Colour in the South African context has immediate connotations with race and identity. Organised by
Rat Western and Dr Ashraf Jamal, the Rhodes Fine Art Department will be hosting a Colour Colloquium this
weekend which will discuss and examine colour as palette in contemporary South African art.
Colour in the South African context has immediate connotations with race and identity. Organised by
Rat Western and Dr Ashraf Jamal, the Rhodes Fine Art Department will be hosting a Colour Colloquium this
weekend which will discuss and examine colour as palette in contemporary South African art.
Western, a digital media lecturer at the Rhodes Fine Art Department explained the importance of colour, especially in a South African context.
“The historical use of colour in South African art is very de-saturated.” Western believes that the way South Africa has been represented in the past is very Calvinistic.
“African identity is very colourful, so representing it with a lack of colour is looking at a very complex culture in a very narrow way.”
Speaking of South Africa’s past, Western said that “black and white, the monochrome of high-modernism, served well within the apartheid struggle period to subvert grand narratives”.
She went on to say that “now we come to a point in which we must question how we might use colour to express the complexity of human existence.”
Several prominent artists from around the country will present their work at this weekend’s colloquium, including Maureen De Jager, Ashraf Jamal, Mark Hipper, Sean O’Toole and Brenton Maart.
“We want to create discussions about topics that haven’t been addressed before,” said Western. “The Eastern Cape is in the middle of nowhere geographically, but we want to show that we are not in the middle of nowhere intellectually.
It is a great opportunity for us. People usually only come here for the Festival, so it’s about establishing links with people outside Grahamstown.”
De Jager, an art lecturer at the Rhodes Fine Art Department, also speaks of the link between colour and race in a South African context.
“I think it’s difficult to mention ‘colour’ in a South African context without invoking the idea of skin colour, given our history of racial segregation and discrimination.
In South Africa, ‘colour’ is a particularly loaded term but it is also a term that often gets defined quite predictably and reductively as a result.”
De Jager will be presenting a paper at the colloquium titled “Aberrant Light and Colour.” “My paper looks at how rainbows function optically and symbolically.
The term ‘rainbow nation’ was coined by Archbishop Desmond Tutu to describe post-apartheid South Africa after the 1994 elections.
It was reiterated by President Nelson Mandela in his first month of office, when he spoke of ‘a rainbow nation at peace with itself and with the world’.
Thereafter the term ‘rainbow nation’ quickly gained credence as a signifier of multi-culturalism and diversity.”
Jamal, a senior lecture at the Rhodes Fine Arts Department, will present his paper, “Colours of Wakefulness.” He will also address colour in relation to the history of South Africa.
“South African art has consciously or unconsciously been mired in responsibility. As a consequence South African art has damagingly deviated itself from the reckonings of art expression.”
The Colour Colloquium will take place on Saturday and Sunday at the Institute for Study of English, St Peter’s Campus, Rhodes University.
Prof Dominic Thorburn, head of the Fine Art Department, will deliver a speech at 2pm on Saturday to open the event.
The colloquium will be accompanied by an exhibition of contemporary South African work sourced in the Eastern Cape.
The exhibition, curated by Zach Taljaard, will be opened at the Albany History Museum on Saturday at 6pm.
According to the organisers, “The colloquium is in essence a celebration of colour and its emotive, cultural and symbolic resonance.”
