Bubblegum Club

Tag: JAG

  • Wolfgang Tillmans: Fragile – A Question to The Art of Photography and its Materiality

    Wolfgang Tillmans: Fragile – A Question to The Art of Photography and its Materiality

    An activation of materiality. A display of careful calculation. Grids and lines are followed in a non-conforming rhythm. Architecture is used as a curatorial device. An installation masterpiece. A photograph as a test. A photograph as a material object. A photograph as a sculptural object. Images untouched by digital manipulation. Welcome to two decades of Wolfgang Tillmans embodied under the title Fragile. Fragility apparent in both subject and material artefact.

    Patient, yet enthusiastic spectators gather to consume the address by JAG’s curator-in-chief, Khwezi Gule, at the press opening of Fragile. As Gule leaves, Tillmans begins to guide his audience, manoeuvring eager bodies through the expanse of his show. Stepping into the first space you are frozen in your tracks by one of his most well-known works, Lutz & Alex sitting in the trees (1992) – a large-scale photograph of two figures, naked torsos exposed, finding minimal cover with their vinyl jackets loosely styled on their frames. But the amazement, appreciation and emotion that his works instil are yet to be explored by us, his immediate audience.

    Tillmans invites his audience to interact with Sendeschluss/End of Broadcast by asking us to step closer to the black and white pixel image. Just close enough to prevent your face from touching the surface. And it is then revealed to the naked eye that this image is constructed of colour. This opening to the show, comprised of over 200 works spanning from 1986 – 2018, invites a word of caution from the artist, warning against first impressions, and encouraging a second look.

    ‘Lutz, Alex, Suzanne & Christopher on beach’

    With work that holds an eminent position in the world of contemporary art, the artist is known for his perpetual redefining of the photographic medium as an artefact of materiality and as an image constructed by light. Led by an unquenchable curiosity, Tillmans navigates the world and reproduces that which he observes with his eye by occasionally placing a camera in front of it. His abstract works and more sculptural pieces include Paper Drop, the Lighter series (one of Tillmans’ very view series of work) and Freischwimmer / Greifbar. Through his experimental approach, Tillmans has developed the photographic medium, both the technical and aesthetic potentialities of the practice further.

    Intimacy, compassion and familiarity translate in image form creating a tangible emotion. An observational modus operandi characterised by a humanist approach to the complexities of the world. Tillmans’ oeuvre comprises of his club culture photographs from the 1990s, abstract works that find their footing in extreme formal reductionism, images narrowing in on the beauty of the everyday, and depictions that display a rigorous perception containing a grounded socio-political awareness.

    ‘Freischwimmer / Greifbar’

    In discussion with the German photographer he elaborates on his interest in objects of the everyday and the narrative of his work by explaining that for him these objects are not necessarily banal objects. His train of thought continues to the value of such objects, “I’m very aware of the values potentially attributed to the things that I photograph, but want to leave the absolute values also quite open.” Explaining this statement through various examples of images in the exhibition, he ends off with the following trajectory, “I choose not to influence. I choose things to settle. It’s the narratives that are usually non-linear objects, and people and places in the pictures and installations. The narratives and associations are definitely more driven by challenging value systems.”

    Reflecting on his work, Tillmans expresses that he does not see himself as a deconstructivist but rather leans towards what he refers to as a nostalgic modernist. “My way of installation at first glance is sort of not modernist but maybe actually it is because there is a certain purity and vigor and a trust in a linear development. Not just in atomization. It looks so super multi varied but actually there are, rhythms, there are recurring themes…”.

    Contrary to tradition, Tillmans does not often work within the frame of series. After the act of taking his photograph, the need to recreate a similar image is worn. “Because I like to make work that is coming from an actual engagement with a subject matter in the here and now and not just from the idea that I should make another one like this.” Tillmans here refers to a feeling of intensity – an instinct to create. Over 30 years of photographing he now has “families of pictures”.

    ‘Deer Hirsch’

    Connecting the works on display to fragility, Tillmans explains that Fragile fulfills the purpose of working as a title and is not a defining label in itself. There are however moments of fragility captured in an expression, in an emotion felt or in the medium of photography. Then there is the fragility of appropriating the world as can be seen in the work Truth Study Centre. Attracted to the economic nature of the photographic medium, Tillmans equally enjoys the ability it has to facilitate conversations around physically concrete and sculptural issues.

    Tillmans sees the art as something that allows him to speak about the physical world and simultaneously penetrate something that is more psychological. “It’s so able to record emotions and relations and it can manipulate a lot and pretend a lot but used sensitively it is an incredibly psychological medium.”

    What draws one to a Wolfgang Tillmans show is more than the images displayed, in part you are pulled by his curatorial method that becomes an artwork in itself. Looking back on his journey with curation, Tillmans explains that his current mode of display was not something which he had planned to be a recurring part of his practice. He states, “I didn’t plan to come up with a way of making art that would leave ultimately only myself to install the exhibitions and it ended up this way.” It was with his first exhibition in 1993 that he first employed this method of display resulting in curators asking him to bring forth his particular grammars and syntaxes in shows. “…it really is to try to represent the way how I look at the world. Which is not just ordered in sections and it’s not all in a line. It’s allowing different attitudes.”

    ‘Paper Drop’

    An agreement to the fragility that defines us as individuals and that influences our relations to one another is viewed as strength. Since his adolescence, Tillmans has been acutely aware of this interplay which is marked throughout the expanse of his artistic practice. Fragile has been used by Tillmans before, as an early artist name as well as the title of a music project he was involved in. Teasing out new ways of making with frailty, failure and rifts, these make reference to the imperfection of life and open up diverse perspectives on the materiality of the above.

    Subjectivity with the potential to transform. Providing an extensive overview of his complex work this exhibition is a showcase of the various shapes of artistic expression of Wolfgang Tillmans. The show includes photography from large scale installations taking up an entire room, to small post card images and even smaller polaroids of 90’s party culture, publications, sculptural objects, video content and the installation practice particular to the artist. Activating discourse, an exchange of reaction takes place when presented with new scenarios. Space is given for mystery, deep emotion and speculation.

    A sculptural practice wrapped around economy. An absolute awareness of the materiality of, not only his medium, but life itself. The deeply psychological nature of his portraits ingrained. To see as never seen before. Attending this show is a perception warp itself and a realization of fragility, a realization of your own inevitable fallibility and life span. If you enjoy walking out of your comfort it is definitely where you should be.

     

    Wolfgang Tillmans: Fragile will run to the 30 September 2018 at the Johannesburg Art Gallery. I promise there is no regretting it.

    ‘Headlight (f)’
    ‘Anders pulling splinter from his foot’
    ‘astro crusto’

  • JAG’s new curator-in-chief Khwezi Gule // Towards an African outlook

    A new curator-in-chief for the Johannesburg Art Gallery has been appointed – Khwezi Gule. Considering the tough times the institution has faced recently – the gallery flooding last year due to roof leaks, and a previous curator suddenly leaving, a general lack of maintenance – Gule comes as a welcomed breath of fresh air, and a sense of hope for the gallery. Having worked with JAG before as curator of contemporary collections, he already has an insider’s understanding of the way in which the gallery has operated.

    Having travelled and viewed museums and galleries in large cities across the world, he aims to bring JAG up to the standard that these museums are known for. His vision is for the gallery to become a must-see in Johannesburg . Within this, he will interrogate the position and function of the gallery within the Johannesburg context. This will inform a more relevant broader curatorial strategy.

    “Whether it is in our exhibitions, or in our collecting policies and educational programmes, our ethos has to reflect an African outlook. The JAG has to become one of the leading museums of art on the continent,” Gule states in an interview with Huffington Post.

    This statement presents a more encouraging future for the gallery. A future that is more embedded within the space in which the gallery is located, and is in touch with debates about the relevance of institutions such as JAG.

  • Spellbinders- Whimsical and Witty // Modes of Engaging with the Curatorial Project

    Levitating canvases – layered with brush strokes. Interwoven narratives and dust-laden histories. Display cases bursting with aged newspaper clippings – offer captured moments of an otherwise forgotten history. Ancient objects adjacent contemporary works, working a magic between them. An enthralling juncture of myth and mystery.

    Spellbinders: Myths, Mysteries and Hidden Treasures opened on Sunday to the public at the Johannesburg Art Gallery. Curated by Tara Weber and Philippa van Straaten, this exhibition unearths secrets and truths with a wicked sense of humour. One of the very effective qualities of their curatorial strategy is the full integration of both historic and contemporarywork from the vast breadth of the collection. This in turn creates at rich and dynamic exhibition.

    ‘Mine Boy’ by Gerard Sekoto

    On entering the museum, several works are suspended, displaying paintings in which both sides of the canvas have been painted on. This form of display allows the viewer to access a traditionally unseen treasure. A Picasso is mounted on one of the walls – it was a highly controversial acquisition in 1974. Beside it is a framed drawing of the piece made by two young boys, Ross and Robert, entitled My Child Could Do That! – as an attempt to replicate the Picasso. A display case filled with archival clippings hosts newspaper titles like, Piccasso upsets Nats, and Picasso clown leaves viewers agog. This tongue-in-cheek approach also highlights the importance of generating context through the archive.

    This level of self-reflexivity and criticality is also applied to the founders of the gallery, Lord and Lady Phillips. Two iconic portraits of them stand proud at one of the entrances to the Phillips Gallery. A fairly traditional oil painting of Lady Phillips by Antonio Mancini (1909) is countered by the contemporary work of Johannes Pokela (2015). In Pokela’s imagining of the patroness, she appears in a state of semi-disheveled undress – lounging on a chaise with one hand holding a feather fan and the other placed delicately on an ‘African’ sculpture. This satirical image alludes to the agenda and motivation behind the Phillips’ interest in art as a means to achieve cultural prowess and ‘educate’ the colonial population. In the corner of the panting is a portrait of her husband – the same one displayed in the gallery beside her. Tara Weber believes that these complex histories ought to be discussed openly rather than brushed under the carpet for convenience.

    ‘Boite’ by Marcel Duchamp

    Moments of the exhibition also dissect intersecting mythologies. An early 19th century woodcut print of the goddess Benten by Kiyosanto is placed adjacent to Janiet’s Venus and Tracy Rose’s Venus Baartman (from the series Ciao Bella). This triangulation of images across time, medium and culture show an intersection of feminine ideals and the power if the goddess architype. “Through these artworks and objects, the similarities shared across all cultures of the world reveal themselves to us, along with their fascinating histories. Often theses hidden stories tell us not only more about objects, but also more about us as human beings.”

    Spellbinders also features 18th century fans, ceramics and an elephant skull – as well as the likes of Gerard Sekoto, Salvador Dali, Marcel Duchamp, Henry Moore, Francis Bacon and a plethora of other artists. This layered and nuanced approach to curating highlights the importance and power of display to shape the imagination.

    “Myth is neither a lie nor a confession: it is an inflection.” – Roland Barthes

    ‘Death of the First Born’ by Alma Tadema

  • The JAG under conceptual (re)construction: A review of Ângela Ferreira’s South Facing exhibition.

    Buildings mark the moments in our history where a people thrived.  Ângela Ferreira’s “South Facing” is the exhibition that marks an important moment in the Johannesburg Art Gallery’s (JAG) evolution.   For the artist “buildings can be read as political texts” and this location has its own fair share of history.

    She examines the relationship between people and their use of building and public space. The “JAG building is a perfect example for me to reference …It’s controversial history tells the story of the role of art in South Africa and reflects on the incredibly dynamic past and present history of the Johannesburg city-center .”

    1912 saw the completion of the Museum building with its North facing extension, completed in the 1980s.This new addition was intended to be a place of leisure, a home within the occupied territories. The exhibition’s curator Amy Watson discusses how “the original building built by a British architect​,​ Edwin Lutyens​,​ [who] built a grand entrance that is South facing, being from the Northern hemisphere ​he applied this​ logic. A fence was erected between the park and the Gallery some time ago, with the intention of protecting the collection and ensuring the safety of the gallery visitors and staff.” With the end of apartheid the park would become a leisurely space for all.

    Ângela Ferreira, Sites and Services, (1991-1992), Installation view South Facing, Johannesburg Art Gallery, 2017

    Ferreira’s works “traces the resonance and impact of colonialism and post colonialism in contemporary societies” (JAG. 2017) through her use of stark lines that create her forms. On the walls of the exhibition feature drawings of buildings and their structural outlines, presenting the viewer with deconstructed images of buildings to their simplest forms. Her installations are made from wooden poles, concrete and plastic tubes used for plumbing. Miniature concrete foundations are connected to cement brick and corrugated steel.  The viewer is left to figure out whether Ferreira is in the process of creating the structure or has begun dismantling the final product.

    Her works reflect the moment of tension that comes with the destabilization caused by change. Colonialism has ended yet its fragments remain.  There is a beauty to these structures but they came at a cost to our very own collective humanity.

    Yet the very issue also applies to the conceptual gaps between the body of work and those understood as being its ‘maker’. We see human form in her photographs of the construction of the JAG.  Bodies are depicted as shadows amongst buildings. She features photographs of the building during the museum’s recent renovations. The builders are distant figures in the background in a spectral haze.

    What Ferreira seeks to challenge seems to be perpetuated in these very works. The black body remains separate from the works. Only the names of the architects is revealed and the labor of those who built the walls go unrecognized. We see a woman building a hut yet we do not see the faces of those who made the concrete walls.

    Ângela Ferreira, Maison Tropicale (footprints), (2007), Installation view South Facing, Johannesburg Art Gallery, 2017 (1)

    The challenge to this history will be one that critiques the very relationship where black bodies are reduced to viewers or consumers and not the actual producers. We remember the names of the architects and salute their work yet no attention is given to the other forms of labor.

    The very line fenced between the JAG and the Joubert Park continues in her works as we are not made aware of who actually made the buildings and their labor made a non-factor. We need to begin to reimagine how we speak about our current buildings in South Africa. Questions need to be asked over whose names get associated with the buildings.

    Yet for the artists we are called upon engage with such a past through our consumption of its works. “Buildings contain history… But mostly for me they are also sculptural. They are designed for a function but architects also have an aesthetic program in mind. So I see them as public sculptural interventions. We all judge them all the time. They inhabit our daily lives and we are entitled to comment on them.”

    Watson discusses how “​ ​there is an interesting parallel between the structural failures and the intellectual limitations of museums, South Facing represents a response ….​​ on these urgent questions​”. Through these works the viewer has the opportunity to question how we go about filling the gaps. As consumers of public art we are forced us to engage with ideas over who gets chosen to represent the ‘achievement’ of a civilization.

    Ângela Ferreira, Double Sided, (1996-2003), Installation view South Facing, Johannesburg Art Gallery, 2017
    Ângela Ferreira, Werdmuller Centre, (2010), Installation view South Facing, Johannesburg Art Gallery, 2017
    Ângela Ferreira, Remining (Mine building), (2017) Installation view South Facing, Johannesburg Art Gallery, 2017

  • Subverting Historical Whiteness – The Evidence of Things Not Seen

    The free-standing building is isolated – a visual juxtaposition to the once-high-end and now dilapidated apartments around it. Surrounded by a colourful and bustling city center – it is a relic of a bygone era in Johannesburg.

    A façade of stone and traditional columns preceded by grand stairs elevate up from the local hustle and lead one into an architectural time-capsule. The sandstone cladding was originally sourced from Elands River. The presence of museums in the South African context relates directly to the Colonial project. The physical orientation of the original south facing building designed by a British Architect is implicit of a lack of understanding regarding the African environment – overlaying European norms and values at every turn.

    maswanganyi_johannes_1Maswanganyi Johannes

    However, on entering the historical building – it is difficult to restrain a sense of awe. Immersed in a space flooded with niggling nostalgia. From the Southern entrance one is absorbed into a white rectangular space with arching high ceilings, accompanied by floral embellishments. Several hardwood expansive doors with golden filigree open onto an internal courtyard. Above, gold flakes cascade off chandeliers. ‘The Phillips Gallery’ appears over a pair of curved hallways monumentalizing the institution’s former patrons in the glittering typeface of white capital.

    Only a little more than twenty years after gold was first struck on the Witwatersrand, the Johannesburg Art Gallery was established. Just over one hundred years on, the building and its immense collection still stands. However, in the ‘post’-apartheid, ‘post’-colonial context a radical shift has occurred in the spatial and visual representation within the museum walls. Its latest exhibition, The Evidence of Things Not Seen, opens its doors to the public on the 19th of November. It shares its title and conceptual articulation with a text by James Baldwin – in exploring the lived experience of people of colour. Pain that historically, has been systematically silenced by an overriding and enveloping whiteness.

    belinda_zangewa_1Belinda Zangewa

    The exhibition, curated by Musha Neluheni in collaboration with Tara Weber seeks to engage in social discourse surrounding notions of identity – manifested in the realms of queerness, feminism(s) and the Black experience. The show initially emerged as a “side-project” – mirroring as a platform for the Black Portraitures Conference – but grew into something far larger. One of the aims of the project was to actively engage the work of contemporary artists and allow their work to activate other historical works in the collection. These historical giants include the likes of Dumile Feni, Gerard Sekoto, David Koloane and Cyprian Shilakoe.

    Other artists featured in the show include: Mary Sibande, Belinda Zangewa, Nandipha Mntambo, Tracey Rose, Berni Searle, Zanele Muholi, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Reshma Chhiba, Johannes Phokela, Santu Mofokeng, Johannes Phokela, Mustafa Maluka, Portia Zvavahera, Moshekwa Langa, Nicholas Hlobo, Nandipha Mntambo, Donna Kukama, Gabrielle Goliath, Senzi Marasela, Turiya Magadlela, Kemang Wa Lehulere, Mohau Modisakeng, Sam Nhlengethwa, Ranjith Kally, Ernest Cole, Valerie Desmore, Ezrom Kgobokanyo Legae, Winston Churchill Saoli, Sydney Kumalo, Julian Motau, Helen Sebidi, Mohapi Leonard Tshela Matsoso, John Muafangejo, Azaria Mbatha, Daniel Sefudi Rakgoathe, Charles Nkosi, Johannes Maswanganyi and the FUBA Archive.

    kally_ranjith_3Kally_Ranjith

    The Evidence of Things Not Seen articulates a critical reformulation of the institutional space, one underpinned by an engagement with a Pan Africanist ideology. A position rarely embraced by public art institutions in South Africa. Tara Weber describes the exhibition as a kind of “homage to James Baldwin” noting that his treatment of identity politics is, “sensitive, but brutally honest”. The curatorial strategy has been made visually manifest in a similar vein – located in a space that seeks to subvert its own historical context.

    “There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.” – James Baldwin

    johannes_phokela_2     Johannes Phokela

  • Alphabet Zoo is inviting cultural practitioners to participate in a zine making residency

    Alphabet Zoo, the Johannesburg based collective founded by printmakers Minenkulu Ngoyi and Isaac Zavale is hosting zine making nights at the Bubblegum Club project space in Newtown.

    Ngoyi and Zavale have extended an open invitation to cultural practitioners interested in collaborating on the development of a zine over a three “zine nights” residency in March. All the nights will take place on Wednesdays, the first being on the 16th, the second on the 23rd and the third on the 30th of the month. The zines produced during the residency will then be presented on the 7th of April 2016 at Bubblegum Club as part of the April edition of Newtown’s first Thursdays.

    flyer

    After discovering a lonely printing press in the Johannesburg Art Gallery Ngoyi and Zavale started meeting twice a week to use the press and create collaborative work under the name Alphabet Zoo. As a way to expand their printmaking practice and to apply it in a more accessible way the duo started zines focused on “street culture” in Johannesburg.

    Alphabet Zoo’s zines are often produced in collaboration with artists, illustrators and publishers within the collectives network. Their desire now, to develop self-publishing practices and to grow zine culture in Johannesburg is what has inspired them to initiate zine nights, a project which they hope will take off in the city.

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