Walter Battiss: Gentle Anarchist

A comprehensive exhibition of the work of Walter Battiss (1906 - 1982) will be on display at the Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg from 20 October to 3 December 2005. More than three hundred works will be on exhibition, including oil and watercolour paintings, graphic art, sketches and tapestries. These works have been drawn from both public and private collections held all over South Africa, and reflect Battiss's prolific artistic career that spanned more than fifty years.

Walter Battiss was a legendary figure – to such an extent that Professor Neville Dubow of the Michaelis School of Art, University of Cape Town, once remarked that had Battiss not existed, we would have had to invent him!

Battiss's weird and wonderful appearance, his colourful and eccentric persona, his insatiable curiosity about life, and his remarkable work ethic, continue to challenge intellectual exploration of his work and capture the imagination of art lovers both at home and abroad.

This retrospective exhibition, Walter Battiss: Gentle Anarchist, is a belated tribute to this “Grand Old Man” of South African art. Collectively, these not only reflect Battiss’s creative development over fifty years, but also provide insight into the diversity of his subject matter, techniques and styles.

In the exhibition’s fully illustrated catalogue, well known artists, art historians and writers have focused on a few of Battiss's preoccupations and achievements: his interpretation of Africa; his exquisite watercolours and amusing erotica; his involvement with Rorke's Drift Arts and Crafts Centre in KwaZulu-Natal; his concept of Fook Island; his many travels to exotic places; and his own literary output.

The chief aim of the exhibition is to take a fresh look at Battiss's contribution to South African art. The influence of San rock art on his work is clearly visible in some of the works on show. There is evidence in these works that his discovery of rock art brought about a significant shift in his vision of the world, and that this was reinforced by his experience of European art at the time - his actual meeting with Picasso, and his admiration for artists like Gauguin, Van Gogh, Matisse, Modigliani and many others.

Battiss's public stance against censorship is well known, as is his creation of the imaginary Fook Island, where artists and writers could express themselves freely and enjoy life.

In the section of the exhibition dedicated to the artist's life, an attempt has been made to 'reconstruct', as far as this is possible, the world of Fook Island. Photographs taken at Fook Award ceremonies and exhibitions, curious Fookian items and memorabilia will be on display in an attempt to rekindle the spirit of Fook Island.

Madiba: Man of Destiny

The Standard Bank Gallery will exhibit Madiba: Man of Destiny, a collection of photographs by internationally renowned photographer Dr Peter Magubane from 16 August to 23 September 2005.

Dr Magubane has documented the life of Nelson Mandela and this major exhibition encapsulates the life of a man who has played a critical role in the establishment of democratic South Africa.

Significantly, it captures moments in history that give the viewer a glimpse of Madiba as a man of destiny, interacting with ordinary citizens, his family, high profile political figures. The exhibition also features significant political events.

Dr Magubane's commitment to photojournalism in the transformation of South Africa was recognised in 1999 when he received an Order of Meritorious Service by the former President.

This exhibition pays tribute to two great men who, through the apartheid struggle, have managed to achieve individual greatness. This collection of photographs therefore reflects the uniqueness and proud heritage of South Africa.

The exhibition forms part of the events that marked the conferment of Johannesburg's Freedom of the City to Nelson Mandela.

Events in Colour: Claudia Shneider

Claudia Shneider's exhibition entitled Bite is on show downstairs at the Standard Bank Gallery from 16 August to 23 September 2005.

What emerges when Claudia Shneider draws or paints on paper or canvas could be called a drawing or painting. Or one could call it figuration or abstraction and differentiate bright from non-bright colours, lines from surfaces, the covered painting and drawing ground from the un-worked surface. It is clear to see, however, that such divisions would remain external to the works. Shneider changes her colours from work to work, and switches from painting to drawing and vice-versa. A series of markings and coloured lines usually produces something like a figuration, but the figures one thinks one sees dissolve again into lines and markings: where there was abstract painting an instant ago, there is now a basket or an island or an insect, and where there was a kind of bar or loaf, there is now a brown, abstract painting.

In many works Shneider makes the motif available. It sits on a surface, which is not a neutral, un-worked background, not even in places where it is not covered by paint, but rather incorporated in the composition, as though the white was painted just like the motif. In the motif, in turn, colour and figuration are torn apart. And all of this is drawn and painted in a way that creates a link between colours and forms that is divorced from rules, that imposes language on the colours: while the adjectival use of the name of a colour invariably remains closely tied to formal aspects, and while the colour is ultimately reduced to the function of colouring a form, the name of the colour, which has wrested itself from its adjectival use to become autonomous, designates only itself. Although in language colours are subject to conventions, meanings, and codes, Shneider hardly adheres to such specifications, but rather lets loose connections between seeing and saying emerge: thus an elephant is perhaps purple, a grandma blue, and a bite green. Moreover, her works bear titles that do not guide the viewer so much as provide him or her with puzzles. Precisely because the titles seem to clearly describe what is seen, the relationship between seeing and saying becomes confused. Shneider's works do not present figures so much as their attributes, qualities, and possibilities, and the titles serve the purpose of giving what is painted an event-like character. The titles are always extremely precise: even when they name something, they do not simply designate what one sees; even when a work on paper is called Basket, a red basket cannot be seen, but rather the red without the basket or, to be more precise, a basket-like red that is by no means a random and unformed collection of lines.

Shneider's titles, which are like names, do not reiterate the motif in language. Instead of stitching the motif to a designation, they weave together seeing and saying and betray the viewer: these drawings and paintings, which can be called abstract or figurative, are chock full of events. Thus, a title such as Bite does not decipher a figure or object, but rather points to something eventful: the picture could bite. Such titles produce unforeseeable connections between colours and events: perhaps that which one sees will actually happen in the next moment.

Menagerie

Emily Stainer's exhibition of display boxes takes place downstairs at the Standard Bank Gallery from 7 June to 23 July 2005. This artist's theatres shift from mythical worlds to erotic 'Red Light District' window displays. The cages are reminiscent of elaborate, gilded birdcages found in Victorian drawing rooms or nurseries, meant to house exotic birds and yet they are evocative of the barred enclosures found in nightclubs and strip joints, containing gyrating women.

In Stainer's exhibition she has sought to evoke something of the ambiance of the Victorian freak show, a collection of the outlandish and the strange. It explores the notion of otherness in miniature worlds which enclose, cage and display a menagerie of the bizarre.

Menagerie has been structured to display elements of contradiction, to suggest variety and comic contrast: the world of childhood games and fantasy play versus the domain of adult knowledge and sexual corruption, the security of the domestic space versus the uncertainty of public scrutiny, the aesthetics of intricacy and detail versus the grotesque.

The suggestion of voyeurism plays an explicit role in much of Stainer's work. The inclusion of mirrors in her installation confronts the voyeur with his or her own image. In particular, with some of these mirrors, an element of physical distortion suggests a mutilation of the psyche with this insalubrious act of looking. On the other hand, the lushness of velvet, varnish and gilt provide the temptation of spectacle and pageantry that paves the way for a public pleasure show, a menagerie.

Kathryn Smith: Euphemism

Artistic practice and an equally compelling interest in forensic investigation, particularly the psychological aspects of criminal activity, have preoccupied Kathryn Smith since childhood. Choosing to prioritise her work as an artist, curator and critic, her artistic practice owes much to the forensic investigator's ability to recreate compelling narratives from evidence that can often best be described as debris. Her process and research-based working methods are based on methodical recreations (or reinventions) of events or situations, which are not presented as complete 'histories', but abstracted moments and suggestive details. Working primarily in photography and video, and dabbling in performance, Smith will treat Euphemism as a work-in-progress, responding to the specific spaces of each gallery and museum to which it will travel.

The exhibition revolves around 'Jack in Johannesburg', a body of work made in response to British painter Walter Sickert's alleged relationship to (and documented obsession with) the Jack the Ripper murders in Victorian England, and works by Sickert in public collections in South Africa. 'Jack in Johannesburg' comprises a two-channel projection featuring footage from the eponymous performance piece produced at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2003, where Smith's upper left arm was tattooed with the aphorism 'Never look for unicorns until you run out of ponies'. Research for this ongoing project has included walking tours of the Ripper crime scenes in London's East End with criminologists and crime historians, a trip to Dieppe (France) where Sickert often painted, and the production of a video documenting accounts of the theft of a Sickert painting (Royal Hotel, Dieppe) from the South African National Gallery in 1998. Original works by Sickert will be incorporated into the installation in galleries where these works exist in their holdings.

Other works, infused with a bit of baroque melodrama, position themselves in relation to artistry versus art history; biography; alter-egos; and the meeting of reality, fiction and fantasy. Here, evidence and identity are circumstantial. Stand-ins, prostheses, body-doubles, and the slippery space between impersonators and impostors are all brought to bear in an exhibition that makes little attempt to sift truths from fictions. Acknowledging the secret histories and unspoken desires that exist between private and public space, Smith's work is connected to both conceptualist and formalist traditions, and is innately tied to the romantic notion of the art of murder.

Euphemism features photo and video works, based on pseudo-forensic working methods that recreate or reinvent situations, and re-presenting them not as complete histories, but as abstracted or suggestive moments. Acknowledging the secret histories and unspoken desires that exist between private and public space, Smith's work flirts with the meeting of reality, fiction, fantasy and desire, and is innately tied to the romantic notion of the art of murder.

Tying the Knot: Courtship & Marriage in southern Africa

This exhibition shows items worn by Zulu and Ndebele women during courtship and engagement and at their weddings. Items will be drawn from the Standard Bank African Art Collection, which is co-owned by the Standard Bank and the University of the Witwatersrand.

The wedding is perhaps one of the few ceremonial occasions which all cultures celebrate universally. There is possibly no other activity that concerns us as much as choosing a life's partner and a co-parent for any potential children. This is probably so because the family, in whatever form it may take, is universally considered the very core of any society or culture.

Although marriage takes on many different forms, informed by different times and places, and personalities, on closer inspection, there are some universal laws, which govern marriage in all societies.

Firstly, young people have to be ready, physically, emotionally and socially for marriage. These youngsters usually dress in such a way as to indicate that they are prepared for the experience of courtship. This is known as adolescence. Secondly, a specific, potential life-partner needs to be identified as such, and once again people have devised ways of showing that an individual is no longer "in the dating market". This phase is known as courtship and engagement. Thirdly, once certain criterion have been met and ceremonies observed a marriage partner is then chosen. All cultures once again provide their community with indications that an individual is now prepared for the responsibility of a shared life, which usually includes parenthood. This is known as marriage.

The exhibition entitled, Tying the Knot: Courtship and Marriage in southern Africa deals with the above three stages illustrated with historical items pertaining to two Nguni1 groups in South Africa; the Zulu and the Ndebele. However, although the literature consulted claims that these are the ways of the Zulu or Ndebele, all people and cultures are different and no description or outline can claim to be conclusive or "true".

1 Nguni is a classificatory term used to describe a sub-group of Bantu languages of southern Africa, including Zulu, Xhosa, Swazi and Ndebele (Powell 1995:156).

His current freelance work is a mixture of fine art photography and commercial photography. In 2002 he won the Mondi Award for Magazine photography for images taken in Angola.

Through the looking glass

Through the looking glass is a groundbreaking art exhibition that has been mounted to celebrate the Centenary of Rhodes University and is complemented by a book with the same name. Brenda Schmahmann, Professor and Head of Fine Art at Rhodes University is the curator of the exhibition and also author of the book.

The exhibition examines representations of self by South African women artists. Comprised of a wide range of significant works that have been borrowed from public and private collections, it explores the many intriguing ways in which paintings, sculptures, prints, photographs and work in other media speak of women's relation to their communities as well as a broad range of social concerns.

The title of the exhibition alludes to the adventures of Alice in the celebrated writings of Lewis Carroll. Equally, it refers to the mirrors that artists have historically used to make images of self. But, as the show reveals, women artists in South Africa do not produce self-representations that are uncritical reflections of traditional ideas. If Alice traverses a universe that inverts or defies convention, South African women artists - likewise - unsettle and challenge inherited norms. As Brenda Schmahmann notes in the book, South African women artists "have produced self-representations not by gazing at the looking glass but by moving and working through ideas that have underpinned prior uses of the mirror as motif as well as self-portraiture as a genre".

Perhaps the most important painting by Dorothy Kay - her Elvery Family - has been loaned by the South African National Gallery in Cape Town. Although made in 1938, it is astonishingly contemporary in its displacements of space and time and in its focus on memory. On show too is Kay's Eye of the Beholder (1953), a deliciously sardonic painting of the sixty-six year old artist at the hairdresser. Apart from offering an ironic engagement with a tradition of showing Venus gazing at a mirror, it has historical importance: The Eye of the Beholder was the very first work by a Port Elizabeth artist acquired by the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum (formerly known as the King George VI Art Gallery).

The exhibition also includes Penny Siopis's much admired My Lovely Day (1997). An installation that is an imaginative reconstruction of the cinema owned by the artist's grandfather in Umtata in the 1930s, My Lovey Day includes a video constructed from home-movie footage that is projected onto a screen in the manner of a silent film.

A unique self-portrait by ceramic sculptor Bonnie Ntshalintshali will be on exhibition. Made in 1991, it is the only work that the curator has ever encountered in which a South African black woman artist represents herself in the context of a studio and surrounded by material for making art.

The visitor will also have the opportunity to view Antoinette Murdoch's self-portrait of herself as a paper doll, a video by Candice Breitz in which the artist mimics the Julia Roberts character in the Hollywood movie Pretty Woman, as well as poignant life-sized nudes by Wilma Cruise and Pamela Melliar.

The book, illustrated in full colour and with a lucid and substantial text, Through the looking glass discusses self-representations in light of themes and issues that are of contemporary concern, such as memory and body politics.

The exhibition was launched at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown and has been shown at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum in Port Elizabeth and will travel to the Durban Art Gallery from the Standard Bank Gallery.

Rhodes University provided sponsorship towards the exhibition. The National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund, the National Arts Council of South Africa and David Krut Arts Resource sponsored the book as well as an educational brochure and educational programmes that form part of this project. The Joint Research Committee at Rhodes University provided funding for research undertaken by the curator/author.

Musée Barbier-Mueller Indian Jewellery Collection

An exhibition entitled Gold of India will take place at the Standard Bank Gallery from 19 April to 28 May 2005. The exhibition will be drawn from the Musée Barbier-Mueller collection of handcrafted Indian gold jewellery and represents a tradition that is thousands of years old.

From 3000 BC, Indian jewellery has been depicted in art forms like sculpture and painting. While there is no dearth of this pictorial and literary evidence, the material itself is not as prolific. These rare items of ancient Indian jewellery show a consistency of form, design and reason for being, which has not changed through the ages.

Based on the myths and legends of Indian gods and goddesses, abstract and obscure philosophical concepts are conveyed in layman's terms to be easily comprehensible. As in all else Indian, material belongings are a means to an end. Consequently, symbols and meanings are assigned to objects that may, to the outsider, appear merely decorative. From the lucky amulet tied to the wrist of a newborn child to ward off the evil eye, to the piece of gold placed in the mouth of a dead person to pay passage to heaven, ornaments and jewellery serve a purpose beyond the decorative. Therefore, everything is linked in an unbreakable chain - man, the metal, the ornament, nature and god.

While most of the Barbier-Mueller collection, which dates from the late 19th and 20th centuries, once belonged to various individuals, it is believed that some of the pieces originated in temples where images of gods and goddesses were fashioned from stone and metal and worshipped daily using prescribed rituals.

The documentation of South Indian jewellery has been somewhat neglected. Original names and antiquity have long been forgotten. In researching the collection, extensive travel was undertaken and vast numbers of jewellers interviewed. By spending long hours with members of the older generation, an attempt was made to find names and identify sources of inspiration for designs. This was a difficult process as the designs have, over time, become so stylized that their original names and sources have been lost.

Among all the art forms, jewellery is probably the most ancient as well as the most portable. It is partly due to its portability that styles and designs have endured and may also be the reason why very few old ornaments survive.

On display at the Standard Bank Gallery, the Durban Art Gallery and the Gold of Africa Museum during 2005, the 25-piece Barbier-Mueller collection is not only pleasing to the eye but takes the viewer on a fascinating journey through cultural structures that few will have the opportunity to visit otherwise.

New Beginnings: The best of the Standard Bank Corporate Art Collection

A comprehensive exhibition of works from the Standard Bank Corporate Collection will be shown from 3 March to 9 April 2005 to celebrate the opening of the newly renovated Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg. Works on exhibition reflect the bank's continued commitment to the arts in South Africa.

The Standard Bank Gallery first opened its doors in 1990 and forms part of the Standard Bank Centre complex in downtown Johannesburg. Since then its status as one of the finest visual arts venues in the city, if not the country, has been firmly established. The Gallery has hosted many local shows of the highest standard - Irma Stern, Karl Nel, The Meneghelli collection of Nigerian Art as well as international blockbusters such as the Marc Chagall and the Joan Miró exhibitions.

The gallery has also established itself as one of the few non-commercial public spaces for major exhibitions, and, through its extensive educational programme, plays an increasingly important role in facilitating the continued development of a truly South African culture.

Fourteen years after its establishment, the gallery, under Architects Pierre Lombart and Bridget Grosskopff from the Architectural firm GLH, has undergone a major face-lift and now boasts a more art friendly environment including state of the art audiovisual spaces.

The inaugural exhibition in the new gallery will feature the very best of the Standard Bank Corporate Collection. Standard Bank has acquired an impressive art collection of quality over many years and this show gives the South African public the opportunity to see it in a single convenient space.

The New Beginnings exhibition will include works by some of South Africa's renowned artists such as William Kentridge, Gerard Sekoto, Karel Nel, Penny Siopis, Sam Nhlengethwa, Andrew Verster, Bonnie Ntshalintshali, Pat Mautloa, Zwelethu Mthethwa and Minnette Vari.

The show will also feature the works of those artists whose pioneering work established the visual arts in South Africa including Irma Stern, Jacob Hendrik Pierneef, Pieter Hugo Naudé and Maggie Laubser.