Bubblegum Club

Author: Chris Soal

  • Io Makandal – To Meet The Threshold

    Misconceptions about being an artist abound within society. Most people think we just sit around aimlessly until inspiration strikes. But if To Meet The Threshold has shown me anything, it’s the value of the dogged persistence of an artist striving to fulfill their vision. The installation enveloping the viewer is just one of a series of what Io Makandal calls “tactile drawings,” made over the last two years as part of her multidisciplinary creative practice. In the past however, these frame-shattering drawings have usually been restricted to a single wall or a corner. At No End Contemporary Art Space, Makandal had the entire space to work with. The long narrow structure of the gallery unsurprisingly caught the artist’s eye, a concept took hold and the necessary arrangements were made with the gallery to hold a show.

    In a previous article I observed how, for me, No End had begun to read as one of Johannesburg’s many alleyway’s, albeit, with good lighting and artworks on sale. It is this feature that I again felt was highlighted beautifully through Makandal’s intervention. The single corridor pulled the viewer in one direction, and gave no opportunity to tip toe around the installation, or view if from a distance. From the onset it outlined clear rules of engagement with its audience; enter and experience. Be engulfed. What were we asking to experience though? There was clear evidence of urban existence: broken chunks of concrete, dirty traffic cones, piping, housing insulation, and refuse, windswept around the gallery, suspended in mid-air, littering the floor. Alongside this urban debris were signs of natural life, or what was at least once alive; dead leaves, dead palm branches, twigs and a skeleton, which I assumed had once belonged to a cow. The tension set up between the natural (in its deceased and decaying state) and the urban, which for us in the twenty first century is our area of primary habitat, was striking.

    But it didn’t simply end there. If it had I might be writing how the installation was a reflection of the overwhelming urbanisation and the effect this has on nature. However, the third element (if I can so crudely group them like this) that I picked out was that of pure line and colour. Coloured string hung from the walls and the ceiling, draping down onto the floor. Neon duct tape covered the surface of the gallery, supporting objects on the wall or cutting through the harsh geometric surrounds. And little fluffy balls were pinned everywhere, little splashes of colour that then expanded when a balloon or party plate came into view. Makandal’s work makes me imagine what might have happened had Joan Miro worked in Johannesburg as an artist. There is the grunge and grit of this urban stew mixed in with transcendental moments of colour and form that seem to have jumped in from another dimension.

    Makandal’s work has a formal consistency that, even in three dimensions, reads similarly to one of her painting or drawing works. This similarity is not however where the work ends, for through the reference to the two dimensional works, a tension is set up. A tension between two dimensions and three that starts to bring to the foreground materiality, spatial concerns, and probably most intriguing for me, the human body. In a world of overwhelming complexity, detritus and structure, there was a single direct reference to the human body, a curled finger protruding from the wall, beckoning to the viewer. Asking to make the most solemn of vows, a pinky promise; we are invited to reengage with the possibilities that art present for our present reality.

  • Emerging voices at the Joburg Fringe 2017

    There is a long history of artists going against the status quo. Of seeking out avenues beyond what was institutionalised and what was accepted, or even celebrated, in their day. A famous example that comes to mind was the beginnings of the Impressionist movement in Paris in the Salon des Refusés (“Salon of the Refused”) in 1863, where a large number of artists including Paul Cézanne, Camille Pissarro, James Whistler, and the early iconoclast Édouard Manet, put together their own exhibition in defiance of the official, government sanctioned salons. Well as they say, the rest is history, Impressionism took the world by storm and the artist as provocateur or agent of antagonism, became central to future trends.

    Much of contemporary art is born in this spirit, and thus we find ourselves discussing an event such as the Joburg Fringe. The Fringe is an independent art fair and organisation first launched in 2008, complementing the FNB Joburg Art Fair. It’s an artist-run initiative with a petit but potent history that celebrates the inner city. Now in its 9th year, the Fringe has continued to expand, giving a platform to up-and-coming artists and providing an alternative artistic experience to the polished spectacle that is the FNB Art Fair. This year the Joburg Fringe had found its home in Victoria Yards, Lorentzville (the suburb established in 1892, when Jozi was just 6 years old). The contrast between this space and the Sandton Convention Centre could not be greater. If capturing the dynamic grit of the city was one of the goals then it definitely achieved it. The challenge for any new radical venture is to stay radical, fighting the urge to become simply a new form of institution as it achieves success. Fringe accepts free submissions from anyone, although a jury has been set up to maintain standards of excellence.

    Work by Malebona Maphutse

    What was most exciting about this year’s Fringe event was the two special projects; curated shows by Mbali Tshabalala and Sikhumbuzo Makandula. Young Capital: White Noise by Tshabalala included many young artists, such as Alka Dass and Johan Stegman to name just two; artists who are making incredible work but are not at the stage of their careers to be signed to a gallery showing at the Art Fair, complementing the idea of the Joburg Fringe being an artist-centric alternative. The timing of the event is crucial as it takes advantage of the presence of the foreign and local audiences that surface in Johannesburg around this time of year. Young Capital provided an opportunity to experience carefully curated and considered art, whilst still appealing to collectors with a more affordable range of art, opening up new markets and exposure for these artists.

    The 2017 version of VideoART!, curated by Sikhumbuzo Makandula was titled WE WON’T MOVE! –and featured a compilation of two collectives, one based in Joburg: Title in Transgression; and one in Cape Town: matsang (made up of Duduetsang Lamola and Malik Ntone Edjabe). Title in Transgression is a group of four artists working collectively, consisting of Simnikiwe Buhlungu (b. 1995), Dineo Diphofa (b. 1995), Malebona Maphutse (b.1994) and Boitumelo Motau (b.1995). They consider themselves to be “formed in a time of frustration with disillusionment of racial, social and political ills, Title in Transgression seeks to creatively address these ills through numerous artistic platforms. Conversations concerning black identity and the black lived experience inform both their collective practice as well as their individual practices.” WE WON’T MOVE was a moment where the curator, Makandula, expressed interest in their own individual practices within the collective. What arose was an intriguing showcase of four creative personalities, where the viewer was left to consider not only the common themes which each member addressed, but the relationship between the individual and the collective, and how one begins to shape the other.

  • Dusty roads and ocean waves, Moshekwa Langa’s ‘Fugitive’

    As a fine arts student trying to get some insight into what contemporary South African art might be (let’s not open that can of worms though) I remember coming across an image online of Moshekwa Langa’s Untitled (Skins) 1995, installed at the Iziko South African National Gallery. Dirtied and torn cement packets hung in an exhibition space from a washing line. It was a moment of sublime understanding, encountering a work so rich with multiple references, yet rooted in a simplicity of form and material that was breathtaking. And so I first encountered Langa’s work (albeit online and not in the flesh), and since then I have followed his artistic output with a fair amount of excitement. He is an artist that works across a wide array of mediums, refusing to be pigeonholed into one specific mode of working, which is actually rather unusual for a contemporary artist. His exhibitions are famed for combining painterly works, collage, installation, drawings, and film, presenting the viewer with a multi-sensorial experience. Whilst there is a definite sense of creative freedom in his practice, he owns and continues to master his approach. And you can’t help but get the feeling from looking at his work that Moshekwa Langa enjoys being an artist.

    Fugitive, the artist’s first show in Johannesburg since he last exhibited in the city in 2009, is evidence of an artist who is thinking and working through a studio practice. Where this relationship between process and product is most noticeable for me is in the works incorporating collage. A technique that Langa has employed since his early years as an artist, it allows him to juxtapose and think through images, drawing onto them, manipulating them. It leaves you with the sense that as the viewer you’re witness to the inner workings of the artist’s mind; drifting between the black and white grainy images referencing the landscape of his home town of Bakenberg, whilst caught up in the swirling colour of his imagination. Masking tape, a staple of any artist’s studio, is a material generally used and discarded once the “job is done,” but for Langa it’s a material that becomes part of the very fabric of an artwork, utilizing it practically as it holds used sandpaper and photographs, and formally for it’s opacity and ability to layer, building up texture.

    Overseas I, 2017

    The evidence of a man displaced, separated by land and ocean from a place he once called home, is subtly woven into what might be referred to as abstract paintings. Just as Langa flits between process and product, so he seems to traverse the terrain between abstraction and representation. As a viewer, this terrain is somewhat pleasant to explore, as one feels free to stand in front of a work, lost in the physical experience of colour and one’s own thoughts, yet still able to root it in a present and geographic reality (often through the titles given each work by the artist.) As the artist does not start with a predetermined image of an artwork in mind, but rather makes through experimentation, the evidence of this creative play and struggle are embedded in the works, which translates to the viewer a vulnerability. We are not being presented with a particular agenda, but rather we are encouraged to observe the path of one still finding their way. The result of this organic studio process is rather refreshing, works that are situated in personal memory and experience, which then ripple outwards to reflect a larger social and political discussion. The personal becomes public with Langa’s work, and just as with his Drag Paintings, created by literally dragging large canvasses through dusty dirt roads, the debris of society gets tossed up by the motion of the artist through the studio.

    The artist will be giving a walkabout of his work at Stevenson, Johannesburg, on Saturday 9 September at 11 am.

    Bokwidi. 2017

     

  • The New Parthenon

    Group exhibitions very often provide platforms for interpretation of art within a broader conversation. Whilst solo exhibitions situate an artist’s work within a concentrated practice and the questions that a particular way of working provokes, group exhibitions allow for a more contextual approach; which artists are working in what ways and how does this locate itself in the wider conversation of art making and culture?

    The New Parthenon, which opened at Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town on the 20th of July and runs till the 26th of August, takes as its initial starting point the essay film, which has its roots as far back as film began to be a medium explored and interrogated by artists. Rather than simply tracing the history of the essay film or locating contemporary essay film works against their historical ancestors, new variables are added to the conversation through installations that incorporate objects as well as elements of photography, ephemera and performance. The relationships between the material and dematerial, image and object are at the core of the exhibition, and even extrapolate outwards through the use of the internet as the exhibition is also accessible as a tumblr page.

    Bogosi Sekhukhuni, ‘Soul Contract Revocations; Dream Diary Season 2, Matilda’

    A number of established and emerging artists are shown alongside one another, drawing links across a variety of practices that take multiple formal approaches to diverse subject matter. As the catalogue states, “The movement between film and object speaks to the dual nature of practices that work with both the tangible and intangible aspects of images.” It would almost be impossible to discuss all the works on show in this article and do them justice, so I’ll hone in on one specific work which I think begins to speak to the relationship between image and object, especially with regards to the form which film takes in a physical world. Bogosi Sekhukhuni’s Soul Contract Revocations; Dream Diary Season 2, Matilda, consists of three screens playing video mounted on a colorfully framed headboard. The videos depict the artist as orator or role-player against a swirling background of colour. The hallucinatory imagery and the placement on the headboard suggest a sort of dream state, a deeper more fluid state of mind, traversing the space between the conscious and unconscious realms. The intentional use of material and colour by the artist combine as both the form and the content intertwine to communicate something beyond words, a message preceding clear knowledge. The spiritual and the physical coexist and cannot merely be isolated one from the other. Bogosi’s own practice could be considered as an exploration of the ways in which the digital and the image manifest itself in the physical world. Signs and banners make use of digitally manipulated imagery prevalent to internet culture and advertising. The artist’s own Tumblr page serves as a research platform, a digital archive that could be compared to an artist’s visual diary.

    Nyakallo Maleke, ‘You have got to fit into the team the team can’t fit into you’

    The relationship between image and object is one that has been a point of exploration and contestation for many artists working in the past and present, and will no doubt continue into the future. Whilst film, photography, digital media, and the dematerialization of the art object seemed to spell doom for the physical object, years after the introduction of these debates, objects continue to be made. I find it particularly compelling that Thierry Oussou’s, La Poésie, a chair and stick installation was installed alongside video installations by Penny Siopis, Michelle Monareng, and Simon Gush. The challenge facing artists today is to interrogate these questions with new eyes; working thoughtfully through the tensions inherent in art-making, as through these struggles it may be possible for new understandings of our complex humanity to arise, beings consisting of mind, body and spirit.

    Thierry Oussou, ‘La Poesie’

  • Surface – there’s more than meets the eye

    The art one tends to encounter in alleyways generally consists of graffiti and street art, with the small possibility of some sort of urban-style installation (the presence of which, one is never certain of as being intentional or simply accidental detritus from a maintenance job). What I hadn’t expected wandering down a particularly brightly-lit alleyway in Linden, was to find a well-curated exhibition of meticulously rendered charcoal drawings on paper. No End Contemporary Art Space, could be mistaken for an alleyway by its dimensions, but that is also the strength of the gallery, occupying a space in the overlooked gaps left open by the mega-galleries of today.

    Currently showing at No End is the two person show by Dalene Victor Meyer and Michael Smith titled Surface. It’s a pairing that works surprisingly well, given the difference in imagery and subject matter employed by both artists. Dalene’s drawings make particularly strong use of form; playing between structure and chaos, surface and depth. Contrasting the swirling movement of her drawings with strong rigid lines that render it very urban, yet simultaneously organic. There is a tension that is evident in the works, as well as a layering of technique. Quite evident to the viewer, is the time spent in rendering each drawing, as Dalene mentioned to me, her technique begins with “drawing using charcoal, then soaking the drawing, embossing it and working into the drawing again, contributing to the practical action of layering, analysing and exploring.” There’s a subtlety in the forms that begins to draw you in to the work, making the viewers’ role one similar to that of an archaeologist, digging through the layers.

    Dalene Victor Meyer, ‘The Plot Impending’ (2017)

    Michael Smith’s work employs pop imagery to the max. Shiny inflated balloons, pulsing hearts, and twinkling stars abound in his work, all meticulously rendered in charcoal, forcing you to take a double look, to make sure you aren’t looking at a real shiny plastic balloon. This iconography is put to use in making text and language visual, specifically text that is sourced from internet phraseology. Phrases such as “lol” and “meh” are used as a way of reflecting the weird and amorphous, yet globalised language that has sprung up in chat rooms, on social media and in memes. At times the work veers towards a more political discourse, where phrases such as “Send Nudes” touch on current issues of gender and sexuality in online communications, and “Fanon,” which is rendered in glittering diamonds, comments on a “gold-plated socialism favoured by the proponents of South African activist groups.” There is a formal awareness at play in the trio of works titled Trajectory, which are painted on tondos, round-format canvases – a direct reference to the Instagram or WhatsApp profile picture format.

    Both artists employ a keen sense of their interrogation of charcoal drawing as a medium, working into the surface of the paper. Simultaneously channelling the medium to suit their intentions, and responding to its own intricacies and limitations. This show is also a testimony to the discipline of being an artist, and not only in the area of mastering your craft. Both artists have full time jobs; Michael teaches art at St David’s, Inanda, and Dalene lectures full time at the Open Window Institute in Pretoria and as both of them can attest, making art whilst supporting a full-time job is not easy. Whilst the burden of supporting yourself financially through your art is relieved, time and energy are consumed by your career. But being a teacher has enabled Dalene to have the opportunity to do something she never thought she could. Along with fellow Open Window Institute lecturers Maaike Bakker and Jayne Crawshay-Hall, the three of them launched No End Contemporary Art Space in 2015. The artist-run gallery is serving as a platform for emerging artists and curators, seeking to be an alternative space in which a variety of new work can be introduced to the market. And as the name suggests, they don’t have any plans of stopping soon.

  • Hasan and Husain Essop – Refuge

    Being 21st century visual artists is a challenge enough on its own! But add trying to tag “ambassador for your faith” on to that and that’s exactly the mission of Hasan and Husain Essop. In a world filled with media that revolves around villainizing the Islamic faith and labeling its followers “extremists”, the Essop’s are continuously seeking to challenge the representation of their religion, and work predominately through the medium of photography to reconstruct this perception.

    Images, such as clothing washed up on beaches, the incinerated remains of a bombed car and suitcase-carrying refugee families fleeing, are propelled around the world by the (predominately western) media of the horrifying casualties of the Syrian civil war. Along with this, issues such as ISIS and the ongoing “war on terror,” became the starting point for the exhibition. Not only for the distressing content but also because of the Essop’s knowledge that the fleeting nature of current media meant that it is here today and gone tomorrow. This exhibition was therefore a way to really analyze what we have been shown by the media of the conflict, the refugee crisis, and the resulting portrayal of both victims and perpetrators.

    Black terror, 2016. Pigment inks on cotton rag paper

    The brothers are intensely aware of their own position in the world, as young Muslim men. In appearance they fit the stereotypes. A passing comment made by Husain was that when he travels internationally, he travels clean-shaven, a decision informed by previous experiences with police, border officials and prejudicial travelers. This awareness of the space they occupy makes the work deeply personal, and yet universal in the way that it calls both the viewer and the media to check. They are afraid, afraid that the situation will get worse, that society will get more and more divisive and that their children will grow up experiencing more discrimination than they have themselves. Their subject matter is simultaneously both personal and political, giving it a narrative that resonates both on an individual and community level.

    The Essop’s use of the language of photography is an attempt to connect their message with as many people as possible. Their photographs are particularly striking in the way that they highlight how images are constructed, and in turn, the effect this has on society. Painstakingly weaving together multiple images to create a single image, this level of control ironically mimics the subtlety with which the media is able to circulate images perpetuating a particular perception about Muslim people and other minority groups. The realization that these are carefully and intentionally fabricated images, forces us to realize for a moment that our own perceptions could potentially have been similarly fabricated. In using photography as their primary medium, not only do they have to deal with the ethics of representation that face all photographers practicing today, but the orthodox view that depictions of the human form are haram [forbidden], further complicates their position. However, they feel that they have managed to find ways of negotiating these complex terrains, predominately through their decision to photograph only themselves.

    Beached, 2016. Pigment inks on cotton rag paper

    Whilst there is a definite gravitas to the show and the themes it tackles, a number of images contain a wry humour, especially in the way that they re-work well-known western icons of pop culture such as the Hulk, Batman and Spiderman, inserting Islamic cultural items to highlight the caricaturing and stereotyping of Muslims, and the relationship American culture in particular, plays in shaping the world. This they feel is not only important in drawing the viewers in, but also in giving their work a bit of character, allowing a side of their own personalities to shine through.

    Speaking with Hasan and Husain, it was clear that this particular exhibition is an important and special moment for both of them. The twin brothers, who were the Standard Bank Young Artist Award winners in 2014, have been exhibiting with Goodman Gallery for ten years. Much has changed for both of them during this period. Beginning with their decision to work collaboratively in 2006, they have continued to push the boundaries of their photographic technique and expand on the themes embedded in their body of work in the years since then. They both now have families of their own, and have had to readjust to changes in their working relationship, particularly with Husain and his family relocating to Saudi Arabia a year ago. Refuge is the brothers’ third solo exhibition with Goodman Gallery, and there is an artistic maturity that is starting to show through their work, especially in their increasing confidence to expand into other mediums such as film and installation, which is presented alongside their photographs. The use of a tent presented as a precarious raft shows a sensitivity to the subtleties of working with found materials, suggesting both the dangers facing the refugees as they escape over the sea, and the minimal shelter that is often provided when they reach the land. Not only does Refuge show an increasing mastery of their mediums but also in the way they stretch, combat, and play with concepts.

    Mass Grave, 2017. Lightjet C-print on archival paper

    Finally, it must be mentioned that the brothers are both full-time Art educators, and while this gives them the financial freedom and stability to provide for their families, it means that they do have to sacrifice time and energy from their practice. They don’t begrudge their day-jobs however, rather they are appreciative of the relieved pressure to make art that sells. They now have the freedom to hone in on their concepts without facing pressure from an art market that is quick to dictate what work artists should make. Knowing this, there is a feeling that their role as educators may have even begun to influence their role as artists, especially how their art takes on an educational slant in itself, seeking to inform and reshape misconstrued perceptions regarding Muslims. Perhaps what they have identified is the possibility that ignorance is a major factor behind the polarising fear we see increasing in society. If they can inform that ignorance, perhaps the growing fear will also diminish.

    Check out Refuge at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg until the 19th of August.

  • Danger Gevaar Ingozi – A safe space for printing

    Signs saying ‘Danger Gevaar Ingozi’ may be plastered everywhere in South Africa, warning people away from potential harm, but as the name of the collaborative print workspace on the fringe of Maboneng, it is one of the few places in the country that young artists and simply curious members of the public could engage with printmaking on their own terms. With a focus on linocut relief printing, artists/printmakers/founders Chad Cordeiro, Nathaniel Sheppard III and Sbongiseni Khulu along with business partner and founder Anaz Mia, are seeking to carve out a new space within the cultural art-scape of South Africa.

    The print workspace initially arose out of a longstanding friendship that formed between Nathaniel and Chad during their days as Fine Art students at the Wits School of Arts. This friendship was solidified over a shared love for printmaking and a belief in collaboration. This resulted in them collaborating on their Honours dissertation together, not a common endeavour in academic circles. Having been intimately exposed to spaces such as David Krut Projects, where incidentally Chad and Nathaniel met Sbongiseni while working there, as well as other printing spaces around Johannesburg such as Print on Paper and the Wits Print workshop, there is an awareness of both the strengths and the weaknesses of the existing models within South Africa. This is what DGI hopes to tap into, not only to establish themselves in the existing market, but in doing so, to change the game. It is probably this exposure, both to print spaces and galleries, which has impressed upon these three under-thirty-years-old creatives the need for autonomy and control within a system that doesn’t often seem to allow access to emerging artists.

    Not only are Chad, Nathaniel and Sbongiseni trained and experienced printmakers, but they are also artists in their own right. Therefore, they understand that it is not enough simply to have a means of production without an appropriate platform for distribution of the work. An empty manor in Houghton that became accessible to them provided a perfect opportunity for a pop-up print show in early May, featuring their own work and the work of a number of other young artists who had printed alongside them at DGI. More such ventures are to come. Most recently, a number of monotypes exhibited in Pebofatso Mokoena’s solo exhibition ‘The Pebofatso Experience’ at Hazard Gallery, were printed at DGI. With Danger Gevaar Ingozi being in operation for just over a year, the space and the vision are still in its infancy, yet already the signs of vibrant possibility are showing.

     

  • Blue Lies, White Truths and Grey Areas

    Flashing lights and flickering TV screens. Smells of fried eggs, alcohol and fishfloated around the silver-wrapped gallery space. The exhibition space became a kaleidoscope, creating an overwhelming visual and sensory experience that enveloped the viewer, distorting time.

    Blue Lies, White Truths and Grey Areas is the culmination of an intensive Masters of Fine Arts program by Daniella Dagnin. The exhibition and the performances which opened on the evening of the 27th of May were only the tip of the ice-berg though, the visual element of this show is based on a novel written in the format of Interactive PDF. The interactive PDF is comprised of videos, sounds and GIFS. The novel acts as a script or lens through which the visual component is experienced. This approach is rather exciting in the way that it presents new possibilities for engaging academic requirements in a form that is true to one’s artistic concept.

    Entering into The Point of Order we were redirected down a small corridor on the side of the space only to re-emerge on the opposite side from the entrance. This simple detour changed our perception of the space and the ways in which we were no forced to engage with it. Scattered throughout the space and suspended in mid-air, we were confronted with white picket fences, Barbie dolls clamped in a boerewors braai grid. Small TV monitors played repeated footage of donkeys braying, ocean views or the Rhodes statue being removed. And projections on the walls created vignettes into scenes and scenarios unfolding in some past which affected the obscure present. As Daniella wrote in her interactive PDF, Blue Lies, White Truths and Grey Areas is centered in a dichotomous South African landscape; a landscape situated between both ocean and casinos, dry fynbos and television sets, the interconnected green lagoons and strip clubs.”

    Intensely curated and consistent in a particularly grungy aesthetic from the moment you set foot in the exhibition space, The Point of Order, there were a number of elements intended to antagonise. We are surrounded by broken bottles smashed on the floor, a hanging inflatable sex doll, a rocking horse from the afterlife and performances of characters descaling raw fish and choking on mussels. Blue Lies, White Truths and Grey Areas uses an amalgamation of characters, both real and fictional, to further obscure the lines between reality and fiction. Despite the overwhelming visual and sensory elements, there was a sense of vulnerability and sensitivity that permeated the narrative. A projected video of a wind-spun washing line flashed a portrait of a white police officer before our eyes. Speaking casually with one of the other viewers, he mentioned to me that the photograph was of his uncle, who had passed away a number of years prior in an “alleged” suicide, alleged due to the fact that he was left handed and the weapon was found in his right. Reality and fiction were being blurred before our eyes.

    What became interesting for me was the feeling that I myself was being sucked into this narrative, along with the other viewers of the exhibition. Having spent far longer in the exhibition that I do at most openings, a lull in the conversation being had in a group caused one girl to say, “Maybe the joke’s on us and we’re the artwork.” Perhaps the childhood rocking horse was just a donkey after all.

    Performed by:

    Koos Van der Wat AKA “Frank”

    Natasha Brown AKA “X”

    Jessica Robinson AKA “Micaiah”

    Solomzi Moleketi AKA “Tigger”

    Jennifer Winterburn AKA Busty Barmaid

    Magician: Neil Harris

    Disco Ball: Alison Martin

    Make-up Artist: Erin Bothma

    Photographer: Marcia Elizabeth

     

  • Rodell Warner / Animating the everyday

    Trinidad and Tobago-born artist Rodell Warner situates his work in the space between digital and physical, making use of projections and gifs to animate the everyday. Greatly intrigued by his approach to art-making, we began a conversation that opened up the history behind the work, his influences and the phenomena of what was once described as the “poor image” by Hito Steyerl.

    Becoming an artist was something that Rodell could only say was the result of an accumulation of small decisions and collective coincidences. What began as a dissatisfaction with the fashion he could access throughout his high school years, led him to design and make his own t-shirts. Stencils and iron-transfers soon gave way to experimenting with Photoshop where he was no longer limited to stock-photos but could use his own photographs for his designs. It wasn’t all just fun and games though because before long, one thing led to another and he was able to use these skills to find work in advertising and as a graphic designer. Fortunately the advertising agency where he worked was a creative hot-pot and he was able to interact with many other creatives, as well as continuing to pursue his own art and he was even encouraged to take part in exhibitions and residencies. Despite enjoying his job in the advertising sector and being rewarded with more and more responsibility, Rodell couldn’t but help feeling that the trajectory he was on was taking him further and further away from his own practice.

    Darron Clarke by Rodell Warner and Arnaldo James

    As an artist there often comes a point where one has to choose between the day-job or the art career as both perhaps have become too big to sustain simultaneously, and while taking that plunge is not always easy, for Rodell Warner, it’s a decision he has never regretted taking. He also acknowledges the role that those experiences played in shaping the work he makes now; “Over time I created projects and collections of images with greater and greater awareness of what it means to make art, and that’s what I do full-time now.”

    Treating the image as an object has always been central to Rodell’s practice and therefore the projector became the ideal bridge between the digital and the physical. As he told me, “The projector also literally adds dimension to any image I’ve captured or created. The projected image exists in three dimensions, so images that existed previously only as 2D representations on-screen can be wrapped around objects and beamed all over the place.” This can especially be seen in his series First Light (2013) which played with projecting kaleidoscope-like forms onto the human body, highlighting the symmetry present in the human form, as well as distorting  and thus highlighting what we take for granted every day.

    The intriguing relationship between the virtual and the physical can especially be seen in the work produced for the BiWay Art Foundation group exhibition in 2015, where Rodell experimented with wrapping images onto virtual “3D” objects that would distort the appearance of the objects’ form. The result was a mesmerizing, gif-like rotating palm tree, covered with digital black and white dots, something that Rodell had noticed occurring when he exported bitmap images from Photoshop. Desiring to see what the effect of this sort of process on real “3D” objects would be, Rodell began projecting and painting these black and white patterns onto found objects, resulting in the incredibly dynamic body of work, T.M.C.N.E.C.i.a.D (The Most Corrupting Notion Ever Captured in a Dream, 2017). In this way, Rodell’s work has gone to the root of image production and circulation in our current day and age. Meditating on the space where the contemporary image exists Rodell commented; “When I think of this overlap between the digital and physical I love thinking about what happens when images are cycled over and over through digital and physical spaces via cameras, computers, projectors and printers. The outside and the inside have access to each other and become a circular path. Digital images can be projected or printed and re-photographed. Images of physical objects can be imported, augmented, and output to the real world again. Every pass from medium to medium produces effects, and effects can pile up and compound each other, create feedback, harmonies, and distortions, creating new entities unfamiliar to either the digital or physical space.” This sentiment we see reflected most notably by Hito Steyerl, an artist and theorist who published a now-famous essay titled “In Defense of the Poor Image,” in which she says; “The poor image is no longer about the real thing—the originary original. Instead, it is about its own real conditions of existence: about swarm circulation, digital dispersion, fractured and flexible temporalities. It is about defiance and appropriation just as it is about conformism and exploitation.” (2009)

    Hungry to continue exploring and creating, Rodell is currently working on a new photographic series, where he continues to combine projection with portraiture in innovative new ways. For exciting work in progress, his Instagram is where it’s at. Most recently, Rodell was commissioned to create Davidoff Art Initiative’s Limited Art Edition for 2017, which involves the artist travelling to Switzerland for this year’s annual Art Basel.

    First Light (2013)

     

    First Light (2013)

  • Blurring the lines between the public and the private, the global and the local

     

    The cultural construction of the “public” and the sayable in turn creates zones of privatised, inadmissible memory and experience that operates as spaces of social amnesia and anaesthesia.

    – Nadia Serematakis, in The Senses Still. 1994

     

    Opening on the 25th of May at Goodman Gallery Johannesburg and running until the 1st of July 2017, is an exhibition by internationally renowned Moroccan artist, mounir fatmi, titled Fragmented Memory. Not only does the presence of artworks in South Africa by an artist based between Tangier and Paris, speak to the blurring of the global and the local, but fatmi’s own practice revolves around these issues, expanding into other issues such as the fragmentation of cultural memory after colonialism, the complexities of a hybrid identity, the sometimes oppressive weight of religion and language – which are all themes that have resounding parallels for South African artists and others all over the world.

    Included in the show will be recent sculptures, reliefs, photographs and installations – including new work making its debut on the African continent. Goodman Gallery’s decision to show fatmi’s work in South Africa is to “facilitate a richer discourse on colonial histories in Africa and challenge the colonial construct of a Sub-Saharan Africa disconnected from its North African neighbours.” fatmi has been exhibited internationally, and to much critical acclaim, having most recently exhibited work at the 57th Venice Biennale at the NSK State-in-Time Pavilion.

    The Blind Man, 2015

    Three objects form the basis of Fragmented Memory; a copy of the Koran, a photograph of a Moroccan King, and a calligraphic painting. These are the only cultural objects that mounir fatmi remembers from his childhood home in 1970s Tangier – all of which he was forbidden to touch or were positioned out of reach, but which vividly captured his imagination. fatmi takes these objects as a starting point for his work ‘to show how the few elements of culture I had in my childhood home have shaped my artistic research, my aesthetic choices and my entire career,’ he says. fatmi adds that ‘through these objects, I draw a direct relationship to language, to memory, and to history in this show, because, for me, these three elements depend on one another: without language there is no memory and with no memory there is no history.’

    It is interesting to read this body of work in relation to the writings of anthropologist and author C. Nadia Seremetakis, who in her book The Senses Still (1994) highlights the importance of personal memory and narrative as constituting the sphere of potential alternative memory and temporality that combats the singular and encompassing narrative of modernism. Seremetakis says, “The split between public and private memory, the narrated and unnarrated, inadvertently reveals the extent to which everyday experience is organized around the reproduction of inattention, and therefore the extent to which a good deal of historical experience is relegated to forgetfulness.” In Fragmented Memory, mounir fatmi furthers uses his personal journey, in a sense mining his memories and digging past the forgetfulness, to comment on cultural memory and collective history – marking a rare autobiographical approach in his work. I am excited to see fatmi bring out these intimate memories into the public sphere and in turn challenge what we have regarded as defining moments within our own cultures and histories.

    Roots 01 – Triptych, 2016

  • Intimate encounters and treasured tales

    Walking into Gallery MOMO for the opening of their new show, Exceeding Return by artist Curtis Talwst Santiago, I’m greeted by a small perspex box mounted and spot-lit on the large white wall. It is the only thing on the wall and its magnetic power is undeniable. I’m drawn to it, but it’s only when my nose is millimetres from the box that I see what it encases.In the centre of a small jewellery box sits a tiny sculpture of a Zulu woman breastfeeding a baby, no bigger than a centimetre in height. The colours are exquisite and the detail immaculate, and just as I’m busy wondering how on earth something this minute could have been made, I’m aware of a face very close to mine, someone leans in just as I do. Necessary hellos are exchanged because of the close proximity, and before long we’ve introduced ourselves and the conversation begins to flow.

    Nubian Origin Story According to the Artist

    A few minutes later and I’ve moved through to another room in the gallery, looking at a miniature diorama of a number of tiny figures enjoying a moment at the beach, when the same situation arises with another onlooker, and before long another scintillating conversation has begun. Twice more the same events played out in almost the same way with different people. Whilst meeting new people in a gallery setting is not a foreign thing on opening nights, here the intimacy of the works almost demands it from the onlookers. Where much contemporary art is large in scale and often pushes the audience back, creating a sort of reverent intimidation, these works beckoned to you as only a close friend with a precious secret can.

    Weaving together scenes from everyday life with the historic and traditional, Santiago manages to summon forgotten modes of storytelling. Speaking to the artist, he mentioned that the works are made to be held and passed around, carried with one as a story committed to memory might be. Addressing his own personal genealogy and ancestry with his ‘Ancestor Drawings’ and Nubian series of monochromatic black ring box dioramas, Santiago speaks to the historical through his present practice. In one such work in the Nubian series, Venus mimics the composition of Botticelli’s famous painting, The Birth of Venus, thereby inserting the black figure into the discourse of Renaissance art history, where historically the black body has been largely excluded.

    Venus

    It is not only the stories that Santiago tells which grab the viewers’ imagination, but the way he tells them. Clearly he is incredibly spatially astute, not only in utilising the tiny scale to draw the audience in, but with each work, demanding that it be approached in a new way. What are you doing? Just chilling with some friends invites you to look down on the jewellery box and into a library, whereas Nubian Origin Story According to the Artist uses the lid of the box to create a backdrop for the figure portrayed. The tight, intricate detail of the miniature sculptures is juxtaposed with the loose and expressive drawings and works on canvas, giving us viewers a window into the possibilities that lie with an artist as multifaceted as Curtis Talwst Santiago. An exciting and refreshing show, not only are we given incredible art, but new potential relationships. I must warn you that you will leave disappointed, but only because the world you return to is not as inviting as the one you just discovered.

  • Making a name within the frame

    I once came across a quote by Steven Fry that read, “a true thing, poorly expressed, is a lie.” These words seemed to tumble around in the back of my mind as I made my way through the survey of Michael MacGarry’s films. Beginning with an animation made as a student in 1999, the exhibition traces his output as a filmmaker, and as a first time viewer of a number of the works, it was refreshing to see a progressing clarity of vision and form as MacGarry masters his craft. Filmmaking is central to MacGarry’s artistic output, and a number of the sculptures, which he exhibits at solo shows, often begin their lives as props for the films, or like his photographic series, take the films and their themes as their reference point.

    Held in the basement of the Wits Art Museum, with the walls painted black and the room left dark, ten films are spread throughout the space, either projected onto the walls or on flat screen TV’s, with headphones and bean bags, allowing for a more intimate viewing experience.

    Still from Sea of Ash

    A kaleidoscope of themes come together, both in the individual films as well as collectively, revealing some of the pressing issues of our day which have been the focus of MacGarry’s practice. Using the form of narrative cinema to combine notions of historic and current imperialism, modernity, migration, economic disparity and urbanization amongst others, MacGarry holds up a poignant mirror to some of the most prevalent issues across Africa today. Excuse me, while I disappear (2015), poetically depicts China’s overshadowing presence in Angola by weaving the narrative of a young municipal worker in and through the huge, largely unoccupied residential buildings constructed in Kilamba Kiaxi, a new city built by the Chinese outside Luanda. Moreover, in the midst of all this, there is a constant interrogation of the artist’s own position within these grand narratives. We see this self-reflexivity most predominately in films such as LHR – JNB (2002 -2010), Sea of Ash (2015) and culminating very personally in the most recently made, two-channel film installation titled Parang (2017), which focuses on the artist’s family history in the Far East.

    Speaking to the artist, he said the title for the show came from a feature film he is currently working on and incorporates some of the recurring themes of representational violence seen in a variety of his work. The title, Show No Pain could also be somewhat revealing of the artist’s own practice; giving us as viewers a small insight into the demands and trials placed on an artist pursuing such a career, and the thick skin you have to grow to “make it in the art world.” For someone who’s CV boasts works shown at the Tate Modern and Gugenheim Bilbao amongst other prestigious international institutions, it is fitting that WAM would acknowledge a local artist in the middle of what promises to be a lifetime of progressive artistic production.

    Still from Excuse me, while I disappear

     

    Still from Sea of Ash