SAarts Emerging Exhibition, 2006

The SAarts opening, walkabout and panels went extremely well – the former attended by at least 150 people through the course of the evening. There are walkabouts every weekend (see schedule) for the next three weeks, and the show and catalogue look great, so I highly recommend your chaecking it out. Below are some photos from the walkabout yesterday (all under CC license and taken by Shane de Lange), and the text my opening speech on friday.

Hello everyone and welcome, from myself, Nathaniel Stern, Uber-digital blogger geek who has been told he puts too many photos of his daughter on the internet, from Simon Gush, the boy wonder who turned a downtown parking garage he’s squatting in into one of joburg’s most interesting contemporary galleries (if you ask me), from our newest member, Rat Western, a wonderful artist and winner at Sasol New Signatures this year, and an ass-saver when it comes to editing and designing so I don’t have to, and most of all, from Bronwyn Lace, the brains, beauty and powerhouse whose vision and determination made this show, and all its forthcoming events.Thank you all for coming, thanks to the Bag Factory, James and Koulla, their funders for the show: National Lottery Distribution Fund, Royal Netherlands Embassy, WK Kellogg Foundation, Ford Foundation – you guys, in your eternal wisdom, gave a bunch of 20-something South African some cash to make things happen, and I hope you are pleased with the results.
And of course, thank you to all f our artists – it’s a fantastic show. SAartsEmerging.org was dreamed up whilst Bronwyn, Simon and I were gallery-hopping the streets of Chelsea, NYC. The basic gist was that since ‘in-crowd’ politics governed art-scenes worldwide, we’d make our own in-crowd.

^{bronwyn lace describes rat western’s work. from left, Simon Gush, Bronwyn Lace, Koulla Xinisteris, some guy from the press}

We wanted something dedicated to creatively mediating, and critically engaging with, emerging and unknown South African artists and spaces. We never knew how successful a site SAarts would become; ironically, despite our intentions to make our own in-crowd and our tagline of “no pretense of objectivity,” we’ve actually wound up with a very open and “mixed bad” of a community. It’s obvious we’ve hit on a need, and I’m proud to say that we’ve managed to keep the level of quality of our artists, and texts, very high.

Basically, we team up unknown contemporary artists with writers, and promote their work through our site. SAartsEmerging.org, which is in the top 5% of most linked to blogs on the internet, is continually seeking powerful and thoughtful mediations for artists that are yet to have any in the public domain.

^{panel on spaces for emerging artists. clockwise from left: Storm Janse van Rensburg, Koulla Xinisteris, Gordon Froud, Bronwyn Lace, Dound Anwar Jahanageer, Nathaniel Stern}

All four of us firmly believe that the role of the artist in contemporary society goes beyond this notion of the renaissance genius in isolation; it includes teaching, mentorship, dialogue, curating and exhibiting, play, encouragement, writing, editing, re-mixing; artists are, themselves, dialectic images, in many respects, and their actions are as public figures, and established through continual giftings, of ideas, provocations, intercessions, and most of all, each other and themselves.

These are the activists, the creators, the transformationists and interventionists and their palettes take many forms.

Or so, as I said, we like to believe.

We ourselves have learned and gained a great deal through our engagements with national artists we knew nothing about before.

For example:

Doung Anwar Jahangeer turns his “work that is art” into socially productive walkabouts, teach-in sessions and empowerment projects. His piece here is only a sampling of his amazing body of work.

Colleen Alborough’s artist book invests us in the intimacies of distance, exploring the painterly roads of South Africa.

Simon Gush’s subtle but invasive interventionist fans, invoke a playfully dangerous sense of colonial habitation in Africa.

And Lester Adams’ wall sculpture, made up of fur from lamb fetuses, is an uncomfortable interrogation of flesh and machine.

^{colleen alborough’s artist book project}

Several of our artists, have gone on to get – we like to think, in part, thanks to our efforts – extended press and shows outside of SAarts, and more in the public domain.

By framing the framing the framing, and opening up to discussion and critique, SAartsEmering might just be, or even exceed, what we had hoped, but never knew.

I see many faces of artists and writers here tonight, and I further hope that you will be involved in this public project, sometime in the near future.

Thank you for coming, and enjoy the show and our many events over the coming weeks.