Writing Art History Since 2002

First Title

The FADA Collaborations/Articulations Exhibition, curated and initiated by artist and writer Brenden Gray, presents new works and collaborative projects instigated by creative practitioners in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture (FADA), University of Johannesburg.

From the Press Release: “The works presented on the show have been generated through an intensive process of dialogue between individual FADA practitioners and their selected collaborators over a period of a year. Nine exciting, new projects will be presented: · ‘The Underground, the Surface and Edges’: A Hauntology of Johannesburg.Curators, researchers, artists and arts writers Leora Farber and Anthea Buys will be presenting the two-hour co-curated video programme ‘The Underground, the Surface and Edges’: A Hauntology of Johannesburg. The programme is an investigation of liminal and interstitial identities and spatialities in Johannesburg. The video programme includes works by Steven Cohen, Anthea Moys, William Kentridge, Berni Searle, Gerhard Marx, Maya Marx, Johan Thom, Minnette Vári, Theresa Collins and Mocke Janse van Veuren amongst others. The programme has been shown at the major international exhibition Afropolis, City, Media, Art at the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum in Cologne, Germany January 2011 and will be shown for the first time in South Africa at the opening of the FADA Collaborations/Articulations exhibition. · Unit for Measure IIIArt critic Mary Corrigall, performance and installation artist Bronwyn Lace and installation artist Vaughn Sadie have collaborated on the production of Unit for Measure III, a continuation of a previous series of previous installation projects initiated by Bronwyn Lace and Vaughn Sadie (Sci-Bono, Newtown, 2009, Durban Art Gallery 2009, University of Johannesburg 2009). The project has emerged as a result of a discursive collision between the various practices of the collaborators: art criticism, installation and performance art. The wall installation itself (which is presented as a residual of an “unseen work” hidden off-site from viewers), made from engraving the surface of the gallery wall, explores issues of presence, memory and residue in site-specific art practice. · Love me as I amArtists Shonisani Maphangwa, Rangoato Hlasane and filmmaker Thenjiwe Nkosi present a video installation that examines issues related to HIV/Aids. The piece recycles and strips material from popular culture and popular representation, for example Phamokate, a popular 1990’s SABC drama show in order to “articulate between the past and the future”. · The Ship Sails On. Ceramicist Eugene Hön working with members of the UJ Multimedia department has produced The Ship Sails On, an animation projected onto a ceramic installation. The work attempts to push the expressive boundaries of ceramic practice by bringing the discipline into interplay with drawing, the artist’s book, animated projection and installation. · Spring-Cleaning: Death in Varanasi.Performance artist Myer Taub, photographer and video artist Nadine Hutton, and film-maker and writer John Trengove have produced a 3 minute video projection entitled Spring-Cleaning: Death in Varanasi. The work has emerged from Taub’s visit to the holy Hindu city of Varanasi, ‘the City of the Dead’. Here, the artist’s body was ritually shaved by the barber Vikas Shamah, which was intimately documented by the videographer John Trengove. By using cameras and cell-phones borrowed by South Korean tourists Lee Jiyeon, Bak Changhyeon and Lee YukYung the work was produced. The video work critiques the notion of collaboration itself and challenges fixed notions of identity, sexuality and language. · Great Dodecahedron StellationSculptor Gordon Froud and Professor Emeritus Jos Lurie (Department of Mining of the University of Johannesburg) have collaborated to design and produce a large-scale, polyhedron sculpture that brings together Froud’s sustained artistic interest in pattern, structure, and repetition in sculpture and Jos Lurie’s research into the geometry of crystalline forms. · A Study of the Vulnerable: Gyps coprotheres (Cape Vulture)Artist Rosalind Cleaver has been working intensively at the Ditsong Museum of Natural History, Bird Collection over the past few months examining the Cape Vulture which is a threatened species. Her work, comprising of an installation of drawing, printmaking and painting /mixed media works presents the endangered bird in a range of visual modalities. The work untangles the relationships that exist between the reception of art and museum display conventions, conservation and classification in art and science and also explores the potential of the visual arts as an advocacy tool for ecological issues. · Secret/WishArtists Landi Raubenheimer and Paul Cooper and students of the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture will be using the FADA Collaborations/Articulations exhibition as an opportunity to launch an interactive, site-specific project “Secret/Wish”. The project invites the broader FADA community (students, lecturers, workers etc) to post their secrets and wishes, cumulatively in a variety of sites in and around the Faculty including in the FADA Gallery. The work, like other pieces facilitated by the artists (The Wishing Wall, Cape Town 2011) considers the relational potentials embedded in site specific art practice and, at the same time investigates issues of authorship and spectatorship in the production of art. · Paper collaborations/articulations with the Phumani Archive MillThe Phumani paper project, initiated by Kim Berman invited a range of practitioners in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture to extend their creative practices by investigating the potentials of archival hand paper making in their work. The Paper Mill, established in 2005 has continually encouraged interdisciplinary work and has engaged a range of professional artists to produce paper-based works. This project presents including paper works by artists and paper makers working at Phumani: Kim Berman, Mandy Coppes, Nkosinathi Ndlandla, Thamsanqa Tshabalala, Dumisani Dlamini; a mixed-media installation work by artist and writer Brenden Gray, a paper work by painter Inge Hyson, a publication by author-designer Deirdre Pretorius and packaging by information designer, Sidhika Sooklal. As a whole, the 2011 Collaborations/Articulations project explores the “articulating potentials of collaboration” and the capacity of cross-disciplinary work to generate new forms of practice and reflection. The exhibition demonstrates how creative practices can speak to and with other practices in the social world and how collaborative creative practices can generate new knowledge. Visitors can expect to see a variety of manifestations of hybrid works including video, sculpture, installation, performance, paper-based works, drawing and site-specific work. The exhibition also includes open-ended textual contributions by the featured practitioners that visitors can read in engaging with their respective works. Please join us for the opening function of the FADA 2011 Collaborations/Articulations exhibition at the FADA Gallery, Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Johannesburg Bunting Road Campus on Monday 9 May 2011 for the opening function programme. Opening function programme: 18h30: An opening address by artist, educator and researcher David Andrew, Head of the Visual Arts Division, Wits School of the Arts. 18h45: The launch of Landi Raubenheimer and Paul Cooper’s Secret/Wish. 19h00: The launch of the eagerly awaited edited volume, On Making: Integrating Approaches to Practice-Led Research (edited by Leora Farber) 19h45: A once-off screening of Anthea Buys and Leora Farber’s curated video programme, The Underground, the Surface and Edges: A Hauntology of Johannesburg. School of Hospitality and Tourism. Mocke Janse van Veuren and Theresa Collins, still from Minutes Project 2010. The Underground, the Surface and Edges: A Hauntology of Johannesburg. Following the launch is the once-off screening of a curated video artwork programme which forms part of the FADA Collaborations/Articulations exhibition, titled The Underground, the Surface and Edges: A Hauntology of Johannesburg. The programme, curated by Leora Farber and Anthea Buys, showcases a range of work in which dialectics between these registers is foregrounded. It includes work by Steven Cohen, Anthea Moys, William Kentridge, Berni Searle, Gerhard Marx, Maya Marx, Johan Thom, Minnette Vári, Theresa Collins and Mocke Janse van Veuren.”

Related Posts

Scroll to Top