'A Vigil of Departure - Louis Khehla Maqhubela, a retrospective 1960 – 2010', opens at the Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, on 3 August 2010, running until 18 September. 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 under Cecil Skotnes and Sydney Kumalo from 1957 to 1959. 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.

Maqhubela had success early in his career, in spite of a hostile environment created by the apartheid government. In 1966 he won first prize at the Adler Fielding Gallery's annual 'Artists of Fame and Promise' exhibition, which included a return air ticket to Europe.

Maqhubela's trip abroad, his exposure to European art and artists, and in particular the time he spent with Douglas Portway in Cornwall in the UK, offered him a means decisively to break out of the conventions and stylistic mannerisms of a genre that had been labelled "Township Art" – the depiction of everyday activities and the way of life in black urban environments created under apartheid. Contrary to what had become a clichéd genre, Maqhubela always had a personal essence and style, and for him change was inevitable.

Maqhubela's new direction meant the end of figurative expressionism and the beginning of a personal engagement with modernist abstraction, accompanied by the development of an artistic language and iconography inspired by his quest for spiritual growth. His work now became less about recording views of his environment, or observed reality, and more about using line, form, shape and colour as expressive means in and of themselves. In Emancipation (1972) and Composition (1972), for example, he uses a nervous, wiry line that seems to start somewhere and meander endlessly through the work.

Maqhubela and his family left the country for Spain in 1973, chiefly for political reasons. In 1976, having travelled to the English capital over the preceding two years, the Maqhubela family settled in London for good.

A trip to South Africa in 1994, and again in 2001, 2002 and 2004, had a powerful impact on Maqhubela and gave renewed impetus to his work, both thematically and technically (Ndebele Gate, 2010).

Maqhubela lives and works in London. His spiritual journey and concomitant 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."

‘Halakasha!’, a flagship exhibition celebrating the historic first FIFA World Cup™ in Africa, is housed in both the upstairs and downstairs exhibition spaces at the Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, and showcases a range of artworks dealing with the global phenomenon of soccer and the passion it evokes in Africa in particular. Running from 2 June to 17 July 2010, it also features the enthusiastic support for the South African national team. 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 (crafted soccer helmets), vuvuzelas (embellished soccer trumpets) and commercially produced soccer merchandise, such as clothing and taxi bumper stickers.

Also on show are personal tributes created by adoring fans and fine art by internationally acclaimed artists. Video installations and projections feature prominently in the exhibition and 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, which appear throughout the various themes of the exhibition.

Adding to the richness of the exhibition are documents and handmade badges by political prisoners on Robben Island, where soccer was played, and local cartoons from the popular press. Costumes and items such as 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, for example, a feature on African soccer audiences by Nigerian filmmaker and photographer, Andrew Dosunmu, who has been documenting supporters of African soccer for the last eight years. In January this year, Dosunmu documented fans at the 2010 Orange Africa Cup of Nations matches in Luanda, Angola – the tournament for which Standard Bank is the official financial sponsor. A selection of 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.

A further fascinating element of the exhibition relates to isangoma and inyanga, diviners and healers from different language groups across South Africa, who use traditional medicine and ritual practices to ensure a winning performance from their favoured team and for protection from the magic of rival traditional practitioners. To give voice to such issues, 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.

The Standard Bank Alan Crump Postgraduate Scholarship was launched by Mr Derek Cooper and Caroline Crump today. The announcement took place on what would have been Crump’s 61st birthday and is intended to pay tribute to one of South Africa’s most important contributors to the art world, as an artist, educator and advisor. In 1980 Crump became a professor and youngest ever departmental head at the University of the Witwatersrand, heading up the Department of Fine Arts, a position he held for nearly 30 years. This prestigious scholarship is the first of its kind: the only Postgraduate scholarship specifically offered for the study of Fine Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand.

The scholarship is open to applicants in their final year of Fine Arts or conducting postgraduate studies at any institution, provided that they register for the Fine Arts course at Wits. Details about the scholarship are still being finalised, but students wishing to apply for 2011 can obtain application forms from the Fine Arts Department at Wits towards the end of the year.

Crump, who received BA and MA Fine Arts degrees from the Michaelis School of art at UCT, as well as the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship for an MFA at the University of California in Los Angeles, was renowned for his invaluable contribution to the South African art world. Crump was a sculptor and watercolour artist whose works are in both private and corporate collections around the country. He also made his mark as an educator, lecturing at Michaelis, UNISA and eventually going on to become Professor and Head of the Department of Fine Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand. He was an arts advisor to the Standard Bank, helping to build its corporate collection, as well as curator of some of the Standard Bank Gallery’s most successful shows. He is acknowledged as being instrumental in bringing the acclaimed Chagall and Miro exhibitions to the gallery.

In addition, Crump served as chairman of the Grahamstown National Arts Festival’s Governing Committee for a number of years, and was known to be in strong support of art awards that came with tangible benefits, saying that “Artists should get an incentive for their work.” It is Crump’s longstanding belief that art should be regarded and conducted as a legitimate profession that inspired the scholarship. At the opening of the Bonnie Ntshalintshali Museum in 2003, Crump remarked that “When someone dies, it is what they leave behind that counts.” In offering this opportunity to worthy candidates, the Standard Bank hopes to continue his legacy.

ISSUED BY: The Heritage Agency on behalf of Standard Bank Gallery
For further information please contact:
Jo-Anne Duggan
The Heritage Agency
Tel: 083 285 3600
Email: jo-anne@heritageagency.co.za

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.’

‘Umtshotsho’ is the exhibition of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Art winner, Nicholas Hlobo, and it runs at the Standard Bank Gallery from 30 March to 8 May 2010. This year-long exhibition began at the National Arts Festival in June 2009 and has travelled around the country. Its run in Johannesburg precedes the final leg, which takes place in Cape Town in August.

Prominent in Hlobo’s work is his focus on his Xhosa heritage, the idioms of his language and the evolution of traditions over time. He also explores ideas around sexual identity, and his place as a gay man in Xhosa society. The theme of this exhibition is centred on 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. Umtshotsho rarely takes place in its original 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.”

Running concurrently in the downstairs gallery will be ‘City and Suburban’, an exhibition of paintings by Johannesburg-based artist, Karin Preller. Her images are carefully extracted from personal pictorial archives, in this instance, stills from home movies filmed in the 1960s. According to Preller, they inscribe her family’s presence into the stream of consciousness of Johannesburg, the city in which she grew up and still lives, and which remains integral to her art. Says Preller, “The paintings chronicle ordinary lived moments of individuals, paused and rewound; interrupted narratives and lost stories.”

Cecil Skotnes said that Ngatane “put his thumbprint on the history of South African art”. In the course of his short-lived but illustrious career, Ngatane made a marked impression on the art of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, creating artworks that captured the essence of township living and conveyed emotion and depth.

Ngatane studied under Skotnes at the Polly Street Art Centre from 1952-1954, during which time he developed his unique method and experimented with different media, from gouache and watercolour to oil paint. Although many artists of that time used the township as their subject matter, what set Ngatane apart was his approach – he used abstract, geometric shapes and a wide spectrum of colour to create compositions that are both aesthetically appealing and emotive.

Through his art Ngatane portrayed life in Soweto: emotions spanning from despair to hope, the soul of the township, its beggars, bicycles and barbershops, and the wind, snow and sun. While his work serves as a narrative of the hardship of living in Soweto, which was overcrowded and dirty, Ngatane was also concerned with depicting the music, sport and social life of the township.

The style of Ngatane’s work ranges from documentary realism to abstract painting, but is always distinctively his own and focuses on the gritty reality of township life. Ngatane died of tuberculosis in 1971 at almost 33 years of age, but his work remains important to an understanding of South African art and township life under apartheid.

A hardcover book on Ngatane, entitled A Setting Apart, edited by Rory Bester, will be launched at the opening of the exhibition, which is curated by Natalie Knight.

Running concurrently in the downstairs gallery is ‘Harmony’, an exhibition of Natasha Christopher’s artworks focusing on Welkom, where she spent her formative years.

Michael MacGarry, 2010 Standard Bank Young Artist Award winner for Visual Art, is proof that creativity cannot be confined.

This 31 year old Johannesburg-based visual artist, graphic designer and author draws from various creative wells to unpack and critically analyze contemporary socio-political and economic narratives on the African continent through his visual creations.

“From a young age I have always wanted to work across a number of creative fields, from visual art, to design and writing,” said MacGarry. “Now as an adult I do work across these fields, but the visual art component allows me to integrate all these elements in producing dense, theatrical and fictional hybrids.”

“Michael’s genius is the particular way he transforms an object we know into something completely different, another reality that is still recognisable,” said acclaimed artist Andrew Verster, National Arts Festival committee member for Visual Art. “At times subtle, at others radical, the new objects are so hypnotic, so plausible, so clever, so tantalising that we can never look at any of his sources in the same way again. We are torn between what we know to be fact and what he offers as an alternative.”

MacGarry holds a Masters Degree in Fine Art from the University of the Witwatersrand, and began his graphic design career in 2000 with Sexton Design & Media in Dublin, Ireland before moving to London in 2002 to join Brockway Associates as a graphic designer. In 2003 he returned to South Africa, and joined The Trinity Session as manager of The Premises Gallery. In 2006 he joined Fever Identity Design in Johannesburg as a graphic designer, where he is currently based.

“This unique award represents a substantial vote of confidence and a show of institutional support in my career. As a young artist one cannot ask for better,” said MacGarry.

MacGarry is a member of the Johannesburg-based visual art collective AVANT CAR GUARD, who have shown at a national and international level for several years. In partnership with Zander Blom, Michael is also a member of visual arts collaborative Blom & MacGarry Presents.

No stranger to the national and international exhibition scene, MacGarry’s art has travelled to Germany, the UK and the USA. His work is housed in numerous private and corporate collections both locally and abroad, including the Seattle Art Museum and the Johannesburg Art Gallery. Brodie/Stevenson in Johannesburg represents his visual art career.

MacGarry is looking forward to producing a comprehensive body of new work at a substantial scale in the year to come. “The award is a unique opportunity to realize a series of large-scale works I have been developing for a number of years, but was previously unable to produce due to budget and contextual constraints,” said MacGarry. “The award affords me a well-funded, institutional context to both produce and exhibit these works at a national level.” As part of his Standard Bank Young Artist Award prize, MacGarry will be funded to exhibit at the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, in 2010.

MacGarry’s work has been acknowledged and awarded in a range of arts circles. In 2009, he was a finalist for a Loerie Award (Publication Design) and for the SOUTH Design Awards. In 2008 he was a finalist for the MTN New Contemporaries Award. He was awarded a Full Merit Scholarship from the University of the Witwatersrand in 2005, and a National Arts Council Individual Artist Grant in 2004.

As a writer, MacGarry recently wrote, designed and illustrated a 180-page monograph and reference book on South African graphic design, titled Skill Set One – A Primer in South African Graphic Design, published by David Krut Publishing. He is regularly published in several magazines including: Art South Africa, Design Indaba, One Small Seed, Stage and House & Leisure. Michael is also co-publisher, with Lloyd Gedye, of The Pavement Special, a tri-annual magazine dedicated to independent South African music.

“The Standard Bank Young Artist Award is unique for a number of reasons,” said MacGarry. “It is multi-disciplinary, recognising cultural and creative production across a number of platforms and media. It is also an unsolicited award rather than an open entry competition, which seems to be the norm for South African corporate patronage of the arts. All of these aspects differentiate the award from any other in the country.”

“Most importantly, as a recipient, this award allows me a space to produce unique works independent of the hegemony of the gallery system, coupled with a real budget and a national platform. Sincere thanks to the National Arts Festival and Standard Bank for this opportunity,” said MacGarry.

Additional information on Michael MacGarry

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
- This is your world in which we grow, and we will grow to hate you (Solo exhibition at Brodie/Stevenson, Johannesburg, March 2010)
- When enough people start saying the same thing (Solo exhibition at Brodie/Stevenson, Johannesburg, August 2008)
- True/Story (Solo exhibition at KZNSA Gallery, Durban, March 2008)
- Or Until the World Improves (Solo exhibition at The Premises Gallery, Johannesburg, July 2004)

GROUP EXHIBITIONS
- A Life Less Ordinary (Touring group exhibition at National Photography Gallery of Wales, U.K. April – June 2010)
- A Life Less Ordinary (Group exhibition at Djangoly Gallery, Nottingham, U.K. September - November 2009)
- Brodie/Stevenson at the Joburg Art Fair (Booth 13, Sandton Convention Centre, April 2009)
- Not-Self (Group exhibition at Brodie/Stevenson, March 2009)
- Why Not? (Group exhibition curated by Christian Ganzenberg, at Kuckei + Kuckei – Berlin, Germany, March 2009)
- Artist's Books (Group exhibition at Brodie/Stevenson, Johannesburg, December 2008)
- Book launch for Skill Set ONE – A Primer in South African Graphic Design by Michael MacGarry (180 page monograph on South African graphic design written, designed and illustrated by Michael MacGarry – published by David Krut Publishing, October 2008)
- Drawing Show (A group exhibition curated by Michael MacGarry of commissioned artworks by eleven leading South African graphic designers and illustrators, at DK Projects, Johannesburg, October 2008)
- Performing South Africa (A festival of South African video art and performance at the Hebbel am Ufer Theatre Complex – Berlin, Germany, September 2008)
- MTN New Contemporaries Awards (Bi-annual group exhibition and juried award curated by Melissa Mboweni at University of Johannesburg Arts Centre, August 2008)
- The New Spell (Group exhibition curated by Lucy Rayner at DK Projects – New York, USA, July 2008)
- Brodie/Stevenson at the Joburg Art Fair (Booth No. 1 – Sandton Convention Centre, March 2008)
- 6x6 (Group exhibition of the Society of Photographers at Rooke Gallery, Johannesburg, February 2008)
- The Trickster (Group exhibition at Brodie/Stevenson curated by David Brodie, February 2008)
- Impossible Monsters (Group exhibition at Brodie/Stevenson curated by David Brodie, January 2008)

QUALIFICATIONS
- Masters Degree in Fine Art (First Class Pass with Distinction), University of the Witwatersrand
- Honours Degree in Fine Art (Cum Laude), Technikon Natal

PUBLIC & CORPORATE COLLECTIONS
- University of the Witwatersrand Art Collection
- Seattle Art Museum
- Johannesburg Art Gallery
- The Marvellous Collection

AWARDS
- Standard Bank Young Artists Award winner: Visual Art (2010)
- Finalist The Loerie Awards, DE3A: Publication Design (2009)
- Finalist SOUTH Design Awards (2009)
- Finalist MTN New Contemporaries Award (2008)
- Full Merit Scholarship, University of the Witwatersrand (2005)
- National Arts Council Individual Artist Grant (2004)
- Cum Laude, Dean’s Commendation (2000)

About the Standard bank Young Artist Awards:
The Young Artist Awards were started in 1981 by the National Arts Festival to acknowledge emerging, relatively young South African artists who have displayed an outstanding talent in their artistic endeavors. These prestigious awards are presented annually to deserving artists in different disciplines, affording them national exposure and acclaim. Standard Bank took over the sponsorship of the awards in 1984 and presented Young Artist Awards in all the major arts disciplines over their 26-year sponsorship, as well as posthumous and special recognition awards. The winners feature on the main programme of the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown and receive financial support for their Festival participation, as well as a cash prize.

ISSUED BY : THE FAMOUS IDEA TRADING CC
ON BEHALF OF : NATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL, GRAHAMSTOWN
CONTACT : GILLY HEMPHILL
TEL : 021 886 4900
CELL : 082 820 8584
EMAIL : gilly@thefamousidea.co.za

The 2010 Standard Bank Young Artists Award winner for Jazz, Melanie Scholtz, is one of South Africa’s rapidly rising musical stars.

Melanie Scholtz graduated cum laude from the UCT Opera School, and is a vocalist grounded in the down-to-earthiness of the blues, R&B and legendary jazz singers like Dee Dee Bridgewater and Billie Holiday.

“I am so honoured and humbled to have been selected to be part of a long line of musicians that have influenced me as a musician and human being,” said Scholtz. “It is such an incredible opportunity to strive and reach for greatness, and this has been proved possible by all the previous winners. We also have an important platform, opportunity and responsibility through music to change the world somehow,” she added.

Coming from a musical family, Melanie learnt to play the piano at the age of five. She then went to study singing with the Eoan Group at the age of 16. In 1997, Scholtz graduated from the UCT Opera School with distinction, but jazz was a permanent fixture in her vocabulary as a musician. “It just felt and still feels like the most natural and most honest way for me to express myself,” she said.

Scholtz said that her love affair with jazz started when she heard a version of White Christmas by Ella Fitzgerald and Lullabye of Birdland by Sarah Vaughan. “I was completely consumed with this music!” she said.

Melanie’s classical training gives her spectacular vocal technique, and she employs this as a basis in her search for jazz expression.

“Melanie Scholtz has a wonderful voice, with natural depth of timbre, inherent strength and flexibility. To this she has added hard work and discipline, which has produced one of the most versatile and beautiful voices in South African jazz,’” said Alan Webster, jazz teacher and National Arts Festival committee member for jazz. “With her heterogeneous background in opera, jazz and popular music she is able to span the confines of the different art forms to produce something fresh and exciting, appealing both to audiences and her fellow musicians.”

Scholtz said that her love for music was nurtured by her parents from a very young age.

“My journey as an artist started as far back as performances for my family in my grandmother's living room,” she said. “Both my parents love music, and there was always something playing, either on my Dad's turntable or on the tape deck, remember those!” she laughed. “My Dad played in a band in the 70's. He played alto sax and so there was always some Cannonball Adderley, Sonny Stitt and Charlie Parker playing. He also played a lot of Sarah Vaughan, Nancy Wilson, Dinah Washington and of course, the incredible Ella Fitzgerald. My mom always played me lots of classical, opera and oratorio. So I felt a bit schizophrenic musically, as I really fell in love with both genres.”

In 2002, Scholtz went on to win Best Jazz Vocalist in the Old Mutual Jazz encounters, and in 2006 she released her debut album entitled Zillion Miles.

Her voice has not only won her awards and competitions, but also favour and acclaim. In 2003, for example, she sang the South African National anthem for the Presidents’ Cup Golf tournament to former South African president Nelson Mandela, and the world.

Invited to perform in Spain, Portugal, Holland, Morocco, Norway, Sweden and Austria, Melanie collaborates with numerous artists both nationally and internationally. Last year she recorded in Stockholm with two stalwarts of the Swedish jazz scene – alto saxophonist Johan Hörlén and bassist Martin Sjöstedt, both of whom have performed in Grahamstown at the Standard Bank Jazz Festival on a number of occasions.

She has performed with a who's who of the South African jazz scene, as well as with international musicians such as Norwegian Band “Inkala”, Belgian jazz pianist Jack van Poll, Al Jarreau and Joe Mcbride. Melanie lectured in jazz vocal studies at the University of Cape Town from 2004 – 2005. She has been involved with Artscape’s youth jazz development projects since 2006 as well as being a composer/lyricist/writer and director.

“Music is such an amazing language, and I feel that as musicians we form part of such a special breed of people. No matter where we are from, we all speak music!” she said.

Scholtz said that she wanted to use the opportunity of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award to share a sense of freedom through expression and improvisation. “I want to reach people from all walks of life through jazz, as well as be an ambassador for South African jazz. I want to use this platform as a way to enrich and educate, and most of all, spread the joy and freedom of jazz.”

“I am looking forward to seeing music from different perspectives,” said Scholtz. “I want to find the best of myself so I can have more knowledge and experiences to give back,” she added.

Scholtz recorded her second album in February 2009 with Norwegian trumpeter and producer, Ole Jorn Myklebust. Apart from her own compositions and recordings, she has collaborated and is featured on Peaceful Moment with guitarist Jimmy Dludlu and on Which way to go with Electronic DJ’s Iridium Project. Both these singles went to number one on SA radio. She has also been featured on albums by Mark Fransman, Ivan Mazuse, Goldfish and Breakfast Included.

Scholtz has performed at numerous music festivals nationally and internationally and in August 2009 she recorded a live album with Inkala in Vadso at the Varanger Jazz Festival in Norway.

“With this award I would love to achieve the highest possible level of musicianship for myself, as well as grow and learn and open up to new experiences by working with a variety of musicians. I would like to find new ways to express jazz through my own music, as well as through the vast jazz repertoire that has come before,” she said.

“I think that, in these difficult financial times, Standard Bank has definitely taken the initiative and have been very brave and visionary in supporting the arts. A country's soul is its arts and culture, and I am proud to be associated with such a high profile brand,” she said.

About the Standard bank Young Artist Awards:

The Young Artist Awards were started in 1981 by the National Arts Festival to acknowledge emerging, relatively young South African artists who have displayed an outstanding talent in their artistic endeavors. These prestigious awards are presented annually to deserving artists in different disciplines, affording them national exposure and acclaim. Standard Bank took over the sponsorship of the awards in 1984 and presented Young Artist Awards in all the major arts disciplines over their 26-year sponsorship, as well as posthumous and special recognition awards. The winners feature on the main programme of the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown and receive financial support for their Festival participation, as well as a cash prize.

ISSUED BY : THE FAMOUS IDEA TRADING CC
ON BEHALF OF : NATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL, GRAHAMSTOWN
CONTACT : GILLY HEMPHILL
TEL : 021 886 4900
CELL : 082 820 8584
EMAIL : gilly@thefamousidea.co.za

Samson Diamond is an internationally acclaimed violinist with a string of awards to his name. His latest accolade, ushering in his return to South African stages, is the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Music 2010.

“This award is a wonderful validation and comes at a time when I am returning to South Africa to develop an audience from differing ends of the spectrum, both the classical and the light listener alike,” said Diamond. “I must admit that it is truly unexpected, and wholly humbling that, having walked such a short path, I have been recognized.”

Diamond matriculated from the National School of Arts in Johannesburg in 2001, with a distinction in Music. He then went on to study in Manchester, obtaining a Masters of Music Performance degree (with distinction) in 2007 from the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM), where he also obtained a Bachelor of Music honours degree (first class, with distinction). He has studied violin under world-renowned teachers such as Philippe Graffin, Pauline Nobes, Richard Ireland and Rosemary Nalden.

“I think of a musical journey as a stream of water. It flows from one point to the other, with no definite point of where it begins or ends,” said Diamond. “Personally, I think that the awareness of my musical journey began when I felt wholly liberated by music and that elevated me to another sphere, where beauty transcended earthly struggles.”

Some of the awards that Diamond received during his studies include the RNCM Eric Nicholson Bow Prize, the RNCM Major Entrance Award, Edward Heaton Scholarship as well as the RNCM Philip Newman Violin Prize. In 2006/07 he was a candidate for the Hallé Orchestra and BBC Philharmonic professional experience schemes, and a recipient of the Charles Hallé Award in 2007/08.

“Awards to young artists are imperative in the struggle of practicing your art,” said Diamond. “There are many hours one spends practicing as a violinist, or any other instrumentalist for that matter, and it makes it worthwhile if one is rewarded at the end. Awards are inspiring, encouraging and motivating for young artists, as they may help the artist not to alter their aspirations because of a lack of financial support or recognition.”

Apart from winning exceptional awards, Diamond has also won sought-after scholarships, including the Buskaid Charitable Trust, the Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust and the RNCM’s Canon Collins Trust.

Diamond said that he wanted to use his Young Artist’s year to collaborate and perform. “My philosophy is ‘the further you go, the further there is to go’. Never stop searching. I look forward to performing to South African audiences,” said Diamond. “Of course, there will be high expectations, but what standards can you produce without expectation?”

No stranger to high expectations, Diamond’s music gift has brought him before royalty. Some of the distinguished guests that he has performed for include Nelson Mandela, Queen Elizabeth II, The Duke of Edinburgh, HRH The Duke of York, Tony Blair, Thabo Mbeki, Gerhard Schröder, and New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark.

“Samson is a natural performer and such an approachable person. He is a delight to work with and as one of the most talented of the new generation of string players to come out of SA,” said popular South African conductor Richard Cock, who is on the National Arts Festival committee for music. “This award will give him the profile and boost he needs to put him in the limelight, and to show South Africans what amazing talent we really have!”

At the beginning of 2009, Diamond toured Europe, performing at prestigious halls including the Berlin Philharmonie in Berlin, Bela Bartok National Concert Hall in Budapest, and the Musikverein in Vienna, with the Academy of St Martin in the Fields conducted by Sir Neville Marriner.

As a freelance violinist during 2007 and 2008, he worked for the Hallé Orchestra, the Academy of St Martins in the Fields, the BBC Philharmonic, Manchester Camerata, and the Academy of Ancient Music, gaining experience under world-renowned conductors including Sir Neville Marriner, Sir Mark Elder, Gianandrea Noseda, Yan Pascal Tortellier, and Stanislav Skrowacevski. In March 2007 he appeared as co-leader of the Freedom 200 orchestra at the national commemoration service for the bicentenary of the abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade Act at Westminster Abbey. During September and October 2008 he toured South America, Germany, and Austria with the Hallé Orchestra conducted by Sir Mark Elder.

Diamond is also a former leader of the internationally acclaimed Buskaid Soweto String Ensemble, from its inception in 1997. As a leader of the Buskaid Ensemble, he made five recordings to date and successfully collaborated in concerts with international artists such as Steven Isserlis and Bernarda Fink, and with members of the English Baroque Soloists, as well as the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. He performed at the 2007 BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall with the English Baroque Soloists and Montiverdi Choir conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, and as leader and member of the Buskaid Soweto String Ensemble.

“This Standard Bank Young Artist Award grants me a platform to re-introduce world-class music to an audience that may have not been particularly interested. Coming from Soweto, and being a classically trained violinist is quite unique, so I want to share with people and demonstrate through my skills that perhaps differing musical perceptions suggest a lack of understanding and not a lack of appreciation,” said Diamond about his expectations of South African audiences, and the year to come. “It’s the same with sport. When people do not understand a certain sport they tend not to appreciate or follow it.”

Diamond is no stranger to South African audiences, and has appeared as a soloist with leading orchestras in South Africa in 1997, 1999 and 2002, including the Buskaid Ensemble under the baton of Sir John Eliot Gardiner. In 1999, on tour with the Buskaid Ensemble, he performed as a soloist in a community concert with L’orchestre Nationale d’ France.

In June and July of 2008, he worked with the Haringey Young Musicians in London as violin coach and soloist, visiting schools in North London and introducing classical music to under-privileged communities. He also toured Jamaica with the Haringey Young Musicians. In July 2009 he extended his community service reach to his home country, where he directed and appeared as soloist with the string ensemble from the South African National Youth Orchestra.

Diamond has received master classes from members of the Endellion String Quartet, the New Zealand String Quartet, and regular chamber lessons with Alisdair Tait and the late Dr Chris Rowland. The Diamond Quartet has participated at the London String Quartet Symposium 2007, where they received master classes from top internationally acclaimed chamber musicians including Andras Keller, Johannes Meissl, Christoph Richter, Seppo Kimanen, Roger Tapping and Vladimir Mendelssohn.

Diamond said that he now wants to “pay it forward” to young people in South Africa by demonstrating how they can empower themselves through music to be ambassadors of excellence in whatever they strive for in life. “This is vital for our youth, whom I think are now being seduced by the acquisition of material possessions and less work,” said Diamond. “The essence of art is an act of conscious intention by rule, preliminary and preparatory design. I wish to demonstrate with this opportunity that determination of self-expression is what we should aim for. Music expresses externally what we conceive internally,” said Diamond.

About the Standard bank Young Artist Awards:

The Young Artist Awards were started in 1981 by the National Arts Festival to acknowledge emerging, relatively young South African artists who have displayed an outstanding talent in their artistic endeavors. These prestigious awards are presented annually to deserving artists in different disciplines, affording them national exposure and acclaim. Standard Bank took over the sponsorship of the awards in 1984 and presented Young Artist Awards in all the major arts disciplines over their 26-year sponsorship, as well as posthumous and special recognition awards. The winners feature on the main programme of the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown and receive financial support for their Festival participation, as well as a cash prize.

ISSUED BY : THE FAMOUS IDEA TRADING CC
ON BEHALF OF : NATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL, GRAHAMSTOWN
CONTACT : GILLY HEMPHILL
TEL : 021 886 4900
CELL : 082 820 8584
EMAIL : gilly@thefamousidea.co.za

The newly announced Standard Bank Young Artist Award winners for 2010 embody a group of artists that are multi-talented, collaborative and eclectic. These artists personify the era of creative cross-pollination that is fast becoming the new standard of artistic expression in the emerging arts-leadership generation.

The 2010 Standard Band Young Artist Award winners were announced last night at a function hosted by Standard Bank at the impressive Emoyeni Conference Centre in Parktown, Johannesburg.

These awards, recognised as one of the most prestigious of their kind in the country, honour young South African artists who are on the brink of national acclaim. Besides providing them with financial support and a platform for experimentation, it gives recognition to their exceptional talent.

“Over the past 26 years, the Standard Bank Young Artist Awards have been heralded by the artistic community as the most sought after accolade to catapult the careers of young artists into the national and international arena,” said National Arts Festival Director, Ismail Mahomed.

The winners of the 2010 Standard Bank Young Artist Awards are:

• Michael MacGarry for Visual Art
• Samson Diamond for Music
• Janni Young for Theatre
• Melanie Scholtz for Jazz
• Mlu Zondi for Dance
• Claire Angelique for Film>

This group of multifaceted young creative artists will be the ambassadors for South Africa’s emerging arts-talent in an intensely significant year for the nation. “As the world gathers in South Africa next year, these six artists will stand out as a testament to the enormous talent and cultural innovation that positions the South African arts sector as a significant player in the international arena,” said Mandie van der Spuy, head of art sponsorships at Standard Bank.

“This unique award represents a substantial vote of confidence and a show of institutional support in my career. As a young artist one cannot ask for better,” said graphic designer/ writer/visual artist/curator, Michael MacGarry, 2010 winner for Visual Art.

“The vision and initiative of corporate companies like Standard Bank who sponsor awards, recognise the talents and aspirations of young artists who would normally struggle without the financial support and platform,” said international violin maestro Samson Diamond, 2010’s winner for Music.

“The awards are a space to create, and are also a reflection on what is important to the artistic community of South Africa. It gives young artists a place and a voice in the ever-evolving cultural identity of South Africa,” said South Africa’s own “Geppetto”, Janni Young, 2010 winner for Theatre.

“I am so honoured and humbled to have been selected to be part of a long line of musicians that have influenced me as a musician and a human being,” said jazz-diva Melanie Scholtz, 2010 winner for Jazz. “It is such an incredible opportunity to strive and reach for greatness.”

“For a dancer who works in a conceptual art domain it was humbling to receive the award, because it made me realise I am on the right track,” said 2010 winner for dance, Mlu Zondi, “It assured me that my work is being noticed.”

“The award is headed in the right direction by embracing the mind and soul that destroys, rethinks, then reassembles to embrace the new or unexplored. By embracing young artists we are embracing the future and rewarding a new generation’s point of view,” said Claire Angelique, 2010 winner for Film.

“Over the past 26 years the Young Artist Awards have played a significant role in developing and promoting South Africa’s artistic talent,” said Standard Bank’s Mandie van der Spuy. ”We are proud to be able to continue contributing to the advancement of the artist’s careers as well as our country’s cultural heritage. The 2010 winners all demonstrate a passion for and dedication to their craft which will no doubt ensure that they reach the pinnacle of success in their artistic professions.”

“I think that, especially in the difficult financial times we find ourselves in, Standard Bank has definitely taken the initiative and have been very brave and visionary in supporting the arts as a country's treasure, and voice. I am proud to be associated with such a supportive brand,” said Scholtz.

“Standard Bank has taken a huge lead in terms of supporting young artists,” said Zondi. “This award puts you at the forefront of the South African art scene. You also get a huge platform being part of the National Arts Festival. What more can you ask for!” said an excited Zondi.

“The Standard Bank Young Artist award is unique for a number of reasons,” said MacGarry. “It is multi-disciplinary, recognising cultural and creative production across a number of platforms and media. It is also an unsolicited award rather than an open entry competition. All of these aspects differentiate the award from any other in the country.”

“Awards to young artists are imperative in the struggle of practicing your art,” said Diamond. “Awards help the artist not to alter their aspirations because of a lack of financial support or recognition.”

“The loyal support of Standard Bank over the past 26 years demonstrates the invaluable partnership between the arts and the corporate sector which is crucial if we are to grow and preserve a b cultural legacy,” said Mahomed.

As part of their prize, each of the winners will be featured on the Main Programme of the 2010 National Arts Festival in Grahamstown (20 June - 4 July 2010). This platform gives them the license to present an innovative piece of work that will première at the Festival.

“I believe that this dynamic group of Standard Bank Young Artists will be able to stand tall amongst all the previous winners of this prestigious award. They have become b ambassadors for South African art,” said Mahomed. “This ‘gallery’ of South African artists is perhaps the best cultural legacy that we can bestow on future generations of South Africans who will judge our civilization by the cultural legacy that we have promoted and preserved for them,” he added.

Previous Winners

• 1981
  Richard Grant, John Theodore, Jules van de Vijver
• 1982
  Janice Honeyman, Neil Rodger, Lindy Raizenberg
• 1983
  Paul Slabolepszy, Malcolm Payne, David Kosviner
• 1984
  Peter Schütz, Ken Leach
• Standard Bank - 1820 Foundation 10th Anniversary Special Award:Lamar Crowson
• 1985
  Marion Arnold, Maishe Maponya, Sidwill Hartman
• 1986
  Andrew Buckland, Gavin Younge
• 1987
  William Kentridge, Hans Roosenschoon
• 1988
  Margaret Vorster, Mbongeni Ngema
• 1989
  Johnny Clegg, Marthinus Basson, Helen Sebidi, Gary Gordon
• 1820 Foundation Special Award:Pieter-Dirk Uys
• 1990
  Robyn Orlin, Fée Halsted-Berning, Bonnie Ntshalintshali
• 1991
  Peter Ngwenya, Andries Botha, Darrell Roodt
• 1992
  Deon Opperman, Tommy Motswai, Raphael Vilakazi, Kevin Harris
• 1993
  Christopher Kindo, Sibongile Khumalo, Pippa Skotnes
• 1994
  Jerry Mofokeng, Sam Nhlengethwa, Michael Williams
• 1995
  Jane Alexander, Boyzie Cekwana, John Ledwaba, Abel Motsoadi
• 1996
  Lara Foot Newton, Trevor Makhoba, Vincent Mantsoe, Victor Masondo
• 1997
  Lien Botha, Geoffrey Hyland, Sibongile Mngoma
• Standard Bank Special Award for vision, commitment and contributionAlfred Hinkel
• 1998
  David Mudanalo Matamela, Debbie Rakusin, Bongani Ndodana, Nhlanhla Xaba, Aubrey Sekhabi
• 1999
  No awards made.
• 2000
  Zenzi Mbuli, Gloria Bosman, Alan Alborough
• 2001
  Tracey Human, Brett Bailey, Fikile Mvinjelwa, Walter Oltmann
• 2002
  Gregory Vuyani Moqoma, Sello Maake Ka Ncube, Prince Kupi, Brett Murray
• 2003
  Moya Michael, Yael Faber, Dumisani Phakathi, Angela Gilbert, Berni Searle
• 2004
  Kathryn Smith, Mncedisi Shabangu, Portia Lebohang Mashigo, Tutu Puone, Moses Taiwa Molelekwa (posthumously)
• 2005
  Wim Botha, P J Sabbagha, Andile Yenana, Mpumelelo Grootboom
• 2006
  Concord Nkabinde, Churchill Madikida, Hlengiwe Lushaba, Sylvaine Strike
• 2007
  Acty Tang, Bronwen Forbay, Shanon Mowday, Pieter Hugo, Akin Omotoso
• 2008
  Dada Masilo, Nontsikelelo ‘Lolo’ Veleko, Jaco Bouwer, Mark Fransman, Zanne Stapelberg
• 2009
  Thabo Rapoo, Kesivan Naidoo, Nicholas Hlobo, Jacques Imbrailo, Ntshieng Mokgoro.
• About the Standard bank Young Artist Awards:
  The Young Artist Awards were started in 1981 by the National Arts Festival to acknowledge emerging, relatively young South African artists who have displayed an outstanding talent in their artistic endeavors. These prestigious awards are presented annually to deserving artists in different disciplines, affording them national exposure and acclaim. Standard Bank took over the sponsorship of the awards in 1984 and presented Young Artist Awards in all the major arts disciplines over their 26-year sponsorship, as well as posthumous and special recognition awards. The winners feature on the main programme of the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown and receive financial support for their Festival participation, as well as a cash prize.

ISSUED BY : THE FAMOUS IDEA TRADING CC
ON BEHALF OF : NATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL, GRAHAMSTOWN
CONTACT : GILLY HEMPHILL
TEL: 021 886 4900
CELL : 082 820 8584
EMAIL : gilly@thefamousidea.co.za

Janni Younge has allured young and old into the world that she masterfully creates through puppetry. This year, she adds the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Theatre 2010 to her long list of accolades.

“I’d like to create a piece of theatre which touches on the fragility and beauty of the experience of being alive as a human being in the world,” said Younge about what she would like to achieve with the Young Artist Award. “I’d also like to use the opportunity to generate awareness about the magic that can be created when different art forms are brought together.”

Before completing a masters degree in Theater and Performance through the University of Cape Town (UCT) in 2007, Younge spent time in France from 1999 to 2002 to do a Diplome d’Etat des Métiers des Arts de la Marionnette (Diploma of Puppetry Arts) from the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts de la Marionnette (Higher National School of Puppetry Arts) in Charleville-Mezieres. This followed a first class BA from UCT in Fine Arts, majoring in sculpture and psychology.

Younge said that puppetry is about bringing objects and images into the theatrical spaces and through this synthesis create new relationships of meaning. “I would like this award to be about these relationships,” she said. “I am looking forward to creating relationships and collaborations around the award and to hopefully see something unfold that comes from within and then goes far beyond me.”

“The awards are a space to create, and also a reflection on what is important to the artistic community of South Africa. It gives young artists a place and a voice in the ever-evolving cultural identity of South Africa,” said Younge about the Standard Bank Young Artist Awards.

Younge’s talent, mixed with her passion and dedication to her craft, has attracted multiple awards and scholarships. Some of the prestigious scholarships that she has held includes the Siri Johnson Scholarship, KW Johnstone Scholarship, Twamey Scholarship, Noreen Saunders Scholarship, Luis Epstein Endowment Scholarship, Rosalie van der Gucht Scholarship and a CG Saker Scholarship. She was also nominated for a Fleur du Cap award for The Fire Raisers’ puppets.

Younge has been the CEO of UNIMA SA (The South African Association of Puppetry and Visual Performance) since 2006, as well as the director for the Cape Town based puppetry and visual performance festival. She is also director, producer and co-founder of Sogo Visual Theatre.

“For me, creating theatre is about generating images, energies and dynamics that somehow approach the experience of being human,” said Younge. “Whether I’m creating a festival, directing puppet theatre or making a puppet or mask for someone’s production, I’m asking myself: What energy does this thing have? What am I putting out there, and what is the intention I have in creating this? What this award means to me personally is that people are hearing the resonance of this creative process, and somehow, somewhere it is creating positive echoes for them too.”

In 2009, she was responsible for the design and construction of the puppets and puppet choreography for Janice Honeyman’s magnificent production of The Tempest, co-produced by the Baxter Theatre Centre and the Royal Shakespeare Company, performed at the Baxter, The Courtyard (RSC) and subsequent tour in the UK. Some other stage productions that she created the puppets for include Pictures of You, Kock up, Quack!, High Diving and the spectacular Giant African Parade Puppets, all of which featured at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown.

In 2008, Younge was writer, director and designer of Thandi, performed at the International Festival of Puppetry in Kilkis, Greece. She was also involved with productions including Elise’s Adventures in Congoland, Shooting the Rain, the construction of life-sized elephants for the Bastille Day parade, and was the South African delegate to the International Congress of Puppetry (held every four years).

Younge was responsible for the design and construction of the puppets used in Romeo and Juliette, presented at Cape Town’s Maynardville in 2007. Other major productions include being visual consultant for Amadeus, directed by Lara Foot Newton and Magnet Theatre’s The Fire Raisers, with shows in The Baxter Theatre, Schlachthaus Theater (Bern), La Parfumerie (Geneva) and Temple Allemand (La Chaux-de-Fonds).

“Janni Younge is a remarkably talented young woman, whose work seems to symbolize the very essence of the new imaging in theatre that Cape Town is producing. An artist to watch!” said National Arts Festival committee member for Drama, Malcolm Purkey.

Younge has been involved with puppet construction and manipulation for various corporate and community theatre productions, as well as for television commercials and children’s programmes. She has also directed, designed and constructed puppets for The Cape Town International Comedy Festival.

Younge has co-ordinated youth development programmes, including UWC’s Brown Paper Studio in District 6, and has worked with the British Council’s environmental education programme. She was director, workshop facilitator, puppet designer and collaborative script writer for Pulling Strings, The Africa Project, a street puppetry performance devised by youth against corruption in Jerusalem and Mpumelanga. She has also presented a shadow puppetry course taught over nine weeks at the Dominican School for the Deaf, and has been a drama tutor at UCT.

From 1993 until 1998 she ran Somersault children’s puppet theatre, which did regular performances in schools, hospitals and private homes in Cape Town.

Younge co-curated At arm’s length, an exhibition of Malian and South African puppets at the Museum of African Art, New York. She handled the curation, exhibition design and installation of Patrimony, an exhibition of Malian puppets in the Sasol Art Gallery, Stellenbosch, the Irma Stern Museum, the Gold of Africa Museum in Cape Town and Museum Africa in Johannesburg. She has also participated in various solo and group exhibitions.

Younge has taken part in many international exchanges and workshops on puppetry. These include a study of Bonraku puppetry with the National Bonraku Theatre of Japan in Charleville-Mézières, and training in the Paris studio of Alain Duvern, Images et Mouvement (creators of Gignol’s d’Info). She has also had apprenticeships with the puppeteer Bob Hartman of Hartman Entertainment and Nina Gerasimov, former head puppeteer of the Bolshoi Theatre in St. Petersburg.

Younge, who recently became mom to a beautiful baby girl, says that she is also looking forward to the great challenge of being a mother and an artist at the same time.

“There are so many ways we find to give form and expression to the inner workings of the mind and imagination, and each one of those is a step on the journey of being an artist,” said Younge. “Maybe my journey is starting now. Or perhaps it hasn’t started yet and all of this has been a journey towards tomorrow where I will start a new moment.”

About the Standard bank Young Artist Awards:
The Young Artist Awards were started in 1981 by the National Arts Festival to acknowledge emerging, relatively young South African artists who have displayed an outstanding talent in their artistic endeavors. These prestigious awards are presented annually to deserving artists in different disciplines, affording them national exposure and acclaim. Standard Bank took over the sponsorship of the awards in 1984 and presented Young Artist Awards in all the major arts disciplines over their 26-year sponsorship, as well as posthumous and special recognition awards. The winners feature on the main programme of the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown and receive financial support for their Festival participation, as well as a cash prize.

ISSUED BY : THE FAMOUS IDEA TRADING CC
ON BEHALF OF : NATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL, GRAHAMSTOWN
CONTACT : GILLY HEMPHILL
TEL : 021 886 4900
CELL : 082 820 8584
EMAIL : gilly@thefamousidea.co.za

34-year old Durban born-and-bred Mlu Zondi is the 2010 Standard Bank Young Artist Award winner for dance.

This dynamic, out-of-the-box performer moves seamlessly between the stage, gallery and public spaces, and challenges the boundaries of the dance discipline with his cutting edge performance art, video and multimedia installations.

“As a young artist, winning this award puts you on the forefront of the South African art scene. It boosts your confidence immensely, allowing you to create without the self-censorship that comes with uncertainty. You also get a huge platform at the National Arts Festival, exposing your work to a wider audience. What more can you ask for!” said an excited Zondi.

“Mlu is thoughtful, considered and a complex creator and performer,” said Jay Pather, National Arts Festival committee member for dance, and a previous lecturer of Zondi’s. “He is a substantial thinker and creates work that is evocative as well as enigmatic and mysterious. He is not your average 'flash' dancer, and will more likely sweep one away with a quiet anarchy and a profound intelligence than try to please you with superficial entertainment,” he added.

Zondi describes his early experiences as an orphan growing up with an extended family as instrumental in his drive to perform. Growing up in the 1980's and early 1990's he was active as a Pansula dancer, and felt that performance allowed him to stand out and be special.

His urge to study with no financial means made him work as a petrol attendant for three years after matriculating, saving for his further studies. This tenacity and endurance is still evident in his work, in a context where the level of experimentation and risk in performance culture is rare.

“My works are my confrontations with issues that haunt me: identity, relationships and childhood memoirs. Suppressed emotions emerge during creations and performances that become therapeutic,” he said. “As a performer with a theatre background, I had to find a style that will not only expose itself in one genre, but can actually be celebrated in a variety of artistic platforms,” he said.

After completing a performance diploma at the Durban University of Technology (DUT), Zondi worked in commercial and corporate theatre for a while. His career as an international performer and artistic director was launched when he was invited to do a residency in Switzerland in 2002, with an opportunity to perform at the Lausanne International Dance Festival.

His exceptional talent and determination, combined with his ability to maximize opportunities, opened the doors to various international grants and residencies, and has led to multiple award nominations.

“My work incorporates various genres, including video-art and installations. With this Young Artist Award I want to develop the creations even further, and I want to instil a signature style of performance art video installations using dance as a base for performance and body politics,” said Zondi.

Zondi’s dance / installation crossover experimentation paid off in 2006, when he won the MTN New Contemporaries Award for his work Silhouette. He was nominated for both the MEC Gauteng Best Original Choreography and the Durban Theatre Awards Best Choreographer awards as well.

Zondi’s first dance residency was with Boyzie Cekwana's Floating Outfit Projects in Durban in 2001. In 2002 he attended a residency with Theatre Sevelin 36 in Lausanne, Switzerland and in 2003 he completed a residency with the FNB Dance Umbrella in Johannesburg.

Since then, Zondi has taken part in various international residencies. In 2007 he was dancing on the stages of South Korea in the Seoul Performing Arts Company’s Orpheus. In 2008 he was in Spain with the Rodriguez-Amat Foundation of Contemporary Arts and in Belgium with the KVS Theatre in Brussels, as well as with the Bains:Connective Art Laboratory. In October 2009, he attended the prestigious Kuns:Raum Foundation in Sylt Quelle, Germany.

Even with all of the international recognition, Zondi’s integrity remains paramount. He speaks about his creations as an outlet for his own emotional journey. “The object is to see how far his work can grow and how it will look once it is complete,” he said. “That challenge keeps me working all the time, as there will always be new material to be added to the work and new structures to be included. That means I will never be out of work and will always have a space to crush my demons.”

In 2008 Zondi created two new works, Experimenta and Vertigo.

Experimenta was performed at the Bains:Connective, Brussels at the end of his residency. The show also formed part of a group exhibition, Scratching the Surface Vol. 1 at the AVA Gallery in August 2008, and Modern Fabrics at the Bag Factory Studios in September 2008.

Vertigo was created and performed during a performance art workshop held at the Bag Factory Studios in Johannesburg, July 2008. It was also performed during a women's festival at the Market Theatre Precinct in August 2008.

Zondi’s award winning show Silhouette was performed at KVS, Brussels as part of Faustin Linyekula, Carte Blanche, in April 2008, and was most recently seen in Cape Town at the Cape Africa Platform, with Thando Mama responsible for the live video images. This follows successful and acclaimed performances of the work at the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, FNB Dance Umbrella in Johannesburg and Jomba Contemporary Dance Festival in Durban. An earlier version of Silhouette premièred at the National Dance Centre in Paris, France in 2005 as a work-in-progress during a festival of contemporary African dance, curated by Faustin Linyekula.

Some of his latest works include his video work Mirage, that was part of the Postcards on the Edge Documentary screened at the Guth Gafa Documentary Festival in Ireland in 2009. Despotica, a performance art video installation, was exhibited at the KZNSA Gallery in April 2009.

Zondi is currently working in a new series Cinema, which utilizes multi-screened performance art video installations. Cinema will première in 2010 in South Africa and tour internationally thereafter.

Apart from being an exceptional performer, Zondi has also tried his hand successfully at arts administration. He was the regional coordinator for the Performing Arts Network of South Africa in KwaZulu-Natal (PANSA KZN) during 2005/06.

He currently works under the banner of Sololique Projects (established in 2000 whilst he was still a student), a performance company with himself as Artistic Director and principal member, incorporating other collaborators.

Zondi’s early artistic influences include Jay Pather, a lecturer at DUT in 2000, and Boyzie Cekwana, the latter a role model as a teenager.

“It is significant that work that transcends disciplines, in that it engages with visual arts and new media, is given prominence,” said Pather. “It takes our art onto exciting frontiers, and pushes the envelope on how we look and express ourselves.”

“2010 is going to be an exciting year indeed,” said Zondi.

CURRICULUM VITAE: MLU ZONDI
Born in Clermont, Durban.

Currently living and working in Durban, South Africa

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS AND PERFORMANCE PROJECTS

2009:
Mirage, performance art video installation, Guth Gafa Documentary Festival 09, Ireland
Despotica, solo exhibition, performance art video installation, KZNSA Gallery, Durban

2008:
Experimenta, installation performance exhibition, Bag Factory Gallery, Johannesburg
Vertigo, site-specific performance, Kizo Gallery, Durban
Vertigo, site-specific performance, Market Theatre Precinct, Johannesburg
Experimenta, installation performance exhibition, AVA Gallery, Cape Town
Vertigo, site-specific performance, Bag Factory Gallery, Johannesburg
Silhouette, Installation performance, KVS Theatre, Brussels, Belgium
Experimenta, Installation performance, Bains Connective, Brussels, Belgium

2007:
Orpheus, Multi-media performance with Seoul Performing Arts Company, Seoul, South Korea
Incognito, Installation performance, Dance Umbrella, Johannesburg
Silhouette, Installation performance, Cape 07, Cape Town
Incognito, Installation performance, Cape 07,Cape Town

2006:
Silhouette, performance, Cape Africa Platform, Cape Town,
Silhouette, performance, Jomba Dance Festival, Durban,
Silhouette, performance, National Arts Festival, Grahamstown
Silhouette, performance, FNB Dance Umbrella, Johannesburg
Silhouette, installation performance, Johannesburg Art Gallery
XeYed, Installation performance, Red Eye Art, Durban Art Gallery

2005:
Silhouette, performance, Centre for National Dance (CND), Paris, France
Incognito, Installation performance, Red Eye Art, Durban Art Gallery

2004:
Identikit, Solo exhibition, site-specific performances KZNSA Gallery, Durban
Labyrinthine, Installation performance, ArtSpace Durban
Fontana, Installation performance, Red Eye Art, Durban Art Gallery

2003:
AmnestyAbsence, site-specific performance, Red Eye Art, Durban Art Gallery
Abel&Kane , performance, Macufe Art Festival, Bloemfontein
Abel&Kane , performance, Jomba Dance Festival, Durban
Sololique: Rafiki, Installation performance, FNB Dance Umbrella, Johannesburg

2002:
Sololique: Rafiki, Installation performance, Lausanne International Dance Festival, Switzerland

2001:
Sololique: Tohubohu, performance, Jomba Dance Festival, Durban

AWARDS
2006
MTN New Contemporaries Award (Won)
MEC Gauteng for Best Original Choreography (nominated)
Durban Theatre Awards, Best Choreographer (nominated)

RESIDENCIES
2009
Kuns:Raum Foundation, Sylt Quelle, Germany
2008
Rodriguez-Amat Foundation of Contemporary Arts, Barcelona, Spain KVS Theatre, Brussels, Belgium Bains:Connective Art Laboratory. , Brussels, Belgium
2007
Seoul Performing Arts Company, South Korea.
2003
Dance Umbrella Residency, Johannesburg
2002
Theatre Sevelin 36, Lausanne, Switzerland.
2001
Boyzie Cekwana's Floating Outfit Projects, Durban

GRANTS
2008
Africalia, Belgium
2007
National Art Council of South Africa Pro-Helvetia SA
2006
National Arts Council of South Africa NAF Main Festival Grant
Jomba Choreographers Grant
FNB Dance Umbrella Grant
2004
KZNSA Gallery Young Artists Projects Grant
2003
Jomba Young Choreographers Grant

WORK EXPERIENCE
2000 - present
Artistic Director, Sololique Projects
2005-6
Regional coordinator, Performing Arts Network of South Africa, KwaZulu-Natal (PANSA KZN)
2006.
Art Consultant, Cultural Radius Arts Consultants.

EDUCATION
2005
NQF 5, Arts Administration, Create SA
2000
National Diploma, Performance Studies, Durban University of Technology
1994
Matric, Hunt Road Secondary School

About the Standard bank Young Artist Awards:
The Young Artist Awards were started in 1981 by the National Arts Festival to acknowledge emerging, relatively young South African artists who have displayed an outstanding talent in their artistic endeavors. These prestigious awards are presented annually to deserving artists in different disciplines, affording them national exposure and acclaim. Standard Bank took over the sponsorship of the awards in 1984 and presented Young Artist Awards in all the major arts disciplines over their 26-year sponsorship, as well as posthumous and special recognition awards. The winners feature on the main programme of the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown and receive financial support for their Festival participation, as well as a cash prize.

ISSUED BY : THE FAMOUS IDEA TRADING CC
ON BEHALF OF : NATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL, GRAHAMSTOWN
CONTACT : GILLY HEMPHILL
TEL : 021 886 4900
CELL : 082 820 8584
EMAIL : gilly@thefamousidea.co.za

Claire Angelique, 2010 Standard Bank Young Artist Award winner for film, is an explosion of boundary-pushing creative expression, in the most literal sense of the word.

Angelique is not only one of South Africa’s edgiest upcoming scriptwriters and filmmakers, but also an award-winning choreographer, dancer and video-artist. In between juggling multiple creative careers, she has managed 15 bands and DJ’s, coordinated national community radio youth programmes, ventured into public relations, and writes for many of the major contemporary South African arts, music and entertainment publications. All of this at barely 30!

“This award has put me on the best natural high I've had since being green-lighted into the production of my first feature film My Black Little Heart,” said Angelique about winning the Young Artist Award.

My Black Little Heart, a dark and deeply personal narrative exposing Durban’s sinister side, was produced by Zentropa Entertainment with cinematography by Slumdog Millionaire’s Anthony Dod Mantle. It featured on the 2009 National Arts Festival’s Film programme in Grahamstown, after premièring at the Durban International Film Festival in 2008.

“To be assaulted by a South African film made by a young Durban girl which is totally original and unique and which is made with a total respect and understanding of film language is very rare,” said Trevor Steele Taylor, National Arts Festival committee member for film. “She is one the best that we have in South Africa, and her talent should not be ignored.”

“First of all, its vindication of one’s potential ability,” said Angelique when asked about the value of the award for her as a young artist. “I think any artist at some point, or more realistically at many intervals, is gripped by the icy hand of insecurity. Questions that seep into your creative consciousness are no longer conducive to new ideas or astounding revelations that can be transported into your chosen medium, but irritating stabs of self-doubt. Awards won are like glimpses into your audiences psyche, they're a gift that qualifies your endeavours,” she added.

Angelique graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Film and Television from the Cape Town International Film School in 2004, after completing a B.A. majoring in Drama / Performance Studies, English and Internet Science through the University of Natal. She was presented with the Most Outstanding Student and Student Most Likely to Succeed awards from the Cape Town International Film School in 2002.

In 2004 she was the first South African filmmaker to be selected, from 3 600 applicants, to attend the Berlin International Film Festival’s Berlinale Talent Campus, and was also a scholarship recipient for the New York University’s Cannes Film intensive course, run by Robert Nickson.

In 2007, she was a winner of the SA Script Institute award for the script of the feature film White Mountain, and in the same year she also bagged a Levis award for SA Music Video Directing, as well as a Mondi Shanduka Creative Journalism award. Her short films, documentaries, music videos and video-art pieces have been screened at galleries and festivals across South Africa and abroad.

“Claire is unique, a true individual,” said acclaimed South African film director Darryl James Roodt. “She sees the world in a way that no one else does.”

Angelique has also acted the lead role in theatrical productions like Viagra Falls and Daddy’s Little Girl, and has co-written a comic book based on one of her films. She is no stranger to the spotlight, having performed as a professional ballerina, diverging into contemporary African dance as one of the first non-black dancers with the Siwela Sonke Dance Theatre.

“I'm looking forward to getting down and dirty with the opportunity to create a new work,” said Angelique about her expectations for the year ahead. “I think my attitude, though I have created many music videos, shorts and documentaries, has always been to ‘go for a long film or go home’.” She will be focusing her creative efforts on two major projects in the following year, White Mountain and Upper Cuts, both full-length feature films.

“There is no artist more deserving of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award than Claire Angelique,” said filmmaker, writer, poet and fine artist Aryan Kaganof. “If she never makes another film after My Black Little Heart she will go down in history as the author of the most powerful South African film made to date.”

Angelique recalls that her creative flair has been evident from a very early age. “As a child I was always performing for anybody who would care to watch. I would disappear down the road, and my parents would find me dancing for neighbours on their lawn, whilst they sat transfixed by a five-year-olds’ play, performed for them whilst they ate their braai on the stoep!” She also had an intense love affair with books for as long as she can remember, always writing and keeping journals.

Angelique feels that the youth of South Africa are searching for art that encapsulates their dreams, their fashions, their disgusts, their frustrations and their independent spirit, which she feels will be the future of South Africa. “The award is headed in the right direction by embracing the mind and soul that destroys, rethinks, then reassembles to embrace the new or unexplored. By embracing young artists we are embracing the future and rewarding a new generation’s point of view,” she said.

A school friend of Angelique’s reminded her recently that she told everyone, from the age of eight, that she would be a movie director and put all her friends in her films. “I don't remember saying that at all, but it proved true,” she laughed.

About the Standard bank Young Artist Awards:

The Young Artist Awards were started in 1981 by the National Arts Festival to acknowledge emerging, relatively young South African artists who have displayed an outstanding talent in their artistic endeavors. These prestigious awards are presented annually to deserving artists in different disciplines, affording them national exposure and acclaim. Standard Bank took over the sponsorship of the awards in 1984 and presented Young Artist Awards in all the major arts disciplines over their 26-year sponsorship, as well as posthumous and special recognition awards. The winners feature on the main programme of the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown and receive financial support for their Festival participation, as well as a cash prize.

ISSUED BY : THE FAMOUS IDEA TRADING CC
ON BEHALF OF : NATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL, GRAHAMSTOWN
CONTACT : GILLY HEMPHILL
TEL : 021 886 4900
CELL : 082 820 8584
EMAIL : gilly@thefamousidea.co.za

West and East Africa is still recovering from South Africa’s Kesivan Naidoo and his band Babu’s whirlwind tour during October. The popular jazz quartet took their boundary-pushing jazz compositions, fused with Indian classical sounds, to music-lovers in Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya.

This mini tour was the result of a new initiative that was launched this year in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Standard Bank Young Artist Awards. This additional component to the awards, allows one of the winner’s each year to participate in a tour of selected African countries.

This key development was undertaken by Standard Bank in conjunction with the French Institute of South Africa who, through the Alliance Francaise in the respective countries, played host to the performers. Standard Bank, with its key focus on Africa and the continent’s leading bank with a business presence in 18 African countries, together with its Standard Bank Africa partners, planned and supported this initiative.

This year the jazz award winner, Kesivan Naidoo, and his band Babu, were selected to perform in Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya during October. The band was very well received in Lagos, Accra and Nairobi where they performed to enthusiastic audiences. Standard Bank Africa hosted clients at all the performances.

“The tour was amazing. We have never been to those countries before, so we didn't know what to expect,” said Naidoo. “One thing that was noticeable was that we have it really good in South Africa, relative to other parts of Africa,” he added.

Mandie van der Spuy, Head of Arts & Jazz Sponsorships at Standard Bank, who accompanied the band, said: “It is envisaged that this venture will become an annual extension of the work by one of the Young Artist Award winners and it is hoped that the network of countries will also increase significantly. Based on the reception of the recent tour and the favorable audience response we will most certainly endeavor to continue with this initiative next year”. “The one thing that was mentioned in all the places was that we have a lot of creativity in our approach to jazz in South Africa,” said Naidoo. “People over there are really interested in what is new and happening here in SA. They all want us to come back!”

Babu consists of Kesivan Naidoo (drums and cymbals), Reza Khota (guitar), Ronan Skillen (tabla and extended percussion) and Shane Cooper (bass).

“The highlight for me was in Ghana,” said Naidoo. ”One of Fela Kuti's drummers gave me a workshop on the traditional rhythms of the Afro Beat, and I think that in our next composition these elements will be evident.” Babu also managed to see a few local bands in Nigeria, and the guys were inspired by the pure energy of the modern High Life music.

Naidoo is currently busy completing a documentary on his journey at the National Arts Festival as the 2009 Standard Bank Young Artist Award winner for Jazz, and as band leader for Kesivan and the Lights. They are also planning on launching a debut album early next year. “Babu is also busy working on some new music, and hopefully Cape Town will be able to hear it soon,” said Naidoo.

“This trip was life changing for Babu and myself,” said Naidoo. “We are very grateful to Standard Bank for giving us the opportunity to see other parts of our continent.”

The Standard Bank Young Artists Award winners for 2010 will be announced on the 4th of November 2009.

About the Standard bank Young Artist Awards:
The Young Artist Awards were started in 1981 by the National Arts Festival to acknowledge emerging, relatively young South African artists who have displayed an outstanding talent in their artistic endeavors. These prestigious awards are presented annually to deserving artists in different disciplines, affording them national exposure and acclaim. Standard Bank took over the sponsorship of the awards in 1984 and presented Young Artist Awards in all the major arts disciplines over their 26-year sponsorship, as well as posthumous and special recognition awards. The winners feature on the main programme of the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown and receive financial support for their Festival participation, as well as a cash prize.

ISSUED BY : THE FAMOUS IDEA TRADING CC
ON BEHALF OF : NATIONAL ARTS FESTIVAL, GRAHAMSTOWN
CONTACT : GILLY HEMPHILL
TEL : 021 886 4900
CELL : 082 820 8584
EMAIL : gilly@thefamousidea.co.za

‘Alexis Preller: Africa, the Sun and Shadows’ opens at the Standard Bank Gallery on 13 October and runs until 5 December 2009. A retrospective exhibition, it showcases the work of Alexis Preller (1911-1975).

Preller was a major South African painter, whose unconventional form of expression was impossible to classify in terms of the mainstream art movements of his time. As an avant-garde artist, his contribution to South African art lies in his synthesis of the language of modernism and a distinctly African frame of reference. By incorporating African influences, he broke away from the European tradition and developed a new form of artistic expression.

In his art, Preller created a world of signs and symbols, shaping a private cosmology in which the myths of humankind are interconnected and interwoven – those from Greece, Egypt and African cultures, for example.

During the course of his 40-year career, Preller concentrated solely on his art, working daily in his studio and producing a vast number of exuberantly coloured imaginative compositions. ‘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 follows the last major exhibition of the artist’s oeuvre – the Retrospective Exhibition at the Pretoria Art Museum in 1972.

The exhibition is accompanied by Alexis Preller, art historian Esmé Berman and artist Karel Nel’s comprehensive monograph on the artist, which consists of two volumes: an extensive biography of Preller and a collection of his works.

‘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 (NAF) in Grahamstown, which has run since 1974. It is granted to emerging, relatively young South African artists who have demonstrated exceptional ability in their chosen field. Five Roses initially sponsored the award, but when Standard Bank acquired the naming rights to the NAF in 1984, it automatically became the title sponsor of the award as well. The bank stepped down as title sponsor of the Festival in 2002 but retained the award due to the significant role they play in developing and promoting South African arts, culture and heritage.

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. Generally, the awards have greatly advanced the careers of the winning artists, and many are not only renowned, but also crucial for understanding our cultural history and heritage. Years after winning the award they continue to add value to culture in South Africa through works that mark South Africa’s creative intelligence. Many are also stars on the international stage – Kentridge, Payne, Alexander, Searle, Hugo, Veleko and Hlobo, for example.

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.

On show at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg are two particularly absorbing shows – Nontsikelelo Veleko’s ‘Wonderland’ and Len Sak’s ‘Jojo’.

Veleko was the 2008 Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art, and only the third photographer to win the award. The Young Artist Awards acknowledge emerging, relatively young South African artists who have displayed outstanding talent in their artistic endeavours. She achieved worldwide recognition with an early project entitled www.notblackenough.lolo, which explored perceptions in South Africa of mixed heritage. In 2003 she was nominated for the MTN New Contemporaries and was awarded a two-month residency with the International Photographic Research Network (IPRN) in the UK, where she explored notions of work, identity and clothes. Since her return, Veleko has exhibited internationally, with exhibitions in Italy, the Canary Islands, New York, Switzerland, London and Berlin.

In ‘Wonderland’, Veleko’s Young Artist Award travelling exhibition, she pursues familiar themes – people on the streets, fashion, graffiti and personal spaces.

Andrew Verster’s ‘Past/Present’ exhibition is a show currently on in Johannesburg which is definitely not to be missed. Verster is one of the country’s most respected and dynamic artists, and his exhibition runs at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg until 23 May 2009.

The show highlights work made by Verster between 1994 – the start of democracy in South Africa – and the present. The title of the show reflects a concern for how our past affects our present. For Verster, 1994-2008 is a particularly significant period, mainly due to the freedoms enshrined in South Africa’s Constitution, which came into effect in 1996. Speaking as a gay man, Verster says, “For the first time in my life I became legal”. As such, many of the works reveal a preoccupation with the male form, which is treated with blunt matter-of-factness in series such as Rude Boys (1994) and Bodyworks (2006).

Verster’s work reflects a sense of liberation and joyousness. His Bodyworks series shows life-size, leaping figures. Their bodies are inscribed with designs referring to tattoos, which reference his earlier works, as well as other cultures and eras. The Skin Markings installation (2007), which consists of tissue paper, wax, ink, pigments and pins, was chosen for the Sasol Wax Competition in 2007, making Verster one of five finalists. Skin Markings features fragments of the figures from Bodyworks, covered in the same symbols of serpents, deities, vases and sculptural heads.

‘Past/Present’ is a multi-media exhibition consisting of paintings, drawings, stage sets, costume designs and wax panels. The intention is to show the diversity and constant creativity of one of the country’s most prolific and respected artists. The exhibition is curated by Carol Brown and is accompanied by a catalogue and educational supplement.

David Andrew’s exhibition, Misc (Recovery Room), opens at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg, running from 3 February to 21 March 2009.

The Misc in the title of the exhibition refers to the miscellaneous objects and moments experienced in the artist-teacher’s practice. And the Recovery Room is a reference to spaces that have the potential to generate new forms of knowledge through the presence of what Andrew refers to as “the artist’s sensibility” – a sensibility we all have the capacity to access. As such, the exhibition reflects on Andrew’s ongoing interest in the relationship between the merged practices of making art and teaching and how they inform each other.

There are three inter-related parts to the exhibition. In the Art and Artefact Gallery space, the display cabinets house a collection of found and makeshift objects constructed from simple materials; a series of notebooks with drawings, collages and writings completed over the last ten years; photographs of the Making Sense of Small Things floor-based installations, exhibited at the Standard Bank Gallery in 2001 and in Sierre, Switzerland, in 2003; and numerous drawings, also from the last few years. The underlying premise running throughout this part of the exhibition, and also present in the other spaces, is one of responding to spaces and situations in an improvisory and playful manner – two qualities that perhaps should be more prominent in the classroom. Following from this, Andrew has begun to consider, in Felix Guattari’s words, how the classroom itself might become like an artwork of sorts – one that is altogether a less orthodox and regimented space.

The central area in the downstairs gallery references more recent collaborative works produced in school-based environments with artist Marcus Neustetter and learners. Here the resources and materials found in schools are used to construct an installation that challenges us to revisit our preconceptions of what these spaces of learning might be. Central to this installation is a consideration of what is present in these spaces and how they might be imagined differently. Chairs, desks and other material from the school environment are used in ways that disrupt our accepted understandings of these all too familiar spaces, and, in doing this, allow for shifts in consciousness.

The works in the African Art Room are primarily drawings produced directly on the gallery walls, or works on paper presented in large grids. Using tactics such as listing, leaning, stacking, layering, constellating, connecting and collecting, the drawings allude to ways of thinking about transformative making and learning.

In bringing together this miscellany of drawings and notebooks, objects, photographs and installation, the exhibition charts one vision toward recovering a sensibility that has surfaced on occasion in how learning and teaching has been imagined, but without finding the necessary purchase to affect a more substantial presence. But perhaps, according to Andrew, in this ever-emerging state lies the value of this sensibility – never to allow for the conditions of settling to become orthodoxy, but always to be in a state of probing, prompting and countering.

The exhibition also seeks to draw together a number of related impulses in order to arrive at an understanding of how (art) education might be pursued in a different form to that which is the norm in the four corners of a classroom. So, emerging from the exhibition is a series of provocations and stimulations: how can the teacher perform more like an artist? What are the dispositions and sensibilities that should be present? Are there particular patterns present in classrooms and schools that allow for a more ‘artful’ learning and teaching?

About David Andrew

David Andrew is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Arts and Art Education in the Division of Visual Arts, Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He is a practising artist with his most recent major work taking the form of installations and interventions with fellow artist and collaborator Marcus Neustetter and learners from the P.J.Simelane Secondary School in Soweto, South Africa. This project is the subject of a recently published visual essay in the Visual Communication journal (November 2008). His interest in the artist-teacher pedagogical relationship and multimodality has resulted in a number of projects aimed at designing and implementing alternative paths for the training of arts educators and artists working in schools.

Since 2000 he has been involved in numerous tertiary level arts education initiatives, including international partnerships with the University of Asmara in Eritrea, the Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design in Stockholm, Sweden, and the Master of Arts in the Public Sphere (MAPS) programme, which includes art schools in Switzerland, France, Belgium, Spain, Finland and Poland.

In 2004 he was appointed to the editorial board of the International Journal of Education Through Art (IJETA). He is a member of the International Society for Education Through Art (INSEA) and has presented papers at the most recent congresses in Viseu, Portugal (March 2006) and Osaka, Japan (August 2008).

I like my neighbours at the Standard Bank gallery, Johannesburg is an exhibition by the internationally acclaimed Soweto-born artist, Johannes Phokela. Following on Phokela’s other successful solo shows in South Africa, it features a body of new work, as well as recent works from a number of private and public collections. The exhibition runs from 3 February to 21 March 2009.

While Phokela’s work is, at first glance, an irreverent representation of Western art history, it is the cultural and political consumption of pictures that interests him most. He is himself a voracious consumer of imagery, drawing not only on the iconic works of the European Masters – Rubens, Van Dyck and Caravaggio, for example – but also on newspapers, magazines and the Internet. His is an ambitious exploration of the import of received art history on one hand and the seemingly endless proliferation of images in popular culture on the other.

Phokela’s art – including oil paintings, oil sketches and sculptures – is animated by a wicked sense of humour, technical virtuosity and an ability to draw together a number of associations in the frame of a single work. He is fascinated by our capacity to connect images to meaning, and his new work in particular makes reference to the myriad visual representations of current events. He walks a tightrope between a fascination with aesthetics and an instinct for satire and social commentary, and the results are both visually stirring and intellectually satisfying.

More particularly, Phokela is renowned for his large, dramatic works in oil, re-working the images of European old masters by adding references to their works, so that their meanings are changed. The results are telling statements on morality, history, politics, culture, decadence, and colonialism and its legacy, often with a sharp, biting sense of humour.

About his art, Phokela says, “There are hidden things about society that no one acknowledges, and for me, the only place for making this plain is through painting” (Haines, 2002). What concerns him especially are the narratives that are left out of European art. “Dutch genre painting,” he explains, “ … portrayed a certain European lifestyle coinciding with a period in history that saw the arrival of the Europeans in South Africa. This was the only visual reference available, utopian in many ways, the harsh realities of war and famine left out. The subsequent cultural collusion is significant and becomes an essential source for my ideas” (Haines, 2002).

An artist of great depth and intellect, and concerned with beauty, ideas and subversion, Phokela is the epitomy of sharply honed skill combined with creative intelligence and insightfulness. Today we still talk about “decolonising the mind.” Phokela’s powerful critiques of colonialism and its vestiges add considerable punch, flavour and wit to the decolonisation project.

About Johannes Phokela

Johannes Phokela was born in Soweto in 1966. He studied in London, at the Royal College of Art (1991-93); Camberwell College of Art (1988-91); and St. Martin’s College of Art (1987-88). He is the recipient of a number of awards, including the John Moores Painting Prize through the Walker Art Gallery (Liverpool, UK), the BP National Gallery Portrait Award, (London) and the highly prestigious Decibel Artist’s Award (UK).

Phokela is represented in major public collections, such as the National Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian in Washington; Standard Bank Corporate Collection, Johannesburg; MTN art collection, Johannesburg; Gasworks Art Studios, London; Delfino Studio Trust, London; Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; UNISA art collection, Pretoria; BHP Billiton, Johannesburg; and gordonschachatcollection, South Africa. He is also represented in the collection of the South African High Commission in London.

Primarily known as a painter, Phokela’s artistic practice also includes printmaking, sculpture and drawing. He lives in London and Johannesburg.

A prospect of icons, Judith Mason’s retrospective exhibition at Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg opens on 2 October 2008, running until 6 December.

The title of Mason’s show is drawn from her essay in a book dedicated to Heather Martienssen by her former students and colleagues, who pay tribute to Martienssen on her retirement as Professor of Fine Art from the University of Johannesburg in 1973. In her essay, Mason reflects on the use of religious imagery in painting, a cornerstone of her own work, particularly in regard to Christianity and eastern religions.

Mason, “an agnostic humanist possessed of religious curiosity,” as she puts it, once said, “The painter of religious themes, whether he does so as a reflection of his faith or as an exploration of his doubts, makes icons.”

According to the curator of the show, Wilhelm van Rensburg, A prospect of icons “is in a sense an inventory of her icons. The list vacillates between a painterly exploration of conventional, if not collective iconography to the development of a highly personal iconography… “ As Van Rensburg notes, this personal iconography includes her many self-portraits made throughout her artistic career, such as Self portrait as my own Ventriloquist (1996) and Not being able to Paint (1992); and recurrent and ambiguous symbols, such as the wing, the eye, the heart, the female breast, the plait of hair, puppet strings, the wire mesh, the under-vest, the shred of cloth, or simply the artist’s finger print. These symbols are widely used in what Van Rensburg calls Mason’s “trajectory suite of religious iconography,” which includes paintings such as The Plague (1980), Pieta (2003) and Judas (1996).

While Mason’s work draws extensively on religion, it is also informed by her exploration of mythological figures and creatures such as the Minotaur and Arachne, the spider symbol of creativity and aggressiveness that features in a number of her works, among them Arachne (1996). “Mason,” says Van Rensburg, “chooses many such like creatures as the leopard to which she adds the image of the hyena, the ape, the monkey, perhaps to symbolize our baser instincts…” She also, Van Rensburg continues, works with “the image of the phoenix to suggest the eternal capacity of human beings to reinvent themselves.” These creatures are represented in works like Wild Dog (1962), Leopard of Delight (1965) and Leopard’s Breath (1971).

Mason’s work, which is sometimes imbued with lyrical and poetic overtones, and sometimes informed by the poetry of Christopher Smart and Wilfred Owen, is often understood as having ‘psychological insight’ into her subject matter. Van Rensburg’s view here is that “it can be argued that Mason’s ‘psychological insight’ might be detected in her concern with the bodily drives in relation to life and death in her work, might be suggested in notions of the damaged body, in a fascination with trauma, both personal and collective, reinforced by her interest in the ‘abject’ body. Equally strongly it can be argued that Mason paints an ‘exulted’ body. And it is in this paradox that the genius of Mason’s work resides.”

Mason’s work also reflects on such iconic socio-political issues as the homeless, street children, HIV/Aids, abortion, war mongering and the politics of conflict under apartheid. Among these works is one which Justice Albie Sachs considers to be “one of the great pieces of art in the world of the late 20th century” – The Man who Sang and the Woman who Kept Silent (triptych) (1998). This work was inspired by a story Mason heard on the radio in 1995 at the time of the Truth and Reconciliation hearings about the execution of a liberation movement cadre by the security police.

Another important feature of her work is what Van Rensburg describes as “the synthesis she establishes between beauty and ugliness in each of her artworks: a beautifully drawn or painted face often gives way to a gaping, snarling monster... The beauty/ugliness, or abjection, dichotomy in Mason’s work is no other than an expression of how awful pain is.”

As a retrospective exhibition, A prospect of icons covers the expanse of Mason’s oeuvre and is a testimony to a lifetime with art. It includes paintings, drawings and installations, such as Walking with and away from Dante (2006-7) and Tombs of the Pharaohs of Jo’burg (1987), with its mine dumps as pyramids and mineshafts as tombs.

The show also includes her artist’s books, such as A Dante Bestiary (1990) and The Fish Hoek Reader (1992) in which she has erased the original printed texts and retained, or invented, all sorts of marginalia that readers often make or scribble in books.

About Judith Mason

One of the most important figures on the South African art stage for a number of decades, Judith Mason was born in 1938. Mason studied at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), obtaining a BA in Fine Arts in 1960. She taught painting at Wits and also occasionally at other institutions on a temporary basis, such as the University of Pretoria, the Michaelis School of Art, University of Cape Town, and Scoula Lorenzo de Medici in Florence, Italy. She has been an external examiner at a number of South African universities; has exhibited frequently since 1962; and is represented in all major public collections in South Africa, as well as private and public collections in Europe and the USA. She represented South Africa at the Venice Biennale in 1966, at the Sao Paulo Biennnale in the 1973, and at the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1973.

Apart from producing a large body of paintings over the decades, which have made her one of the stars of the South African art galaxy, Mason has also published her work in books, sometimes in collaboration with poets. These publications include ‘A Dante Bestiary’, with Ted Townsend, (ombondi editions, New York, 1990) (a mixed-media portfolio); ‘Selected poems’ by Patrick Cullinan (The Artist’s Press, 1993) (lithographs); and ‘Talking pictures’ (essays published in 1988 by the Broederstroom press).

CECIL SKOTNES: A PRIVATE VIEW: Images from the archive of Cecil and Thelma Skotnes opens at the Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, on 30 July 2008, running until 6 September.

Cecil Skotnes is an icon of the South African art world, revered for both his art, as well as his pioneering role in art education in South Africa.

The exhibition, curated by Pippa Skotnes and Thomas Cartwright of the University of Cape Town’s Centre for Curating the Archive, moves beyond the public face of Skotnes, offering a more private view. It focuses on his more intimate work – drawings, cartoons, prints and paintings on paper. Some of these date back to the late 1950s.

The show also includes letters and documents collected over five decades by the artist’s wife, Thelma, photographs by Paul Weinberg, personal memorabilia, and items from Skotnes’ studio.

Overall, the exhibition offers not only an overview of Skotnes’ work, but also insights into the creative community of which he was part, the way in which he researched his subjects, and how he helped to shape a vibrant period in South African art history.

Also opening at the Standard Bank Gallery in the downstairs space on 30 July 2008 is Toys For Africa – an exhibition of handmade African toys presented by The African Toyshop.

The African Toyshop is perhaps the first shop of its kind in the world to stock only toys that have been handmade in Africa. The Toyshop believes it important to trade fairly, whether buying or selling toys, and is a member of the Cooperation for Fair Trade in Africa (COFTA).

Since the first shop opened in Milpark, Johannesburg, in 2005, the shop has sourced toys from many countries, including South Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Kenya, Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho, Madagascar, Namibia, Tanzania, Uganda, and Angola. More recently Ghana has been added to the venture’s growing list of suppliers.

Works by five of The African Toyshop’s premier artists will be on show, as well as the best examples of the many other ranges available at the shop. Among the toys showcased will be those by the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Auguy Kakase, Malawi’s Lekemu Seleman, Mozambique’s Samuel Baloyi, South Africa’s Max Normal.TV and the children of Zola, Soweto’s African Children’s Community Education and Feeding Scheme.

The show also includes other examples of work drawn from the many artists and co-operatives across Africa whose work is featured at The African Toyshop, as well as three-dimensional dolls that are created from South Africa’s signature shwe shwe fabric.

I work in my studio all the time – I believe in daily practice. I make sculptures in clay, large and small, I make oil paintings on canvas, on stone, on wax and I make small watercolours of the two human skulls I have in my studio. I carve into rubber slabs and make casts of these in plaster, I make plasticine sculptures, I take photographs of my studio and my model and myself, I decide which works to cast in bronze, and which works to group together. I just work, sometimes knowing exactly what I am doing and sometimes not knowing at all. I like the unimagined possibilities that open up through such an approach. This way of working produces an enormous amount of work, which is stacked in my studio, in my lounge, dining room, bathroom and kitchen… I live with the work, some of it I leave – quite a lot of it, and some of it I rework or discard. Sometimes it feels like I live in an archaeological dig, excavating and collecting my own work.

This exhibition in the downstairs space at the Standard Bank - the space with the built in glass cabinets - is a selection of the works I have been making recently. I have included a few much earlier works and I have called this exhibition ‘collection’. The space lends itself to a display of objects in a fashion that recalls museum collecting, and it is a space perfectly suited to my practice. I have, for years now, worked consciously with the conventions of museum display and the strategies of presentation. I have looked in a sustained way at museums all over the world, looked at the work of other makers, both ancient and contemporary, and I have been interested in the ways in which their work is shown. Collections of work always seem to me to be fragmentary in the sense that there is much left unknown or unshown. As viewers we are like archaeologists piecing together a broader story from fragments.

My subject matter is mostly portraits, and I have found that a portrait itself is only ever a fragment of the person, or a fragment of the relationship between artist and sitter. Working with portraiture means working with an awareness of time passing and it brings mortality and the fragility of being into sharp focus and I understand in T.S. Eliot’s words, that it is not the “greatness”, the intensity, of the emotions, the components, but the intensity of the artistic process, the pressure, so to speak, under which the fusion takes place, that counts’. He also says that ‘humankind cannot bear too much reality’ and I know from the way I work, from being an artist, from making portraits, that living is a process of dying but also that in the knowledge of mortality, is life.

Joni Brenner
2008.

Messina/Musina is an exhibition of works by Pieter Hugo, the 2007 Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art and internationally acclaimed photographer. The title of the exhibition refers to Musina, the northernmost town in South Africa. It lies on the Limpopo River on the border with Zimbabwe.

Musina became the new name for the town after Messina was dropped in 2002 to correct a colonial misspelling of the name of the Musina people, who lived in the region. Located in the heart of the bushveld with its hunting farms and diamond mine, and on the major trucking route north, Musina attracts a conglomeration of disparate people. They are drawn to this town by the opportunities it offers – for hunting, prostitution, working on the mines and farms, policing the border, and smuggling contraband and alien immigrants.

Hugo first visited Musina with a journalist who was working on a story about refugees fleeing Zimbabwe and entering South Africa illegally. “For me,” says Hugo, “Musina is peripheral, demographically and quite literally. The Great Trek ended there; for the Afrikaners – a group of which I am part – it’s pretty much the last outpost. The Transvaal Republic ended there.”

As an outpost and town with a bar that, on a Friday night, is packed with a mix of prostitutes, farmers, truck drivers, mineworkers and hunters, Musina is well suited to Hugo’s orientation as a photographer. “I am,” he says, “concerned with the peripheral in society, particularly in Africa, and I negotiate contexts where the cultural nuances of our time are amplified… I’m fascinated with people… that are outsiders in some way or another.”

Hugo’s photographs show individuals, black and white families, interiors, landscapes and incidental details. Of his family portraits, taken at night using lights, and portraying people of different classes, Hugo comments: “And some families ask, ‘Why do you use the image where we’re not smiling?’… I don’t think [that’s] mean-spirited. I am engaging with humanity in all its complexity – why should I whitewash it? … There is something strange about a family that wants their picture taken together, but the moment you leave the room they start arguing… By their very nature most families are dysfunctional.”

Unlike documentary and news photographers, who take their pictures quickly in order to capture the moment, Hugo sets up an interaction with his subjects. This arose out of a realisation that working in Africa as a white person did not afford him “fly-on-the-wall status,” as he puts it: “It occurred to me that I appeared out of place, and often I found myself being scrutinised by the subjects being photographed. I decided to switch to a larger and more cumbersome format for my photography that requires negotiating consent and dialogue with the person being photographed. I prefer to engage directly with the people I photograph and this is one of the most important aspects of what I do.” What this means, importantly, is that, unlike most documentary photography, Hugo’s subjects are never photographed without their permission, and that they are always aware that they are being captured.

About his Musina project, Hugo says that he was “very conscious of not making… a body of work about disenfranchised poor whites.” While the personas in his portraits allude to a complex web of social, economic and political relations in an isolated community, his landscapes tell of environmental degradation and/or encroachment onto a pristine wilderness: “The baobab is an iconic symbol of Africa. But here, people paint them, cut their names into them. What’s interesting to me is that there is this stereotype of how Africa gets depicted – a baobab with a sunset behind it. And this is not, of course, what it’s like at all. People fuck the trees up, carve their names into them. It’s not a whitewashed, idealised view of the African landscape.”

Rather than clichés about Africa, what Hugo aims for in his work is complexity – and disease for the viewer. For him, photography in Africa is generally either about suffering and misery or an idealised representation of the continent, like the beautiful baobab at sunset. “Most things,” he contends, “that show some kind of complexity or nuance about a particular culture have the capacity to make people feel uncomfortable. We have to acknowledge, he continues, that life – and photography – is “much more complex than is usually represented. I don’t think art has a responsibility to be pretty.”

Messina/Musina is a touring exhibition. It has already been shown at the National Festival of the Arts in Grahamstown, and in Port Elizabeth, Durban and Bloemfontein. It completes its run at Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town on 4 May 2008, after which it moves to the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg for the final leg (27 May to 5 July 2008).

Skin-to-Skin: Challenging Textile Art opens at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg on 16 April 2008, running until 10 May. Curated by Fiona Kirkwood, the exhibition reflects South Africa’s multi-cultural identity and unique history through diverse work by artists using textile-related concepts, techniques and materials.

The title of the show, Skin-to-Skin, is a metaphor for the present day amalgamation of various cultural groups that were racially separated under apartheid. According to Kirkwood, the textile-related works on show are “the artistic fruits of a new unified South African society.” These works are by Tamlin Blake, Lynda Ballen, Leora Farber, Nicholas Hlobo, Karin Lijnes, Nkosinathi Khanyile, Fiona Kirkwood, Angeline Masuku, Walter Oltmann, Langa Magwa, Jane Makhubele, Nandipha Mntambo and Yda Walt.

Skin, and skin pigmentation, has played a significant role – politically, socially and culturally – in South Africa. Under apartheid, people were classified into racial groups according to the colour of their skin, and ‘skin-to-skin’ relationships, or relationships across the colour line, were outlawed. All of this changed when democracy dawned in South Africa in 1994.

One artist on the show who reflects the changing face of the country under South Africa’s democracy is Yda Walt. In Miriam Makeba Street (2007), she focuses on Johannesburg as a city transforming itself out of apartheid into a vibrant cosmopolitan environment with immigrants from all over Africa. Another such artist is Jane Makhubele, whose works on the exhibition are based on Nelson Mandela’s shirts and illustrate recent episodes in the former president’s life, like voting in the 2004 elections.

While skin has been central to the politics of South Africa, it has also been significant as a marker of cultural identity in traditional communities. As such, animal skin is used by a number of artists on the exhibition to comment on aspects of traditional life. Langa Magwa, for example, uses cowhide to explore his experiences of scarification of the face, as well as circumcision as a ritual into manhood.

Goatskin and cowhide are used by Africans to connect with the ancestors – a theme in Tamlin Blake’s beaded work, Baby Skins (2007), which is based on Zulu pregnancy aprons (isibodiya), worn to ward off evil spirits and as a request for protection from the ancestors for unborn children."

Angeline Masuku and Karin Lijnes also express an affinity with traditional African societies. While Masuku’s basket portrays life in a Zulu village, Lijnes’ work, Patricia and Francina (2007), highlights the idea that there were no discarded homeless people in such societies.

While some artists explore their connections with traditional cultures by using skin, Leora Farber’s contribution to the exhibition is also about identity but from a different angle. In her photographs and video performance she transforms herself from a white Victorian settler to a post-colonial African by grafting indigenous aloe leaves onto her skin, or what appears to be such.

The exhibition also focuses on another critically important association with skin – HIV/AIDS. South Africa has one of the highest infection rates in the world, exacerbated by the African traditional practice of ‘skin-to-skin’ sex i.e. without using a condom. While Nicholas Hlobo focuses on issues of masculinity and sexuality in black society, both Fiona Kirkwood and Walter Oltmann explore HIV/AIDS in their work. Kirkwood’s work is an installation using a washing line with second-hand clothing, some of which is marked with words and symbols linked to HIV/AIDS, like “multiple partners”. Her piece is accompanied by a video showing its use as an educational tool in and around a dowtown shopping centre.

A showcase of contemporary developments in the field of textile art, Skin-to-Skin was recently shown at the Kaunas Art Biennial - Textile 07 in Kaunas, Lithuania.

The show is sponsored by Standard Bank, Artists for Human Rights Trust, Bartel Arts Trust and Pickfords Removals South Africa.

Following its successful run in Cape Town, MARLENE DUMAS: Intimate Relations opens at the Standard Bank Gallery on 6 February 2008, closing on 29 March.

The exhibition is the first solo show in South Africa by Marlene Dumas, one of the world's most renowned contemporary artists.

Dumas was born in Kuilsriver, near Cape Town, in 1953. A graduate of the Michaelis School of Art, University of Cape Town, she left South Africa in 1976 to do a post-graduate degree in visual art at the Atelier '63 in Haarlem. She now lives in Amsterdam.

Dumas has participated in many biennales and has twice been invited to show at Documenta in Germany. She represented The Netherlands at the Venice Biennale in 1995.

A participant in numerous group shows since 1978, Dumas has held solo exhibitions at prestigious venues in many centres of the world, such as the Tate, London (1996); the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2001); the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (2003); and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2007).

Curated by Dumas herself and Emma Bedford from South Africa, the exhibition is a homecoming that will give South African audiences in-depth insights into Dumas' extraordinary oeuvre. It covers a broad selection of her work, ranging from early conceptual pieces from her student years at Michaelis to very recent paintings and drawings dealing with contemporary global issues. The works are drawn from a variety of public and private collections in the Netherlands and Belgium, as well as from Dumas' studio.

As the title of the exhibition suggests, Dumas is concerned with intimate relations, how we connect with art, and one another on both a personal and global level.

According to Bedford, Dumas' work "deals with the cycle of life, and with issues of gender, sexuality, pleasure and pain, amongst others. While intellectual, ethical and moral questions stimulate and absorb her, it is her awareness of how these are experienced in and through the body that is central to her work."

Apart from making work about eroticism and sexuality, for which she uses images from magazines, or her own photographs shot in Amsterdam's red light district, Dumas also explores other complex ideological themes, such as stereotyped notions of beauty, racism, death, violence, religion, maternity and motherhood. These themes are presented in her work with a frank and often chilling honesty. Referring to some of Dumas' work, Bedford comments: "We are reminded that the crimes perpetrated against humanity - discrimination, violence, brutality, murder - are registered in and on the flesh. Dumas' works stimulate consideration of what it means to be human now - in these times and in this world - and remind us that we cannot divorce ourselves from what happens elsewhere on the planet or even in our cities."

Dumas is generally unknown to the broad South African public. A highlight on the exhibitions calendar for 2008, MARLENE DUMAS: Intimate Relations is thus an opportunity for South African audiences to become acquainted with the work of this internationally acclaimed contemporary artist. Consisting of many of her best works, it tells us what the world has known for some time - that Dumas is one of the finest painters of our time.

MARLENE DUMAS: Intimate Relations is accompanied by a catalogue featuring full-colour reproductions of the more than 50 works on exhibition, as well as personal letters, documents and photographs collected by the artist. A substantial selection of Dumas' own writings is also included, and there are essays by Bedford, Marlene van Niekerk, and Achille Mbembe and Sarah Nuttall.

Marlene Dumas: Intimate Relations is sponsored by Standard Bank, the Mondriaan Foundation, Royal Netherlands Embassy, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Iziko South African National Gallery.

"A chilling honesty - the work of Marlene Dumas" A chilling honesty - the work of Marlene Dumas

Marlene Dumas' long-awaited exhibition, MARLENE DUMAS: Intimate Relations, opens at Iziko South African National Gallery on 8 November 2007, running until 13 January 2008. The show then moves to Johannesburg, where it will be held at the Standard Bank Gallery from 6 February-29 March 2008.

Although relatively unknown in South Africa, Dumas is an internationally acclaimed artist who has held solo exhibitions at prestigious venues in many centres of the world, including the Tate, London (1996); the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2001); the Art Institute of Chicago (2003); and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (2007).

Raised on a vineyard near Stellenbosch in the Cape, Dumas studied at the Michaelis School of Art, University of Cape Town, in the 1970s. She left South Africa to study in Holland in 1976 at the age of 23. Although she did not plan to stay abroad, she is sill based in Holland, where she has a studio in Amsterdam.

As to why she chose to move to Amsterdam, Dumas has this to say: "I speak Afrikaans, so I thought I would understand Dutch more easily than all the other languages in Europe, and I wanted to start somewhere (small) there…[I wanted] to see the art that we had to study in the books. I wasn't ready for New York yet, although everything happened there in international art at the time. I had a bursary from UCT to study overseas for two years. Never thought to stay."

MARLENE DUMAS: Intimate Relations is Dumas' first solo exhibition in the land of her birth and the show is conceived as her homecoming. About this she says that "it feels very strange. I'm very excited that I will show in South Africa after all these years but also very scared obviously. Dolly Parton once said it was the worst thing she had to do: after being in all kinds of countries, she was scared to come back to where she came from and do a show in her home town."

For Dumas art is "[about] always talking, relating to, trying to reach those that you do not see, and do not know. It is a strange combination between intimacy and distance that makes an artwork. You start with something intimate, you start with a love story. Whether it's a good love story or bad love story, sad or joyful, is not really the point. Then you take your media and your medium and your methods and your materials to a place that you do not know, where you have not been; and so you end up between a strange place and a familiar place, and that's somehow where the artwork is."

Dumas has been called a "neo-Expressionist conceptualist", about which she comments: "Once there was an older Dutch artist…and I asked him if he liked my work. He said, 'no, no,' he didn't like it because he thought I had one foot in the conceptual area and the other foot in the tradition of painting. And I thought, 'Oh, that's actually quite nice.' Often the very painterly painters don't like my work because they think I can't paint…And the very conceptual people think, 'Oh no, it's not conceptual enough, it's too painterly.'"

As the title of the exhibition suggests, Dumas is concerned with intimate relations, how we connect with art, and one another on both a personal and global level. Works such as Martha - my ouma (1984) and Helena 2001 nr. 2 (2001), for example, focus on her family relations; others, like Martha: Freud's Wife (1984) are concerned with her interest in the personal relations of important theorists, or tell of how we relate to one another on a social or political level.

Some of Dumas' paintings, such as those from the 1980s dealing with whiteness, explore racism. Here one might consider, for example, a work such as The White Disease (1985), which, while specifically about a medical condition, alludes to the idea that racism is a sickness.

Besides racism, Dumas also deals with other complex themes, such as stereotyped notions of beauty, death, violence, religion, maternity and motherhood. These themes are presented in her work with a frank and often chilling honesty.

Dumas also makes works about eroticism and sexuality, for which she uses images from magazines, or her own photographs shot in Amsterdam's red light district.

Writing about her erotic works in the catalogue to MARLENE DUMAS: Intimate Relations, Emma Bedford, who co-curated the exhibition with the artist, writes: "It is the artist's unashamed and apologetic depiction of the human body…that confronts viewers' expectations. The complete absence of a tradition of the nude in South Africa, and the vexed issues of censorship and sexual abuse in this country, have meant that many local spectators are uncomfortable with viewing the body as a purely aesthetic object and have come to expect from art a discernable moral directive. In addition, feminist and identity discourses have required that bodies be contextualised within defined discourses and debates. But Dumas will have none of this. While she does not deny such contexts, she offers us instead the thing in itself as an object of beauty: a source of delight as the focus of intimacy…"

Dumas is interested in both "how life is lived and how death is experienced," as Bedford puts it, and her images of death and dying are particularly chilling. These include works like Mistaken Identity (2002) and Death by Association (2003), which pertain to the deaths of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Described as making works that constitute "a general survey of suffering" on the occasion of her 'Suspect' exhibition in 2003, Dumas has also made other works about the conflict in the Middle East, such as Blindfold (2002), for which she used press photographs of blindfolded people as source material. Referring to these and other works, Bedford comments: "We are reminded that the crimes perpetrated against humanity - discrimination, violence, brutality, murder - are registered in and on the flesh. Dumas' works stimulate consideration of what it means to be human now - in these times and in this world - and remind us that we cannot divorce ourselves from what happens elsewhere on the planet or even in our cities."

Standard Bank, one of the leaders in arts sponsorship, announced the winners of the 2008 Standard Bank Young Artist Awards at a ceremony last night, marking 24 years of sponsorship of these awards.

South African artists and artistry were proudly celebrated as Standard Bank acknowledged and applauded the talent, and originality of these young South African artists. The awards actively encourage, promote and develop the aspirations of young artists, giving them not only a money contribution, but also recognition of their talent.

The winners of the 2008 Standard Bank Young Artist Awards are as follows:

JACO BOUWER for Drama
MARK FRANSMAN for Jazz
DADA MASILO for Dance
ZANNE STAPELBERG for Music
NONTSIKELELO 'LOLO' VELEKO for Visual Art

In acknowledging Standard Bank's involvement, Mandie van der Spuy, Head of Arts and Jazz Sponsorship, had this to say, "Standard Bank's sponsorship of the Young Artist Awards contributes to the development of our country's up-and-coming artists. As a bank we are committed to sponsoring the arts and believe the awards play a vital role in nurturing South African talent."

The Young Artist Awards recognise South Africans of a relatively young age who have demonstrated exceptional artistic promise within their discipline but who have not yet achieved extensive national exposure and acclaim. The awards were designed to assist in promoting the careers of those selected.

The Standard Bank has sponsored the awards for the past 24 years and some 89 artists have been recipients of the awards since their inception in 1981. Previous winners include the likes of Paul Slabolepszy (1983),Andrew Buckland (1986), William Kentridge (1987), Johnny Clegg (1989), Darryl Roodt (1991), Sibongile Khumalo(1993), Vincent Mantsoe (1996),Bongani Ndodana (1998), Gregory Maqoma (2002), Yael Farber (2003) and many more.

The 2008 recipients are certainly worthy of the recognition. Visual art winner, photographer Lolo Veleko was humbled by this award. "I am truly grateful to be acknowledged by my own country, I have so much still to show and do and this will enable me to realise my dream." Her photographic projects pose questions around how identity is perceived.

Actor/dancer/director Jaco Bouwer, an immensely versatile winner praised Standard Bank for its contribution to the arts and said, "I am happy to be able to have the chance of producing and directing work in English for the National Arts Festival, as most of my work in the past has been in Afrikaans." Jaco first started an Engineering Degree with Applied Maths before switching to the arts so that he could realise his dream of acting and directing.

Dada Masilo, dancer/choreographer and dancer in resident at the Dance Factory was amazed by her recognition at this early stage of her career, "I am truly humbled by this award and want to thank Standard Bank for the opportunities afforded me." Dada first performed for Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands at the age of 11.

Jazz musician extraordinaire, Mark Fransman believes this award will take him to even greater heights, "I look at my friends who have won this award and know that this will enhance my career opportunities." Mark started his own band 'Strait and Narro' which performed at the 2004 Olympic Games.

Operatic sensation Zanne Stapelberg's debut at 22 has meant that she has spent the last 8 years making a name for herself and is still reeling at the news, "I feel truly honoured to be one of the Standard Bank Young Artist winners, and I know my career will benefit from this award."

As part of their prize, each of the winners will be featured on the Main Programme of the 2008 National Arts Festival in Grahamstown (26 June to 5 July). In addition to a cash prize, they will receive the financial backing required to present their work, be it a production or exhibition. "The Standard Bank Young Artist Awards are a vital element of art initiatives in South Africa," said Sibongile Khumalo, Chairperson of the National Arts Festival.

"They allow space for experimentation and give affirmation to developing talent. Standard Bank has gone a long way in giving credit to these young artists."

The 2008 National Arts Festival runs from 26 June to 5 July and for further information visit the website www.nafest.co.za