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News Bytes
SA arts Emerging Exhibition
The Bag Factory recently hosted an exhibition and series of workshops organised by the website team SA arts emerging http://saartsemerging.org The website
was started at the end of last year in order to provide a platform for
profiling young emerging artists whose work is often not publicised due to its emerging status. Since its beginning, SAarts has profiled a new artist every month. In
celebration of nearly a year of activity, SAarts
decided to present a physical manifestation of all those who have been
involved.
The series of events included Collecting Digits, a Panel
Discussion, on the 6th of October, at WSOA Digital Arts, Wits University. The panel - Franci Cronje, Warren Siebrits,
Nathaniel Stern, and Clive Kellner - discussed
‘the challenges and obstacles to curating
and selling digital art in South Africa’ as well as topics
concerning the state of emerging arts in this country. (read more here http://nathanielstern.com/blog/2006/10/08/collecting-digits-the-upgradejhb-digital-soiree-panel-discussion/)
The main exhibition opened that night and was well
attended by the public. Works were
exhibited by Lester Adams, Colleen Alborough, Doung Anwar Jahangeer, Christo Doherty, Shane de Lange, Stephan
Erasmus, Ismail Farouk, Simon Gush, Dean Henning and Rike
Sitas, Bronwyn Lace, Hannes
Olivier, Vaughn Sadie, Nathaniel Stern, Rat Western, and Asha Zero.
On Saturday, 7 October 2006, the artists held a walkabout
and were joined by a Zambian reporter, Andrew Mulenga,
from the newspaper The Post. (Read his article here http://www.post+rfRE//zambia.com/post-read_article.php?articleI/d=16700) The walk
about was followed by another Panel discussion, this time featuring Storm
Janse van Rensburg who spoke about his Young Artist Project at the KZNSA
Gordon Froud spoke about his project space RainForest
which profiles young artists and Johan Thom spoke about Abrie Fourie’s
project space, Outlet, at Tswane University of
Technology.
SAarts wishes to thank
National Lottery Distribution Fund, Royal Netherlands Embassy, WK Kellogg
Foundation and the Ford Foundation whose funding made this programme possible.
SAartsEmerging was founded, and
is maintained, by Nathaniel Stern, Bronwyn Lace, Simon Gush and Rat
Western.
About Art workshop programme
The Bag Factory has recently launched its artist education
programme, About Art. This project seeks to address a gap in
the learning and experience of artists practicing in Johannesburg today. The programme
is aimed at a variety of audiences and will examine skills development,
business practice and marketing through formal lectures, practical
workshops and critiques and event based presentations. These courses will be run by several
different professional practitioners working in the fields of visual
arts, arts management, critical writing, curation
and corporate collecting. We will
keep you posted on upcoming lectures and workshops.
For more information about the programme please contact the education officer,
Bronwyn Lace at bronwyn@bagfactoryart.org.za
Nathaniel Interactive Workshop The Body Electric
The first event in association with the Bag
Factory’s education programme, About Arts
was conducted by interactive installation artist and physical computing
expert, Nathaniel Stern from 13 – 15 October. Stern began his workshop with a Friday
evening lecture on a brief history of interactive installation and video
art where he showed various examples of such work both locally and
abroad.
The lecture was followed on the Saturday and Sunday by a
hands-on practical workshop where Stern taught basic programming concepts
and the applications MaxMSP and Jitter. The workshop participants all created
what Stern refers to as ‘a stupid pet trick.’ The idea of the
‘pet trick’ is to make something simple in order to learn the
basics of the applications.
The workshop was attended by programmers, practicing
artists, curators and a musician and so set up relationships for
potential future collaborative and interdisciplinary work.
David Koloane
at the Seville
Biennale
David Koloane has returned
this week from the Second Edition of the International Biennial of
Contemporary Art of Seville (BIACS 2) where he is exhibiting his series
of works entitled Street Dogs.
Okwui Enwezor is the
Artistic Director for BIACS 2 - The Unhomely:
Phantom Scenes in Global Society.
Other South Africans on the show included John Fleetwood &
John Makua, Gillian Slovo
and Jo Ractliffe.
The exhibition opened on 26
October 2006 and runs through 8 January 2007.
Resident Exhibition: Self/Destruct
Arash Hanaei (Iran)
and Zach Taljaard’s (South Africa) residency exhibition
opened at the Bag Factory on the 13 September. The exhibition, entitled Self/destruct,
examined issues of self, representation and male identity at a time where
violence and terrorism are constantly in the media. Hanaei showed
his photographic series Autopsy which captures scenes of burned doll
parts in a post carnage display as well as two new video works. Taljaard’s
self-portrait sculptural busts represented the artist in various guises
of imposed masculinity- soldiers both ancient Greek and Boer war. He also created a video work, The Game,
which featured footage from an arcade fighter pilot game projected on to
one of his busts. The show closed
20 September.
Diana and Dinkies at the Red Line
Diana Hyslop and Dinkies Sithole’s group show of recent works, Session
1, opened at the Red Line Gallery in Kensington on 15 October 2006. The work exhibited was quite diverse,
the two artists working in very different styles. However, the underlying theme of
journey and quest brought the paintings together. The Red Line is a small independent
gallery which has recently been opened in an old house on Roberts Avenue
on the border of Kensington and Troyeville.
The gallery is the brainchild of film makers Ethel
Williams-Abrahamse and Guy Oliver and has Wayne Barker as its Creative Director.
To contact the gallery please email GemBioscope@iafrica.com
New Residents
This month, we welcome two new residency artists. Claire Wolf-Krantz
who is a painter and critic and who works with a combination of painting
and digital photography hails from Chicago,
USA. Anna Ruth lives currently in Finland but has worked and lived in
several European centers including France.
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