The experiential and narrative aspects of the arts can fundamentally shift how we act on the climate change crisis by transforming meaning, not just delivering facts | When the water crisis threatens the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa, one of Earth’s earliest homes of modern humans, facts alone wont shift our behaviour. Across the world, we already know the science, yet we fail to act. South African artist Johan Thom shows how the arts can change what water, soil, and survival actually mean to us. Drawing on personal history, Darwin’s ideas, and years of artistic experimentation, he reveals how beauty, choice, and imagination shape the core decisions that determine our collective future. While the sciences may diagnose the problem, the arts help us feel and experience our changing world in different ways, reminding us that meaning, not data, drives human action | South African artist Johan Thom works across performance, video, and installation to probe the human condition in a changing world. As curator of the forthcoming Soil & Water exhibition at NIROX, he brings artists together to engage with ecology, resilience, and our shared climate future. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx
Posts Tagged ‘Johan Thom’
Beauty and survival in a changing climate | Johan Thom | TEDxJohannesburg
Posted in News, tagged Art, art and beauty, art and evolution, beauty, Climate Change, Contemporary Art, Darwin, Johan Thom, Nirox Foundation, tedx, tedxjohannesburg, water crisis on December 11, 2025|
‘Grasp’ new and recent works by Johan Thom at the Nirox Foundation, 8 September- mid November 2024 (tbc)
Posted in News, tagged African art, Art, Casa Wabi Foundation, ceramics, Contemporary Art, Johan Thom, Nirox Foundation, Performance art, Sculpture, South African art on August 21, 2024|
NIROX is pleased to present new and recent works by South African artist Johan Thom, exploring the material relationship between the tactile, time, and (negative) space.
The exhibition is structured in two parts, split across two venues. Held in NIROX’s residency workshop, part one includes a recent installation — Time after Time (2023) — in which an automated brick and bronze skull constantly rotate, narrowly missing each other. Across the road, at the Kromdraai Impact Hub, Thom presents three new works: Will you still be mine? (The weight of body in ice), a large photograph documenting his performance at Casa Wabi, Mexico, earlier this year; Dwell (the weight of my body as a brick), produced in collaboration with Modern Art Projects South Africa (MAPSA); and LH+RH+LHRH (Grasp), a major installation of over a thousand individual clay forms.
Dwell is a large replica of a red building brick, such is commonly used for the construction of homes, shelters, and buildings in South Africa. Made to the weight of the artist, it is a deceptively complex minimalist gesture in which the body is shown to be a contested, uneasy home — at once a space of ‘dwelling’ (of knowing and being) whilst also forming part of the skewed spatio-political and economic organisation of the contemporary South African landscape.
In turn, LH+RH+LHRH (Grasp) (2024) is a site-specific installation that gives three- dimensional form to the negative space generated by ‘grasping’ a lump of clay. The result is an overwhelming number of near alien, bone-like fragments, arranged in three minimalist, 10 x 3m rectangular grids.
In keeping with the context of the Cradle of Humankind, this arrangement is reminiscent of the anthropological/archeological sites nearby. Here, the act of grasping becomes a metaphor for that which remains unknown or undiscovered, suggesting that the tactile and material remain largely dormant, fecund repositories for rethinking our partial knowledge of the world.
RSVP: sven(at)niroxarts.com
The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication, with essays by Dr Sikho Siyotula (Research Associate, UP), Dr. Wayne Binitie (Associate Lecturer, Camberwell College of Art, London) and Sven Christian (Curator, NIROX), published by the Villa- Legodi Center for Sculpture in partnership with UJ Press. Also included in the exhibition is “Grasp (Fragment),” an educational kit developed for the tactile exploration and teaching of sculpture, in collaboration with Prof. Jenni Louwrens (Associate Professor in Visual Studies, School of the Arts, UP), The student Gallery at the Javett UP, the Claire & Edoardo Villa Will Trust and the Villa-Legodi Center for Sculpture. The artworks on exhibition have been generously supported by a number of organisations: NIROX Foundation; Villa-Legodi Center for Sculpture; Modern Art Projects South Africa; Casa Wabi, Mexico; The National Research Foundation of South Africa; The School of the Arts, University of Pretoria; Kalashnikovv Gallery
Figure details: Johan Thom, Will you still be mine (Del Mar#1), photographic production still form a performance in Casa Wabi, Mexico, 2024 (Sizes: 210 x 110cm).
Some new works 2019 –
Posted in News, tagged African art, Africanart, Art, Artists, installation, Johan Thom, performance, Performance art, Photography, Poetry, public art, Sculpture, South Africa, Visual Art on April 11, 2020|
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).
Houseboat #1. 2019. Wood, glass, Material One, glass and mixed media Sizes: 230cm x 300 cm x 205cm
‘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
Foundations and Futures: The Bag Factory Artists’ Studios is thrilled to announce its 25th Anniversary Exhibition
Posted in News, tagged African art, Arash Hanaei, Art, Asanda Kupa, Blake Daniels, Carlo Galli, David Koloane, Diana Hyslop, Gordon Froud, Jarrett Erasmus, Johan Thom, Johannesburg, Marie Fricout, Mary Wafer, Pat Mautloa, Paul Emmanuel, Sharlene Khan, Shenaz Mahomed, The Bag Factory Artists' Studios, Tracey Rose, Triangle Trust, Usha Seejarim on October 8, 2016|
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.
Artistic intervention at Art of Wagnis conference, Iwalewahaus, Bayreuth, Germany, 2015
Posted in News, tagged African art, Aluta continua, Christophe Schlingensief, Contemporary Art, Contemporary South African Art, Johan Thom on December 11, 2015|
‘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).
Performance and video screening at Iwalewahaus, Bayreuth, Germany 27 Nov – 7 Dec.
Posted in News, tagged Abrie Fourie, African art, Christoph Schlingensief, Contemporary Art, Johan Thom, Performance art, South African art, video art, Video art from Africa on November 26, 2015|
Video still 1 ‘Terms of endearment’ Johan Thom, 2007
At Iwalewahaus for a 3 day festival/ screening of ‘The film will always be you’ curated by Abrie Fourie and Zoe Whitley as of this Saturday. Then for some mischevious fun with a dark performance as part of the conference program for ‘Art of Wagnis’ dedicated to the life and work of provocateur Christoph Schlingensief.
More details about the ‘Art of Wagnis’ conference here:
http://www.iwalewa.uni-bayreuth.de/de/program/20151204_Schlingensief-Tagung/index.html
and for ‘The Film will always be you’ here:
http://www.iwalewa.uni-bayreuth.de/de/program/20151127_Film-Will-Always-Be-Yo/index.html
Prints from The Animal Series @ The Collectors Room, Fried Contemporary, 24 Oct – 21 Nov 2015
Posted in News, tagged Art, Bevan de Wet, contemporary African art, David Koloane, Diane Victor, Elephant Skull, Elephant Skull Plate, Etching, Henry Moore, Johan Thom, Willem Boshoff on October 22, 2015|
Johan Thom & Willem Boshoff Elephant Peepsite, 2014. Etching using elephant skull with lines made up of alphabet beads on extruded acrylic super 220 x 127.5cm
Prints from The Animal Series
@ The Collectors Room, Fried Contemporary
Johan Thom with Willem Boshoff, Diane Victor, David Koloane and Bevan De Wet.
Opens Saturday 24 October @ 12 – 2pm
Concludes Saturday 21 November 2015 @ 14:00
Fried Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to present a body of work by Johan Thom created at the Nirox Foundation in 2014 and exhibited at its Project space in the Maboneng precinct, Johannesburg. The series of prints, titled: ‘Prints from the Animal Series’ is a series of etchings produced by Thom in collaboration with a number of well-known artists.
More info here: Fried Contemporary
Video screening at 1:54, Somerset House, London
Posted in News, tagged 1:54, African art fair, art fair, contemporary African art, Johan Thom, video art, Video art from Africa on October 6, 2015|
Catch a screening of my some of my video artworks at 1:54 in London.
Sunday 18 October 2015, Somerset House.
12.00 – 13.00 Works by Theo Eshetu and Johan Thom
More info available here: http://1-54.com/london/forum/
Research seminar: Monday the 28th of September 2015 at 14h00 in the Visual Arts Gallery, University of Pretoria,
Posted in News, tagged African art, Art, Faustus, Faustus in Africa, Johan Thom, Materiality on September 21, 2015|
You are invited to join us on Monday the 28th of September 2015 at 14h00 in the Visual Arts Gallery, University of Pretoria, for our Departmental Research Seminar.
I will be presenting a talk regarding the artworks from my recent solo exhibition at The Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg.
Tate Modern presents ‘The Film Will Always Be With You: South African Artists On Screen’
Posted in News, tagged Abrie Fourie, British council, contemporary African art, Contemporary Art, Contemporary South African Art, Johan Thom, Tate Modern, video art, Zoe Whitley on May 30, 2015|
-
Johan Thom
Terms of Endearment 2007
Video still
© Johan Thom, courtesy the artist
Little known outside of South Africa, the Johannesburg Free Filmmakers Cooperative was a loose association of filmmakers in the 1980s, among them artist William Kentridge. The very act of filmmaking as a vital outlet for self-expression caused Kentridge to recognise that ‘you yourself will be the film and the film will always be you.’ This three-day programme of screenings launches with Free Filmmakers’ experimental 1986 documentary and is followed by a selection of 25 contemporary artists’ shorts rarely or never before seen in UK. The Saturday and Sunday screenings will each culminate with artists in conversation, reflecting on the changing role of the moving image in art and how the medium expresses new subjectivities. The series demonstrates the substantial legacy of South African artists on screen.
Curated by Zoe Whitley, Adjunct Research Curator, Tate, supported by Guaranty Trust Bank plc, and Abrie Fourie, Independent Curator
Events in this series
The Film Will Always Be You
Friday 10 July, 19.00–21.00
The Film Will Always Be You: Points and Counterpoints
Saturday 11 July, 16.00–18.00
The Film Will Always Be You: Performing Selves
Saturday 11 July, 19.00–21.00
The Film Will Always Be You: New Subjectivities
Sunday 12 July, 17.00–19.00
Tate Film is supported by LUMA Foundation
This project has been supported by the SA–UK Seasons 2014 & 2015, a partnership between the Department of Arts and Culture, South Africa and the British Council.
johanthom.com 