spier contemporary
This is how it’s done. Very excited, y’all… Check out all the info you need on the new spier bi-annual exhibition, here. Click on the image below for larger version.
stimulus
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smith and western
Do you like my loaded gun pun?
On this month’s artthrob, Rat Western responds to Michael Smith about art criticism in Johannesburg. First, I must agree with Rat that this debate is getting really boring. But I’ve never backed down from depositing 2 pennies on the web…
Admittedly, I have to eat my words from last month a bit – “Michael also responds to Rat Western in the feedback section (a fair and funny and well-informed response all considered…”
Western’s response illuminates the contexts of her arguments, left out last month. Her point (tho tangential at times) is this: Smith denies an underground in Joburg and yet skips out on the Drill Hall, the Parking Gallery, the Bag Factory (etc). It’s not necessarily his responsibility to go to every show, but Rat’s final argument is, how can you dismiss these spaces when writing about exactly what they do (or, at minimum, try to do)? Not even mention them so as to publicly dismiss them, in fact, but rather, ignore them? This, she says, is “lazy” when writing about the power of critical writing vs the underground.
Although I mightn’t use her strong language, I could further Rat’s argument. Smith went so far, in his first article, as to praise Art Heat, a blog on art in Cape Town, whilst implicitly asking for a speaking back to power-like site in Joburg. This is a direct insult to SAartsEmerging, run by the same people who do the above spaces (including her, and founded along with me, Bronwyn Lace and Simon Gush), a site with a very specific purpose:
“Providing a free South African alternative to the gallery-driven and mainstream media platforms, SAartsEmerging.org is dedicated to featuring emerging South African artists, curators and arts personalities who are not generally, or have not yet been, written about – but who should be. SAartsEmerging aims to ‘discover’ and profile a variety of early-career non-stars working conceptually, and across disciplines.”
SAarts also avowedly gives preference to Gautengers. It, along with the above spaces, was ignored.
I think Michael Smith is smart; I like his writing, his thinking, his excitement; and I like the great article he did on my AOP show in last month’s artthrob. I’m also not comfortable with some of Rat’s insults (nor am I that fond of his) in this debate, and can see why her “fighting words” might be taken on. But she also offered to get involved, asked Michael to be involved in the spaces he didn’t write about (with the “power” of artthrob and/or Art SA behind him). We have to remember that these two publications are mostly the only potential connection the rest of the world’s art elite have to some of SA’s newer artists; to say “there is no underground in joburg” is to make it true for anyone who isn’t already involved in Joburg’s, actually existent, and thriving, emerging arts scene (I prefer that term, cuz I don’t know WTF underground means). He seems to have declined her offer.
read Rat’s response
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EXHIBITION_GIMBERGNERFSACKSYOUNG
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:
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Sasol Wax 2007 semi-finalists announced
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.
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AVANT CAR GUARD
Ha. Is this Joburg’s answer to trans-cape07-notabiennale?
AVANT CAR GUARD secure funding from the World Art World. 2007
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the art, she is throbbing
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.