09a / Implemented environments: 07 december 2011- 04 january 2012

There can be little doubt that “green issues” are at the forefront of contemporary collective consciousness. Notions of recycling, climate change, and environmental sustainability are all pertinent topics of discussion and have manifested themselves in such diverse initiatives as the United Nations Environment Programme’s Billion Tree Campaign and Greenpeace. With the upcoming COP-17, UN Climate Change Conference in Durban all eyes will be on South Africa as a central figure in this global dialogue.

Yet to view a notion of environment in isolated terms of its nature connotations is to ignore the fundamental interrelations of the word in its broader context. The Oxford English Dictionary supplies multiple definitions of environment including:

• Freq. with the. The natural world or physical surroundings in general, either as a whole or within a particular geographical area, esp. as affected by human activity.
• The social, political, or cultural circumstances in which a person lives, esp. with respect to their effect on behaviour, attitudes, etc.; (with modifying word) a particular set of such circumstances.
• Art. A large three-dimensional artwork designed to be experienced from within.
  

Thus the term becomes something that one experiences, but also something that one perpetuates and has the potential to influence; environment as an entity sustained by a series of actions and reactions.

With this in mind, Brundyn + Gonsalves proudly presents Implemented Environments. The exhibition incorporates a diverse array of responses to the theme although consistent throughout is a frank honesty in the artists’ reflections. Indeed the exhibition runs the gamut from the whimsical to the confrontational. Implemented Environments marks an insightful and relevant investigation into South African artists’ meditations on notions of environment; whether addressing ecological, economic or sociopolitical conditions or simply reflecting on the earth-human connection.

Participating Artists:
Jessie Hammond, Mohau Modisakeng, Daniella Mooney, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Sean Slemon, Jan van der Merwe, Barbara Wildenboer

For more information:
fiona@brundyngonsalves.com
leighanne@brundyngonsalves.com
00 27 21 424 5150
www.brundyngonsalves.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09b / Stevenson Cape Town:

Buchanan Building, 160 Sir Lowry Road
Woodstock 7925 South Africa

Cape Town Summer Exhibition 1 Dec 2011 - 14 Jan 2012

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE
Stevenson presents what we talk about when we talk about love, an exhibition that questions what constitutes this feeling and its ramifications. The title, borrowed from a Raymond Carver story, suggests that the search for love might extend beyond popular culture’s notion of romantic love and relationships, reiterated in movies and songs.

The selected works explore the relationship we put in place with ourselves, what we like and dislike, what we desire or reject, and why. The exhibition endeavours also to observe some of the forms assumed by the search for wholeness, investigating the complexity of the spheres of love, desire and self-inquiry.

Participating artists include Francis Alÿs, Anton Kannemeyer, Ian Grose, Pieter Hugo, Zanele Muholi, Deborah Poynton, Zina Saro-Wiwa, Viviane Sassen, Claudette Schreuders and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, among others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

09c / The barnyard gallery:

The Barnard Gallery was opened by owner and director Chris Barnard, as a space to not only exhibit and represent some of South Africa’s largest names in the art world, but also to give a few young up and coming artists an opportunity to be showcased and represented by a gallery with professionalism and passion for what they do.
 
We are still a relatively young gallery but in the past year and a half we have managed not only to be recognized as a serious player in the art community, we have also managed to secure representation and exhibit works by some of the greats, including, Willie Bester, Robert Slingsby, Norman Catherine, Keith Calder, Paul Du Toit to mention a few.
 
We are incredibly excited about the possibility of creating a mutually beneficial, professional relationship and belief that the Barnard Gallery and yourselves can better promote the great talents to the world, and open the eyes of the public to what amazing art is out there.
 
Please visit our website at www.barnardgallery.com for further information on the artists, exhibitions, the gallery and so much more.

The Barnard Gallery is delighted to present an exhibition of visual music by the internationally acclaimed artist, Felix Anaut.
Having experienced the civil war in Spain and ethno-political conflict in Northern Ireland, Anaut's diverse and often tumultuous life has been accompanied by an insatiable passion for art in all its manifestations.
Now based in South-West France, his prodigious and eclectic oeuvre includes paintings, installations, sculpture and ceramics. His imagery has been influenced by classical and Baroque figurative painting, ancient calligraphy and abstraction; as well as the art of Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso and Wassily Kandinsky.

It is particularly the latter who has influenced his recent works, which explore the synaesthetic relationship between sound, stroke and colour. Like Kandinsky - the influential Russan Expressionist artist - Anaut has produced epic abstract works in which colour is identified with sound.

The notion that music is linked to visual art harks back to ancient Greece, when Plato first spoke of tone and harmony in relation to art. But music - unlike the traditional visual arts - expresses itself through sound and time. It allows the listener the freedom of imagination, interpretation, and emotional response that is not based on the literal or the descriptive, but rather on the abstract quality that painting, still dependent on representing the visible world, usually cannot.
Anaut, however, has succeeded in transcending this limitation. His installations include studies of musical notation, instruments, musical structures and the emotional symbolism of colour. From his visual music installations have emerged arias, opuses and symphonies specially composed for the works, thereby completing Anaut's synaesthetic homage to life, love and creativity.

FELIX ANAUT - BIOGRAPHY

Spanish born artist Felix Anaut (1944) is now based in South West France, although, but also works from studios in Ireland and Spain. In recent years Anaut has had considerable success and recognition, been embraced warmly by the European Art Scene, exhibiting widely in both public and private sectors, most notably in France, Spain, England, Italy and Ireland as well as many other European countries.
Anaut started his artistic studies with classes at the ‘Circulo de Bellas Artes’ in Madrid, finishing studying at the ‘Ecole de Montparnasse d’Art et Dessin’ in Paris in 1978-79. After Paris he returned to Madrid to continue painting, followed by time spent living in Tangier and Ibiza (1982-83). During this period Anaut developed his interest in abstract painting, largely inspired from arabic calligraphy.
In 1983, after studying a course on the history of porcelain at Christie’s in London, Anaut decided to stay in England and continue painting, ending up settling in Belfast, where he co- founded a contemporary art gallery. During the seven year duration of the gallery, Anaut dedicated less time to his personal work, due to his obligations with the gallery, however continued to paint and exhibit sporadically.
In 1989-90 he returned to Spain and to painting full-time. From this period onwards he has been dedicated to the development of his work, returning to a strong investigation of figurative painting. In 2001 Anaut moved his base from Spain to South West France, where he continues working today, reflecting back, in some of his new work, to his past abstract painting and keeping in line also, his powerful figurative work.

In the winter of 2003 Anaut was invited to participate in the Florence Biennale, where he won the award ‘Lorenzo el Magnifico of the city of Florence’ for his artistic career, in front of some 890 artists from around the world. In 2006, Anaut was listed in the Spanish national newspaper, ‘El Mundo’ in their supplement of the ‘500 most influential Spanish people, 2006’, under the Arts section, alongside seven other artists, including such names as Tapies.

Some of his more notable exhibitions have included ‘Los Artistas’, an exhibition where Anaut showed alongside three of his greatest heroes in the history of modern art, Picasso, Miro and Bacon, sponsored by Arttank in Belfast, Ireland. Also his solo show in the Museum of Isaba, in Navarra, Spain and a Retrospective at the Galerie des Tanneries in Nerac, France.
In 2005 he exhibited work in a new contemporary art museum in Casoria, Naples, Italy, which remains in the permanent collection. He also had a solo show at the Museum Albert Marzelles, Marmande in France, who have purchased work for their permanent collection.
In 2006 he had a huge solo exhibition under the title of ‘Bacchanal – Art or Decadence’, at the Raymond Farbos Contemporary Art Centre, Mont de Marsan. He also participated in the Belfast Arts Festival, with an exhibition under the title ‘No Hay Camino, Se Hace Camino Al Andar’ (There are no paths, one makes a path by walking’, Antonio Machado, 1875-1939).
2007 included his participation in the Process-Art Festival in Bulgaria, and various art fairs in France & Spain.

His most recent work concentrates on his interpretation of music, his visual music as he calls it, inspired from the Baroque period. These abstractions have led to recent exhibitions in London, and the most recent, “The Zaragoza Symphony”, a large scale public exhibition in homage to his birth city, and which included a true musical symphony composed by the Spanish composer Gonzalo Alonso, with an aria (words written by Anaut) sung by the international Spanish soprano, Marta Almajano. This was the first of many “symphonies” which Anaut is working on for different venues in the world.

Over the last couple of years parallel to his painting, Anaut has also been developing his work with ceramics, painting very large scale one off pieces. For this he collaborates with ‘Ceramicas Abio’ in Huesca, Northern Spain.
Works by Anaut are also in the collections of various museums, art institutions and many other public spaces, notably the British Museum, London: Ulster Museum, Belfast: Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, Naples:

He has had numerous public interviews on television and radio about his work and career, and wide press coverage in magazines, newspapers etc, throughout his career.

Also in 2010 a book was published, ‘Felix Anaut, his life & work’, written by the art collector Michael Simonow, whose art collection is on permanent loan to the ‘Abbaye Flaran’ in S. W. France, this will add to one of several books that Simonow has written about artists in his collection. The book covers Anaut’s life, and through illustrations give a wide representation of his work.

09d / An exhibition of recent works by David Kuijers and Tania Babb:

Duration: 12 December 2011 - 14 January 2012
at The Cape Gallery, 60 Church Street, Cape Town

Sundays in summer are long leisurely days to spend with the family or at the beach. We ask you to note that at the request of the artists there will be no formal opening to this exhibition. We invite you to join us, at your leisure, during the period the work is on show.

A man of few words, David Kuijers walks the fine line between expression and playfulness. He is “…inherently wary of too much seriousness…” when making art and attempts to translate every bit of whimsy found in daily occurrences into a burst of excitement on canvas or glass.

The quirky sense of humour and seemingly arbitrary choice of subject matter in his work has been described as “…a good armchair in which one rests from physical fatigue…” This November/December exhibition will be no exception, as David once again brings his light-hearted sense of fun to The Cape Gallery.

David Kuijers has participated in numerous past solo and group exhibitions at The Cape Gallery. He studied graphic design and illustration at Cape Tecknikon, beginning in 1987, and has been working as a full time artist since 1999. In 2002 a book on Cape Town, entitled “David Kuijers paints the town” was published.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

His notable commissions include work for:
The President Hotel; Sea Point
The Radisson Hotel; Granger Bay
Constantia Medi Clinic
Tiger Brand Food Head Offices
Dole Export
Prices Food
Da Vinci Hotel, Johannesburg

Tania’s quirkiness extends out into a three dimensional level. A successful ceramist with a graphic design background, she has exhibited extensively locally and internationally, including exhibitions held in France, Korea, Germany, London and the USA, among others. In 2003, her work reached the finals of the Brett Kebble Art Awards.

09e / Gerard Sekoto:

I discovered I could imitate the likeness of people, and that fascinated me since I had always been attracted by expressions; a hand producing the likeness of objects.” [i]

Sekoto’s creative nature was evident early on. As a young boy his mother would pose for him; gently encouraging him while making light fun of his lopsided expressions as he worked. Shy of his artistic ability, he shared his talent with a trusted few, surrounding himself with close and encouraging friends.

In his late 20s, Sekoto took a leap of faith and decided to paint fulltime. He resigned from his teaching post at Khaiso Secondary School and moved to Johannesburg in a bid to develop his career as an artist. He lived, worked and exhibited in Johannesburg alongside reputable artists including Alexis Preller. The Johannesburg art scene, still suppressed by discrimination, did not suit Sekoto and after four years he embarked on a second move, arriving in Cape Town in 1942[ii]. In 1947, he left South Africa to live under self-imposed exile in Paris.

Sekoto became the first black artist to be represented in a South African museum collection, when the Johannesburg Art gallery purchased one of his paintings in 1940.

In an article written by Walter Battiss that appeared in the September 1952 edition of iconic arts publication The Studio Magazine, the strength and social realism of Sekoto’s work is identified with profound sentiment. Sekoto’s early painting, OLD FRIENDS - in its presentation of empathy and sensitivity - was used to illustrate the article titled New Art and Old Art in South Africa. This painting carries Sekoto’s genuine vision and careful portrayal of the human condition that has since been celebrated locally and across Europe.

Battiss describes a disconnect and superficiality in the artistic representation of Africa that was uprooted by painters like Sekoto:

“But faith was restored, for... suddenly appeared Gerard Sekoto who had something to say in paint.”[iii]

Sekoto’s OLD FRIENDS (lot 876) is one of the jewels of the forthcoming Stephan Welz & Co (Pty) Limited Johannesburg Auction. The painting will come under the hammer in Session 5, 19h00, 16 November 2011.

09f / Robyn Penn: Pretty World exhibition opens on 17th Nov at AOM

The washing machine switches to the spin cycle while the incessant vacuuming continues. Outside someone is mowing the lawn. From the shopping Mall below, a scream of car hooters cut the air and then an alarm begins to wail...

Pretty World, a selection of prints and paintings created by Robyn Penn over the last year. The exhibition is comprised of an unusual combination of large and small artworks depicting clouds and atom bomb clouds.

From a young age Robyn Penn has romanticised the landscape, deeply influenced by German Romantic landscape painter, Caspar Friedrich. Her work navigates dialectic between spaces that are fractured and the sublime; the image before our eyes and all that it suggests. She describes her work as a product of “the madness of the space [she] works in,” a small home studio in an apartment where she is surrounded by the constant interruptions of domesticity and the streets below. Clouds appear as her subject matter and as metaphor for the distractions she negotiates daily. “They’re clouds which have been added to the landscape,” she explains referencing Muybridge who used photographic techniques to add clouds to the sky of his landscapes. There is an emphasis on process in Penn’s finely detailed, yet expansive views; and an obsession with multiple images. She nurtures a deep irony in the beautiful rendering of perhaps the most horrific moment in human history, the dropping of the atomic bombs that extends into the works titles.

Robyn Penn lives and works in Johannesburg as a fine artist. She has an honours degree, with distinction, in Fine arts from Canterbury University, New Zealand and also spent one year training in Fine Arts at The University of the Witwatersrand. Penn also read for a BA in Psychology from Wits University. She later relocated from New Zealand to London where she painted and developed drawing classes before returning to South Africa again in 2000. Her earliest works were miniature paintings. This progressed to painting on paper in oil and naturally moved towards printmaking. Working on paper seemed to inspire new ideas for her and it solved the issue of having to work in a small studio. As an artist with an interest in neuropsychology, her expansive sky-scapes and endless ocean-scapes depicted on a very small scale present a fascinating dynamic.

When Penn was studying in New Zealand she was living on the South Island. Circumstance made it necessary for her to move to the North Island, but because she was still studying she had to travel to the South Island every month for a week to present her course work. The experience of flying so frequently and constantly seeing the clouds and landscapes from a far informed a lot of her university work. Eventually she resorted to posting her artworks, she took the postcard-sized canvas boards and would stick the stamp directly onto the artworks sending them with nothing else but the address on the back. Her first paintings on her return to South Africa were of postcard skies and landscape.

Please join us for the opening exhibition of Pretty World, a selection of prints and paintings created by Robyn Penn over the last year. The exhibition is comprised of an unusual combination of large and small artworks depicting clouds and atom bomb explosions.

The exhibition opens on Thursday 17 November 2011, at 6pm.
Please join us for a drink on the evening at David Krut Projects, Arts on Main.
For more information visit our website or contact the projects space t: 011 334 1208 / juliet@davidkrut.com

09f / Diane Victor - Exhibition

Exhibition Programme

Wednesday, 16 November 2011 at 18:30 for 19:00 – Exhibition Opening
Please join us for the opening of the first part of the exhibition. The guest speaker for the event is Bronwyn Law-Viljoen.
Saturday, 19 November 2011 at 11:00 – Artist’s Walkabout
Diane Victor will be available for the morning, providing insight into the method and thought process involved in her work. A short film by photographer Paul Mills documenting the recent work of the artist will also be shown.
Wednesday, 4 January 2012 at 09:00 – Gallery Reopens
The second part of the exhibition is unveiled. This section will explore the potential of book ash as a drawing material.
Saturday, 21 January 2012 at 11:00 – Book Launch
Join us for the official launch of the second publication on Diane Victor to be produced by David Krut Publishing. Following this, there will be an informal discussion panel with Diane Victor, during which members of the public are welcome to share their own views on or engage with topics surrounding the second instalment of work.
Wednesday, 25 January 2012 at 18:00 – Closing Ceremony
The end of the exhibition will be marked with a final closing ceremony. Diane Victor will be available for book signing.

The University of Johannesburg Art Gallery, in collaboration with David Krut Publishing, is pleased to invite you to the opening of Diane Victor’s first solo exhibition at the Gallery. Owing to the prolific output of the artist and the importance of the weighted issues with which she deals, there will also be a series of events that will take place throughout the duration of the exhibition which are intended to create more of an exploration and discussion of the ideas surrounding the artist and her work.

Unlike the more conventional openings, Victor’s show will be unveiled in two sections. The first aims to showcase her experimental glass work and smoke drawings on paper, followed by an artist’s talk. In the new year, her works exploring the potential of book ash as a drawing material will be shown. Sourced from specific documents and texts, this lost information and lost words are dusted and fixed on the paper. This second part will be accompanied by the launch of the latest publication on the artist on 21 January and a closing ceremony on 25 January 2012.

The release of Victor’s second publication (the first being TAXI-013 Diane Victor) aims to document and discuss the works created over the last three years and how her progressive processes have led to a dynamic shift in exhibiting and working. The book includes text from Karen von Veh, who contributed extensively to the TAXI-013 book, and it serves as an invaluable source of knowledge on Victor’s work. There will also be text contributed by Juliet White, from David Krut Projects, who has been involved in writing about and documenting most of Victor’s movements and projects leading up to this event.

2011 marks a significant turning point in Victor’s approach to art. Upon returning from her three-month stay in the USA at the beginning of this year, Victor began focusing on alternative and faster methods of working. While she maintains her role as an educator, she is often under a lot of pressure to put as much focus and energy into her teaching as she does into her art-making. In many ways, this pushed her to work increasingly with ash and candle smoke: the process is faster and requires the work to be completed in one sitting.

Having returned to South Africa in March this year, she went straight to Oudtshoorn, where she installed work for the ABSA KKNK. It was here that she was encouraged to interact with the surroundings of the town, more so than the exhibition space. Victor chose to show in three spaces: a funeral home, where she exhibited an ash portrait; a butchery, where she exhibited smoke drawings of animal heads; and a car dealership that allowed her to place her shark imagery in the window. Later in the year, she pushed the idea to a new level: taking over an abandoned abattoir in Nelspruit during the annual Innibos arts festival. She wanted to engage with the space more by creating ghostlike portraits of typical farm animals. Understanding that the space now plays a larger role in terms of her art, Victor chose to work on glass for the first time, so as not to disturb the feeling of the space.

Victor is known for her heavy subject matter. The need to review and relook her work, which too often repels the viewer before they grasp the essence of the idea, is paramount. The profundity of the image and subtle nuance and humour expertly embedded within the chaos and sophisticated draughtsmanship of her work deserves further engagement and dialogue. This exhibition is not about walking into the Gallery and merely looking: it is about continuing interaction, education and intervention.