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The Centre for Asian Studies in Africa and the Visual Arts Division at the University of Pretoria present  ‘Unhoused Memories’ at the Javett-UP – a creative collaboration between acclaimed poet Sudeep Sen (India) and visual artist Johan Thom (South Africa).

Please join us for an afternoon of readings, short-film screenings, live-art, discussion & book-signing.

Venue: The Javett-UP Auditorium
Date: Thursday 11 May 2023
Time: 14:30-15:30

For this talk Sudeep Sen, the globally-acclaimed author, will read poems from his latest book, Anthropocene (Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize winner) and his two books-in-progress, The Whispering Anklets and Red. Sen is currently the international fellow & writer / artist-in-residence at the Nirox Foundation in South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind. [www.sudeepsen.org]

Johan Thom is Associate Professor and Coordinator of Fine Art, School of the Arts, Faculty of Humanities, University of Pretoria. Thom holds a PhD in Fine Arts from The Slade School of Fine Arts (UCL) on a Commonwealth Scholarship. Thom works across a variety of media including sculpture, video, performance, drawing, printmaking and photography and has exhibited extensively – both locally and globally.
[https://johanthom.com/]

Thom and Sen are currently collaborating on producing creative responses to each others’ works through the use of text, video, recorded sound and live performance.  

Javett-UP Auditorium, Thursday, May 11, 2023 | 2:30pm
RSVP: Email: connect@javettup.com or bookings@javettup.com | Telephone: +27 (0)12 420 3960

I am exhibiting works as par of FNB Art Joburg Fair (https://artjoburg.com) in South Africa with Kalashnikovv Gallery (https://kalashnikovv.com/). A large-scale installation, ‘Houseboat #2’ (shown below) and a single related bronze work ‘Masked’ (also shown below).

In Houseboat#2 the form of the boat/ vessel is synonym for an expanded definition of the home. Here the home is understood as a space of dwelling that, other than a permanent brick and mortar built structure, moves through the world as a provisional, ever-changing form. This construction is as much a physical extension of my body as it is a site and a vessel through which I traverse the world even as I negotiate my sense of belonging as part thereof.  Houseboat #2 is made from pine wood, a widely available and non-permanent means of sculptural construction. Materially speaking pinewood is light and easily shaped or joined together. It is typically used for building applications such as roof trusses, fences, decks and other non – or – semi-permanent structures. As such it is an ideal means to materially expand the self (the body, the psyche) into a number of aesthetic forms that are always only provisional even though they appear fixed or permanent.  

For Houseboat #2 I have mounted a small museum-style display cabinet near the stern of the vessel. The cabinet is filled with a found collection of 35mm photographic slides comprising visuals materials (such as examples of artworks, architecture, design) all related to the teaching of undergraduate modules in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Pretoria. Questions of belonging, of changing technology and of decolonial thoughts about art and art education in our current context are all brought to bear upon one another.    

   

This piece simply called ‘Masked’ (2020) also showing with Kalashnikovv Gallery as part of FNB Art Joburg. In plain terms a portrait of Nelson Mandela cast in bronze and patinaed, standing slightly larger than life-size at 30 x 20 x 16cm. A work in dialogue with the artwork Houseboat #2.

The mask may be understood as a discarded object found as part of the journey into the archive of our collective memories. The piece was made by modeling the face in clay, casting it in wax form and then partially covering the wax with South African newspaper clippings dating from 1994 & a sisal rope netting. During the process the wax and final bronze cast slowly became distorted. This is a normal part of the casting process but here I think it closely analogous to the way in the archive becomes distorted, deteriorating materially and taking on new, often unintended meanings as we engage with it.

Most importantly for me the net is actually the mask here (i.e the tools by which we interact with archival items), a form of layering that simultaneously obscures and enables meaning. The more straightforward reading of the recognizable face as mask (Mandela) refers to an artwork by Kendell Geers, ‘Portrait of the artist as a young man’ (1993) that, in keeping with questions raised in Houseboat 2, formed a part of my art education. Despite such readings on my part, I do think that today for many South Africans the legacy of Nelson Mandela is an immensely complex matter. More to the point, his image, the face and the surface of the thing, may function as a means of masking, of ritually hiding behind as people advance their particular agendas in the nasty carnival that is contemporary South African politics. And I choose my words carefully here to invoke the writings of Achille Mbembe, in particular his thoughts on the role and function of ritual in the postcolony, the intimacy of tyranny that form part of our daily lives.

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New World Order
A special project curated by Johan Thom

Featuring the artists:
Sharlene Khan, Johan Van der Schijff, Fabian Saptouw, Avi Sooful, Willem Boshoff, Diane Victor, Jacob Van Schalkwyk, Gordon Froud, Minnette Vári, Frikkie Eksteen, Rat Western, Reshma Chhiba, Cow Mash (Kgaogelo Mashilo), Brent Meistre & Jan Van Der Merwe.

VIP Preview – 27 August 2020 18h00 | Public Opening 28 August 2020 09h00

Curatorial Statement

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic the world itself seems to be on the brink of global change. Grand ideas and conspiracies abound as we grapple daily with the anxiety of the global impact of a raging pandemic. This is compounded by the force of the myriad social injustices and political failures that seem to have the ability to touch and deeply impact all of our lives – whether by social media, global news or even personal experience. Though much of the media focus has been on the economic, social and political changes that await us all once the dust settles, the question of what role art may play in a changed, post-Covid world still requires careful consideration by artists, critics and art patrons alike.

The works of art exhibited collectively as part of ‘New world order’ embody a critical way of thinking about art and its role in a possible future. However this is no grand utopian exercise but, rather, a close focus on the artistic practice of selected South African artists who critically engage the world of art whilst being deeply involved in academia too. In this regard I turn to the voices who will guide the new generation of artists who will live and practice in a post-Covid world. In this way the exhibition serves as a critical platform that seeks to highlight and interrogate a variety of aesthetic approaches, forms of creative practice and rigorous, critical thinking about the role of art and art education in the milieu of an ever-changing South African society.

Throughout South Africa’s history many of our arts educators have been nationally and internationally esteemed artists, including such luminaries as Walter Battiss (1906-1982), Bill Ainslie (1934-1989), Cecil Skotnes (1926-2009) Colin Richards (1954-2012), Susan Sellschop (1941-2017), David Koloane (1938-2019), Ingrid Stevens (1952-2019) and many others. Today many of South Africa’s most respected artists still call academia ‘home’ in one form or another.

Each artwork included on New World Order should be viewed as a unique opportunity to engage with the work of an artist as the very embodiment of their research concerns, the particularity of their artistic voice and the manner in which these values congeal as an artistic methodology in the artwork itself. Perhaps more than that, given the seriousness with which these artists approach their work (artistically, pedagogically), we may find therein if not exactly a clear plan for the future, a particular aesthetic, political and cultural vision thereof. This artistic vision is shaped as much by the ongoing struggle against the harsh realities of our present moment as by the possibility of serious artistic practice to unearth the numerous unexplored and even surprising possibilities that may help define tomorrow. In this sense the exhibition New World Order is underpinned by a decidedly hopeful premise.

#RMBTAF #RMBTAF2020 #RMBTurbineArtFair #RMBTAF20 #TAF20 #TAF #TAFOnline

Some new works 2019 –

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Speech act #2. Performance last August at the Association of Arts for Drawing Conclusions II curated by Diane Victor. For the work I read excerpts from texts out of my personal diaries for the period of 2009-13 whilst standing on an old portrait created with flour on the floor. The piece is a meditation on the materiality of memory and its artifacts. (Photograph by Carla Crafford).

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Houseboat #1. 2019. Wood, glass, Material One, glass and mixed media Sizes: 230cm x 300 cm x 205cm

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‘Missing: Selfportrait as an ass asleep in my son’s bed’ 2019. Photographic inkjet print on Hannemeule 2/3 (Edition of 3 and one artist proof) 50 cm x 65 cm Photo Credit: Garreth Fradgley

This year lecturers and artists from the Department of Visual Art at the University of Pretoria made a huge splash at Aardklop. Dr Johan Thom, Senior lecturer in Fine Art was for the second year running the head visual arts curator for Aardklop. Other lecturers and past alumni from Fine Arts whose works were showcased as part of the visual arts program include Diane Victor, Avi Sooful, Shenaz Mahomed and alumni such as Angus Taylor and Cazlynne Peffer.

Figure 1: Installation view: ’14 Stations of the Cross’ by Diane Victor. Photo Credit: J. Thom

Curator Dr Johan Thom conceived the visual arts program under the collective title of ‘Spoke Diewe en Digters’. The program was conceptualised in relation to the complex history of Afrikaans as a poetic language, one indelibly shaped by a persistent undercurrent of creative, often anti-establishment practices and thoughts. The life and work of figures such as Eugene Marais, the ‘sestigers’ (including Breyten Breytenbach, Etienne Le Roux, Adam Small and Ingrid Jonker) and even more recently those of Koos Kombuis and Johannes Kerkorrel served as inspiration for a large-scale exhibition premised upon the exploration of creative process and the contested place of visual art in our contemporary society.

In total seven exhibitions were mounted by Thom across the venues located on the campus of the North-West University during the festival. These include the solo exhibition ‘Skadu en Lig’ by festival artist Diane Victor, the group exhibition ‘A Flood in my hands’ (curated by Aysha Waja), ‘Saamklop’ (a program featuring the work of artist collectives including The Dead Bunny Society, Found Collective and The Centre For The Less Good idea), ‘Degenerative evolution of the living’ by Donald Wassiwa from Uganda (kindly made possible by ABSA), en ‘Die groen grass groei daar om’ a solo exhibition by Liza Grobler. Thom also curated a large-scale group exhibition featuring the work of local and international artists including global superstars such as Marina Abramović, Olu Oguibe, Roger Ballen, Jodi Bieber and many others. Finally a special music programme with Pretoria-based musicians including Bacchus Nel, Die See and Blinkruiter concluded the program with a show filled with poetry and musical ghost stories.  The last also included a series of oil portraits of Afrikaans musicians painted by the artist  Ronel Kellerman.

The work of this year’s festival artist Diane Victor set the tone for much of the visual arts on display. Victor is perhaps best known for her unflinching depiction of violence and discrimination against women in South African society. Apart from exhibiting a series of new drawings and prints Victor created a site specific installation of fourteen light projections against the walls of a concrete walkway of the auditorium of the Hennie Bingle Student Centre. This ethereal work titled ’14 Stations of the Cross’ was conceived as a pilgrimage of sorts, with each of the fourteen portraits depicting a victim of femicide. In this way viewers could stop at each portrait and meditate before reaching the end of their journey at the top of the staircase.The work was made all the more ghostly as each of the portraits was literally made from smoke on glass through which a bright light then projected the image against the wall. Victor was deservedly awarded best visual arts exhibition at Aardklop 2018 for her efforts.

The festival also provided a rare opportunity to see the work of the veritable grandmother of performance art, Serbian artist Marina Abramović in person at the NWU Art Gallery. For ‘Confession’ (2010), a video loop of sixty minutes, Abramović sits in front of a donkey telling it her deepest, darkest secrets. Amazingly the donkey almost never moves right until the end.

Figure 2: Confession Performance for Video by Marina Abramović, 60 minutes, 2010. © Marina Abramović. Courtesy of the Marina Abramović Archives

Other highlights at the festival this year included ‘Pink and White Flowers’, an installation artwork by Olu Oguibe, made possible by the support of The University of Pretoria and The Nirox Foundation. Oguibe was a recent visitor to the Visual Arts Department of the University of Pretoria where he spoke about his life and work as an internationally renowned artist, scholar and activist. For ‘Pink and White Flowers’ Oguibe made a large-scale installation in the botanical gardens consisting of four thousand petunias stacked together. The work served as a portrait of Nokuphila Kumalo, a young girl who was also a South African victim of femicide. Sadly her mother had no picture of her but could remember that she liked pink and white flowers. Each of the petunias could be taken home by a visitor to the installation thus extending the work beyond the exhibition.

Figure 3: Installation view of ‘Pink and White Flowers’ (2018) at the botanical gardens of the North- West University, South Africa, by Olu Oguibe. Photo credit: J. Thom

Original post here:

https://www.up.ac.za/en/visual-arts/news/post_2727551-up-visual-arts-lecturers-and-artists-feature-large-at-aardklop-the-potchefstroom-national-arts-festival-1-7-october-2018

 

Opening: Thursday, 23 March from 18:00 to 20:00
Featuring Lament, a performance by Lizette Chirrime in collaboration with Ledelle Moe, at 19:00

ARTIST FEATURED
Willem Boshoff | Joni Brenner | Marco Cianfenelli | Guy du Toit | Stephan Erasmus | Richard John Forbes | Gordon Froud | Kim Lieberman | Ledelle Moe | Marcus Neustetter | Lwandiso Njara | Brett Rubin | Joachim Schonfeldt | Johan Thom | Sophia van Wyk

Gallery MOMO Cape Town is proud to present (DON’T) LOOK BACK – a group sculpture exhibition, a collaboration between  the NIROX Foundation and Gallery MOMO. The exhibition continues NIROX’s commitment to fostering the arts, particularly the development of three-dimensional work, and the artists across the country who have dedicated themselves to their discipline. (DON’T) LOOK BACK explores the practice of constructing form through the medium of sculpture. Featuring work by seventeen sculptors affiliated to NIROX, the exhibition offers a sampling of recent South African sculpture.

 

PRIEST presents Critical Discharge.

Critical Discharge 1.a physical discourse (dis- away; Currere- to run) constituting an extended form of linguistic criticism that views image, action and object as critical (criticus/ diseased or ill); a discursive formula and phenomena. (?.) critical response to crisis or threat in the socio-political dynamic that often seeks to adequately and even inadequately produce insight into the way language, in its extended forms, both generates and resists power, abuse and dominion.

To unload but not as a release from “obligation.”

2.a phrase or trope that allows for maximum projection; more explicitly, a difference that can extend the metaphor.

Dischargees:

Izanne Wiid
Nicholas Hauser
Alison Shaw
Oliver Mayhew
Johan Thom
AD-Reflex

Curated by Wayne Matthews.

Runs from 6-20 October 2016.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1605800116385763/

j-thom-labour-cleaner-webFig. 2: Labour 3: The cleaner (2016), Johan Thom (polyurethane foam, material one, saligna wood, found object). Sizes: 80 x 60 x 130 cm (Photo credit: Johan Thom)

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The Bag Factory Artists’ Studios is thrilled to announce its 25th Anniversary Exhibition entitled
FOUNDATIONS AND FUTURES

When: Opening on Friday, 28th October, 2016

Time: 6pm

Where: Bag Factory Artists’ Studios, 10 Mahlatini Street, Fordsburg

The Exhibition Foundations and Futures runs from
Monday 31 October until Saturday 10 December 2016,
Monday to Friday 9am-5pm.

For 25 years the Bag Factory Artists’ Studios has been more than just a building and studio space. It has provided the foundation of many an artist’s career. Built out of the dream for artists from different backgrounds to be able to work together, the Bag Factory is a community that continuously supports and builds on its ethos of “the community studio space where artists practice is held in the highest regard and experimentation is encouraged.”

Over 25 years these foundations have been strengthened by the artists and staff who have poured their passion and efforts into the community and ethos of the space. In recent years the Bag Factory has worked hard to encourage a younger community of artists to engage in our programming ensuring that the life-blood of the space – interaction and development – continues to pump.

The community has played host to artists such as Helen Sebidi, Deborah Bell, Sam Nhlengethwa, Penny Siopsis, Benon Lutaaya, Blessing Ngobeni, Neo Matloga, Dinkies Sithole, Kay Hassan and many, many more. We have created an international following through our visiting artists programme and a consistent space for art loving members of the public to experience outstanding work.

While many things have changed over the past 25 years, 3 have more or less stayed the same.
1. After 25 years, artists David Koloane and Pat Mautloa still have studio space at the Bag Factory.
2. We remain in the hessian bag factory in Newtown that gave its name to the organisation.
3. We have never changed our creative community ethos.
The organization without any of these would not exist and each is linked.

On Friday 28th October 2016, the Bag Factory begins the celebration of an incredible 25 years with an exhibition entitled Foundations and Futures. Since the inception of the organization, over 300 artists have been through the space either as studio artists, visiting artists, participants in workshops and exhibitions and as winners of award programmes. All of them have been influenced and have influenced the space in many rich and diverse ways.

Foundations and Futures is an acknowledgment of these influences and the celebration of a space that not only supports the artistic community but is driven by it. The programme continues with artist performances, conversations and master classes through the months of October, November and December 2016.

Artists participating in the exhibition Foundations and Futures opening on Friday 28 October 2016 include Blake Daniels; Paul Emmanuel; Jarrett Erasmus; Marie Fricout; Gordon Froud; Carlo Galli; Arash Hanaei; Diana Hyslop; Sharlene Khan; Asanda Kupa; David Koloane; Shenaz Mahomed; Pat Mautloa; Tshepo Mosopa; Ndikhumbule Ngqinambi; Tracey Rose; Usha Seejarim; Lerato Shadi; Johan Thom; Stijn van Dorpe and Mary Wafer

Join us on this momentous occasion to celebrate 25 years of outstanding artists, art and art enthusiasts.

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‘A luta continua ( Victory etc.)’ 2015
Johan Thom
Medium: Site specific intervention in mixed media for the conference ‘Art of Wagnis: Christoph Schlingensief’s Crossing of Wagner and Africa’ held at Iwalewahaus, Bayreuth, Germany, 4-6 Dec 2015

This artistic intervention is based upon a creative re-reading of the political slogan A luta continua, vitória é certa (The struggle continues, victory is certain). Historically this political slogan is associated with Mozambique’s armed struggle for independence from Portugal during the mid to nineteen seventies. To be specific, the slogan is considered the political rallying cry of Samora Michel, the erstwhile leader of the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique or Frelimo.

During the recent student protests against the rising costs of tertiary education in South Africa this slogan was often appropriated by students and their various supporters, appearing in social media on handmade posters in shorthand form simply as ‘A luta continua’. In this particular form, the slogan does not make explicit the possibility of victory, leaving instead the rather dispiriting possibility of a never-ending struggle. However, I think it may well be argued that the obverse is also true – that contemporary South African students are deeply aware of just how naive any hope for victory singular and total appears today.

By replacing the second part of the slogan ‘é certa’ with the term ‘etc’ (‘et cetera’) I wish to playfully shift the meaning of the original slogan into a somewhat humorous even self-critical statement that encapsulate elements of all the aforementioned (the history of the slogan, its appropriation and conditional re-employ in the present post-revolutionary moment). Today victory is no longer certain and nor is it understood as being the sole outcome of any revolutionary, anti-colonial struggle: instead it is joined by a host of other possible outcomes and post-colonial narratives, some of which have become all too familiar. In this regard, although the term ‘et cetera’ is mostly understood as meaning something to the effect of ‘and other related things’, at least one of the more discrete meanings inherent in its usage is the idea that the unspoken, or absent, terms it stands in for are so well known that it would be a waste of time to include them in full. In this way, the modified slogan embodies a form of cynicism borne from our familiarity with the disappointing, even wholly fatigued socio-cultural and political narratives and realities that have become the hallmarks of the post-revolutionary moment (the debt-ridden, corrupt post-colonial regime, the contemporary neo-colonial, capitalist sell-out of principals, assets, land and services et cetera).

Lastly, this artistic intervention is a meditation on the possibility of art to defamiliarise otherwise commonplace, accepted ideas, forms and meanings. In this much the work seeks to celebrate the fearless capacity of contemporary art to generate creative space for imaginative journeys into an unfamiliar future, an ‘etc.’ that signals space to explore, imagine and complete existing ideas without reifying the familiar.

Art cannot pray in the church of fear.

In memory of Christophe Schlingensief (1960-2010).