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Renowned South African photographer Pieter Hugo’s new exhibition Kin was launched last week at Johannesburg’s Stevenson gallery. GREG NICOLSON sat down with Hugo to talk about his new work and his relationship with South Africa.
Hugo is famous for his striking portraits of those on the margins of African society. T. J. Demos, writing on a retrospective of Hugo’s work, noted Hugo’s subjects: groups of people defined by their work, space or physical condition, including honey collectors, those with albinism, residents of Musina, recyclers in Ghana, those on the edge of Nollywood, and Nigerians who use hyenas for sideshows.
For this edition of our look at daily life we share images from Bangladesh, Cambodia, France, Brazil, China, Nicaragua, India , United States, Russia and other countries around the world.
Artist Gerhard Marx in conjunction with Spier Architectural Arts recently created an enormous sculptural mosiac of an aerial photograph of Johannesburg, South Africa. Seven professional mosaic artists, together with nine apprentices worked for 5 months to complete the project using natural stone such as marble and travertine, fragments of red brick, ceramic elements and chippings of Venetian smalti glass. In the end, the 56-panel aerial image weighs nearly three tons and was presented last month at the 2013 FNB Joburg Art Fair.
Welcome to the premiere issue of the Art21 Magazine, the result of a major redesign and rethinking of the Art21 Blog. Art21’s mission for the magazine is the same as its mission for the blog: to serve as an online space for insightful writing on contemporary art and artists.
Available exclusively online, the Art21 Magazine publishes six times per year. Each issue is devoted to a single theme. This inaugural issue, “Becoming an Artist,” was inspired by the words of William Kentridge in Art21’s feature-length film, William Kentridge:Anything is Possible
I art SA is a community art project which involved several artists who created murals in Woodstock and Soweto. Some interesting results...check out the video here.
Box explores the synthesis of real and digital space through projection-mapping on moving surfaces. The short film documents a live performance, captured entirely in camera.
Silvia Pillon is the recently appointed curator of the FNB Jo'burg Art Fair that opens this weekend. With her colleagues at the art fair office, under the trade name Artlogic, she has pulled together this year's event, which includes 33 galleries, 11 of which are newcomers.
Artist Juan Fontanive combines sculpture and animation in his beautiful bird-themed flipbook machines. Each motorized machine is hand-assembled by Fontanive and features his hand-drawn bird illustrations. Some of the machines are available for purchase at the New Museum store.
Tokyo-based sushi chef Tama-chan creates works of art with rolls of sushi. By arranging the rice (which is often colored) and other ingredients inside the seaweed exterior, he is able to create images which are exposed when he slices the roll. He has re-created famous works of art like Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” and other fun things like cats, flowers, skulls, and, even a baby in the womb. You can see more of his sushi art at his blog Sushi smile of Tama-chan.
The 2013 Johannesburg Art Fair has been over for nearly a fortnight. . But we're still thinking about what it meant because this year’s festival will be remembered for years – for all the wrong reasons.
"There actually are two very different, opposing ideas about what any artistic activity should be about. On the one hand is the idea artists almost inevitably stand in opposition to authority; that they gain their power and potency by rearranging the world’s mental furniture; and that they point the way towards a new way of thinking or looking at things. In short, they are something like the cultural version of the canary in a coal mine.The other opposing idea is this mysterious thing called the “creative economy”. Rather than seeing art and culture as something special beyond quotidian commerce – this view holds that they are just like any other form of productive activity."
In this week’s roundup Rashid Johnson addresses the black American experience, Doris Salcedo and Fred Wilson receive honors, William Kentridge returns to the Metropolitan Opera, and more.
In this new short from Marc-Antoine Locatelli, dancer Lucas Boirat is seen battling with various geometric forms of light that launch and morph as part of a carefully choreographed dance that marries human motion with motion graphics. It reminded me a bit of Proeigon.
What if the Internet had a body? In his DUMBO studio, artist Daniel Gordon photographs paper collages constructed from found images downloaded from the Web. "I like to think about what I'm doing as an optimistic version of appropriation," says Gordon, who wonders if he can transport digital images into real life by giving them a physical form. The artist's paper tableaus, rich in vibrant colors and vivid patterns, are transformed in the process of making a picture with large format cameras. "It's a fiction and a truth at the same time," says Gordon, whose early "Flying Pictures" series (2001--2004) created whimsical illusions of the artist in mid-flight.
At an event last week at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) officially released The Emergency Red List of Syrian Cultural Objects at Risk, which outlines the categories of cultural goods most vulnerable to illicit trade during the Syrian war. With growing reports of widespread damage and looting at cultural heritage sites throughout Syria, ICOM’s publication, which was supported by the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, provides a concise guide that can be used by museums, auction houses, art dealers, collectors, and customs officials to identity possibly looted or stolen items as the war in Syria continues.
David Goldblatt is the featured artist at this year's Johannesburg Art Fair. He is showing work under the title the Frock and Other Pictures.
"Vladislavic: What work are you showing at the Art Fair? Goldblatt: I've chosen 30 pictures, both old and new. It's a rather disparate collection of work that I've not shown or published before, including some personal favourites. The older ones were made between the 1960s and the early 1990s, and belong in the series I call The Structure of Things Then. The newer ones show the work I've been doing on post-apartheid public art and structures. Although visually the new photographs are quite different, in my mind they continue the process of looking at structures in this country."
Johannesburg, September 29 - A painting depicting the Marikana shootings, has been reinstalled at the FNB Joburg Art Fair. The piece by Ayanda Mabhulu, was removed before the start of the exhibition earlier this week, because organisers felt it was too controversial.
Check out this video for the project ‘Wide Open Walls’ which showcases a bunch of talented street artists who go by the names of Roa, Know Hope, Remed, TIKA, Freddy Sam, Selah, and Best Ever who spent time painting up villages in Gambia and hanging with the locals.
This is a very interesting project aimed at improving tourism and engagement with Gambian communities. Here's some more information from the website.
"Wide Open Walls was founded by Lawrence Williams, one of the owners of a conservation project in Gambia as well as a keen artist. He has been working with local artists on a project called Bushdwellers for a number of years and has always wanted to expand the project into something more lasting that could both function as a valid art installation in itself and at the same time promote Gambia as a tourist destination. The basic idea was to turn villages in the area into a living art project which evolved into a collaboration with Wide Open Walls and Write on Africa, a South African based organization started by Ricky Lee Gordon."
London-based artist Leonardo Ulian (previously) has completed a new body of work titled Sacred Space. Inspired by Hindu and Buddhist symbolism, Ulian continues his exploration of technology and spiritualism with these carefully sculpted mandalas created with soldered computer and radio components.
On Peace Day, September 21, 2013, 9,000 human figures were drawn on a beach in Arromanches, France to commemorate the soldiers and civilians who died during D-Day, June 6, 1944. The installation, called “The Fallen,” was organized by Jamie Wardley and Andy Moss of Sandinyoureye. More than 500 volunteers used stencils to draw the figures on the beach. The installation was swept away a few hours later by the tide.
Illustrator, graphic artist, and mom Mica Angela Hendricks writes on her blog that she didn’t set out to share her brand new sketchbook with her 4-year old daughter. She wanted to keep the new book to herself but her young daughter turned her own “mommy-words” on her, “If you can’t share, we might have to take it away if you can’t share.” She complied and let her finish drawing the body of a woman’s head she had started sketching out. Mica writes, “Not surprisingly, I LOVED what she drew
Photographer Nadav Kander eschews images that reflect certainties and deliberately seeks to fram moments that leave questions unanswered.
The adage "a prophet has no honour in his own country" would be true for photographer Nadav Kander if only he had a country that he could really claim as his own. But where, exactly, is home for the award-winning photographer? He was born in Israel, grew up in South Africa and left for Britain when he was 21.
In an interview with Lens Culture, he said: "I don't feel Israeli, I don't feel South African and I don’t feel English."
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