chroma
DESCRIPTION
Stevenson e-catalogue 2 v6TRANSCRIPT
27 NOVEMBER 2014 – 17 JANUARY 2015
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The blood of sensibility is blue.
I consecrate myself
To find its most perfect expression.
— Derek Jarman
Chroma takes its title from a book of musings on colour by filmmaker Derek
Jarman. Written just before his death in 1994, when his vision was failing, the book
draws from art history, philosophy, science, medicine and literature, alongside
Jarman’s acute observations of his own life, to reflect the extraordinary multiplicity
of ways in which colour is experienced and comprehended by the human eye and
mind. The exhibition sets out to explore colour from diverse perspectives, and
various quotations cited here are extracted from his text.*
Learning that colour is a fiction of light is one of the
primary shocks of growing up.
— Tacita Dean, ‘The Magic Hour’
Science declares colour to be an expression of vibration and wavelength:
what we see is determined by the spectrum of light that an object absorbs or
reflects, as perceived by the human mind and eye. Colour as we experience it
is a phenomenon of perception, as colour itself does not have a physical and
tangible materiality. This seeming paradox ensures that colour is grist for the
philosopher’s mill, prompting metaphysical questions about the nature of both
physical reality and the construct of mind. Yet, because colour can only be
perceived through the prism of mind, it is simultaneously, and inextricably,
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poetic and psychological; rarely do we speak about colour without invoking
the realms of emotion and of meaning.
Red. Prime colour. Red of my childhood. Blue and green were
always there in the sky and woodland unnoticed. Red first shouted
at me from a bed of pelargoniums in the courtyard of Villa Zuassa.
I was four. This red had no boundary, was not contained. These red
flowers stretched to the horizon.
— Derek Jarman
The symbolism and metaphorical significance of colour has been contemplated
since the dawn of artistic expression; however, in Western art history colour only
become a subject in itself early in the 20th century. Malevich’s Black Square,
painted a century ago, in 1915, is perhaps the most radical manifestation of a shift
that allowed more conceptual and abstract notions, including those of colour, to
become part of the subjectivity of art. The scientific approach to the aesthetics of
colour was arguably most carefully articulated in the work of Josef Albers, whose
series of paintings of chromatic interactions started in 1949 and who published his
theoretical treatise, The Interaction of Colour, in 1963, arguing that the perception
of colour is governed by an internal and deceptive logic.
If one says ‘red’ (the name of a colour) and there are fifty people
listening it can be expected there will be fifty reds in their minds,
and one can be sure that all these reds will be different.
— Josef Albers
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At the time of these aesthetic debates about colour and subject in the 1950s
and 60s, South Africa was dominated by apartheid, which limited conceptual
considerations of colour as subject: racial classification brought the focus to issues
of black and white, literary and figuratively. It is interesting that in the 1990s the
analogy of the rainbow, with its spectrum of colours, has been widely used to heal
the fractures in this society, and in recent years the shifts that have taken place
have allowed more spacious considerations of the experience of colour in art. This
exhibition presents both works that see colour as their primary leitmotif and others
that, often with new strategies, reflect on the politics of colour in recent years.
The exhibition opens with works whose imagery exists at the edges of our
perceptions of colour, exemplified by a watercolour of swirling dark blues by
Moshekwa Langa inscribed ‘During the hours of darkness’. In three large-scale oil
paintings of night scenes by Deborah Poynton, darkness almost enfolds the viewer,
who must strain to see colour and subject. By contrast, Bruno Boudjelal’s Paysage
du Depart photographs were made using lengthy exposures to light to create
eerie white landscapes that almost disappear, invoking Ludwig Wittgenstein’s
rhetorical question in his Remarks on Colour: ‘Isn’t white that which does away
with darkness?’ These images were taken in Algeria, where the Harragas – those
who ‘burn their immigration papers’ – depart for European shores; the series
started by mistake with over-exposures ‘on a winter day full of white light’, giving
Boudjelal the inspiration to create images that evoke the longing and sadness of
these uncertain journeys. In Pieter Hugo’s infra-red photographic portraits, taken
from beyond the spectrum of human perception, anonymous sleepers remind us
that surveillance has its own aesthetic of desaturated grays and grainy muteness.
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As Jarman observed: ‘Red adapts the eye for the dark. Infra-red.’
In an installation of videos by Samson Kambalu, sepia is the hue of time passed.
In the performances selected for this exhibition, his short and usually singular
actions also play with our perceptions and the construct we understand as colour.
His installation is seen alongside groups of small Polaroids by Kemang Wa Lehulere
where grainy images of the artist and elements of his installations constellate as
blurred and liminal figments of associations and memory.
The luminosity of blues and whites is experienced through the work of Nicholas
Hlobo, Edson Chagas and Wim Botha, recalling Cézanne’s observation that ‘Blue
gives other colours their vibration’. The tonality of white is usually overlooked by
the eye, even though all whites are not the same: whiteness may be innocent or
it may have a cooled intensity. The delicate stitch-work of Hlobo’s white ribbon
drawings on white paper is discernable only in relief as the forms strain towards
dissolution. In Chagas’ photographic series Found Not Taken whiteness sits close
to lightness, and thus to sky with its blue stain. The grey and blue fields on which
discarded objects sit speak of the life of objects, and how they are consumed by
space. In a large installation of Botha’s blue and white watercolours and paintings,
his blue hues make white appear even more luminous, especially in relation to the
shimmering white of a marble bust that anchors the constellation. In Daniel Naudé’s
new photographs of Australian bowerbird sites of courtship, he records how the
male birds collect and sort myriad mostly blue and white objects by colour into
spectacular, formally acute displays as part of their courtship, a reminder of the
primacy of colour in the survival of life on earth.
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Central to the exhibition is Jarman’s Blue (1993). This is the final film made by the
artist before his death from AIDS-related complications, when his vision became
shadowed by a blue veil. In this work Jarman uses an unwavering, dense blue colour
field as a vibrant backdrop against which to meditate on his life and imminent
death. In his words:
Blue protects white from innocence
Blue drags black with it
Blue is darkness made visible
Dineo Seshee Bopape’s entrance wall painting and her slide show recalling the
television test pattern introduce the range of the colour spectrum, which is
explored fully in the large back gallery. Meschac Gaba’s sculpture Vernissage,
from his Colours of Cotonou series, offers viewers the opportunity to have their
nails painted in bright hues selected from bottles of nail varnish. Also in this
space is a new sculpture from Zander Blom’s Modern Painting series comprising
artifacts from his studio; here hundreds of empty paint tubes are aestheticized
and abstracted in a deep, square cardboard box. In new paintings, Blom, for whom
colour is fundamental to his marks and spatial planes on the raw canvas that he
characteristically uses, continues on his trajectory of reimagining the history of
modernism since the black square of Malevich. Recent images by Viviane Sassen
of reflected and refracted planes of coloured glass photographed in the Namibian
desert recall the acute abstraction of the Russian Supremacists, perplexing the
mind and eye with their intense abstraction of sky and sand and angular coloured
planes. The seriality of colour is to be seen in Moshekwa Langa’s triptych I Am So
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Sorry in which pulsating expanses of red, green and blue lend subtly yet sharply
differing tones to the words of the title. The large canvases of Nigerian-born
Odili Donald Odita with their shard-like forms are acute, angular meditations on
the interplay of colours and the associative and emotive responses their subtle
interactions evoke in us.
In a different idiom, the Ghanaian painter Atta Kwami plays with the colour and
forms that are distinctive of Ghanaian architecture and African strip-woven
textiles, especially those of the Ewe and Asante. He creates grids of colour
that are rhythmic structures vibrating with the tones of jazz and the timbre of
Ghanaian music (Koo Nimo) in their plays of improvisation, reinterpretation and
variation. The work of the little-known Mozambique painter Estevão Mucavele
is a meditation on colour and process. He paints the patterns that make up
his landscapes, and then repeatedly scraps away and overpaints the different
elements with varying colours to build up a luminous surface. In the words of
renowned poet and painter Malangatana, he paints ‘with no compromises – he
neither respects nor is aware of habitual norms. Academicisms have no place in
his life [...] he makes art of that which meets his eye, with no other concern
than to recount what he sees.’
In the final galleries the focus is on works that continue to activate debates
around the politics of representation and the political significance of colour.
Perhaps the most iconic images from South Africa’s years of transition and
debates around identity are Berni Searle’s Colour Me series in which she
covered her face with spices, and this series is to be seen along new works by
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Mawande Ka Zenzile whose paintings incorporate natural pigment and earth as he
literally seeks to ground contested imagery around colonialism and hegemonies
of power. In two photomontages by Jane Alexander, produced after 10 years
of democracy, two sculpted ‘Harbingers’ cross two locations in Cape Town,
one depicted through a reflection on a passing car window, each with an arc of
rainbow. As with all her photomontage, the image is intended to elaborate on the
role of the original sculpted figure, with references made through the elements
included in the images read together as a form of commentary on the time.
Penny Siopis’ memorable Pinky Pinky series from around 2002 used stories of a
mythical ghost-like creature to create images of disembodied beings; their parts
are all separate in each painting, in varying hues of pink, flesh and red. These
paintings convey the formlessness of this strange being through the inclusion
of just an eye, lashes, lips or a mouth, in fields of singular colours. Nandipha
Mntambo’s recent paintings continue her fascination with the representations
of hump-like forms, and in these paintings, the rich impasto black surfaces are
often heightened by the inclusion of strands of cow-hair tails. Her reduced palette
is accentuated with occasional shards of light and colour coming through the
undulating abstract forms which resonate with rich associations of man,
nature and landscape.
In the abstractions of Serge Alain Nitegeka black has a density and weight always
in opposition to the sharp inflation of white, and his ‘black subject’ appears
within a body that is both formal and political. The works of Walid Raad explore
the psychological impact of the conflicts that have ravaged Lebanon over
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All quotes are from Derek Jarman’s Chroma: A Book of Colour (The Overlook Press, Woodstock, New York, 1995), with the exception of Tacita Dean, published in Colour – Documents of Contemporary Art, edited by David Batchelor (Whitechapel, London, and MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2007)
four decades; in Appendix XVII: Plates 22-257 colour itself is counted amongst
the victims of warfare; brutalized into submission, the essence of some colours
diminishes, while others die off. In Simon Gush’s Red, the artist considers the strike
actions and debates at the Mercedes Benz plant in East London, South Africa, in
1990 when the workers manufactured a red car as a gift for Nelson Mandela. Gush
presents four wall-mounted Mercedes doors, painted in different reds, along with
a black-and-white documentary of the events. The various shades of red prompt
us to ask ‘which red is the truest?’ Memory and mythology grind down action and
context, and colour is central to the re-telling of the tale.
Vermilion is a red with a feeling of sharpness, like glowing steel
which can be cooled by water. Vermilion is quenched by blue, for it
can support no mixture with a cold colour. The glow of red is within
itself. For this reason it is a colour more beloved than yellow.
— Wassily Kandinsky, ‘Concerning the Spiritual in Art’
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MOSHEKWA LANGA
‘during the hours of darkness’2000Mixed media on paper100 x 140cm
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DEBORAH POYNTON
Scene with a Dog2014Oil on canvas230 x 150cm
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Scene with a Rainbow2014Oil on canvas230 x 150cmDetail overleaf
Scene with Falling Leaves2014Oil on canvas230 x 150cm
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BRUNO BOUDJELAL
Paysage du Depart 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 122012-13Archival ink on cotton rag paper 60 x 90cm eachEditions of 4
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PIETER HUGO
The Journey2014Archival pigment ink on Baryta Fibre paper3 panels, 176 x 138cm eachEdition of 3 + 2AP
I am 40 000 feet above the Atlantic ocean – mid-air, between Johannesburg and Atlanta. It is a 16-hour flight.
I cannot sleep. It seems as if everybody else in economy class is in some deep, troubled somnambulist state. Most have masks over their eyes and are shielded from any luminous intrusion.
I go for a walk to stretch my legs. Nine hours of flying left. I have almost reached the halfway mark of my journey. Will the second half go faster? Unlikely.
I am bored. I take my pocket camera with me. There is an infrared function on the camera. I make a few portraits of some of the sleeping passengers. Because the camera is photographing the infrared spectrum, no flash is needed. The subjects don’t know I am photographing them.
I go back to my seat and review the pictures. They remind me of the images that came from Iraq during the US invasion. They remind me of what soldiers see through their night vision goggles. It occurs to me that the pictures of the first invasion of the Iraq War changed the way we see the world. Previously I associated infrared photography with wildlife pictures, leopards caught feeding at night. Now I associate them with conflict. I start pondering the strange relationship photography has with surveillance and the military industrial complex.
What time is it? Is it South African time? Is it US time? On the aerial map on my in-flight entertainment system there seems to be no land beneath us. No islands. No human presence. Who governs this space between where a journey begins and ends, this limbo between departing and arriving?
I think of Walker Evans’ subway portraits and it occurs to me that the world is a very different place now to when he made those pictures. Our notion of public and private has drastically shifted. I wonder if anyone accused him of voyeurism in 1938. I wonder how the people I photograph will feel about these pictures. In this age we demand that celebrity be placed within the public gaze but have a conflicting ethos for our own representations.
I once read that a Londoner was caught on CCTV an average of 300 times a day. We are constantly being photographed without being aware of it.
If these image serve as a warning that we are almost always under surveillance, being watched, I feel they have a reason to exist, to be seen and debated, even though they may make the sitters – and myself – uncomfortable.
I look at my watch. Only eight hours and 17 minutes left till Atlanta.
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SAMSON KAMBALU
Amistad2014Digital video, colourDuration 57 secEdition of 1 + 1AP
Cowboy Asleep2014Digital video, colourDuration 33 secEdition of 1 + 1AP
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Dancer in the Woods2014Digital video, colourDuration 34 secEdition of 1 + 1AP
Dinosaurs are Birds2014Digital video, colourDuration 39 secEdition of 1 + 1AP
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Installation view with Cowboy Asleep, Dinosaurs are Birds, Amistad, The Blues Came Along, Runner
KEMANG WA LEHULERE
The World of Nat Nakasa (Sketch 1)2013Set of 5 Polaroid photographs10.7 x 8.9cm each
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The World of Nat Nakasa (Sketch 2)2013Set of 5 Polaroid photographs10.7 x 8.9cm each
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The World of Nat Nakasa (Sketch 4)2013Set of 5 Polaroid photographs10.7 x 8.9cm each
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WIM BOTHA
Private Violence of Equilibrium2014Installation including:Untitled (Nebula 5 with Bywoner)2014Carrara marble70 x 40 x 30cm
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Private Violence of Equilibrium2014Installation with:
A Thousand Things Part 1912014Painted wood83 x 82 x 90cm
Untitled (Nebula 5 with Bywoner)2014Carrara marble70 x 40 x 30cm
Cloud Studies2014Oil on linenVarious dimensions
NICHOLAS HLOBO
Isinikezelo2014Ribbon on Fabriano paper150 x 246cmDetail overleaf
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Ndinik’isandla2014Ribbon on Fabriano paper66 x 101cm
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Thabatheka2014Ribbon on Fabriano paper101 x 66cm
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EDSON CHAGAS
Found Not Taken, London2013C-print80 x 120cmEdition of 3 + 2AP
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Found Not Taken, Luanda2013C-print80 x 120cmEdition of 3 + 2AP
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Found Not Taken, London2014C-print80 x 120cmEdition of 3 + 2AP
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ESTEVÃO MUCAVELE
Untitled2014Oil on canvas79 x 87cm
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Untitled2007Oil on canvas71 x 81cm
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Untitled2006Oil on canvas71 x 81cm
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DANIEL NAUDÉ
Satin Bower 4. Queen Mary Falls, Queensland, Australia, 2014
All archival pigment ink prints75 x 100cm Editions of 4 + 2AP
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Great Bower 2. Mareeba, Queensland, Australia, 2014
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Satin Bower 1. Bunya Mountains, Queensland, Australia, 2014
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Satin Bower 2. Lamington National Park, Queensland, Australia, 2014
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Great Bower 1. Yungaburra, Queensland, Australia, 2014
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DEREK JARMAN
Blue199335mm (tape) HD fileDuration 79 minCourtesy of Basilisk Communication Ltd
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WALID RAAD
Scratching on things I could disavow: A History of Modern and Contemporary Arab Art, Part 1, Section 271: Appendix XVIII Plates 063-257, 2012Set B of 3l platesArchival inkjet prints, framed54.3 x 42cm eachEdition of 7 + 2AP
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Sfeir-Semler, Hamburg
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SIMON GUSH
Red (Mandela car)2014Mercedes 500SE car doorsInstallation dimensions variable
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Red2014HD video, stereo soundDuration 1 hour 21 min 49 secIn collaboration with James Cairns
Edition of 3 + 1AP
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DINEO SESHEE BOPAPE
video still: the distressing part is being caught up in the voice of the heroine2013Wall paintingDimensions variable
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“callibration//1.the fable; 2. the fatal image, 3. we hold these truths to be true (g.o.)”2014Slide projection, 15 slidesInstallation view
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MESCHAC GABA
Vernissage2009/2014Wood, nail varnish, nail accessories, found objectsInstallation view
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ZANDER BLOM
Modern Painting 8 (Paint Tubes)2014Mixed media85 x 116 x 126cm
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1.690 Untitled2014Oil on linen198 x 164cm
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1.689 Untitled2014Oil on linen197 x 140cm
1.691 Untitled2014Oil on linen198 x 140cm
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VIVIANE SASSEN
Red Vlei2014C-print150 x 150cmEdition of 5 + 2AP
With the support of Matthijs de Wilde and Nederlands Fotomuseum
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OppositeYellow Vlei2014C-print150 x 140cmEdition of 5 + 2AP
From left to rightAxiom G03Axiom G02Axiom GB02All 2014, C-prints45 x 30cmEditions of 5 + 2AP
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From left to rightAxiom MAxiom B01Axiom BB01All 2014, C-prints45 x 30cmEditions of 5 + 2AP
OppositeGreen Vlei2014C-print150 x 140cmEdition of 5 + 2AP
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From left to rightAxiom GB01Axiom G01Axiom R02Axiom R01Axiom RB01All 2014, C-prints45 x 30cmEditions of 5 + 2AP
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MOSHEKWA LANGA
‘I am so sorry’2001TriptychMixed media on paper100 x 140cm each
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ATTA KWAMI
Roxana2013Acrylic on linen78.9 x 58.4cm
Beacon2014Acrylic on linen122 x 122cmCourtesy of Nicolas Krupp Contemporary Art, Basel
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ODILI DONALD ODITA
Tomorrow World2013Oil on canvas228.5 x 279.5cmDetail overleaf
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Accelerator2014Oil on canvas127 x 152.5cm
PENNY SIOPIS
Pinky Pinky: Mask2003-4Oil and found objects on canvas51 x 61cm
Overleaf, from left to right:
Pinky Pinky: Jewel2004Oil and found objects on canvas13 x 18cm
Pinky Pinky: Pale2004Oil and found objects on canvas61 x 45.5cm
Pinky Pinky: Red Eye2005Oil and found objects on canvas50 x 61cm
Pinky Pinky: Lips2003Oil and found objects on canvas20 x 25cm
Pinky Pinky: Nose2005Oil and found objects on canvas22.5 x 30.5cm
Pinky Pinky: Tongue2005Oil and found objects on canvas40.5 x 50.5cm
Pinky Pinky: Lash2003Oil and found objects on canvas20 x 25cm
Pinky Pinky: Blinky2002Oil and found objects on canvas50.5 x 40.5cm
Pinky Pinky: Pimple2002Oil and found objects on canvas18 x 13cm
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BERNI SEARLE
Colour Me series1998Handprinted colour photographsSet of 4, 42 x 50cm each
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MAWANDE KA ZENZILE
The Mythology of the Rape2014Cow dung, earth, buttons and oil on canvas151 x 180cm
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Untitled2014DiptychCow dung, earth and oil on canvas90 x 90cm each
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Amehlo akaphakelani2014Cow dung and oil on canvas60 x 60cm
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Homage to the MagicianPerformance, 27 November 2014Sound (I Put a Spell on You by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins)
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JANE ALEXANDER
Dig it All yummy, 2004Archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper45 x 40cmEdition of 15
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Harbinger with rainbow, 2004Archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper45 x 54.5cmEdition of 15
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NANDIPHA MNTAMBO
Enfold-me I 2014Oil and cow hair on canvas200 x 174.5cm
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SERGE ALAIN NITEGEKA
Tunnel IX: Studio Study I2014Paint on wood123 x 244 x 8cm
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ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES
JANE ALEXANDER (born 1959 in
Johannesburg; lives in Cape Town)
participated in the 10th Gwangju
Biennale, Burning Down the House,
in 2014. She is included in the
travelling exhibition The Divine
Comedy (Museum für Moderne Kunst,
Frankfurt, and SCAD Museum of Art,
Savannah, Georgia).
ZANDER BLOM (born 1982 in
Pretoria; lives in Cape Town) was the
winner of the third Jean-François Prat
Prize for contemporary art, Paris,
in 2014.
DINEO SESHEE BOPAPE (born 1981
in Polokwane; lives in Johannesburg)
was included in Ruffnek Constructivists
at the Institute of Contemporary
Art, University of Pennsylvania,
Philadelphia, and The Lightning Speed
of the Present at Boston University
College of Fine Arts, Boston, in 2014.
WIM BOTHA (born 1974 in Pretoria;
lives in Cape Town) had solo
exhibitions at the National Arts
Festival, Grahamstown, in 2014, and
at Kunstraum Innsbruck, Austria, in
2013. He is included in the travelling
exhibition The Divine Comedy, and
showed on Imaginary Fact, the South
African Pavilion at the 55th Venice
Biennale in 2013.
BRUNO BOUDJELAL was born 1961
in Montreuil; lives near Paris. His series
Les Paysages du Départ was included
on Artists Engaged? Maybe at the
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation,
Lisbon, in 2014.
EDSON CHAGAS (born 1977 in
Luanda; lives there) exhibited his
series Found Not Taken at the Angolan
Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale in
2013, winning the Golden Lion for Best
National Participation.
MESCHAC GABA was born
1961 in Cotonou; lives there and
in Rotterdam. His Museum of
Contemporary African Art was
acquired by and exhibited at Tate
Modern, London, in 2013; seven
rooms of the Museum were shown
at the Deutsche Bank KunstHalle,
Berlin, in 2014.
SIMON GUSH was born 1981
in Pietermaritzburg; lives in
Johannesburg. His Red (Mandela car)
showed as part of his solo exhibition
at the Goethe-Institut, Johannesburg,
in 2014. He has a solo show at Galerie
Jette Rudolph in January 2015.
NICHOLAS HLOBO (born 1975 in
Cape Town; lives in Johannesburg)
has work on view at the Centre
Pompidou, Paris, as part of A History
(Art, Architecture and Design from
the 80s to Now) and on Tate Modern’s
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Energy and Process, a thematic view
of works from the collection. He is
included in the travelling exhibition
The Divine Comedy.
PIETER HUGO was born 1976 in
Johannesburg; lives in Cape Town.
His Kin series is on view at Fundació
Foto Colectania in Barcelona (until 10
December), and travels to Fondation
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris, in
January 2015. His survey exhibition,
This Must Be the Place, is currently
at Centro Atlántico De Arte Moderno,
Las Palmas. He is included on
Prospect.3: Notes for Now (P.3), the
New Orleans Biennial (2014).
DEREK JARMAN was born 1942
in Middlesex, England, and died in
1994. Blue, his 12th and final feature
film, won awards for Best New
British Feature at the Edinburgh Film
Festival (1993) and an honourable
mention at the Stockholm Film
Festival (1994) for ‘an inspiration
that takes matters of life and death
beyond film form’.
SAMSON KAMBALU (born 1975 in
Malawi; lives in London) is currently
completing a PhD in Fine Art, looking
at the general economy in Meschac
Gaba’s Museum of Contemporary
African Art, at Chelsea College of Art,
London. In 2014 his work was included
on the Dakar Biennale.
MAWANDE KA ZENZILE (born 1986
in Lady Frere; lives in Cape Town)
was the recipient of the 11th Tollman
Award for the Visual Arts in 2014, and
an artist-in-residence at Nafasi Art
Space in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania,
in June/July.
ATTA KWAMI (born 1956 in Accra;
lives in Kumasi and Loughborough)
exhibited commissioned works at the
Liverpool World Museum in 2014, and
is the author of Kumasi Realism 1951-
2007: An African Modernism (2013).
MOSHEKWA LANGA (born 1975 in
Bakenberg; lives in Amsterdam) had
solo exhibitions at the ifa (Institut für
Auslandsbeziehungen) galleries in
Stuttgart and Berlin in 2014, and at the
Krannert Art Museum , University of
Illinois, in 2013.
NANDIPHA MNTAMBO (born 1982
in Swaziland; lives in Johannesburg)
has work on the travelling
exhibition The Divine Comedy and
on Performance Now, curated by
RoseLee Goldberg, at Queensland
University of Technology Art Gallery,
Brisbane, Australia.
ESTEVÃO MUCAVELE (born 1941
in Manjacaze; lives in Maputo) had
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his first exhibition in Cape Town in
1969. He returned to Mozambique
in 1976 after the country achieved
independence. A survey exhibition
took place at the country’s National
Art Museum in 1990.
DANIEL NAUDÉ (born 1984 in Cape
Town; lives there) presented his
series Sightings of the Sacred: Cattle
in India, Uganda and Madagascar
at Stevenson, Cape Town, in 2014.
He was included on Apartheid and
After at Huis Marseille Museum for
Photography (2014).
SERGE ALAIN NITEGEKA
(born 1983 in Burundi; lives in
Johannesburg) has his first New York
solo exhibition, Morphings in BLACK,
at Marianne Boesky East (until 21
December), following his third solo at
Stevenson, Johannesburg, Into the
BLACK (2014).
ODILI DONALD ODITA (born
1966 in Enugu, Nigeria; lives
in Philadelphia) is included on
Represent: 200 Years of African
American Art at Philadelphia
Museum of Art, opening January
2015. His work appears in the recent
Phaidon publications Defining
Contemporary Art: 25 Years in 200
Pivotal Artworks and Vitamin P2.
DEBORAH POYNTON was born
1970 in Durban; lives in Cape Town.
A survey of 25 years of her painting,
titled Model for a World, showed
at The New Church Museum, Cape
Town, in 2014. A monograph on
her paintings was published by
Stevenson in 2013.
WALID RAAD (born 1967 in
Chbanieh, Lebanon; lives in New York)
had solo shows at Carré d’Art, Musée
d’art contemporain, Nîmes, France;
and the University of Contemporary
Art, Amherst, USA, in 2014. His
Scratching on Things I Could Disavow:
A History of Art in the Arab World
showed at Sfeir-Semler Gallery,
Beirut, in 2012/3 and T-B A21,
Vienna, in 2011.
VIVIANE SASSEN was born 1972 in
Amsterdam; lives there. Her exhibition
In and Out of Fashion, which debuted
at Huis Marseille in 2012, travels to
Fotomuseum Winterthur in December
2014. She was included on The
Encyclopedic Palace, 55th Venice
Biennale, in 2013.
BERNI SEARLE (born 1964 in Cape
Town; lives there) was the recipient of
a Rockefeller Creative Arts Fellowship
in 2014. She was included on Public
Intimacy: Art and Social Life in South
Africa at the Yerba Buena Center for
the Arts, San Francisco (2014).
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PENNY SIOPIS was born 1953 in
Vryburg; lives in Cape Town. Her
retrospective exhibition, Time and
Again, opens at the Iziko South
African National Gallery in Cape
Town on 17 December. The survey is
accompanied by a major monograph
edited by Gerrit Olivier and published
by Wits University Press.
KEMANG WA LEHULERE (born
1984 in Cape Town; lives there) is
the Standard Bank Young Artist for
Visual Art 2015, with a solo exhibition
opening at the National Arts Festival
in July 2015. Wa Lehulere won the
first International Tiberius Art Award
Dresden in 2014.
CAPE TOWNBuchanan Building160 Sir Lowry RoadWoodstock 7925PO Box 616Green Point 8051T +27 (0)21 462 1500F +27 (0)21 462 1501
JOHANNESBURG62 Juta StreetBraamfontein 2001Postnet Suite 281Private Bag x9Melville 2109T +27 (0)11 403 1055/1908F +27 (0)86 275 1918
e-catalogue 2Version 10 December 2014
© 2014 for works: the artists
Front cover Walid Raad, Scratching on things I could disavow: A History of Modern and Contemporary Arab Art_Part I_Chapter 1_Section 271: Appendix XVIII_Plate 224_A History of an Invitation II, 2012 (detail), archival inkjet print, 54 x 42cm
Opposite Walid Raad, Scratching on things I could disavow: A History of Modern and Contemporary Arab Art_Part I_Chapter 1_Section 271: Appendix XVIII_Plate 223_A History of an Invitation I, 2012 (detail), archival inkjet print, 54 x 42cm
Design Gabrielle GuyInstallation photography Mario Todeschini