Press Release

The Double Body: being in space is an exhibition of new and recent installation and performance art by South African artists and explores the implicit relationship between physical performance, or presence, and architectural spaces.  Drawing from a body of recent writing that makes a case for a corporeal “knowledge” of space, the works in this exhibition are invested in how the body locates itself in space and develops a sense of place, how installation environments may bear the traces of bodily presences and the different levels at which a viewer experiences an artwork. Many of the works, Alexander Opper’s installation, Auseinandersetzung, in the upper-level of the gallery, for instance, consist in an immediate sensory encounter for the viewer that takes place prior to a formal or analytical engagement with the work.
Nevertheless, each contribution to the exhibition has been rigorously conceived and carefully chosen to create an immersive network of spatial environments that exist in a carefully hewn poetic conversation with each another.  This conversation will ring most clearly at the exhibition’s opening event, where Lerato Shadi, and Bronwyn Lace will present performance works and new video work by Nina Barnett, Same Seine, will be projected onto an outdoor “screen”.  This exhibition has been designed to read best after dark, and uses unconventional lighting selected to meet the display demands of each work individually.  In this way, the exhibition breaks with the temporal conventions of gallery viewing and relies on its external environment to determine the conditions of its legibility and meaning.
Participating artists are Marcus Neustetter, Bronwyn Lace, Alexander Opper, David Andrew, Nina Barnett, Johan Thom, Lerato Shadi, Phillip Raiford Johnson, Murray Kruger and Rodan Kane Hart.
Curated for the FADA Gallery by Anthea Buys.
A digital catalogue will be available from May 20 on the FADA website.

Opening: FADA Gallery, Johannesburg, Wednesday May 20, 6.30pm.
Contact: Andthea Buys
antheabuys@mweb.co.za; 082 460 3427
With thanks to Leora Farber, Lauren van der Merwe, Gordon Froud, Rosalind Cleaver, David Paton, Lucille Pillay and Avita Padiachey.