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Fiona Gordon: Heads will be turned all over Cape Town’s city centre this week, as strangely dressed characters do even stranger things in and around the city’s public spaces.
In an effort to ‘encourage expression of creative thought’ Spier supports this public arts festival, ‘Infecting the City’, (curated by performance artist extraordinaire, Brett Bailey) as part of their community social investment.
With ‘Human Rites’ as the 2010 theme, and involvement from some of the city’s most prominent and prolific theatre-makers, it seems many of the pieces presented acknowledge aspects of this city’s rich and colourful history, and heritage combinations. This social art encourages different perspectives, and seems to seek to acknowledge the lives and struggles of others, and their impact on our presents, and futures.
I saw two pieces which used open spaces, which in itself from an accessibility and audience development perspective, is a great thing. But I was most grateful for the innovation of the third – a site-specific work that makes use of a monument as a performance space, in a way that some may deem disrespectful, but really to my mind, better fulfils the brief of ‘challenging us to think, reflect and communicate in uniquely powerful ways’.
It’s worth making an effort to attend some of the things on offer. Even if it’s just to watch the passers-by be forced to engage with the space, or happenings in it, in a different way than usual.
“Infection” may have negative connotations, but I certainly left my little sojourn in the city feeling inspired – infected with the positivity that comes from experiencing art.
And even the weather played along providing some of its own drama – threatening to rain out the second performance I saw, while I watched the third, a mere hour later, feeling the rays of the scorching sun. Ah, Cape Town…
Performances and installations happen daily 13-20 February, throughout the CBD, and are almost all free of charge. See www.infectingthecity.com for more details.
Fiona Gordon
fiona@artslink.co.za
www.artslink.co.za
STUTTERHEIME, PENELOPE
‘Sun Shines’, oil on canvas, 70 x 90 cm
The Everard Read Gallery, Cape Town is delighted to invite you to view new works by Penelope Stutterheime.
Please join them at 18:30 on Thursday 18th February at 3 Portswood Road, V&A Waterfront.
In her latest works, Stutterheime makes use of her distinctive impasto application of oil paint, carefully building up layers of vibrant colour to create a series of richly glowing paintings. With their thick and haptic quality, they reveal an exploration of the subconscious using fluid symbols and forms, to which viewers respond emotionally & experientially.
The exhibition concludes on the 4th March.
For more information, please contact: +27 21 418 4527
ctgallery@everard.co.za
www.everard-read-capetown.co.za
INFECTING THE CITY (ITC) the Spier Public Arts Festival hits the streets of Cape Town for its third year from the 13th- 20th February.
Get out of your comfort zone and engage with exciting large-scale site-specific performance art pieces, choreographic works, installations and low-key interventions. Intriguing participating artists come from South Africa, Zimbabwe, China, the UK, the USA, Greece, Germany, Australia and the Netherlands. A wealth of diversity, viewpoints and talent.
ITC 2010 is themed ‘Human Rite’, asking artists to refigure the public spaces of the inner city as arenas in which we confront some of our demons and attempt to put them to rest. To seek out silent memories and invisible stories and celebrate them. To look for what needs to be righted, and ’rited’.
Witness the new creative voice of 21st century urban Africa. The full programme is available on www.infectingthecity.com.
For further information please contact Felicia Pattison-Bacon on 021 422 0468 or email feliciapb@africacentre.net
The AVA in partnership with Spier invites you to the opening of three solo exhibitions:
NDIKHUMBULE NGQINAMBI
THE WINDOW PART 1
Ndikhumbule Ngqinambi – Halo of Manhood
Ngqinambi returns to the AVA for his much anticipated second solo exhibition. A gifted story teller, his paintings offer us the opportunity to escape, to soar across farm fields and skylines. The landscape becomes a place for souls to journey. The paintings bind traditional belief and personal history as they guide us through worlds real and imagined.
MAX WOLPE
NOT EARLY EARLY FRIDAY BUT LATE LATE WINNER
Max Wolpe – detail of British Nationals
Max Wolpe presents Not Early Early Friday but Late Late Winner in the Long gallery. The works on display offer a satirical view of the spectator. Tourists and sports fans are captured during their recreational time. Astute observation of politics and personalities are transferred onto the painting surface with wit and humour.
ANGELA BRIGGS
FLOW
Angela Briggs – River on Scarborough Beach 1
Angela Briggs presents Flow in the Artsstrip. Briggs plays with the tension between abstracting and representing a view. Using the surface of the painting to explore line and colour, the paintings give expression to the impossibility of pinning down a moment or situation.
The opening is on Monday, 08 February 2010 at 6 pm.
Exhibition closes on Friday, 05 March 2010 at 1 o clock pm.
Association for Visual Arts Gallery
35 Church Street, Cape Town, South Africa
Gallery hours: Weekdays 10h00 to 17h00,
Saturdays 10h00 to 13h00
Phone: +27-21 424-7436,
Fax: +27-21 423-2637,
avaart@iafrica.com
www.ava.co.za
After an exhaustive nation-wide selection process 100 artists and over 130 art pieces have been chosen for South Africa’s largest contemporary art exhibition, the Spier Contemporary 2010.
The Spier Contemporary exhibition has been conceived to provide an open platform for all artists to show their work, uncompromised by the limitations of technology, space and access. Artists in South Africa work under extremely varied conditions and see from radically different perspectives. These differences are what define our collective identity and unique social and cultural landscape. The Spier Contemporary provides a space for exploring our diversity, giving audiences insights into our complexity and thus contributing to our understanding of difference.
The Africa Centre’s art biennale, the Spier Contemporary 2010 will launch on the 14th March 2010 at the Cape Town City Hall.
The artworks were selected from a national call for submissions, with artworks collected at thirteen selection centres across South Africa. The final exhibition was chosen from over 2,700 entries, which represents an increase of 10% on the submissions received for the Spier Contemporary 2007/8. The selection was made in November and December 2009 by a curatorial team of five local and continental industry professionals.
The Spier Contemporary 2010 artists, in alphabetical order, are:
Janine Allen, Eugene Arries, Lindi Arbi, John Barron, Stuart Bird, Matthew Blackman, Joanne Bloch, David Bloomer, Richard Letsatsi Bollers, Brydon Bolton, Candice Borzechowski, Justin Brett, Bruno Brincat, Tegan Bristow, Elizabeth Buys, Kurt Campbell, Jonathan Cane, Richard Chauke, James Clayton, Melanie Cleary, Lean Coetzer, Roxandra Dardagan Britz, Araminta de Clermont, Angela de Jesus, Frikkie Eksteen, Nicola Elliot, Hasan Essop, Husain Essop, Gordon Froud, Frina Galloway, Jonathan Garnham, Jessica Gregory, Ndivhuwo Gundula, Dan Halter, Gerrit Hattingh, Matthew Hindley, Zakhele Moses Hlatshwayo, Sarah Jones, Matthew Kalil, Philippe Kayumba-wa-Yafolo, David Koloane, Arie Kuijers, Neil Le Roux, Tim Leibbrandt, Sentso Lele, Nina Liebenberg, Carla Liesching, Jacky Lloyd, Elsa Lourens, Michael MacGarry, Daniel Maggs, Maja Malievic, Zen Marie, Christopher Marsberg, Dillon Marsh, William John Martin, Maja Marx, Emile Maurice, Maurice Mbikayi, Jacki McInnes, Jean Meeran, Mohau Modisakeng, Frans Masobe Mothapo, Brett Murray, Mxulisi Nkononde, Vusumuzi Derrick Nxumalo, Mamela Nyamza, Carolyn Parton, Colin Payne, Richard Penn, Dawood Petersen, Kurt Pio, Cameron Platter, Lucy Pooler, Philip Rikhotso, Dave Robertson, Wilhelm Saayman, Brink Scholtz, Johannes Scott, Helen Sebidi, Jaco Sieberhagen, Sonja Smit, Jane Solomon, Anthony Strack van Schyndel, Karen Suskin, Nicolene Swanepool, Christoper Swift, Motseokae Klass Thibeletsa, Lucas Nkahloleng Thobejane, Rudolph Tshie, Johann van der Schijff, Francois Van Tonder, Roelof Van Wyk, James Webb, Hanje Whitehead, Xolile Mazibuko, Ed Young, Dale Yudelman, Sicelo Ziqubu, Mlu Zondi.
Work has begun on the Cape Town City Hall, where the first leg of the Exhibition will be held. The Spier Contemporary has commissioned architect Nabeel Essa to design the exhibition. Nabeel’s vision is to contrast the contemporary nature of the artworks against the historic grandeur of the Edwardian building.
For more information on the project, and the exhibition, visit www.spiercontemporary.co.za
Jill Trappler’s exhibition Notions of Being/Moments of Being moves to the
SMAC (Stellenbosch Modern and Contemporary) Art Gallery from the 30 January to the 20 February 2010.
The opening is on Saturday 30 January at 11am and Christopher Peters is the opening speaker.
SMAC Art Gallery
Tel: 27(0)21 887 3607
Fax: 27(0)21 887 7624
email: info@smacgallery.com
De Wet Centre
Church street
Stellenbosch
7600
James Webb. 2008. Le Marché Oriental. Production still.
“One day, all of this will be yours” is James Webb’s second solo show at Blank Projects. It takes its starting point from Blank’s relocation to Woodstock. The 3-minute film “Le Marché Oriental,” Webb’s meditation on the unresolved space that was the former Oriental Plaza, an Apartheid-era shopping mall designed to control Indian trade, will be screened. This artwork is both site and time-specific to the gallery space, as the location of the Oriental Plaza is currently the construction site of ‘Six,’ a newly designed suite of luxury apartments furthering the gentrification of the Woodstock area.
The film documents an intervention inside the then-disused mall on the 4th day of Ramadan, 2008. Sheikh Mogamat Moerat of District Six’s Zeenatul Islam Majid mosque was invited to sing the Adhan (call to prayer) inside the empty remains of the building a few weeks prior to its demolition.
The film won second place at the Documentary Film Makers’ Association’s “Home Town” short film competition at the 2009 Encounters Film Festival, and is currently part of the 3rd Arts In Marrakech biennale, curated by Abdellah Karroum.
The exhibition will also feature selected other works created by Webb in the last 3-years around the world, displayed together for the first time in Cape Town.
The Exhibition opens on Thursday 21 January at 18h00 and runs until the 26th February 2010
Gallery hours: Tuesday – Friday, 10h00 – 15h00
Blank Projects, 113-115 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock, Cape Town
Known internationally for his impressionistic-styled paintings, Derric van Rensburg is widely recognised as one of South Africa’s top artists.
His subject matter, including widlife scenes, Western Cape landscapes and portraits are depicted with broad brushstrokes and characteristically colourful acrylic paint.
Derric van Rensburg has exhibited his work widely in South Africa as well as further afield including Germany, Portugal, England and Australia.
To view Derric van Rensburg’s complete profile on Cape Town Creatives click here
The AVA in partnership with Spier invites you to the opening of Greatest Hits 2009.
The opening is at 6pm Monday, 11 January 2010.
Exhibition closes on Friday, 5 February 2010 at 1 o clock pm
Greatest Hits 2009 is a selected exhibition of graduate works. It will employ the four gallery spaces of the AVA.
Works have been selected from Michaelis school of Fine Art UCT, Ruth Prowse School of Art and Stellenbosch University. The exhibition offers an overview of the local and broader discourses that run through the three schools and reflects the quality of work produced by the graduate students in 2009.
Participating artists:
Igshaan Adams, Robyn Birkett, Klara-Marié den Heijer, Danni Isaacs, Janodien January, Kristine Kronje, Matthew Alexander King, Tim Leibbrandt, Gerald Machona, Mohau Modisakeng, Daniella Mooney, Jody Paulsen, Katherine-Mary Pichulik, Monique Prinsloo, David Rossouw, Olivia Stephan, Christopher Swift, Thuthuka Tumelo Tumie, Hugh Upsher, Tamzyn Varney, Claire May van Blerck, Jade Doreen Waller.
Association for Visual Arts Gallery
35 Church Street, Cape Town, South Africa
Gallery hours: Weekdays 10h00 to 17h00,
Saturdays 10h00 to 13h00
Phone: +27-21 424-7436,
Fax: +27-21 423-2637,
avaart@iafrica.com
www.ava.co.za
