Top African visual artist @ AfroNova
Sep18

Top African visual artist @ AfroNova

Joel Mpah Dooh lives and works in Douala, Cameroon, and studied fine arts in Amiens, France. He has been showing extensively in solo and group exhibitions in Cameroon, Austria, Senegal, France, Cuba, Lebanon, USA and Kenya. Catch his first ever exhibit in South Africa: JUST TO SAY HELLO… A first solo exhibition of paintings and mixed media works by JOEL MPAH DOOH. Joel Mpah … Dooh is one of the finest artists on the continent and enjoys international critical acclaim with his paintings and multi media works. His recent exhibition Rendez-vous was a definite highlight of the 2006 Dakar Biennale of African Contemporary Art in Senegal. He strongly featured in the Lines of Connections exhibition with William Kentridge, Kendell Geers, Sam Nhlengetwa and Samuel Fosso, organised by the MTN Art Foundation in 2001. With this first solo exhibition in South Africa, Joel Mpah Dooh draws on a retrospective body of works and exhibits a coherent ensemble while evoking years of experimentations. With the kind support of the French Institute of South Africa. Exhibition runs until Saturday 14 October Gallery Hours Tuesday to Saturday 13:00 to 20:00 Contacts email Afronova c: +27 (0) 83 726 59 06 The gallery is just across the Market Theatre entrance Safe parking corner Miriam Makeba and Gwigwi Mrwebi St – Newtown Po box 3205 – Parklands 2121 – Johannesburg – South Africa —————————————————————————————————– FEBRUARY 2006 Get down to Newtown to the Afronova gallery for an exhibition entitiled URBAN JUNGLE: Urban Jungle brings together two prominent artists from the continent; Birame Ndiaye from Dakar, Senegal, and Wayne Barker from Johannesburg, South Africa. Both painters are children of the African city and its collision of cultures. They get down and dirty in the streets, sometimes the back alleys, and venture into the craziness and confusion of the concrete jungle. Exhibition runs until Saturday 11th March Tuesday to Saturday 13:00 to 20:00 Safe parking corner Miriam Makeba and Gwigwi Mrwebi St – Newtown Email Afronova Afronova...

Read More
Durban: New exhibit @ artSPACE
Jul23

Durban: New exhibit @ artSPACE

artSPACE continues to break new ground with up and coming artists exhibiting their work every month… Next up at artSPACE durban is the opening of “Work(ers) in Progress” on Monday, 31 July at 6:30pm and closes on Saturday, 12 August at 1pm. This is a collaborative exhibition by students and practising artists and is curated by Cheryl Penn. The exhibition brin… gs together paintings, digital work and photographs by artists in various stages of creative development. It is an attempt to bring together a cross-section of work currently being produced by artists (and artists in the making) in the Durban area. ********************************************* JUNEYou have three days to catch the Fresh n Fab Grace Kotze at Durban’s trendiest gallery artSpace… then there are two new exhibits opening for June – they’re on the ball as always.:Next up at artSPACE durban: Opening on Monday, 5 June at 6 for 6:30pm are the following exhibitions: Next up at artSPACE durban:Opening on Monday, 5 June at 6 for 6:30pm are the following exhibitions:In the Main Gallery is “Rocktalk” an exhibition of paintings by South Coast artist Lorraine Goss-Ross which will be opened by John Roome, the Head of the Fine Art department of the Durban University of Technology. In the Middle Gallery is “Through My Eyes” an exhibition of black and white photographs by Durban photographer Dale Grobler. Please note that there will be car guards on duty and a cash bar. Both of these exhibitions close on Saturday, 24 June at 1pm. ******************************************* May Our sources tell us Durban Fine Artist Grace Kotze’s star is rising… just google her name and check out her vibrant work and we’re sure you’ll agree. We’re still on at you Durbanites about you bad reputation for attending cultural events – come on, wozani… go and support young artists. Put on your berets and get to the exhibition opening on Monday the 15 May 2006. “Co-ordinates” a solo exhibition by Grace Kotze Co-ordinates is Grace Kotze’s third solo show, worked on over an intensive five month period forming an intrinsically linked collection of oil paintings which work as a group of individual art works but also as one. The works expand on and link one another, setting up many points of dialogue within the show. Opening Monday, 15 May at 6:30pm. There will be a cash bar and car guards on duty. Exhibition closes on Saturday, 3 June at 1pm. *artSPACE durban 3 millar road (next to Waste Centre) stamford hill durban tel: +27 31 312 0793 **************************************** OFF THE WALL – the next exhibition at ArtSPACE in Durban looks like fun – it starts this Saturday...

Read More
Diane Victor @ the Goodman
Jul16

Diane Victor @ the Goodman

Sounds like an original way to make art… and so it should be. Go and see Diane Victor’s Smoke Drawings, mused from the images of missing children and friends… Sounds sad. DIANE VICTOR 22nd July – 12th August 2006 Goodman Gallery The Goodman Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works by Diane Victor. The show opens on the 22nd July 2006 and will comprise of … etchings, drawings, and smoke drawings in carbon soot and stain drawings with charcoal. This body of work being presented is from drawn from the last 3 years of production. It includes large format etchings and embossings that explore notions of identity and presentation in our culture as well as role playing and its performative nature. These images are based on self observation and question expected notions of identity and the role models prescribed and imposed in our system. Also included are large format etchings that explore and rework stereotypes within religious and secular structures. Victor has recently started experimenting with a very delicate method of smoke drawing where drawings made with the smoke deposits from wax candles on paper. The results are fragile portraits in a vulnerable and transient medium of members of our society – missing children downloaded from numerous South African Police web sites and others posted of missing friends. Victor is interested in the increased fragility of the medium and its parallel to the fragility of human lives. She also interested in how character and portrait emerge out of the carbon stain of the candle smoke deposits. These drawings are intended to be a counterpoint to the more substantial figures drawn in charcoal and stain. Recurrent and persistent images that stain our national psyche through memories and habits that repeat and resurface. The consequent conversations between these images allude to a morality where the sins of the father are visited upon the child thus eluding erasure. The ongoing “Disasters of Peace” series promises additional reflections within South Africa society and focus on issues on human interaction and contacts. *************************************************** February 2006 Kick off the year with some eye-candy by visiting an art exhibition now why don’t you? And what about choosing one of our successful young artists that is making waves abroad? SUPPORT SA TALENT and get down to the Goodman. Now living and working in London and Trinidad, one of South Africa’s internationally acclaimed artists, Lisa Brice, will have first solo show here at the Goodman Gallery since 2000. “Night Vision” is a new series of paintings and drawings which opens on Saturday 21st January 2006 at midday. Brice, known for her iconographic installations on the...

Read More

KINSHASA – the Invisible City

Do yourselves a favour and go and hang out at the Johannesburg Art gallery in Hillbrow next to Noord Taxi Rank& for suburbians it may feel a little hairy getting there but once you’re in it’s an amazing space to hang out in for a few hours. Just wind your windows up and do it. For more on the Johannesburg Art gallery click here … A friend of ours who affectionately calls it KIN, once said that Kinshasa was the scariest place that they had ever been to, but, he added, it also had an attraction to it that made him go back for more, despite his fear. This exhibition seems to examine this very ‘two-sided” experience of KINSHASA and sounds like a fascinating look at URBANITY in Africa. We encourage everyone to go to the exhibition to further inter-cultural understanding in Africa. GO GO GO. It opens on the 11 June. The Johannesburg Art Gallery is please to be hosting the exhibition: Kinshasa, the Imaginary City. The advent of this exhibition in Johannesburg is appropriate not only due to the increasing interest in various forms of urbanity especially in African cities but also because of the need for greater dialogue between the various communities in Johannesburg and other African cities. It is also relevant in light of the large number of Congolese in Johannesburg and the cultural influences that this influx has brought. The exhibition was commissioned and realized with the financial support of the Ministry of Culture of the Flemish Community for the 9th International Architecture Biennale of Venice 2004. The Belgian pavilion received the Golden Lion for the best country’s pavilion. Kinshasa, the Imaginary City is not solely focusing on the city’s material infrastructure or the urban colonial legacy. Rather, it comments upon Kinshasa’s urbanity, which exists beyond the city’s architecture. Underneath the surface of the material city lurks a second, invisible city that exists in the autochthonous mind as a mirroring reality of the visible world. The exhibition explores the constant transactions that take place between these two levels. The exhibition and the accompanying book are the culmination of many years of field research. This anthropological approach aims at stimulating the ongoing debate on the postcolonial African city as a salient site for the renegotiation of ‘modern’ citizenship and for the development of ‘alternative modernities’. RELIGIOUS TV CHANNELS Over the past decades Kinshasa has witnessed the rise of a whole range of Christian fundamentalist churches. Many of these churches have their own private TV channels, broadcasting religious music, masses and prayer sessions. The TV itself, omnipresent in the living room but also in more public...

Read More