Got this from here:
Rhizome has an open call for net art commissions. You could score between US$1k and US$3K to MAKE SOME GODDAMN NET ART FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!
Deadline is April 2, 2007 and that ain’t no joke.
Get on over there and find out how to submit a proposal for chrissake! Do it now! Do it now!
As part of XCape, Cape 07’s artists-led fringe exhibition, SAarts will exhibit works by selected artists and writers who have been featured on the site in the past year as well as artists to be featured in 2007.
The SAarts Emerging Exhibition: Cape Town 2007
will open on the
27th of March at
Vega, The Brand Communications School,
2nd Floor Satbel Building
Cnr De Smidt & Somerset, Green Point,
Cape Town
If you are in the area please join us for the opening at 6pm on the 27th or for the two workshops we will be giving on the 28th and 29th of March from 10am till 12pm.
Artists to be featured on the exhibition include:
Stellenbosch is centrally situated between two freeways, the N1 and N2, 45 minutes from Cape Town, 20 minutes from the International Airport.
From Cape Town International Airport / N2:
Take N2 towards Somerset West
Take Exit 33 (Baden Powell) to get onto R310 to Stellenbosch
Drive approx 15km to T-junction
Turn right to Stellenbosch
At the 2nd set of traffic lights turn right into Dorp Street
Drive up Dorp Street until you reach a big traffic circle that you go 180° across, pass the second small circle and take first left after that into Andringa Street. Take first left into Church Street. The De Wet Centre is on the right hand side - entrance to gallery in walkway between Hohsl Jewellers and Leotana Outdoors.
From N1
Take exit 39 off N1 onto R304 to Stellenbosch
Travel 15km to the town
Continue straight along Bird Street until you reach T- junction
Turn left into Dorp Street
Drive up Dorp Street until you reach a big traffic circle that you go 180° across, pass the second small circle and take first left after that into Andringa Street. Take first left into Church Street. The De Wet Centre is on the right hand side - entrance to gallery in walkway between Hohsl Jewellers and Leotana Outdoors.
Oh, and my contribution to the show’s book:
via atjoburg:
Upgrade! Johannesburg is proud to present:
The Art of Sound - James Webb presents his major gallery installations and
radio projects
James Webb is a leading South African sound artist with a growing
international reputation. He will discuss the challenges of his large-scale
sound installations including Prayer (2002); The Black Passage (2006) and
Autohagiography (2007); his collaborative radio projects including A
Compendium of Imaginary Wavelengths (2004) and works in progress such as
Beau Diable (2007).
The Digital Soiree
Friday 16 March 15:00 - 17:00
Convent Seminar Room
University of the Witswatersrand
Johannesburg
All Welcome!
Read the profile of James Webb by Carinne Zaayman on Artthrob.
Kind of modelled on the Turner prize, this competition works by open nomination for mid-career South African artists, then 10 semi-finalists are chosen by committee based on their work to date, 5 out of those will get a R20,000 budget - from proposals - to make a work or series (the stipulation from their funders being the piece or pieces have something to do with wax: be it medium, process or concept), and finally a winner gets about R130,000 at the launch of said culminating exhibition.
Last year’s show had mixed reviews, some criticising many of the pieces as fairly lame (tho everyone agreed that winner, Jeremy Wafer, had a very moving piece), others saying it was a schmoozfest for the elite. Me? I thought that given how little support there is for the arts in SA, how much money was thrown at it, how it was NOT engulfed by PR to fix a wrong-doing, like the Kebbles, and finally, how well it ran for its very first year of life (more than we can say for aforementioned Kebbles), it was great that it happened, and am glad to see it only get better from here on out. (Tho I also have higher hopes for Clive van den Berg’s - the second curator of the Kebbles - new project with Spier.)
Sasol’s semi-finalists were announced yesterday, and it’s an impressive list:
Sue Williamson, Prof. Keith Dietrich, Lien Botha, Avasone Mainganye, Noria Mbasa, Andrew Verster, Mbongeni Buthelezi, Wayne Barker and Walter Oltmann and Usha Seejarim.
Could be a really interesting year for them.
Ha. Is this Joburg’s answer to trans-cape07-notabiennale?
AVANT CAR GUARD secure funding from the World Art World. 2007
Via DKW:
David Krut Arts Resource is a vibrant and ever-evolving organisation. Our latest venture is the opening of a brand new project and exhibition space at 142 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Johannesburg. The new space, David Krut Projects, is an extension of the well-established David Krut Arts Resource up the road that incorporates a printmaking workshop, bookstore and headquarters for David Krut Publishing. Once David Krut Projects is operational, the printmaking workshop will extend into the former gallery at 140 Jan Smuts Avenue. We will sell our own books as well as a range of art titles from other South African publishers and Tate Publishing in both venues.
David Krut Projects will host exhibitions and art-related events every few weeks. The space will officially open on Saturday the 17th of March with an exhibition of prints by Bruce Backhouse. Upcoming shows include an exhibition of photographs by Angela Buckland and an interactive installation by Johan Engels and Robert Whitehead. Please join us fro these events and watch this space for more news…
Nice issue of artthrob this month (feeling homesick). I’m not even going to get into it with Cape ‘07 (formerly TransCape, and now it’s DEFINITELY “not a biennale” in South Africa), but some other great stuff to report…
First, a little self-promo, Michael Smith engages with my work at Art on Paper. A snippet:
The work proves, if any proof were needed, that Stern’s performative interests expand to include ‘performing’ a relationship to history, a quietly anarchic deconstruction of the creative person’s position in relation to history. This work, and much of the rest on show, reveal that Stern’s is a position of productive paradox, of signalling his debt to the historical archive of creativity yet resisting the impulse to politely replicate its terms.
It’s a very engaged and generous reading - an artist couldn’t ask for more from a critic. Thanks, Michael. Read more.
Minette Vari - a great video artist with Gothic stylings - also gets a nice review for her Goodman show. And, this side, fellow South African grad student in Ireland does this month’s ArtDiary. A bit closer to my heart - given my time in Joburg, and my initiating (with Bronwyn Lace and Simon Gush) of SAartsEmerging last year - Michael also responds to Rat Western in the feedback section (a fair and funny and well-informed response all considered, tho he does leave out that his review of Brendan Grey’s work is also a review of a friend he seems to work with frequently; please note that I do not think this a problem at all, but he might have done himself more service had he addressed that, given the first point he makes about insularity) and he also gives Dave Andrew and Rat a space for more discussion.
Emma Bedford, former curator at SANG (South African National Gallery, Cape Town) and Director of the new Cape-based Goodman Gallery (also a small article on that - if you didn’t know, we love Storm, her co-director), is the ArtBio this month. Also some interesting listings, including a Cape anti-avant-garde show curated by Kathryn Smith.
The biggest news, from where I stand, is the announcement of a Spier Exhibition replacement for the old Brett Kebble Art Awards. I think they’d be a little upset by the comparison, but it has the same chief curator, and is, like the Kebbles, the only large-scale exhibition in SA that offers both emerging and established artists any equipment they might need to see their visions through. HOWEVER, as several added bonuses, they are also giving fees to their artists, they are open to more interesting interdisciplinarity (shown by their selection of Jay Pather as co-curator), and they are committed to at least six years of the exhibition. I should also stress how much I appreciate that altho it is also a competition, the main focus is on the exhibition itself, more like the Whitney Biennial, I gather. Spier is building a museum on their wine farm to house the exhibition, which is just plain smart: they will have it permanently, so won’t have to pay heaps for rental, and they already have one of the most interesting art collections in South Africa, so why not have some place to house it the rest of the year?
update: Almost forgot! The most outstanding bonus of Spier vs Kebble is that there’s no Brett Kebble! That guy, despite his later committment to the arts, was a mining mogul with fraud allegations and questionable intentions (and a great PR firm). Spier, on the other hand, just makes nice wine, good money, and has always been committed to the arts. We like that.
“The words were treated as a kind of incantation, as if they enveloped something of the desired event, contained its trace. Their repetition deposited a trace of the event in each of the contexts, gradually coloring the everyday world. Conversely, each context left its own trace in the words. It is as if the words were absorbing the relative perspectives, absorbing traces of the movements accomplished within them, as well as the movement from one to the other, blending the motion of acting the exemplary event with ordinary circulation through the world. The accumulation immobilizes [him] under its weight. He enters a state of passivity marked by heightened excitability.”
- Brian Massumi, Parables for the Virtual, page 56
