Show us what you're made of
dal 5/3/2004 al 27/3/2004
Segnalato da
5/3/2004
Show us what you're made of
The Premises Gallery, Johannesburg
The inaugural exhibition at The Premises is a two-part exhibition, designed as such to address broad critical interests that present up-to-the-minute contemporary art practices. These practices, including photography, painting, installation, sound and mixed media works, are embedded in social space and experience, but also include those that are more introspectively-focused and formal in approach.
An exhibition in two parts
PART 1
opening on saturday, march 6, 5pm  8pm
cash bar
invited artists
Marco Cianfanelli
Frances Goodman
Trasi Henen
Alison Kearney
Terry Kurgan
Jo Ractliffe
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. Through various partnerships with Wits School of the Arts
(WSOA), the Johannesburg Development Agency and other non-profit
organisations in the city, 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.
The inaugural exhibition at The Premises, SHOW US WHAT YOU'RE MADE OF, is a
two-part exhibition, designed as such to address broad critical interests
that present up-to-the-minute contemporary art practices. These practices,
including photography, painting, installation, sound and mixed media works,
are embedded in social space and experience, but also include those that are
more introspectively-focused and formal in approach.
SHOW US WHAT YOU'RE MADE OF Â PART 1 features six invited artists whose
works range from site-specific public projects to intensely subjective,
conceptual works, reflecting on issues of urban and suburban social spaces,
nationhood and nationalism, identity and subjectivity. This exhibition
references The Premises' location on the Cultural Arc; its relationship to
an urban centre under revision; the significance of radical urban
redevelopment to South Africa's financial, tourist and cultural economies;
and how these shifts in public space affect private experience.
Jo Ractliffe's Real Life series is an ongoing body of work that speaks of
the non-descript but psychologically charged qualities of suburban spaces.
Disquieting in their blandness, other works from this series featured
recently on the DaimlerChrysler Award for Photography 2004.
Suburban space is also the subject of paintings by Trasi Henen  but Henen's
suburbia is a fantastical one, focusing on the phenomenon of cemeteries as
buffer zones. Henen is compelled by habits of mourners at a local Kempton
Park cemetery, where in the absence of traditional grave markers, personal
objects of the deceased are embedded in the sand.
Alison Kearney, a nominee for the MTN New Contemporaries Award 2003, shows
an important installation that was a precursor to her Portable Hawkers'
Museum, containing objects purchased from street traders in the inner city.
This work will also feature on Sondela: Witnessing a Decade of Democracy,
scheduled to open in Boston later this year.
Having created a series of remarkable collaborative exhibitions for the
first phase of development on Constitution Hill, Terry Kurgan has used
documentation of these works, made in partnership with Nina Cohen and Mark
Gevisser, to create a photographic, stand-alone work that references the
collaboration and acknowledges the importance interface between the site of
the new Constitutional Court and the constituents of neighbouring areas.
Frances Goodman, now resident in Antwerp, shows Portait, a sound-based piece
that probes the perception and assumption of individual identity traits by
others. Finally, Marco Cianfanelli investigates the other side of the
equation, parodying national emblems and critiquing issues of nation and
state.
SHOW US WHAT YOU'RE MADE OF Â PART 2 (April 3 Â 24) will be a playful
exhibition about the politics of aesthetics and subject, contemplating the
diversity of individual expression, and making reference to the marketplace
of art and new opportunities arising for artists in the changing cultural
landscape of Johannesburg and beyond.
Artists who feature on the inaugural exhibitions may reappear later in the
year as consolidated solo exhibitions.
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