April 14, 2003
By Lucille Davie
THE Johannesburg Art Gallery, in a drive to re-capture the interest of scholars and students in its artworks, has developed, in consultation with teachers and lecturers,.contemporary displays focused on the requirements of schools, technikons and universities.
The shows are designed to offer a two-fold resource for students: there are specific art works of critical importance, allowing students to undertake direct research on particular artists; and there are artworks on display arranged according to technical and stylistic similarities.
The Gallery's newsletter says: "The works traverse the entire terrain of South African visual arts production in the twentieth century - from early landscape and portraiture masters, to pivotal works of the 1960s and 1970s, through to recent examples of painters and draughtspersons."
Selected artworks will now have informational text panels which will explore the work and the artist, and indicate how students may go about exploring further relevant resources.
The Gallery emphasises that these shows are not just for student use but are "valuable in their own right, as showcases for some of our Gallery's finest contemporary acquisitions".
As an example of its new programme, the Gallery indicates that in the new South African Print and Photography room, students will be able to view the artworks and make comparisons with similar artworks, thus recognising "the multitude of forces that are at play in many forms of art production".
Some new acquisitions, never before seen on display in the Gallery, will also be put on show, together with some forgotten treasures from the storeroom.
Student classes
From March to June art classes for learners from neighbouring disadvantaged schools will be offered in the Gallery's education studio. From April to October the Gallery will be working with community art centres, and will host several of their functions and exhibitions.
Between April and August a mentorship programme will be up and running. Learners aged 16 to 25 will be mentored by various members of the Gallery staff. One of the activities learners will be involved in is to organise and set up exhibitions.
During the July school holidays, from 24 June to 11 July, workshops will be run, aimed at learners from 14 upwards. They will be taught drawing skills using the Gallery's collection.
In April the Young Curator Training Project takes off. It is designed for high school learners and aims to train them in practical curatorship, including research, conservation and interpretation of works of art with an emphasis on traditional and contemporary South African art. Along the way it is hoped that learners with be given a sense of the value and importance of this art.
The Gallery has a project that uses the arts as an agent of social change to raise awareness and to educate young people about Aids. Running throughout the year, the project displays quilts, runs student workshops and has an exchange programme with the Indianapolis Art Centre in the US.
From March to November the Gallery will be working with the Gauteng Department of Education on the Imbali Training Project, in which it extends practical training to arts and culture teachers in Gauteng.
Current exhibitions
Last week a new exhibition entitled
Show me Home opened at the Gallery, and this weekend two new exhibitions entitled
Liminal States and
Trusting the Truth, will open.
Show me Home showcases 12 contemporary South African artists and the exhibition has the theme of home being "a space echoing the identity of the self", exploring "sensibility and visions attached to the act of inhabiting South Africa today".
The exhibition captures a contrast: a "highly intimate project express[ing] the warmth and comfort" that belong to a home, but at the same time the art reflects "the ambiguities and insecurities of home in South Africa: the violence, segregation and sense of defence".
The participating artists are Angela Buckland, Pitso Chinzima, Veliswa
Gwintsa, Stephen Hobbs, Dorothee Kreutzfeldt, Colbert Mashile, Santu
Mofokeng, Justice Jimmy Setumane Mokwena, Deborah Poynton, Jo Ractliffe, Usha Seejarim and Diane Victor.
The exhibition runs until 25 May and is curated by Mads Damsbo.
Opening on 13 April is the Liminal States exhibition, a selection of video and mixed media installations by Churchill Madikida.
Madikida says of his exhibition: "I focus on my history as an individual: ethnic identity, nationality, and global identity. My art is autobiographical and mostly deals with my Xhosa heritage as a form of positive identity and self-imagery."
Madikida says that he is hoping to get society to understand itself with the aim of undertaking self-examination, and addressing issues, attitudes and behaviours, with a view to becoming open to change.
"My work engages people in deeper critical debates and dialogues about traditional practices in connection to the concept of a nation and of national identity, especially in the new South Africa."
This exhibition runs until 12 May.
The third exhibition, Trusting the Truth, is a selection of photographs by South African Adam Broomberg and Briton Oliver Chanarin, both currently based in London. Both were formerly creative editors of Benetton's controversial Colours magazine, between 2000 and 2003.
The exhibition is a selection of photographs of the notorious Numbers gang, taken in Pollsmoor Prison near Cape Town. It has shown in London's Victoria and Albert Museum; at the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees; and moves to the Venice Biennale after the Johannesburg Art Gallery showing.
The exhibition opens on 12 April and runs until 23 May.
Other current shows at the Gallery include:
- South African paintings and sculptures
- South African landscapes and portraits
- South African prints and photography
- South African ceramics
- Traditional southern African art, including garments and jewellery
- Modern International works
- French and British schools
- International prints
- Dutch masterpieces
