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2/4/2004

Show us what you're made of - part 2

The Premises Gallery, Johannesburg

opening on saturday, april 3, 5pm ­ 8pm
cash bar

invited artists

Ryan Arenson
Rebecca Griffiths
Matthew Hindley
Nicholas Hlobo
Roelof Van Wyk
Roy Weisz

Show us what you're made of - part 2 picks up where Part 1 left off, demonstrating an engagement with broad critical interests that are embedded in social experience, but introducing a powerful relationship with the stuff of popular culture. Dealing with the politics of aesthetics and subject, Show Us 2 contemplates the diversity of individual expression, and makes reference to the marketplace of art and new opportunities arising for artists in the changing cultural landscape of Johannesburg and beyond.

Ryan Arenson
Recently returned from an extended stay in Paris, Ryan Arenson is currently developing a major body of work. For this exhibition, he shows Angry White Man (2002 ­ 2003, oil, enamel and acrylic on primed oil paper, 100 x 70 cm), influenced by19thC engravings, particularly the work of Gustav Doré. This work was produced while Arenson was living on the Ile St Louis in Paris. Heavily influenced by line and mark, Arenson is interested in the relationship between the sophisticated techniques of 19thC master engravers who made anonymous engravings of famous paintings and as such, made possible the popular consumption of master paintings. Working inversely to this process, Arenson elevates the engravings into a one-off painting, enlarging and crafting the mark into a painterly equivalent.

Rebecca Griffiths
Rebecca Griffiths (BA / Fine-Arts 2003) shows a series of plywood sculptures, hybrid monsters created from skeletal shapes and forms that inhabit the gallery ceiling. Her oversized 'puzzles' engage the realm of intrigue as they sit on the boundary between childhood fantasy and an adult, urban reality. Her 'monsters' entice and reveal fanciful imaginings that explore the unnerving experience of city life.

Roy Weisz
A copywriter who makes his artistic debut with this first public showing of his work, Weisz has for years produced 'retro-perspective' collages, the source material of which is derived from retro dress patterns, 50's and 60's Africana, magazines and photo-stories. Aliens and natives, whether animal, vegetable or mineral, urban or rural, vie for supremacy in a B-grade mondo exotica that challenges postmodern worldviews, contemporary reality, etiquette, political correctness and glamour. His multi-unit wall piece is an irreverent revisionist history of life in the tropics.

Matthew Hindley
Cape Town-based Matthew Hindley is most well-known for electronically-based works that use surprisingly lo-tech means to achieve spectacular results. For this show, Hindley reverts to his first love ­ drawing. Inspired by local tabloid media like You magazine, Hindley employs an edgy, cartoonish style to interpret stories of violence and horror in a consumable way. He produces works on paper which incorporate electronic elements, as well as a recently developed technique of scratching through the backs of found mirrors and reinserting painted imagery of his own invention. In relation to these mirror works, Hindley references new developments in camouflage technology, where mirrored surfaces become the medium by which the environment is reflected and as such, 'become' the environment. Like an earlier electronic work, Infra-Red, which projects an image of a viewer back at them via infra-red lights 'seen' by a spy camera, these works require interaction by a viewer to complete them. As such, they touch on themes of voyeurism, hunger for recognition and self-obsession of the viewer.

Roelof van Wyk
Roelof van Wyk subscribed to Cosmopolitan magazine in 1983, as an 11 year old boy, in the godforsaken little town of Kinross, Mpumalanga. Thanks Jane Raphaely for shaping his vision of the world, together with Huisgenoot, resulting in a strangely twisted sense of what's modern, popular and fashionable. A degree in architecture and a day job in media and marketing honed an eye and a visual sensibility that has now matured sufficiently to be exposed to the public eye. Van Wyk shows photographs that tend 'towards an architectural language', blurring the boundaries between art and architecture, form and function, construction and deconstruction, and focusing on three key thematics: Natural phenomena, manmade form and machine metaphor.

Nicholas Hlobo
A young artist based in Johannesburg, Hlobo is outspoken about his identity as a black, gay, Xhosa male. Listed in Art South Africa as one of the local art scene's 'bright young things', Hlobo states: 'My works are an attempt to explore issues of masculinity, sexuality and ethnicity. In my attempts I challenge certain Xhosa conventions and ideas of manhood or masculinity. In these works I explore those ideas of Xhosa initiation into manhood, focusing on non-traditional initiation. I also attempt to highlight how similar it is to gay pride or coming out. The work comments, in a subtle way, on the psychological pain that some men, whether gay or non-traditionally circumcised, experience because of the ridicule, exclusion and disrespect by some members of the society. The work is also a celebration of being proud of what makes you who you are and your importance in a society. It is like a needle that is piercing through a big boil of secrets in a culture, thus breaking the walls to reveal what is inside so that every one learns to understand and appreciate others for who they are. It is an attempt to initiate others into taking pride of who they are and the choices they make and to have courage to wash their dirty linen in public.'

a brief note on The Premises
The Premises, a brand-new, purpose-built gallery on the Braamfontein Theatre Precinct, is the latest addition to the Johannesburg Civic Theatre complex and is strategically positioned on the Cultural Arc of Johannesburg. Artistically directed by artists lab The Trinity Session, it will be focused on presenting a series of contemporary art, public, educational and developmental projects over the next three years, the objective being to develop and enhance audience experience of the visual arts and related activities. The Premises and The Trinity Session aspire to create new interfaces between the reinvention of Johannesburg and the redefinition of its cultural facilities, and accessing those who use and enjoy local cultural assets.

Gallery hours:
Tuesday ­ Saturday, 12pm ­ 8pm

For more information, please contact:
Michael MacGarry (gallery manager)
tel: 011 877 6859

The Premises Gallery
Braamfontein Theatre Precinct
Johannesburg Civic Theatre
Braamfontein

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