Ryley Grunenwald’s The Shore Break, has won the prestigious Backsberg Audience Choice Award at Encounters South African International Documentary Festival for Best South African Film.
The award-winning documentary film follows the dilemma faced by a rural community on South Africa’s Wild Coast as to whether to support or resist a proposed titanium mining project and a national tolled highway.
The Lost Men project is a series of site-specific, temporary, outdoor installations engaging concepts of memory and memorialisation.The artworks are non-partisan and make no political statements.
Each installation of this ongoing project relates to a specific historical battle site and is unique in its imagery, structure and format while maintaining conceptual consistency.
DURBANITES can enjoy Colab Tokyo: an exhibition of photographs by Mark Lanning at Saviour Brand: Station Drive Precinct (51 Station Drive) from June 26 to July 31.
Respected photographer, Lanning, will be exhibiting a collection of “iphonography” (photographs taken on an iPhone5) of a recent visit to Tokyo with Durban designers the Holmes Brothers. Continue reading
A season of five famous ballets from The Royal Ballet company is currently being screened at Cinema Nouveau theatres around South Africa. Continue reading
Lizamore & Associates hosts two solo exhibitions in July: Daughter Language by Robert Hamblin and Daughters, by Heike Allerton-Davies.
In these exhibitions Hamblin and Allerton-Davies visit subjects of patriarchy, race, colonial remnants and gender from the perspective of parenting a new generation of daughters. The exhibition will be opened by activist and television and stage actor Vinette Ebrahim.
Hamblin’s images are based on his family and baby daughter who is of Xhosa descent. The photographic images in Daughter Language are hand finished with pencil writing from an antique English Xhosa phrase book written by missionaries in 1899. The pencil markings on the works pose an allegory for current day struggles and tensions between black and white South Africans.
“My family and I are confronted by racism and also our whiteness on a very personal level now,” says Hamblin. “I am not talking about blatant racism, more about subtle day-to-day communications, almost invisible things that leave uncomfortable spaces between people, making them unable to really connect across race borders regardless of their commitment to change.”
Hamblin has been an active fine art photographer over the last 22 years and has had several exhibitions across South Africa and included in shows internationally. His work is informed by gender complexities, identity and more recently, colonial studies.
Highlights in his career include winning the Fellowship Award at the Houston Centre for Photography in Houston, Texas, and a Kanna award nomination at the KKNK national arts festival. Lizamore & Associates represented Hamblin at the Joburg Art Fair in 2014.
Daughter Language is Hamblin’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and follows the artist’s solo exhibition, The Colony, which was exhibited at the University of Johannesburg Gallery late 2014.
The most recent work from Heike Allerton-Davies, Daughters, explores the merging fault lines in our shared history that brings the artist, her daughter and the daughters of the surrounding Dwarsrivier Valley (between Stellenbosch and Franschhoek) to this point and place in time. These grappling portraits contain shards of Delft porcelain collected by her daughter.
“My daughter sifts through the sand in the vineyards obsessively collecting these iconic colonial ‘treasures’,” Allerton-Davies. “She brings them to me, cobalt reflected in her eyes. Porcelain that would have been carefully packed in crates with soft cushioning against any damage, brought across the sea, slaves below the deck – and so Colonialism spread like spilled ink across the African continent.”
In this exhibition, Allerton-Davies explores the colonial patriarchy as the underlying and binding narrative in the famous Boschendal valley where traces of the colonial rule remain embedded in every corner of the land. On the farm where Allerton-Davies lives with her family, the slave bell still stands in the back lawn, untouched. The works in this exhibition features her own daughter, girls in the rural region where she lives, and the found shards of Delft porcelain.
Allerton-Davies has established a well-known name for herself within the South African art industry. She holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Fine Art from the University of Cape Town and where she completed her Honours in painting. She also studied art and graphic design at the East London Technikon.
Allerton-Davies has participated in numerous group shows, including Sex, Power and Money (2009), Fresh (2011), 15 Years (2011) and Marking the Map. Allerton-Davies has also had a number of solo exhibitions: Good Night at the Barnard Gallery, Cape Town in 2012, Damaged at the Association of Visual Arts in 2004 and Valley of Grace at Lizamore & Associates in 2013 are amongst others. Lizamore & Associates also represented the artist at the 2013 Joburg Art Fair and 2013 Turbine Art Fair.
Daughter Language & Daughters opens at 6 pm on Thursday, July 2 and ends on July 25 at Lizamore & Associates, 155 Jan Smuts Avenue, Parkwood, Rosebank.
David Krut Projects (DKP) Johannesburg is hosting Mary Wafer’s solo exhibition Ninth Floor from Wednesday, June 24 at 142 Jan Smuts Avenue in Parkwood.
Ninth Floor is a new body of paintings and etchings that continue Wafer’s interest in structural marginality and exclusion in contemporary South Africa.
Following her previous inquiry into the Marikana massacre, Wafer’s current research on John Vorster Square – the police station that embodied the violence of the apartheid system – explores moments along South Africa’s post-democratic timeline in order to interrogate cultural change (or the lack thereof).
The sinister, and in places deteriorating, facade of John Vorster Square, now Johannesburg Central Police Station, is, in this work, a signifier of the collective trauma embedded in many of our urban spaces. It embodies a shared anxiety that is a consequence of the brutality of daily life in South Africa.
The menacing presence of the police station is a monument to systemic violence, and is painstakingly explored in Wafer’s large oil paintings.
The title of the exhibition is a reference to the poem “In Detention” by Chris van Wyk.
For more information, contact ame@davidkrut.com or 011 447 0627.
Today’s stars join stars of tomorrow in the Born To Perform Gala Concert at The Lyric Theatre, Gold Reef City on Wednesday 1 July at 7.30 pm.
Daniel Baron, Graeme Watkins, Nathan Ro and Cito join budding stars of tomorrow on stage to celebrate the young and professional talent that we have in South Africa.
Born To Perform is a platform created by Gemma Marinus Donnelly and Matthew Marinus to create professional opportunities in the performing arts industry for young budding talented children and teens.
Originally coming from the United Kingdom, Gemma has been a major player in the musical theatre industry in SA for over eight years before opening up an elite performing arts school (Stageworx School Of Performing Arts) in 2009. www.stageworx.co.za
Passionate about growing a bright future for our budding artists Gemma and Matthew are heavily involved in training and showcasing the future stars of SA.
Matthew is best known as the talented drummer for The Graeme Watkins Project, but most recently is fast making a name for himself as Dream Canvas Productions, a video production company he has recently formed, where he produces music videos and EPK’s for SA artists. www.dreamcanvas.co.za
For the Born To Perform Gala Concert at The Lyric Theatre on July 1, Gemma and Matt have searched all over Johannesburg for the most talented singer, dancers and actors in musical theatre and pop music to put together a variety style show inspired by the annual Royal Variety Show in England. These budding performers will be teaming up with some of SA’s favourite artists to show the world what South Africa has to offer.
Says Gemma; “We are lucky enough to have such strong industry support and have managed to gain assistance from some top industry players including Collett Dawson and Cito from The CoLab Network as well as seasoned pro’s such as Graeme Watkins (The Graeme Watkins Project) Nathan Ro (Lonehill Estate), Daniel Baron and Cito (WONDERboom).
“Having these artists performing with our young stars will not only give the youngsters an experience of a lifetime but also hopefully encourage other producers to create opportunities in the industry for them. “
The evening will be a dazzling display of song and dance provided by our leading stars alongside a wide array of budding talent. Here are just a few of the expected highlights:
The second leg to Born To Perform is the Born To Perform TV show. Gemma and Matthew are currently in the process of filming segments for this, such as the “Sing with a Star” segment where talented children will duo with local stars – such as Tylo Venter in this clip working with Belinda Davids from the recent The Greatest Love of All – The Whitney Show. Watch the clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sd0kCWqKT8
The final aspect is the new Teen group “The Buzz” where it’s hoped to create a market for young singers in the SA music scene. You can see the debut of “The Buzz” at the showcase in July.
Tickets range from R180 to R220 and can be booked through Computicket or online at www.goldreefcity.co.za or by calling The Lyric Theatre Box Office on 011 248 5000.
Follow Born to Perform:
Website: www.borntoperform.co.za
Face Book: https://www.facebook.com/Borntoperformgala
YouTube: Born To Perform TV
Stageworx Performing Arts is always looking for new talent for their projects so if you are a young talented teen please send a clip to info@borntoperform.co.za
Watch these videos to give you an idea what to expect from the youngsters on the night:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cBzy4ade94
AFAI will host a public debate on heritage symbols in post-colonial contexts, titled How do we interpret and manage living history in South Africa?’ on Monday, June 29 at 5.30 pm at the District Six Museum.
Panelists include Gcobani Sipoyo from the South African Heritage Resource Agency (SAHRA), Dr Ashraf Jamal from CPUT, Mohammed Shabangu from the Open Stellenbosch Collective and Brian Kamanzi from the Rhodes Must Fall movement (UCT). The debate will be chaired by the D6M Director Bonita Bennet.
The recent removal of a statue of Cecil John Rhodes on the University of Cape Town’s Upper Campus stimulated vociferous debate on social media, public fora, seminar rooms and informal spaces around the country.
While much of the debate was about the structural racism that still defines many South African Higher Education institutions, the debate was also about heritage, collective memory and living history.
This debate seeks to tease out some of the different ways in which the ‘nation’ deals with statues and buildings that represent an oppressive past, and also articulate a complex and problematized present. In addition, the debate seeks to interrogate the ways in which, the ongoing project of transformation – both within universities and public spaces – can be dealt with in a post-colonial context.
In this way South Africa can reflect on recent events in light of how other post-colonial societies have managed the telling of history and the transformation of cultural/ heritage objects and symbols that shape a community’s consciousness (take India or Zimbabwe as examples).
The District Six Museum is at 25A Buitenkant Street, Cape Town, 8000. Please RSVP to Sophia at sophia@afai.org.za by Monday, June 29 10 am.
Following the success of the 10th anniversary of the hugely popular annual Baxter Dance Festival last year, the organisers are now calling for entries for 2015 from dance studios, schools, companies, groups and independent dance-makers, as well as proposals from choreographers (including a DVD of recent work).
The closing date for applications to participate in this year’s event is Monday, July 6, at 5pm and choreographers are strongly encouraged to send in their submissions as early as possible. Continue reading
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