jz supporter, durban,11/10/05
south african art
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impact / kontakt
Thomas Kilpper’s don’t look back at the impact festival biennale a few weeks ago, Berlin / Poznan
Local hero, Richard Kilpert (note similarity in name to Thomas Kilpper, artist shown), gave a talk about his great experiences at the Impact Printmaking festival/conference a few weeks ago. The conference, whose title and theme was ‘kontact,’ brought print specialists to, and between, Berlin, Germany and Poznan, Poland. His talk was for an hour yesterday afternoon at Wits, and this is one of Rich’s slides.
Thomas Kilpper’s don’t look back, 22 x 12 meters(!), is a (ridiculously) large-scale wood cut, produced by carving a relief image into a basketball court – just before the building was to be renovated. Approximately six pain-staking months were spent chipping away before Kilpper inked up and produced this beauty, above.
Richard Kilpert later gave me a ride to the airport (I’m blogging from the airport! Not a big deal to you first-worlders, but I am in Africa, baby!), on my way to Durban for Colleen Alborough’s opening – thanks, buddy. Zululand, here I come….
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jo ractliffe @ warren siebrits
Jo Ractliffe, from her Real Life series, at Warren Siebrits gallery, Johannesburg
The beautiful and amazing Jo Ractliffe exhibits yet another beautiful and amazing show at Warren Siebrits this month. The show opened on Tuesday eve (I had to go and leave early, since I teach those nights) to a crowd of interested and excited artists, scholars, art appreciators and your other usual suspects.
The show is a follow up to her last Selected Works 1982-1999 exhibition at Siebrits, which focused solely on black and white, while this is color images and a video installation (Love, Death, Sacrifice and so forth, 1999). It leaves out some of her more famous pieces to make room for new work: Real Life (as above).
The Real Life series began as a bit of ‘an aside,’ maybe a joke, for Jo, when she was working on something else. It consists of images revealing garden-based plastic figurines, and surburban skies, at night and with a flash, printed on polished plastic. The finished works are obvious, ironic, funny, and would look great in my flat.
Man, she is so clever.
Also shown are some provocative strips from her Johannesburg Inner City Works collaboration. Obviously, I believe Jo’s exhibitions to all, always be, must sees.
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brett kebble art awards cancelled
Not sure how I missed this, from the star three days ago (thanks, Franci):
The Brett Kebble Art Awards will not go ahead in 2006, as it would be emotionally too difficult for the family following Kebble’s murder.
And just after I hit the spell-check button (but before posting), I get an email from Clive van den Berg, the would-be curator. Not surprisingly, he expresses sadness about losing the exhibition. It was a good two years….
