Please note that in order to view PDF documents a viewer such as Adobe Reader needs
to be installed on your computer. If you do not have this software, please click here to download it.
Water, the [Delicate] Thread of Life
‘Water, the [Delicate] Thread of Life’, sets out to navigate a course through the
many wonders and complexities of water and to challenge the way we think about and
respond to one of the most precious substances on earth. This unique exhibition
seeks to bring home just how fragile and tenuous life on earth would be without
sustainable water resources. Through the eyes, minds and creative endeavours of
South African artists, it shows how integral and fundamental water is to life. Water
is indeed the delicate thread on which life depends.
The exhibition, dedicated to “the lifeblood of all life forms on earth”, comprises
work by a host of artists, such as Deborah Bell, Penny Siopis, Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi,
Jackson Hlungwani, Walter Oltmann, Norman Catherine, William Kentridge, Georgie
Papageorge, Simon Max Bannister, Alan Crump, David Goldblatt, Andrew Verster, Noria
Mabasa, Strijdom van der Merwe, Moshekwa Langa, Marcus Neustetter and Durant Sihlali.
Through their collective artworks, the exhibition traces water’s role on earth,
from sustaining life and fuelling economies to its presence in belief systems, religions
and rituals.
A number of works have been commissioned specifically for this exhibition, including
Willem Boshoff’s Walking on Water (2011) and a unique piece by Karel Nel. Boshoff’s
Walking on Water plays off the multiple interpretations of the word ‘water’, as
he ingeniously combines notions of the Christian religion with science and technology
to summon a warning against the abuse of clean water resources. Nel’s site-specific
installation, Reflective Field (2011), explores the space between knowing and not
knowing, the inexplicable realm symbolised in his work by reflections of water against
the gallery ceiling in what the artist describes as a “scientific exploration of
divination”.
Other themes covered in ‘Water, the [Delicate] Thread of Life’ include the shocking
devastation caused by floods (Andrew Verster and Noria Mabasa); drought conditions
and severe water shortages in South Africa (Strijdom van der Merwe); the consequences
of drought and thoughtless human intervention when it comes to water, particularly
as it affects the poor (Moshekwa Langa); and the humanitarian consequences of water-related
disasters (Marcus Neustetter and Durant Sihlali).
The artworks on this exhibition show how water touches every facet of our lives.
However, life on earth is threatened by the unsustainable use and abuse of limited
clean water resources. In general, the message of ‘Water, the [Delicate] Thread
of Life’ is that it may not be too late to adopt a new approach towards water, a
vital, fragile and miraculous substance. With creative interventions and a collective
commitment to preserve and nurture our natural environment there can be a promise
of new beginnings.
The exhibition is curated by Marion Dixon, a freelance art curator and author, and
is accompanied by a catalogue.
To read more, download the full educational supplement on Water, the [Delicate]
Thread of Life below:
Click here to download PDF(507
Kb)
Listening to Distant Thunder: The art of Peter Clarke
'Listening to Distant Thunder: The art of Peter Clarke', runs at the Standard Bank
Gallery, Johannesburg, from 4 May – 2 July 2011. The exhibition is aimed at honouring
Clarke's life, work and contribution to art and cultural development in South Africa.
The exhibition is accompanied by a book of the same title, by curators Philippa
Hobbs and Elizabeth Rankin. The culmination of seven years of extensive research,
the book traces Clarke's evolution and is a comprehensive account of his art.
Born in Simon's Town in 1929, Clarke's career spans six decades. After working in
the Simon's Town dockyard for a number of years, he embarked on his career as a
full-time professional artist in 1956.
Clarke has recorded many aspects of South African life. Although he and his family
were forcibly removed from their home in Simon's Town during the apartheid era,
his art is without bitterness. Often humorous, it is rather a scrutiny and celebration
of life in all its aspects, and an expression of his ongoing delight in ordinary,
everyday experiences.
The exhibition, and the accompanying book of the same title, tells the story of
Clarke's work over the decades. It includes his early pieces, made as a schoolboy:
works that reflect the social disruption of the Cape Flats, as well as his prints,
for which he is renowned. Also on the show are works from the late 1960s that refer
to the trauma of forced removals from Simon's Town, and the ambitious paintings
he began making during his trips to America, Norway and France in the 1970s. In
addition, the exhibition highlights his late works that look back on the apartheid
years and celebrate the new South Africa.
Clarke was awarded the Order of Ikhamanga (silver) by President Mbeki in 2005 and
a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. Through this exhibition and the accompanying
book, authors and curators Philippa Hobbs and Elizabeth Rankin hope to show you
why.
To read more, download the full educational supplement on Peter Clarke
below:
Click here to download PDF(7.1mb)
Wayne Barker: Super boring
The concept for Wayne Barker's exhibition, 'Super Boring', was born at the private
showing before the opening of the 2009 Venice Biennale, given to recognising an
older generation of conceptual artists, including the American John Baldessari.
Barker was in Venice to show on a fringe exhibition, 'I Linguaggi del Mondo: Languages
of the World', curated by Vincenzo Sanfo. On the Grand Canal hung a banner declaring
Baldessari's words from a 1971 artwork: "I will not make any more boring art."
Barker is a colourful, provocative and rebellious persona and artist who lives a
life of seemingly endless outrageous incidents. He and his work are anything but
boring, lending an ironic twist to the exhibition's title. He firmly rejects the
idea that art should be "idle navel-gazing", as it is said in his exhibition catalogue.
What Barker presents instead is work that is arresting, incisive and a challenge
to political perceptions and understandings, morality, authority and values.
Over the years, Barker has produced various bodies of rich, stimulating work which
deal with both the old and new South Africa. He is renowned for his re-interpretations
of paintings by the Afrikaner nationalist artist, JH Pierneef. For the exhibition,
'Super Boring', he has produced a new body of work that confronts and questions
the new South African culture in all its diverse manifestations, while celebrating
the underlying force and spirit of optimism that binds and drives our unique country.
'Super Boring', initially a curatorial collaboration between SMAC Art Gallery, Andrew
Lamprecht and Barker, will now travel in an evolved form to the Standard Bank Gallery
in Johannesburg as a retrospective exhibition curated by SMAC Art Gallery. It is
accompanied by a catalogue contextualising his new work in relation to earlier bodies
of work. It includes text by Lamprecht and contributions by Simon Njami, Carol Brown
and Thembinkosi Goniwe.
To read more, download the full educational supplement on Wayne Barker
below:
Click here to download PDF(747kb)
A Vigil of Departure: Louis Khehla Maqhubela, a retrospective 1960-20.
'A Vigil of Departure', a retrospective of Louis Maqhubela, runs at the Standard
Bank Gallery from 3 August to 18 September 2010. The thrust behind the exhibition
and catalogue is to assess Louis Maqhubela's (1939- ) place in, and contribution
to, the history of South African art. The intention is to remind the public of a
great artist, to return Maqhubela from obscurity and to re-inscribe him into the
history of art of this country.
Maqhubela's name is strongly associated with the Polly Street Art Centre, where
he studied from 1957-59. At a time of increasing apartheid restrictions, Polly Street,
the first large-scale urban art centre in South Africa, emerged as a place where
black artists could learn their craft.
A trip to Europe early in his career, and encounters with great European artists
and abstract painting, offered him a means decisively to break out of the conventions
and stylistic mannerisms of a genre that had been labelled "Township Art".
Maqhubela's new direction meant the end of figurative expressionism and the beginning
of a personal engagement with modernist abstraction. His work now became less about
recording views of his environment and more about using line, form, shape and colour
as expressive means in and of themselves.
After settling in London with his family in 1976, Maqhubela's work became increasingly
abstract, while trips to South Africa since 1994 have stimulated renewed interest
in the colours, rituals and places of the country of his birth.
Maqhubela's spiritual journey and search for a higher plane through form and colour
may explain why he has no immediate successors in the stylistic sense: his art is
too personal, too enigmatic for followers to emulate.
In the catalogue to Maqhubela's exhibition, Marilyn Martin, the show's curator writes,
"In spite of trials and challenges he faced during his life, Maqhubela's art is
characterised by a profound humanism, inner joy and affirmation of life; [his works]
spring from a deep spiritual and metaphysical well."
To read more, download the full educational supplement on Louis Khehla Maqhubela
below:
Click here to download PDF(747kb)
Click here to download PDF(686kb)
Halakasha
‘Halakasha!’, a flagship exhibition celebrating the historic first FIFA World Cup™
in Africa, showcases a range of artworks dealing with the global phenomenon of soccer
and the passion it evokes in Africa in particular. The exhibition’s title, ‘Halakasha!’
is drawn from the traditional South African celebratory cry on a goal being scored.
Designed to showcase the full spectrum of cultural manifestations of the love of
soccer, the exhibition includes makarapas, vuvuzelas and commercially produced soccer
merchandise. Other highlights include popular street art in the form of painted
barber signs by Ghanaian and Congolese artists; a selection of posters from the
official FIFA poster collection of commissioned prints by world renowned artists
(© FIFA 2010, brands united, Berlin (licensee) / David Krut Publishing, JHB (distributor);
and images from Drum magazine relating to football during the apartheid years.
Adding to the richness of the exhibition are documents and handmade badges by political
prisoners on Robben Island, where soccer was played. Costumes, drums and masks from
Angola, Cameroon and Ghana that are echoed in some of the images on show are also
included, as well as photographic essays, such as a feature by Nigerian filmmaker
and photographer, Andrew Dosunmu. His work depicting fans in a range of guises,
such as religious prophets, drummers and musicians, magicians, cross dressers, chiefs
and military personnel, is featured. Images depicting the rivalries between supporters
of local teams Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates – both of which are sponsored by
Standard Bank − are captured by the Kenyan photojournalist Antony Kaminju.
Another element of the exhibition relates to isangoma and inyanga, diviners and
healers who use traditional medicine and ritual practices to ensure a winning performance
from their favoured team. The exhibition includes examples of items associated with
divination practices.
The exhibition, curated by Fiona Rankin-Smith of the Wits Art Museum, also includes
a series of documentaries and films on the theme of football. These will run throughout
the show, which is accompanied by an extensive catalogue.
To read more, download the full educational supplement on Halakasha below:
Click here to download PDF(916kb)
Click here to download PDF(771kb)
Pieter Hugo
Pieter Hugo was born in Johannesburg in 1976 and is a self-taught photographer and
filmmaker. He started taking pictures at the age of twelve, when his father bought
him his first camera. He documents social issues globally but has a special interest
in Africa and developing countries.
On winning the 2007 Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art award, Hugo says:
‘It means that photography is being recognised as an artistic medium in South Africa
and this gives me great pleasure… It is refreshing that there is now the space where
we can appreciate photographic images beyond the urgency of photojournalism.’
Hugo was included in ReGeneration: 50 Photographers of Tomorrow, 2005-2025, an exhibition
identifying 50 young photographers who will be considered great by 2025. In 2006
he won first prize in the portraits section of World Press Photo 2006 for a work
from his Hyena Men portfolio. His most recent achievement was winning the KLM Paul
Huf Award 2008, an annual prize for a young international talent below 35 years
old. Hugo held his first solo exhibition in 2004 at Michael Stevenson in Cape Town.
To read more, download the full educational supplement on Pieter Hugo below:
Click here to download PDF(804kb)
Click here to download PDF(775kb)
Skin-to-Skin
Jane Makhubele
Jane Makhubele is a full-time artist who grew up in Limpopo, where she was taught
by her mother to make traditional Tsonga minceka. She married Billy Makhubele, who
is now a well-known designer of new versions of this old art form. Billy is also
respected as a collector of rare Ndebele and Shangaan beaded artworks and clothing.
Their collaborative work, and that of others in the Makhubele family, has been honoured
on the Dungamanzi/Stirring Waters exhibition that is touring the country in 2007-8.
The artist still lives in Limpopo.
Karin Lijnes
Karin Lijnes studied for an MA in Fine Arts at the University of South Africa. Her
fibre artwork explores the impact of consumer culture on society and the individual,
often looking at contradictions and contrasts in South African life. For example,
the mass-produced versus the handmade; or the disposable versus the durable. Since
2000 Lijnes has exhibited her fibre art works, both in this country and abroad.
She lives in Noordhoek in the Western Cape.
Leora Farber
Johannesburg artist Leora Farber received an MA in Fine Arts at the University of
Johannesburg in 1992, having already finished a BA Fine Arts at the University of
the Witwatersrand. Farber’s feminist works deal with ways the female body has been
represented in contemporary western culture. Since 2004 she has exhibited in numerous
South African cities, and has participated in numerous overseas group exhibitions.
Farber currently directs research in art at the University of Johannesburg.
Walter Oltmann
Walter Oltmann grew up in Nongoma in KwaZulu-Natal, where he watched rural wireworkers
making staffs and snuff containers decorated with wirework. He studied at the University
of Natal, then completed an MA in Fine Art at the University of the Witwatersrand.
Oltmann’s student research into traditional wirework in southern Africa has influenced
his sculpture, and he has been making wire sculptures since he was a student. These
are stranded constructions in copper, brass, aluminium wire and other industrial
metal products, many of which are on display in public and corporate buildings.
Oltmann lives in Johannesburg, teaches at the University of the Witwatersrand and
exhibits widely.
To read more, download the full educational supplement on Skin-to-Skin below:
Click here to download PDF(804kb)
Click here to download PDF(775kb)
Cecil Skotnes
Of Norwegian-Canadian descent, Cecil Skotnes was born in 1926 in East London in
a poor neighbourhood. He fought in World War II against fascism in Italy with South
African troops, after which he stayed on to study painting in Florence. On returning
to South Africa, Skotnes studied art at the University of the Witwatersrand from
1947 to 1950. He lived in Johannesburg from 1946, relocating to Cape Town in 1978.
In 1963 Skotnes helped to establish the Amadlozi group. This group, which included
Guiseppe Cattaneo, Cecily Sash, Sydney Kumalo and Edoardo Villa, sought to work
at the intersection of African and European art. Skotnes first exhibited his prints
on his first solo show at the Pretoria Art Centre in 1957, and some were chosen
to represent South Africa at the Sao Paolo and Venice Biennales of 1957 and 1958.
A former President of the now defunct South African Council of Artists, Skotnes
is the recipient of many awards in recognition of his contribution to cultural development
in South Africa: the Chamber of Mines Gold Medal in 1965, and the South African
Breweries Gold Medal in 1968. He has been given honorary doctorates: from the Universities
of Rhodes and Witwatersrand; and the Order of Ikhamanga in Gold (2003), for ‘exceptional
achievement in, and the deracialisation of, the arts, and for outstanding contribution
to the development of black artists.’
To read more, download the full educational supplement on Cecil Skotnes:
Click here to download PDF(12MB)
Click here to download PDF(12MB)
Nicholas Hlobo: Umtshotsho
In 2009 the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Art was bestowed on Nicholas
Hlobo. Since 1981, the award has been made annually to those who have demonstrated
exceptional ability in their field, and Hlobo was the 28th visual artist to be acclaimed
through the award. On winning the award, he said, ‘I am truly honoured to
have been chosen and hope to give audiences something new and innovative’.
A key element of the award is that winning artists are granted a national touring
exhibition, with legs in all the major centres in South Africa. Hlobo’s show, ‘Umtshotsho’,
a sculptural installation, began its year-long tour at the National Arts Festival,
Grahamstown in July 2009. His exhibition in Johannesburg at the Standard Bank Gallery
is supplemented by new works by the artist which have not yet been exhibited. This
is the penultimate leg of the tour before the show ends its run in Cape Town in
August 2010.
Drawing on his Xhosa culture and heritage, and his life as a black person in post-apartheid
South Africa, Hlobo is concerned with gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity,
and, according to him, ‘anything that people find embarrassing in society’.
He is particularly concerned with prejudice against homosexuality in black society,
as well as sex education, AIDS and blurring the division between the masculine and
feminine. Renowned for his sculptures made of found objects and disparate materials,
such as the inner tubes of car tyres, ribbon, leather and wire, Hlobo also makes
drawings and is a performance artist of note. His works are usually entitled in
his native tongue, Xhosa, and he is interested in the language, with its proverbs
and idioms. His work is symbolic: rubber tubes refer to condoms and some of his
forms allude to phalluses, sperm, orifices and umbilical cords.
While Hlobo’s previous shows have explored ideas surrounding birth and sex, the
theme in ‘Umtshotsho’ is the rituals that accompany the transition from youth to
adulthood. As Hlobo explains, the term umtshotsho refers to a traditional party
for young people. ‘The focus is on that time when children are beginning to
think and act like adults; the desire to explore life, dating, going out at night
and all the consequences of wanting to do things older people do. Umtshotsho rarely
takes place in its old form anymore and young people have found alternatives, such
as going to bars and clubs. The works are not trying to tell a story about an old
way of partying for teenagers but look at the new conventions and draw similarities
between different times.’
‘Umtshotsho’ is accompanied by Hlobo’s first monograph, which traces his life and
work from 2005 to 2009.
Running concurrently in the downstairs gallery is ‘City and Suburban’ by Johannesburg-based
Karin Preller. Her images are carefully extracted from personal pictorial archives,
in this instance, stills from home movies filmed in the 1960s. Says Preller, ‘The
paintings chronicle ordinary lived moments of individuals, paused and rewound; interrupted
narratives and lost stories.’
To read more, download the full educational supplement on Nicholas Hlobo below:
Click here to download PDF(550Kb)
Click here to download PDF(469Kb)
Alexis Preller: Africa, the Sun and Shadows
‘Alexis Preller: Africa, the Sun and Shadows’ runs at the Standard Bank
Gallery from 13 October to 5 December 2009. A retrospective exhibition, it showcases
the work of Alexis Preller (1911-1975).
Preller was a major South African artist, whose unconventional form of expression
was impossible to classify. In his art, he created a world of signs and symbols,
shaping a private cosmology in which the myths of humankind are interconnected and
interwoven.
‘Alexis Preller: Africa, the Sun and Shadows’ showcases a wide selection
of the artist’s work, as well as a number of artefacts, documents and photographs
relevant to his life. A contribution to understanding Preller as one of South Africa’s
pre-eminent artists, and as a pioneer who defined an African style in the 20th century,
the exhibition is accompanied by Alexis Preller, a comprehensive monograph
by Esmé Berman and Karel Nel.
To read more, download the full educational supplement on Alexis Preller below:
Click here to download PDF(612Kb)
Click here to download PDF(612Kb)
Standard Bank Young Artists: 25 (SBYA 25)
‘Standard Bank Young Artists: 25 (SBYA 25)’, arriving fresh from the
National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, opens at the Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg,
on 6 August 2009, running until 19 September. The exhibition celebrates the 25th
anniversary of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for the visual arts.
The award is inextricably linked to the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, which
has run since 1974. The award is granted to emerging, relatively young South African
artists who have demonstrated exceptional ability in their chosen field. The list
of Young Artist Award winners from the past 25 years includes many of South Africa’s
most famous and astute creative individuals in the visual arts.
Curated by the late Alan Crump, who was associated with the award as Chairperson
of the National Arts Festival Committee (1990-1999), and Barbara Freemantle, curator
at Standard Bank Gallery, the exhibition includes two works by each of the award
winners to date. The works were selected from various public and private collections
in South Africa.
To read more, download the full educational supplement on SBYA 25 below:
Click here to download PDF(1.3Mb)
Click here to download PDF(1.2Mb)
Nontsikelelo ‘Lolo’ Veleko: Wonderland
‘Wonderland’, Nontsikelelo Veleko’s Young Artist Award travelling
exhibition, runs at the Standard Bank Gallery from 10 June to 18 July 2009.
Veleko was the 2008 Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art, only the second photographer
to win the award. These awards acknowledge emerging, relatively young South African
artists who have displayed outstanding talent in their artistic endeavours. In ‘Wonderland’,
she pursues familiar themes – people on the streets, fashion, graffiti and
personal spaces.
To read more, download the full educational supplement on Nontsikelelo ‘Lolo’ Veleko
below:
Click here to download PDF(552kb)
Click here to download PDF(443kb)
Andrew Verster: Past/Present
Past/Present is a survey exhibition of works by the renowned artist, Andrew Verster.
The exhibition opened at the National Festival of the Arts in Grahamstown in June
2008 and has travelled to several venues throughout the country. The show highlights
work made by Verster between 1994 – the start of democracy in South Africa – and
the present. It includes paintings, drawings, stage sets, costume designs and wax
panels intended to show the diversity and ongoing creativity of one of the country’s
most prolific and respected artists.
Eduardo Villa: Moving Voices
At he age of 93, Eduardo Villa is probably the oldest working artist in South Africa.
While he is probably best known for his large public steel sculpture. Eduardo Villa:
Moving Voices reflects an often overlooked tradition of small-scale sculpture, showcasing
a prolific collection of vibrant works which reflect the artist’s delight in the
vigour of life.
If you are unable to attend the exhibition in person, you can take an online tour
by visiting the Standard Bank Gallery website: www.standardbankgallery.co.za
To read more, download the full educational supplement on Eduardo Villa below:
Click here to download PDF(3.238kb)
Click here to download PDF(3.185kb)
Johannes Phokela: I like my neighbours
Johannes Phokela is renowned for his exquisitely painted manipulations of iconic
images by European Old Masters, particularly those from the seventeenth century,
like Rubens, Van Dyck, Breugel, Jacob de Gheyn and Caravaggio. “Most of my
work,” says Phokela, “is a contemporary take on Old Dutch and Flemish
Masters where I take on what is perceived to be Europe’s grandiose history
of art as a medium to convey values and ideals represented within a global context
of cultural elitism” (Dlamini, 2006).
One striking feature of Phokela’s satirical work is his use of a red nose,
which appears every now and again in both his paintings and sculptures. He was inspired
to use this clown-like nose after he had acquired one in the UK from the charity
organisation, Comic Relief. But the nose did not fit his African physiognomy. “At
first,” he says, “I thought I must have bought the wrong size, but in
the end I realised that they were not really made for my type of nose” (Haines,
2002).
To read more, download the full educational supplement on Johannes Phokela below:
Click here to download PDF(1.821kb)
Click here to download PDF(1.764kb)
Judith Mason: a prospect of icons
Judith Mason was born in Pretoria in 1938. She studied at the University of the
Witwatersrand in the 1950s, obtaining a BA Degree in Fine Art in 1960. Her first
solo show was held in 1964.
In the 1970s and 80s Mason was highly visible in the South African art world at
a time when the country was isolated both politically and culturally from the rest
of the world. Even so, she was chosen to represent South Africa at the Venice Biennale,
and at international art fairs, like Art Basel. In the early 1990s Mason returned
from living and teaching in Florence, Italy. At this time, her work became part
of the South African school and university curricula and she also taught history
of art, drawing and painting at the Michaelis School of Art, University of Cape
Town.
To read more, download the full educational supplement on Judith Mason below:
Click here to download PDF(866kb)
Click here to download PDF(793kb)
Cecil Skotnes: A Private View
Of Norwegian-Canadian descent, Cecil Skotnes was born in 1926 in East London in
a poor neighbourhood. He fought in World War II against fascism in Italy with South
African troops, after which he stayed on to study painting in Florence. On returning
to South Africa, Skotnes studied art at the University of the Witwatersrand from
1947 to 1950. He lived in Johannesburg from 1946, relocating to Cape Town in 1978.
In 1963 Skotnes helped to establish the Amadlozi group. This group, which included
Guiseppe Cattaneo, Cecily Sash, Sydney Kumalo and Edoardo Villa, sought to work
at the intersection of African and European art. Skotnes first exhibited his prints
on his first solo show at the Pretoria Art Centre in 1957, and some were chosen
to represent South Africa at the Sao Paolo and Venice Biennales of 1957 and 1958.
To read more, download the full educational supplement on Cecil Skotnes below:
Click here to download PDF(7.003kb)
Click here to download PDF(9.974kb)
Pieter Hugo: Messina/Musina
Pieter Hugo was born in Johannesburg in 1976 and is a self-taught photographer and
filmmaker. He started taking pictures at the age of twelve, when his father bought
him his first camera. He documents social issues globally but has a special interest
in Africa and developing countries.
On winning the 2007 Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art award, Hugo says:
‘It means that photography is being recognised as an artistic medium in South Africa
and this gives me great pleasure… It is refreshing that there is now the space where
we can appreciate photographic images beyond the urgency of photojournalism.’
To read more, download the full educational supplement on Pieter Hugo below:
Click here to download PDF(804kb)
Click here to download PDF(775kb)
Skin-to-Skin
For centuries in South Africa skin colour was used to define our social status and
culture – and to keep us apart. Under apartheid this separation became extreme when
people were classified ‘white’, ‘black’, ‘coloured’ or ‘Indian’ according to skin
colour. Black and white people could not live in the same neighbourhoods, go to
the same schools, eat in the same restaurants, ride in the same busses, use the
same bathrooms, swim or play together, or get married. When South Africa became
a democracy in 1994, discrimination against people on the basis of skin colour was
outlawed. Now we may associate with each other as we like, without restriction.
To read more, download the full educational supplement on Skin-to-Skin below:
Click here to download PDF(804kb)
Click here to download PDF(775kb)
Marlene Dumas: Intimate Relations
It will give viewers in-depth insight into Dumas’s extraordinary oeuvre through
a broad selection of her work, ranging from early conceptual pieces dating from
her student years to her recent paintings and drawings dealing with contemporary
global issues.
The words ‘Intimate Relations’ from the title of this exhibition encapsulate the
ideas and concerns Dumas has explored in her work during a career spanning thirty
years or so. It raises questions about what intimate relations are and how these
relations between people, places and objects are structured. It also probes the
way we connect with one another, both personally and globally, and how we relate
to art.
More particularly, Dumas’s work deals with ideologically complex subjects. Her work
challenges many of our taboos. For not only has she made autobiographical works,
but her attention has also focused on racial themes, stereotypes, motherhood, death,
violence, sexuality, eroticism, and religion.
To read more, download the full educational supplement on Marlene Dumas below:
Click here to download PDF(1.821kb)
Click here to download PDF(1.764kb)
Christine Dixie: Corporeal Prospects
Christine Dixie was born in Cape Town in 1966. She completed her undergraduate studies
in fine art at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1988, before obtaining an
Advanced Diploma in Fine Art in 1990. Dixie gained a Masters in Fine Art from the
Michaelis School of Art, University of Cape Town, in 1993. She was a research fellow
at the Ampersand Foundation in New York in 1998.
To read more, download the full educational supplement on Christine Dixie below:
Click here to download PDF(1.821kb)
Click here to download PDF(1.764kb)
Churchill Madikida: Like Father Like Son?
Madikida was born in Butterworth in 1973 to a ‘coloured’ mother and a black father,
who abandoned him. His life as a young person was challenging, to say the least.
Not only was his family poor, but he also grew up with two stepfathers, one ‘coloured’
and the other Xhosa, neither of whom accepted him. To make matters worse, his Butterworth
community did not embrace him either, because he was neither ‘coloured,’ nor black.
‘I am just in between,’ says Madikida. ‘My community in Butterworth didn’t accept
me as black. They used to call me all these different names. I became very closed.
Drawing became one of the ways I communicated my feelings.’
To read more, download the full educational supplement on Churchill Madikida below:
Click here to download PDF(1.821kb)
Click here to download PDF(1.764kb)
Karel Nel: Fugitive images from deep space.
Born in 1955, Karel Nel is a renowned South African artist who exhibits locally
and abroad. He has taught Fine Art since 1980 at the University of the Witwatersrand,
where he is now an Associate Professor, and was awarded a Fulbright placement at
the University of California, Berkeley, in 1988. Nel has won numerous awards and
commissions, and is represented in most art museums and public collections in South
Africa, as well as in the collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African
Art in Washington DC and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He lives and
lectures in Johannesburg but spends six months of the year travelling to the major
art centres of the world, as well as to remote parts of the Pacifi c, Asia and the
east coast of Africa. These expeditions inform his life’s work.
To read more, download the full educational supplement on Karel Nel below:
Click here to download PDF(1.821kb)
Click here to download PDF(1.764kb)
Willem Boshoff: Word forms and language shapes 1975-2007
Willem Boshoff was born into a humble working class family in Vanderbijlpark in
1951. In the conservative world of an Afrikaner town, where it was commonplace for
a boy to help his father around the workshop, Boshoff inherited his love of wood
from his father, who was a master carpenter. But the relative harmony of his childhood
years was shattered when, like all white males during apartheid, Boshoff was forced
by the South African Defence Force to serve two years of military service after
leaving school, then report for regular military camps. Boshoff refused to carry
a rifl e, and came to reject all forms of violence and war, suffering isolation
among fellow Afrikaners as a result.
To read more, download the full educational supplement on Willem Boshoff below:
Click here to download PDF(1.821kb)
Click here to download PDF(1.764kb)