s body of work this May. “Art Source South Africa is excited to work in association with Bloemfontein’s first contemporary art gallery and bring Bernice Stott’s work to a national platform.” Cohn.

Les Cohn will be delivering the opening remarks on the 13th of May at 18h30. Furthermore in collaboration with Stott’s exhibition there will be a performance, directed by Mark Dobson on the 14th of May at 19h00.

GALLERY TIMES

Tue - Fri: 7:00 am - 4:00 pm

Sat - Sun: 8:00 am - 2:00 pm

GALLERY ADDRESS

59 Dan Pienaar Avenue, 

Westdene

9301 Bloemfontein, Free State

For media enquiries contact:

Wilma Cruise

Will you, won't you, will you join the dance?

Wilma Cruise’s touring project titled Will you, won’t you, will you join the dance? showcasing a new body of work launched at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival on 27 June 2013.  The exhibition was well received by the public at the Festival and was reviewed by Cue, the Festival Magazine and Art South Africa.

“Will you, won’t you, will you join the dance? derives its impetus from the nursery rhyme character of Humpty Dumpty, a fanciful creature, half man, half egg who finds himself in Alice’s daydream in Through the Looking Glass. I have re-interpreted this bad tempered anthropomorphic egg by creating a clay character roughly modelled in a bulbous round shape. In the exhibition he is depicted perched on a stool, legs crossed, or he is upside down, or dancing, his spherical form precariously balanced on his underdeveloped legs. As an indicator of his vanity, he is shod in a pair of bright red ballet slippers. I have called him H.D. Arnoldus, an allusion to the metaphorical imp that was said to sit on my shoulder as a little girl.  He also pays a passing nod to the tokoloshe, which in South African folklore is a malevolently mischievous creature”, says Cruise.

Will you, won’t you, will you join the dance? is the fourth exhibition in The Alice in Wonderland Sequence. What distinguishes this exhibition from the previous ones is that, in this exhibition the artist invites the audience to come and join in the dance as a way of being involved in and engaging the game of Alice in Wonderland. “You, the viewer, are invited to unravel the conundrums and the absurdities contained within the tales and re-interpreted in the artworks of The Alice Sequence. You are invited to make the connection between thinking speaking humankind, as exemplified by Alice, and the non-speaking other – even if it is, as in this case, a pompous anthropomorphic egg!” says Cruise.

Explaining her current work Cruise states, “In this series of exhibitions I interrogate the curious interface between Alice in Wonderland and the animals that inhabit her dream world. Using ceramic sculpture, painting, drawings and text, I explore the nature of animal/human communication within the fecund metaphor provided by Lewis Carroll’s tales of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass”.

The next showing of  Will you, won’t you, will you join the dance? is at Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Bloemfontein in July 2014.

Wilma Cruise, Detail of: Alice: Self Portrait ll, Mixed media drawing on paper, 200 x 100cm, 2011.  Photo:  Ant Strack

By Wilma Cruise from the Will you, won't you, will you join the dance? exhibition

By Wilma Cruise from the Will you, won't you, will you join the dance? exhibition

2013 Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale (GICB)

Wilma Cruise has been invited to participate in the 7th Gyeonggi International Ceramic Biennale (GICB) in Korea.

GICB presents newly created artworks made specifically for this exhibition by requesting artists to share their interpretations on the 2013 theme, ‘Community-with me, with you, with us’ in conjunction with social, geographical, cultural and aesthetical issues.  The GICB is the most prestigious ceramic biennale on the circuit.  "It is a huge accolade for me to be invited and it is a pinnacle of my career to date as a ceramic sculptor", says Cruise.

Cruise's work will be shown in the International Prize of GICB 2013 which is the main exhibition of the GICB. It is the highlight and the most important venue as it addresses different issues associated with the current tendencies in international contemporary art. The final selection for the exhibition has been progressed through a nomination format. Among the 91 artists recommended by 11 international committee members representing Asia, the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Oceania, only 30 artists are nominated for the main exhibition by the director Lee Inchin.

The GICB will open on 28 September - 17 November 2013 at Icheo in Gyeonggi, Korea.

Professional Practice Seminar in the Visual Arts hosted by Art Source South Africa

Usha Seejarim invited by the Centre for Indian Studies in Africa (CISA)

In response to a great honour and with excitement, Usha Seejarim was invited in March to present a talk at The Centre for India Studies in Africa (CISA).  Being of Indian descent, Seejarim spoke on her long standing preoccupation with the everyday and how this has been articulated in her art making.  Her presentation demonstrated the development of this interest through a discussion of her previous works which led up to her recent body of work Venus at Home, currently on exhibit at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG).  Venus at Home explores concepts of domesticity and gender roles through the artworks created from used found, household objects such as brooms, mops and irons. All the ‘material’ on the exhibition was donated by friends and neighbours, further infusing the work with their original owner’s individual histories.

“Related to the search for meaning in the ordinary is a search for identity. It is the relationship of oneself to all this ‘stuff’ that seems to define our existence. It is an analysis of identity further than culture, nationality, gender and heritage. It is a personal investigation of the self and the relationship of the self to its environment; an understanding of oneself beyond the labels of being female and African, beyond being a mother, and an artist”, says Seejarim.

The Centre for Indian Studies in Africa (CISA) was established at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg towards the end of 2007, the first in Africa to focus on India. CISA promotes teaching, research and public activities concerning the Indian sub-continent, its links to Africa and the Indian Ocean, and builds on the multi-faceted networks developed with Indian universities, research institutions and public agencies. The Centre’s public activities are part of its mandate to contribute to the consolidation of economic, political and cultural relations between India and countries in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia. “The CISA aims to have a comparison between India and South Africa on historical and current issues and challenges; and have connections between India and South Africa and the rest of Africa. With such goals in mind, the organisation has to employ creative ways to achieve them”.

On 24 April, CISA will be screening a film on issues of gender, domesticity and labour titled Lesser Human by Dir K. Stalin, to accompany Usha Seejarim’s exhibition (untitled) of new and old works.

Event:  Film Screening – Lesser Humans by Dir K. Stalin

Date: Wednesday 24 April 2013

Time: 16h00 - 18h00

Venue: Committee Room, CISA, 36 Jorrissen Street

This is part of an on-going dialogue with the South African artist Usha Seejarim whose work through a series of installations employing brooms looks at issues of gender, domesticity and labour, in her exhibition Venus at Home currently on at the Johannesburg Art Gallery. This film explores the inhuman link between brooms, scavenging and caste in India.

“The film is about manual scavenging in India which has won several awards and helped to put the issue of untouchability in contemporary India on the agenda for numerous international development agencies. It investigates the lives of  ‘manual scavengers,’ the community at the lowest rung of the caste system whose inhuman caste-based occupation is to manually dispose of human excreta”.

Lesser Human, award winning film of:

Excellence Award, Earth Vision Film Festival, Tokyo, 1999

Best Film, New Delhi Video Festival, 1999

Silver Conch, 5th Mumbai International Film Festival, 1998 

Special Mention, Amnesty International Film Festival, Amsterdam, 1998

For further information contact Prof. Dilip Menon, Mellon Chair in Indian Studies dilip.menon@wits.ac.za

‘Venus at Home’ at the Johannesburg Art Gallery

‘Venus at Home’ is a solo touring museum exhibition by visual artist Usha Seejarim. Venus at Home is currently on exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG), where the exhibition opened on 10 February 2013.

Venus at Home is an intensely personal project in which Seejarim aimed to explore the places she finds herself in and the various roles she undertakes, such as being a home-maker, housewife, mother of two, and an artist.  These distinctly defined roles in Seejarim’s own life come together in this body of work that employs ordinary household objects and found objects as the primary materials to create a series of sculptural works and installations.  Venus at Home explores Seejarim’s interest in and her allurement with the mundane and everyday routines.  Her use of ordinary objects as material for art making inevitably references the ‘readymade’ stimulating questions around notions of exhibition and the definition of ‘art’. 

Seejarim is a young woman of Indian descent whose own experience is as a South African. Yet her artistic voice has been developed and informed by the rich heritage of her South African diasporic Indian environment and culture. She asks relevant questions about identity, nationality, culture and the concept of ‘home’- but rather than seek universal clichés that society so often uses in rhetoric, Seejarim looks to this project for a personal expression and questioning of these notions.

In a community that is largely art-illiterate, conceptual art of this nature is strangely an immediate abnormality. It also provided an access point to the individuals who contributed objects drawn from family members and neighbours. The materials utilised in ‘Venus at Home’ range from used mops, brooms and irons, donated by these individuals. They have been curious about how their donations were transformed, and equally Seejarim was equally curious about their responses to the artworks; particularly since she suspected that they were expecting something “pretty”.

Each object is culturally loaded, gender specific and stripped of its utilitarian function when transformed into these art pieces. She links their transformation to an acute awareness of her identity through location, history and culture. It questions a sense of who she is in relation to notions of home and belonging. This new body of work extends Seejarim’s previous preoccupation with the ‘ordinary’ and explores her position to the various persona and roles she undertakes - those of an Indian/ South African woman, a wife, a mother, home keeper and artist.

Seejarim obtained her Masters Degree in Fine Art at Wits University in 2008 and her B.Tech Degree in Fine Art in 1999 at the University of Johannesburg (previously the Technikon Witwatersrand). She has held five solo exhibitions and participated in numerous group exhibitions nationally and internationally in Paris, Minneapolis, Tokyo, Havana and Belgium.

Venus at Home was launched at the Grahamstown National Arts Festival on 28 June 2012. It was selected by the visual arts jury to be shown on the prestigious Main 2012 Visual Arts Programme.

The exhibition closes on 12 May 2013.  Visit JAG before this thought provoking show comes to an end!