invites you to the opening of the exhibition entitled

Mine:

A Selection of Films by South African Artists

Date:

Wednesday 7 March 2012

Time:

18:30 for 19:00

Venue:

UJ Art Gallery

Kingsway Campus,  Corner of Kingsway Avenue and University Road Auckland Park

Bridget Baker, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Doris Bloom, Jacques Coetzer, Teboho Edkins, Simon Gush & Dorothee Kreutzfeldt, William Kentridge, Donna Kukama, Michael McGarry, Nandipha Mnthambo. Zanele Muholi, Cedric Nunn, Robin Rhode, Berni Searle, Lerato Shadi, Penny Siopis, Gregg Smith, Johan Thom, Minette Vari

UJ Arts and Culture presents an exhibition entitled Mine at the UJ Art Gallery during March 2012.  This exhibition, with a selection of nineteen films by prominent South African artists, addresses not only the concept of deep level mining, but also that of personal ownership and  the countless ways in which the self is identified and positioned.

The diverse works chosen by Berlin based curator Abrie Fourie for this show all have a common denominator: the artists make references to themselves in their work – either in person, as actor, model, observer, interviewer or instigator.

Furthermore, some of the artists such as Johan Thom, Bridget Baker, Robin Rhode, Teboho Edkins, Doris Bloom and Gregg Smith presently live in European capitals, while South African based artists enjoy an increased presence in the global art world.   Their various approaches are thus colored by local and diasporal perceptions, but they all nonetheless seek answers pertaining to aspects of identity from a perspective on South African concerns.

Capitalist exploitation, colonialism, the social, political and cultural realities of the country, history and memories are addressed by artists such as William Kentridge (nine of his videos produced between 1989 and 2003 will be on show and we get to meet Soho Eckstein again), Penny Siopis (Obscure White Messenger:2010) and Bridget Baker (Steglitz House: 2009 – 2010), while Minette Vári, for instance,  in her production (Alien:1998), positions herself in the cultural archive of the new South Africa during the period 1994 to 1998.

The film and video productions with their often experimental styles are described by Anna Schrade from the University of Bayreuth as seeking “… to represent the experience of living between two or more cultural regimes of knowledge and explore the myriad ways in which we identify and position ourselves in a world where “mining the self” is imperative for the formulation of new and alternative identities, histories and discourse” (2011).

Fourie, who conceptualized this exhibition, is an artist, photographer, curator and art facilitator.

This exhibition was first shown at the University of Bayreuth in Germany last year, and at the Dubai Community Theatre and Arts Centre in the United Arab Emirates earlier this year.

A booklet providing more insight into each of the works will be available at the exhibition.

Discussion and walkabout:

Saturday 17 March 2012 at 11:00.

Gallery hours:

Mondays to Fridays:  09:00 – 18:00

Saturdays: 09:00 – 13:00

Closed on Sundays and Public Holidays

Contact:

0115592556 | gallery@uj.ac.za | 0115592099

The exhibition ends 28 March 2012.

You are invited to the following event (exhibition and conference) organised by the Slade School of Fine Art PhD programme:

MAKING SPACE:

Exploring creative and research processes through dialogue, curation and exhibition.

Investigating their intersection with psychoanalysis through conference.

An event examining artistic process, organized by the Slade PhD programme.

The exhibition is free and open to the public from

20th to 25th February 2012, 12noon to 5pm

Slade Research Centre, Woburn Square, London WC1H 0AB

Private View 6.00 – 8.30pm, Wednesday 22nd February 2012

Opening address: Professor Juliet Mitchell

The conference will be held on

Saturday 25th February 2012, 9am to 5pm

Venue: Cruciform Lecture Theatre 1, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT

The conference is free to attend but booking is essential.

For booking and information https://makingspace.eventbrite.co.uk/

Press enquiries: please contact makingspaceinfo@gmail.com

From the viewer’s perspective, video installations can be a tricky medium to wrap your head around. The content is often obscure and indecipherable, and it’s all to easy too walk away feeling more than a little confused. However, if you’re armed with some background knowledge on the artist and their intentions, video installations can be a rewarding and fascinating art form.

One such exhibition, entitled ‘Mine’ (showing at Ductac’s Gallery of Light), presents video installations of 17 South African artists (including well-known notables William Kentbridge and Robin Rhode), in which they comment on personal ownership. Each artist also appears in his or her film. To help you understand the pieces, we asked five of the artists. to give us an insight into their work.

Johan Thom
Title of installation
‘Terms of Endearment’.

Length of film
Three minutes 49 seconds.

Describe your video installation.
In short, it’s a work in which I wanted to express something about the relationship between domesticity, art and the subconscious. For most of my career my home has also been my studio. There’s something interesting about the way in which art is simultaneously very personal and social, domestic and public.

What message are you trying to convey?
I think we ought to carefully examine the myriad ways in which ideas about dirt and cleanliness figure so prominently in the way we structure and understand the meaning of our lives.

Where do you appear in the film?
I appear made up in ‘skullface’, as a delirious character that seems to celebrate the material messiness of life even from beyond the grave.

Who inspires you?
The ingenuity of ordinary people.

Do you have a favourite filmmaker?
I love film generally, and three names come to mind immediately: Steve McQueen, Bill Viola and Werner Herzog.

What makes you proud to be South African?
We are a hybrid, multicultural nation.

…….

Also read Robin Rhode, Bridget Baker, Lerato Shadi and Jacques Coetzer’s pieces in the Time Out by clicking on this link:  South African video art.