Hazel Friedman
AT last! After much deliberation and volatile exchanges, selections for the South African curated exhibitions of the 1995 Africus Biennale have finally been made from 45 proposals and a scaled-down budget of R40 000.
Sadly the selections have occurred against a backdrop of squabbling within the art community. If informed sources are to be believed, the selection process has all the ingredients of a third-rate soapie, complete with an interchangeable cast of thousands, with role-overlaps, walk-on parts and storm-out scenes including the resignation of several members of the curatorial selection committee.
The multidisciplinary exhibition line-up includes proposals from community art centres, artists and academics. They include Professor Elizabeth Rankin from Wits University, who will compile the catalogue for a sculpture exhibition entitled Space/(Dis)Place; Wits art history lecturer Rhoda Rosen, whose exhibition Jobs, Journeys, Jo’burg will comprise visual material produced by or catering to people who cross borders, revealing the history of an identity fashioned by spatial movement; Volatile Colonies, an exhibition by artist Kendell Geers, involving “marginalised” art-makers whose work constitutes a challenge to Western aesthetics; photographer Jenny Gordon, whose show My Area will comprise documents by the Market Photography Workshop on northern suburbia, the inner city, townships and squatter camps; Marianne Meijer and Andrew Verster, who will curate an exhibition of work faxed from all over the world; a display of San art, past and present, by Catherine Meyer and David Morris; and Julia Charlton, curator of contemporary collections at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, who has selected artists to make installations that critically engage with aspects of the gallery.
The chosen community arts centres include the African Institute of Art which will be curating an exhibition of works by Funda students and guest artists; Ivasa, whose multicultural show will consist of life-sized sculptures using commercially manufactured balls to depict the different groups of South Africa; a multi-media exhibition by the Badisha Art Association, involving visual arts, theatre, music and poetry; Katlehong Art Centre, which will offer a glimpse of a war zone through 10 monumental forms and mobile Casspir military vehciles; the Soweto Outreach Project, which will conduct workshops and on-site art activities for disadvantaged communties; a celebration of Mamelodi’s history through art and performance by the Mamelodi Theatre Organisation; exhibitions involving the Johannesburg Art Foundation and incorporating the Military History Museum, arches, trees and walls in Saxonwold; and the Manu Technical College: Pelmana Academy, which will convert a bus into a mobile gallery and artists’ workshop.
A feminist flavour has been provided by Chani Collet and Emma Bedford. Collet will focus on clay vessels produced by women, which suggest the polarities of ancient and contemporary, craft and art, in a show titled Africa Earthed. Through Objects of Defiance/ Spaces of Contemplation, Bedford will explore women’s experience of the world, of themselves and of art-making through a multitude of media. Another welcome addition to the pack is internationally acclaimed feminist author Grizelda Pollock, who will be teaming up with Pitika Ntuli and Colin Richards to curate a provocative show on the “body politic”, in all its racial, sexual and colonial guises.