Exhibition: A prospect of icons

Mason has been one of the most important figures on the South African art stage for a number of decades. Apart from producing a large body of paintings, she has also published her work in books, in collaboration with poets.

While Mason’s work draws extensively on religion, and sometimes on the poetry of Christopher Smart and Wilfred Owen, it is also informed by her exploration of mythological figures and creatures. These include the Minotaur and Arachne, the spider symbol of creativity and aggressiveness. Animals, like the leopard, hyena, ape and monkey, in fact feature widely in Mason’s work, and one understanding of them is that they symbolize our baser instincts.

Another important aspect of her work, which is often understood as having ‘psychological insight’ into her subject matter, is that it reflects on such iconic socio-political issues as the homeless, street children, HIV/Aids, abortion, war mongering and the politics of conflict under apartheid.

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 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.

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, installations and artist’s books.

Mason is one of the stars of the South African art galaxy. Her show should not be missed.

Exhibition: A Private View

Of Norwegian-Canadian descent, Cecil Skotnes was born in 1926 in East London in a poor neighbourhood. He fought in World War II against fascism in Italy with South African troops, after which he stayed on to study painting in Florence. On returning to South Africa, he studied art at the University of the Witwatersrand from 1947 to 1950. He lived in Johannesburg from 1946, relocating to Cape Town in 1978.

A legendary figure in South African cultural circles, Skotnes has exhibited in many countries, and no collection of South African art can be said to be representative without his work.

In 1963 Skotnes helped to establish the Amadlozi group (the name was chosen by him and means “spirit of our ancestors”). This group, which also included Guiseppe Cattaneo, Cecily Sash, Sidney Kumalo and Edoardo Villa, sought to work at the intersection of African and European art.

A former President of the now defunct South African Council of Artists – he took over from Walter Battiss – Skotnes is the recipient of many awards in recognition of his work and his contribution to cultural development in South Africa. He was awarded the Chamber of Mines Gold Medal in 1965, and the South African Breweries Gold Medal in 1968. In addition, he has been honoured with three honorary doctorates – from the Universities of Cape Town, Rhodes and Witwatersrand – and a National Order, the Order of Ikhamanga in Gold (2003), for ”exceptional achievement in, and the deracialisation of, the arts, and for outstanding contribution to the development of black artists.”

About the exhibition

CECIL SKOTNES: A PRIVATE VIEW: Images from the archive of Cecil and Thelma Skotnes is an exhibition celebrating the art of Cecil Skotnes, an icon of the South African art world and champion of modernism in Africa.

The exhibition, curated by Pippa Skotnes, the artist’s daughter, 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, in part, on his more intimate work – drawings, cartoons, prints and paintings on paper. Some of these have not been shown publicly before. The exhibition, however, also includes some of the works that have helped to shape Skotnes into the legend that he is.

Skotnes is mostly acclaimed as a printmaker, although he is also renowned as a painter. He has, however, worked in a number of media and, besides prints, paintings and drawings, the exhibition also includes tapestries and sculpture, as well as his signature large coloured wood-panels that grew out of the making of blocks for relief printing.

Also included on the show are letters and documents collected over five decades by the artist’s wife, Thelma; photographs of the Skotnes home by Paul Weinberg; the artist’s sketchbooks; stamp designs from 1966; objects from Skotnes’ studio; personal memorabilia, like bowties; and visual dedications to Thelma in the form of Christmas cards.

In exhibiting not only works, but also memorabilia, tools, and such like, what the exhibition seeks to do is to demystify Skotnes as legend by constructing a picture of the man behind the art. In so doing, the exhibition offers an intriguing and absorbing look into Skotnes’ intimate world.

Exhibition: Toys For Africa – an exhibition of handmade African toys presented by The African Toyshop

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).

Exhibition: Messina / Musina

Pieter Hugo was born in Johannesburg in 1976 and is a self-taught photographer and filmmaker. He started taking pictures at the age of 12, when his father bought him his first camera. He documents social issues globally but has a special interest in Africa and developing countries.

Hugo has a working relationship with Colors magazine, for whom he has shot photographic stories on issues ranging from old age to slavery, slums and madness. In 2002/3 he undertook a residency at Fabricia, Benetton’s Research and Communications Centre in Italy, after which he achieved global acclaim as a photographer.

Hugo was included in ReGeneration: 50 Photographers of Tomorrow, 2005-2025, an exhibition identifying 50 young photographers who will be considered great by 2025. In 2006 he was selected by Getty Images as one of their young photographers of the year, and as one of “100 artists on the cusp of international success” in the December issue of Art Review. In the same year, he won first prize in the portraits section of World Press Photo 2006 for a work from his Hyena Men portfolio – a series of portraits about a street gang in Nigeria who use hyenas and baboons to entertain and collect debts.

Hugo’s most recent accolade was winning the KLM Paul Huf Award 2008, an annual prize for a young international talent below 35 years old. According to a jury spokesperson, Hugo’s work embodies “originality, both in approach and style.”

On winning the 2007 Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art award, Hugo says: “It means that photography is being recognised as an artistic medium in South Africa and this gives me great pleasure…It is refreshing that there is now the space where we can appreciate photographic images beyond the urgency of photojournalism.”

Hugo held his first solo exhibition in 2004 at Michael Stevenson in Cape Town, a show that included the projects Albino Portraits, a portfolio about people afflicted with albinism throughout the world; Rwanda 2004: Vestiges of a Genocide, a series of works about the development of Rwanda 10 years after the genocide there; and Malawi 2003: Tuberculosis and guardian care. The Albino Portraits form part of a larger project, Looking Aside, which focuses on people whose appearance makes us look away.

Other intriguing projects on which Hugo has worked, or is currently working, include The Wild Honey Collectors, about wild honey collectors in Ghana; The Bereaved, which explores spaces associated with mourning and the bereaved families of those killed by AIDS-related illnesses; and The Judges, which consists of African judges and barristers dressed in official regalia.

Exhibition: Collection

Joni Brenner is a visual artist based in Johannesburg. She lectures in the Division of Visual Arts at the Wits School of Arts and exhibits her work regularly both locally and in London. She makes portraits, in a variety of mediums, of Wilson Mootane – her sitter of more than fifteen years. Whilst her work is focused on a single sitter she is less interested in issues of likeness than she is in the portraits’ dispersal to encompass broader notions of mortality, preservation, fragility and transience – issues implicit in all portraits. As she puts it: “Working with portraiture means working with an awareness of time passing and it brings mortality and the fragility of being into sharp focus”

This exhibition at the Standard Bank Gallery is called Collection and is installed in the downstairs gallery. It is a selection of new paintings and sculptures (and some much earlier works) that uses the permanent cabinets in the space to explore conventions of museum display – an area of investigation that has informed Brenner’s practice in an ongoing way. Brenner understands that portraits themselves are always and only fragments of a far more complex whole and as viewers we are like archaeologists piecing together a broader story from fragments.

Exhibition: Skin-to-Skin: Challenging Textile Art

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.

Exhibition: Intimate Relations

Standard Bank and Iziko South African National Gallery are hosting the first solo exhibition in South Africa by Marlene Dumas, the internationally acclaimed artist.

Although regarded as one of the world's leading artists, Dumas is generally unknown in the land of her birth, except among art cognoscenti.

Dumas was born in Kuilsriver, a semi-rural area on the outskirts of Cape Town, in 1953. After matriculating from Bloemhof Girls' High School in Stellenbosh, she enrolled at the Michaelis School of Art, University of Cape Town, in 1972, completing her studies there in 1975. Of her Michaelis days, Dumas says: "Art school in South Africa was very stimulating in a theoretical way, [and we were dealing with] issues that only now are becoming important for some Europeans, like… what is political art?"

In 1976, the year of the Soweto uprising, Dumas moved to Holland to do a post-graduate degree in visual art at the Atelier '63 in Haarlem. She also studied psychology at the University of Amsterdam from 1979 to 1980. Although she had no intention of staying, Dumas still lives and works in Amsterdam.

Dumas has participated in many biennales and was the first South African artist to exhibit at Documenta in Germany. She represented The Netherlands at the Venice Bienniale in 1995. A participant in numerous group shows since 1978, she 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).

Besides being a consummate painter, Dumas is also a writer whose commentaries on art, culture and politics have been widely published. "I write about art," she says, "because I want to speak for myself. I might not be the only authority, nor the best authority, but I want to participate in the writing of my own history. Why should artists be validated by outside authorities. I don't like being paternalised and colonised by every Tom, Dick and Harry that comes along (male or female)."

Dumas' work is informed by the idea of intimate relations, how we connect with one another, both personally and globally, and also with art.

More particularly, her work deals with varied and ideologically complex subjects and for her nothing is taboo. In a career spanning thirty years or so, she has made works focusing on apartheid, racist stereotypes, maternity and motherhood, death, violence, sexuality and eroticism, and religion.

Speaking at a media launch for Marlene Dumas: Intimate Relations in July, Emma Bedford, the co-curator of the exhibition along with the artist, had this to say about Dumas: "Through her paintings and texts she reflects on and takes pleasure in all aspects of life from birth through to death. She rarely shies away from uncomfortable truths. Images appropriated from diverse sources, including the media, reflect the world back at the viewer. To the extent that she continues to show the world to itself, she may be considered a significant public intellectual in that, through her chosen medium of drawing and painting, she articulates engaging responses to some of the most pressing issues of the day. Achille Mbembe, one of the catalogue authors, is of the opinion that Dumas' work speaks directly to the politics of our times, right now, worldwide."

Amongst the images that Dumas has appropriated from the media are those of superstar models, like Naomi Campbell. According to Bedford, works such as Naomi (1995), Supermodel (1995) and Barbie (1997) "challenge Western ideals of beauty and remind us that notions of beauty are not necessarily derived from personal taste. Nor are they universal and fixed, but rather cultural-specific and open to change. What Supermodel and Naomi validate is beauty originating in Africa - a beauty inextricably entwined with the body which asserts itself through, and despite, attitudes towards blackness."

Dumas is described by Patricia Ellis of the Saatchi Gallery in London as "championing the under-represented classes." "Her characters," she continues, "occupy unholy ground where the viewer's individual morality and adherence to ideological convention are questioned." This is the value and strength of her work. In raising provocative questions about beauty, gender, identity, oppression, sexuality and eroticism, and ethnic violence, she obliges us to think about our own platforms and understandings. Consider, for example, her works based on photographs from newspapers showing Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli soldiers in 2002. Here we are not only called upon to ponder death by violence, but also our attitudes in regard to the conflict in the Middle East.

In summing up the artist's work, Bedford says that "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."

An artist of great stature in the world at large, it is only fitting that Dumas is given credit for her contribution to global art in the land of he birth.