Cape art picks: September 16 2011
Ever Young, Ghanaian photographer James Barnor’s exhibition, offers insight into the heydays of pan-Africanism and Black Consciousness.
■ South Africa, as Achille Mbembe reminds us, came late to postcolonialism. As such we missed the “high life” of the first postcolonial years and the spate of nostalgia ushered in by recent independence celebrations across the continent.
Ever Young, an exhibition of Ghanaian photographer James Barnor’s work, offers rare insights into the heydays of pan-Africanism and Black Consciousness in both decolonised Ghana in the Fifties and black Britain in the Sixties. Like Senegalese photographer Oumar Ly and Mali’s Malick Sidibe and Seydou Keita, Barnor gained acclaim for his stylish studio pictures of social life in the Ghanaian capital of Accra from the mid-1950s. Later, as a fashion photographer in Britain in the 1960s, he began to capture unique images of Africans living in the country — from black models dressed in Western fashions in typical London settings to famous faces, including sport icons Mohammed Ali and Roy “Black Flash” Ankrah.
Iziko SA National Gallery, Government Avenue, Company’s Garden, Cape Town, until January 29.
■ The Commune.1 Gallery is a new art space in Cape Town dedicated to large-format installation and sculpture. It aims to provide an environment of intimate, heightened receptivity that engages the relationship between art and spectator.
Christopher Swift, last year’s Spier Contemporary mixed-media winner, shows a selection of new work in the space throughout September. Titled Umlungu, this new exhibition is a timely meditation on the often precarious, ambiguous position of white people in contemporary South Africa. It features seven new large-scale installation works that took 60 days to install.
Commune.1 Gallery, 64 Wale Street, Cape Town, until October 13.
