|
JOHANNESBURG ART FAIR 2010
Johannesburg Art Fair 2010
|
From the 26th to the 28th of March 2010, Sandton Convention Centre will be the home for 23 participating galleries, featuring the work of over 400 artists and 40 designers from South Africa and the greater continent. The Joburg Art Fair showcases the cream of contemporary artistic production and is a critical platform for positioning African artists as players in the international art arena.
In its 3rd consecutive year, the Joburg Art Fair has established itself as a key event on the calendars’ of galleries, artists, buyers, sellers, international collectors and the like, as well as anyone with an interest in contemporary art, design and culture from the continent. As the only event of its kind in Africa, the Joburg Art Fair aims to represent the continent.
From its inception in 2008, the Joburg Art Fair has combined the various disciplines of art. The project has been driven by the desire to make contemporary art and design more accessible and available to the public. And it’s working. The Art Fair’s second year saw a 50 percent increase in numbers, with the total visitor count rising to 10 000.
In addition to the galleries, 11 special projects have been created to give new and emerging artists an opportunity to showcase their works. These projects offer visitors an experience that goes beyond the purely commercial.
The overarching theme for the 2010 Fair is ‘Art & Industry’. A series of projects will mirror the international move towards the beneficial collaboration of artists with industry. The Joburg Art Fair is a forum for these exchanges and dialogues to take place. The partnership of Art & Industry is a catalyst for fresh perspectives and solutions in production that are both inspired and progressive. Art breathes new life into industry, and this synergy serves the growing demand for the contemporary and ‘cool’.
|
|
Johannesburg Art Fair 2010 - Get your tickets now!
|
|
|
Part of the Art Fair’s larger purpose, in collaboration with participating galleries, is to give exposure to emerging, ‘extraordinary’ and innovative South African (and African) artists.
Several participating galleries will be showing the work of newer South African voices whose works are breaking ground and pushing boundaries.
|
|
|
Hasan & Husain Essop - Goodman Gallery
Born in 1985, Hasan and Husain Essop live and work in Cape Town, South Africa. Since graduating from the Michaelis School of Fine Arts at the University of Cape Town in 2006, Hasan and Husain Essop have been working collaboratively. Staged scenarios in which they perform varying roles are photoshopped to explore a range of conflicts and convergences.
The Essops are twin brothers; who share an identity, personality characteristics and a family. Their unique bond enables them to confront and address similarities and differences within a personal and a global context and open up debate around religious, cultural and social correspondences and conflicts.
Their work originates from a history that is confined to a specific area, a faith that is universally shared and a critical understanding of the media and modern technology. They strive to create images that will portray their personal relationship with each other and the environment around them.
|
|
Hasan & Husain Essop
|
Through these constructed photographs, the Essops explore the influence of Western popular culture and the hybridising effects it has on other existing religions and cultures. Internal conflicts are expressed through performance. Their voices and gestures speak to a public that lives within these confines. Highlighting their own personal struggle; they question their roles in relation to the society in which they live.
|
|
|
Jake Aikman - Smac Art Gallery
Jake Aikman
|
The difficulty of conveying narrative in a single static image has concerned artists for millennia. This problem lies at the centre of many of the intellectual and conceptual advances that have been made in art and continues to lead new directions in artistic representation today. Jake Aikman’s paintings concentrate on a single moment that seems to imply multiple pasts and potential futures, all laden with possibilities. In his careful composition and use of symbolic understatement, he draws the viewer into a visual realm redolent of suggestion while never dictating meaning to those who glimpse at the isolated moment he portrays.
Aikman’s poignant and evocative imagery suggests longing and a yearning for something that seems just out of reach. Perhaps it is appropriate that a favourite subject for his work is the ocean, with its surface giving no hint of what lays below and scant indication of whether it bodes ill or well for those that penetrate its depths. His palette, which may seem simple at first glance, reveals upon careful observation rich nuances of colour and tonal depth, echoing the complexity of the emotional drama that underpin his subject matter. In all this he is the natural present-day heir to the Romanticists of the 18th and 19th centuries.
Jake Aikman was born in London in 1978 and has a Masters Degree from Michaelis School of Fine Arts, Cape Town.
|
|
He has participated in several group exhibitions and in early 2009 SMAC Art Gallery hosted an important solo exhibition entitled Echoes. Aikman was also selected for participation in the major exhibition, L’Anima Del Acqua: The Spirit of Water, sponsored by the Italian government and presented at the Ca’d’Oro Palace as part of the 53rd Venice Biennale.
He is also an invited artist to exhibit at the 4th Beijing International Art Biennale.
|
|
|
Jessica Webster - David Krut Projects
Jessica Webster has recently entered the South African art scene as a young painter whose work is difficult to ignore. Her 2009 début solo show at David Krut Projects met with high praise, and the Johannesburg Art Gallery immediately acquired one of the centrepieces of the exhibition. Many of the other works in the show were claimed in a hurry by collectors near and far.
Art critic Michael Smith described her work in the Mail and Guardian as ‘light years ahead of the simply sensational’. It is clear that the high regard for Webster’s work is anchored in recognition of her singularly expressive imagination and exceptional talent as a painter.
It is through the painted surface that Webster’s individualism and creativity are realised. Working primarily with oil paint and encaustic (wax), she subjects her imagery to a quasi-alchemical process in which objects and figures shift and transform, resisting fixity and immediate legibility. Her sensitivity to surface and depth, materiality and form (or formlessness) manifests as playful experimentation on the boundaries between the abstract and the figurative.
|
|
Jessica Webster
|
The enchantment of Webster’s surfaces is enhanced by an underlying revelation of the human — an empathic vision that seems to reveal the irregular contours of fragility and potency. It is within these indeterminate parameters that Webster’s paintings compel a second look.
|
|
|
Sabelo Mlangeni - Brodie/Stevenson
Sabelo Mlangeni was born in Driefontein near Wakkersoom in Mpumalanga. In 2001 he moved to Johannesburg where he joined the Market Photo Workshop, graduating in 2004. He won the Tollman Award for the Visual Arts in 2009. His first solo show, Invisible Women, took place at Warren Siebrits, Johannesburg (2007).
|
|
Sabelo Mlangeni
|
Group exhibitions include Obsession, PhotoZA Gallery (2004); Johannesburg Circa Now, Johannesburg Art Gallery (2005); Gender & Visual Exhibitions, District Six Museum (2005); and Positive: Pulse at Sun International, Sun City (2003).
|
|
|
ART DEVELOPMENT:
The Art Fair has identified and collaborated with other organizations to support and promote the development of South African art. These organizations include the Artspace Mentorship Program (made possible by Gauteng Provincial Government), Artist Proof Studio and FUNDA (sponsored by Siemens).
As part of the Artspace Mentorship Program, top candidates were selected as potentially integral to the future of South African art and offered the opportunity to draw knowledge and experience from more established practitioners in the art world.
Artist Proof Studio continues in its effort to provide talented but financially disadvantaged artists with the opportunity to create and sell prints within the world-class workshop setting for which it is known.
The new generation of rising stars at APS includes Phillemon Hlungwani, Nelson Makamo, Molefe Thwala, Hloniphile Khuzwayo, Lehlogonolo Mashaba, Nathi Ndlandla
The FUNDA project aims to encourage artistic development by exhibiting artworks by exceptional participants. The selection process is purely based on a student’s ability to utilise various mediums to delve into the complexities of history and narratives of social transformation in South Africa. Mainly senior students in their final year, the show intends for the project to draw attention to the ambiguity of social equality and initiate dialogue.
From the incredible line up at this years Joburg Art Fair, it's easy to why South Africa artists of all shapes and forms have the ability to express themselves freely and for those that have the talent, as most of these do, the stage is theirs.
I'm personally looking forward to this event and am very eager to get my finger clicking as I view and photograph some of these amazing pieces. In keeping with the promotion of South African talent, the JAF 2010 is one of our highlights this year at ZAGlamour.
Hope to see you there.
|
|