A contemporary look at the historical seems to dominate the 2013 series of Visual Art Exhibitions presented at the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown.
A contemporary look at the historical seems to dominate the 2013 series of Visual Art Exhibitions presented at the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown.
In her new solo exhibition titled The purple shall govern, Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art Mary Sibande draws inspiration from a specific incident in South Africa’s history in which, in the late 1980s, people were marching for equality in Cape Town.
During the march, the police sprayed everyone with a water cannon laced with purple dye to enable them identify and arrest anti-apartheid protestors.
This act motivated Mary’s interest in the roles that colour played in the history of this country.
Colour remains a predominant factor in our social interactions and it continues to play a dominant role in our perceptions of one another as South Africans.
In Sibande’s view it is like a monster that we are all too familiar with. On a personal level, this new work comes full circle as Mary connects it back to her very first exhibition, where she displayed a figure that represented her in purple attire.
The purple shall govern presents the next chapter, in which Sibande speaks of her own aspirations, desires, fears and anxieties of being a woman.
For the first time, the photographs of anti-apartheid photographers, Benny Gool, Zubeida Vallie and Adil Bradlow, who as young photographers and friends were to be found with their cameras documenting apartheid South Africa, is brought together in a group exhibition entitled Martyrs, Saints and Sellouts.
Their impressive collections show us now, some 19 years after the first democratic elections in South Africa, a vivid narrative of violence, loss and injuries, the reverberations of which are subdued in the rhetoric of the post-apartheid landscape.
Based on selections from the Standard Bank Corporate Art Collection, The Art of Banking: celebrating through collections provides a journey through South Africa’s history, using art works as points of departure, or triggers, for telling a story about various eras, episodes, circumstances and events.
John Mohl, Walter Battiss, Johannes Phokela, Durant Sihlali, Alexis Preller, Trevor Makhoba, David Goldblatt, Penny Siopis and Wim Botha are among the artists featured.
Two exhibitions showcase the work of Brent Meistre – a photographer/ filmmaker who works across varying media including sound and stop-frame animation.
Sojourn is a photographic exhibition of selected landscape images taken over a period of six years across Southern Africa.
Across My Father’s Fault is a site-specific stop frame animation installation, shot on location in the Cradle of Humankind.
Wilma Cruise’s exhibition Will you, Won’t you, join the dance? is developed as an extension of the ideas latent in Cruise’s previous body Cocks Asses and I: Can’t hear.
An exhibition entitled Women, Our Treasure!, celebrates the strength of South African women.
Visual artists from the Eastern Cape in collaboration with their counterparts from the craft sector join artists across the country in an artistic expression of awareness about gender identity and abuse.
The Eastern Cape's Department for Sport, Recreation, Arts and Culture will have a number of stalls located around the Village Green.
The Arena programme will feature a showcase of work drawn from some of the more successful artists who will be exhibiting on this year’s Fringe programme.
