Vrijdag 20 April 2012

In 2010, Tillim (South Africa) bought a catamaran and sailed from New Zealand to the Polynesian islands, seeking to portray the modern landscapes of these ‘paradise islands’. His intensely light, vividly colourful, windblown landscapes reveal these landscapes as being new, up to date, and full of life.

huismarseille

Mainly artists from Southern Africa. Explores landscape typologies in South Africa, Namibia, Angola, and Mozambique. The concept of landscape here is not linked to historical notions of the picturesque and the sublime. Instead, the exhibition considers landscape as a prism of experience, a reflection of ideology, and a stage for the performance and perception of identity.

walthercollection

Brings together the full range of the artist’s work, from wood trays referring to traditional symbols of the Akan people of Ghana; to early ceramics from the artist’s Broken Pots series, driftwood assemblages that refer to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and wooden sculptures carved with a chainsaw; to the luminous metal wall-hangings of recent years.

El Anatsui - When I Last Wrote to You about Africa

In juli 2012 sluit het museum voor een grondige renovatie. Deze tentoonstelling biedt de bezoeker een uniek kijkje achter de schermen. In een parcours met 30 stops wordt antwoord gegeven op uiteenlopende vragen, zoals wat doet een indiaan nu in een museum over Afrika? De stops presenteren markante feiten uit de geschiedenis van het museum en werpt tevens een licht op de toekomstplannen.

africamuseum

Images by Congolese photographer and video artist Sammy Baloji feature the industrial landscapes around Lumbumbasi, the capital city of Katanga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The images serve as a visual indictment of the failed postcolonial leadership that mismanaged and squandered Katanga’s industrial resources, its modernity, and the economic prosperity of the region.

si

While Jane Alexander’s figures are, in many ways, emblems of monstrosity, they are oddly beautiful. Her creatures expose the human animal for all it is and all it could become. Though clearly concerned with social issues, Alexander’s sculptural installations and photographs do not judge, nor do they convey a particular political or moral standpoint.

africanart

In olieverf toont Asaph Batecereza krachtige Ugandese beelden van muzikanten, dansers en de relatie tussen mens en natuur. Het sterke licht- donker contrast in zijn werk laat ons meereizen naar een magische sfeer van kale bomen, dansende vrouwen met waterkruiken op hun hoofd en pijprokende eenzame mannen.

podiummozaiek

Hoe Nederlandse stoffen van het Helmondse bedrijf Vlisco onderdeel werden van verschillende West- en Centraal Afrikaanse culturen én hun weg vonden in de internationale mode, beeldende kunst en fotografie. Met werk van kunstenaars, fotografen en modeontwerpers. Uit Afrika onder meer Yinka Shonibare, Wangechi Mutu, Fatimah Tuggar, Seydou Keïta, Meschac Gaba en Bodys Isek Kingelez.

mmkarnhem vlisco

De carrière van de fotograaf Pieter Hugo (Johannesburg, 1976) is met recht ‘booming’ te noemen. Zijn monumentale foto’s, waarin het hedendaagse Afrika een hoofdrol speelt, krijgen inmiddels wereldwijde aandacht. Hij won al talloze prijzen en is recentelijk genomineerd voor de prestigieuze Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2012. Aankomend voorjaar toont het Fotomuseum Den Haag een uitgebreid overzicht van werk dat Hugo maakte tussen 2003 en 2011.

fotomuseum pieterhugo

El Salahi’s body of work is not bound within one style nor is it constrained by the early parameters of Sudanese aesthetic practices. His paintings combine a critical understanding of western art principles with references to Sudanese and Islamic art forms; his trademark linear style remains a preeminent unifying device expressing the intuitive merging of Islamic spirituality with critical social consciousness.

africanart

Goddelijk en Griezelig is een interculturele tentoonstelling over het oudste dierensymbool ter wereld: de slang. De tentoonstelling laat in de vorm van oude en moderne kunst uit de hele wereld zien dat de slang vanaf de prehistorie tot op de dag van vandaag in alle culturen een bijzondere betekenis heeft.

afrikamuseum

Drawings as understood and defined by a select group of important contemporary artists. The discipline has expanded and evolved over the past two decades and currently includes several creative forms of expression that were previously not defined as drawing. The exhibition’s name, 'Prism', evokes a tool that enables a variety of approaches, akin to how a glass prism disperses light into a multicoloured spectrum. Participating in the exhibition are African artists Ghada Amer (Egypt), Frédéric Bruly Bouabré (Ivory Coast), William Kentridge and Robin Rhode (both South Africa).

nasjonalmuseet

De educatieve tentoonstelling De gierzwaluw: Ver weg en ook dichtbij is op 9 maart geopend door burgemeester Bernt Schneiders, samen met woningbouw-directeur Victor Verhoeven en de kinderen van basisschool de Cirkel en de VMBO opleiding Sterrencollege.  De tentoonstelling  is onderdeel van het 20jarig bestaan van de stedenband Haarlem-Mutare. De tentoonstelling is gemaakt voor de hoogste klassen van de basisschool.

haarlemmutare youtube

Iziko Museums in collaboration with the Campbell Collections of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, proudly presents Iqholo le Afrika (Her African Pride): A Centenary Celebration of the Life and Work of Barbara Tyrrell. An event marking her 100th birthday on 15 March 2012 will launch the exhibition which opens to the public the following day. A selection of over 150 of her highly decorative and accurate visual recordings of southern African costume a.o. will be exhibited.

iziko

Osaretin Ighile’s recent sculpture employs strategies that grasp notions of artworks as conceptual totalities, multivalent narratives crafted from a variety of approaches, not just single images that express big ideas about humanity. His work is informed by a sophisticated discourse on traditional philosophical concepts, a deep understanding of the aesthetic and cultural character of the African continent as well as an invigorating inclination and facility with various materials and methods.

skotogallery

De werken in de tentoonstelling zijn een spel met mensen en dieren – ambigue wezens die iets vertellen over hun fragiele relatie met de wereld. In de dynamische composities van Omar Ba (Senegal) vind je tegenovergestelde werelden: het rijk van de mensen en dat van de dieren, vooruitgang en natuur, Afrika en het westen. Daarnaast creëert Ba een neutraal terrein dat reflectie toestaat. Barbara Polderman voert haar sculpturen van stof uit in een virtuoze collagetechniek. Persoonlijke waarnemingen inspireren haar tot het ontwikkelen van sprekende symbolen. Met getekende dieren creëert Lenneke van der Goot een in scene gezette wereld; licht/schaduw, vorm/restvorm, op zoek naar eigenheid in een context.

galeriesanaa - omar ba

In Exit Mode, Berlin-based and South African born painter Carla Busuttil returns home to exhibit a series of paintings that traverse her exit from the country, and what she discovered when she left. A dedicated painter, Busuttil’s point of departure and ultimate concern is always her medium. “Within my work, it is the quality of painting that matters,” she explains. “Content is secondary – always secondary. I am not interested in constructing images that shock or dictate, and doubt whether painting, or any other medium, retains the power to do so.”

goodman-gallery

Uses South Africa’s past to examine both the complex nature of history and of South African identity. Using a variety of media, including lithographs, sculpture and found objects, Chad Rossouw shows moments of melancholy, bathos and bombastic failure against the relentless march of historical time. Two main ideas connect the various artworks in A History of Failure. The first is that historical progress is merely an illusion. The second proposes an inherent failing in projects, monuments or nations that are dependent on the illusion of history.

brundyngonsalves

Portraiture is a favoured genre with subjects drawn from Gratrix’s personal and social world, as well as contemporary pop and celebrity culture. Imagery such as rainbows, flowers, exotic birds and puppies have a mischievous, ominous undertone. The paintings are fresh, energetic, witty, vibrant and colourful – yet melancholic. Despite numerous art-historical references, Gratrix is entirely original and completely immersed in the present. In the artist’s own words, My Show includes; “mythical grunge, good pop, bling jokes, sweaty Chanel, divorce flowers, tropical Maximalism, jungle nipples, rainbow poodles, the age of LOL and my friends”.

smacgallery

In this series of documented photographs Van der Merwe used the rusted wires that were deposited in the landscape and arranged them on the existing sandstone pillars in the landscape. These sculptural drawings are metaphors to cloud formations and his close relation to the land and the cycles of nature as it occurs in the landscape. The building up of clouds is also a reference to the building up of public anger against the proposed “fracking” in the Karoo. The installation inside the gallery functions as a ‘time machine’ symbolizing the ‘sleeping’ time bomb that await us if we don’t take appropriate action in protecting our natural resources.

circaonjellicoe

In this series of works, Stephen Conroy (UK) continues his pre-occupation with the human figure in isolation and presents a single male figure posed in various standing positions. A number of the works are self portraits and these range from a series of head studies in which he portrays himself both frontally and in profile, as well as three-quarter length views with arms in various attitudes. This is a striking group of paintings, where the artist’s gaze is particularly poignant and enigmatic.

everard-read

First installment of the gallery's Trade Routes Project, marking the 15th anniversary of the second - and last - Johannesburg Biennale. In this exhibition, some artists present the same works that they showed in 1997. These are works that are central to these artists' development but have not been widely seen. Other artists show works that might be familiar to international audiences but are not part of our local consciousness. The three South African artists present new works made especially for this exhibition.

stevenson

The Land of Cockaigne was the medieval idea of a paradise of plenty. For Poynton, the act of painting is an attempt to enter this fantastical world - but in an unexpected way. As the artist writes: In the Land of Cockaigne every wish was granted. I have used this title not because I wanted to illustrate paradise, but because painting itself is that land of never-realised fulfillment. Every painting I do comes from the same need to inhabit this land, to create a sense of engulfment, of complete enclosure, to blind and deafen and numb myself through the senses in order to find some peace.

stevenson

In Strange Days Booyens' structures evolve into isolated forms that vary from the severely monochrome to the exuberantly polychrome. His abstracted compositions evoke landscapes built on systems of fractal geometry, and yet they retain the spontaneity of an intuitive creation process. Booyens’ reluctance to completely undermine figurative representation adds to this body of work’s feeling of internal dissent, a conflict between the order of recognisable forms and the vitality of chaos.

blankprojects

Galerie Lumières d'Afrique is proud and excited to display a selection of 30 pieces of the work of Ahmed Abushariaa, the Sudanese watercolours master and painter. The exhibition focus is on the Darfur war series, memories from Sudan and impressions of a medieval city called Suakin, on the South Coast of Port Sudan.

lumieresdafrique

For the entire year of 2011, Alison McKay set out to create one 20x20cm painting each day, illustrating a news headline for the day. She documented her progress in an interactive online blog (365southafrica@blogspot.com). McKay’s work is largely figurative and graphic and located within an urban aesthetic. Her work largely draws inspiration from the opinions and actions of the ordinary person in the streets of South Africa - their energy and need to survive.

artspace-jhb artthrob

Neil le Roux’s ballpoint pen drawings can be described as a series of obsessive, repetitive curved lines, forming peaks and dales in what appears to be topographic maps of imaginative land masses, or concentric circles resembling the year rings of hewn trees. The process of drawing is cardinal in his work. It is apt to use Richard Serra’s maxim ‘Drawing is a verb’ when describing Le Roux’s drawings. His drawing is, however, much more than process; it is as much an artifact, projective, not predictive, of its own aesthetic outcome, as it is of an act.

artonpaper

The central theme of the artist is social life in South Africa, both on the land and in the big cities. Cedric Nunn documents internal political confrontations among the black population, as well as the civil war of the 1980s and its effects. He is interested in the reality of apartheid, beyond the media-generated images and social prejudices. Over a long period of time he focused in particular on the people in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, and in the neighbouring country of Mozambique. This exhibition features photographs from the late 1970s to the present day.

kznsagallery

Gretchen van der Byl's work engages with those spatial questions that we find ourselves compelled to answer every day, as we move through the world. This body of work, presented less as a collection of discrete objects than as a series of ongoing experiments, takes its cue from those particular geometries, and spatial and linguistic devices, that fold back on themselves in loops of self-reference. What happens when that which is being described, and that which is doing the describing, unexpectedly turn out to be the same thing.

commune1 artthrob

J H Pierneef's Johannesburg Station Panels, made in the early 1930s, are cornerstones of South African landscape painting. They hung in the concourse of the old Johannesburg railway station and depicted 28 views taken from South Africa and Namibia. These highly stylised works have been seen by thousands of people over the past 80 years. In 2007, photographer Monique Pelser and painter Carl Becker independently set out to explore whether these places ever existed and if so what they look like today.

sun-ac

New drawings. Julia Rosa Clark works with elements of throwaway nostalgia to create witty, poignant collages and installations. Her works function both to incite personal longing and to deconstruct general, though often specifically South African, cultural truths as learned through the information systems of the public education system, popular media and family legend.

whatiftheworld artthrob

Self-taught artist David Bromley´s paintings have rich layers of vibrant colour and texture which cover the canvases in an obvious relish for painterliness. Figures are outlined in black in a way which is reminiscent of comic book imagery and pop art. Rather than super-heroes, though, Bromley chooses to paint women, birds and butterflies – marks of beauty, fertility and fragility – with rich backdrops of gold- and silver-leaf.

everard-read-capetown

Making Douala 2007-2013 shows the effects of inscribing contemporary art into public space on the daily life in and the perception of the city of Douala (Cameroon). Making Douala presents the work of SUD, the Salon Urbain de Douala, through the representation of a selection of the projects and events that contributed to the success of the international triennial’s editions in 2007 and 2010. It also introduces the preliminary ideas for SUD2013, entitled Douala Metamorphoses.

iabr

Hajek is a painter immersed in a world of surreal fantasy and melancholic beauty. Drawing from diverse references such as 60’s African studio photography, renaissance perspective and the Dutch still lifes of the 1600s his work is underpinned by the colour and texture of folkloric imagery.Strange Flowers, Hajek’s most recent body of work, is a hypnotic tangle of botanical forms and colour. Rendered in acrylic on wood panels, Hajek uses distressed and exquisitely fine mark-making to create a rich surface patina. Woven into the fabric of the work the image of the flower is used as a seductive yet contradictory metaphor for fertility, poison, growth and decay.

whatiftheworld