implicit art

Note the Pretoria exhibition post, below, was the first from our new guest blogger, Franci Cronje. Link to her bio and photo is at right - let’s hope we hear more from her!

perhaps it is time for a serious contemporary art gallery in tshwane to contact motlhabane mashiangwako. he is the last surviving member of the seventies school of engaged artists that included fikile magadledla, winston saodi, gilbert mabale and lefifi tladi. he lives in mamelodi. he produces an enormous amount of work. he has not had an exhbition in his home city since 2000 (at the unisa gallery).

People who have not yet heard about it, we are rejoicing here in Pretoria (Tshwane) because of a new SERIOUS gallery that opened its doors in Brooklyn recently. This promises to be a hub for cutting-edge contemporary art in our area, and we also like the look and feel of the place. Very classy and ‘we mean business’ attitude.

The sculptor Guy du Toit opened his ‘Retrospective’ last week, called “More (than) Histories”. By ‘retrospective’ he is actually talking about his own re-makes of bits and pieces of his memory concerning elements in his own history, albeit all new works. The Gulliver-esque ambience originates from an overwhelming amount of objects wall-mounted in one room.

Objects ranging from a spoon, rosebush twigs, a milk carton, hammer, chisel, plants, and a funnel, meet with noses, mouths, ears and hands. Juxtaposing these are the miniature figurines, some hobbit-like, others anciently african and animal, some moulded into mirror-images of top-versus bottom attached to the same base to form a strange dream-like feeling very much divorced from reality.

Exquisitely cast in bronze, Guy succeeds in transforming ordinary objects like pouches and candelabra into very desirable objects. Add a few disembodied fingers and life-sized chairs, and viewers leave the space with a sense of nostalgia, yearning and enchantment.

On till 18 September, Fried Contemporary,
430 Charles St Brooklyn
Pretoria 0181
SOUTH AFRICA
Tel/fax +27 12 346 0158