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SA BUSINESS ART | OCTOBER 2009
ART GALLERY LISTINGS: KWA ZULU - NATAL
Durban
Artisan Contemporary 30 Sep-28 Oct, the latest Nieu Bethesda-inspired work by internationally-celebrated ceramicist Charmaine Haines. 344 Florida Rd, Morningside, T. 031 312 4364 sue@artisan.co.za Art Space - DBN 5-24 Oct, Ceramics SA/KZN Regional Exhibition (Main Gallery), Stillness Moves, works by Ellis Pearson (Middle Gallery). 26 Oct–14 Nov, work by UNISA Students, Cally Lotz (Middle Gallery) and Anthea Martin (Front Room).10 Oct, Showing of Art 21 Series 5. 17-23 Oct, works by Vega Imagination Lab students (Front Room). 3 Millar Road, Durban. T.031 312 0793 www.artspace-durban.com Durban Art Gallery 12 Aug-end Oct, PAST/ PRESENT, works by Andrew Verster. Until Dec 2009, Pic(k) Of The DAG, South African works from the gallery’s Permanent Collection. Second Floor, City Hall, Anton Lembede Street, Durban T. 031 311 2268 strettonj@durban.gov.za www.durban.gov.za/durban/discover/museums/dag Elizabeth Gordon Gallery A variety of new South African artworks, including paintings by Hugh Mbayiwa, Scott Bredin and Ezequeil Mabote. 120 Florida Road, Durban T. 031 303 8133 eqqart@iafrica.com Imbizo Art Gallery 24 Sep-31 Oct, Décor Delight, with works by Pieter Lessing. Shop 7A, Ballito Lifestyle Centre, Ballito 4418 T. 032 946 1937 info@imbizogallery.co.za Tamasa Gallery 20 Oct-11 Nov, Trees, oils, pastels and charcoal works by acclaimed KwaZulu-Natal artist Pippa Lea Pennington. 36 Overport Drive, Durban T. 031 207 1223
Pietermaritzburg Tatham Art Gallery 18 Sep-18 Oct, African Ceramics UKZN Alumni Exhibition. 27 Oct-14 March, the Schreiner Gallery New Acquisitions Exhibition, including a linoprint by Vuli Nyoni, and a rolling ball sculpture by Zotha Shange. Cnr. Of Chief Albert Luthuli (Commercial) Rd. and Church Street (Opposite City Hall) Pietermaritzburg T. 033 342 1804 www.tatham.org.za
SEND YOUR SHOW LISTINGS TO: SHOW@ARTTIMES.CO.ZA
Peter Machen
King Zorro is your Art Bus guide
A Moveable Arts Feast - The Arts Bus The Arts Bus - a free hop-on, hop-off city bus service which allows arts lovers to visit eight of the city’s premier galleries in one Saturday - is being hosted again as part of the Celebrate Durban season over Heritage month and October. The Celebrate Durban season bus schedule will cover eight weekends - Sat 12, 19, 26 Sept and 3, 10, 17, 24, 31 Oct leaving from the KZNSA Gallery at 9am and returning to the gallery mid afternoon. There is safe parking at the KZNSA Gallery. A Movable Arts Feast, AKA the Arts Bus, is an innovative project to encourage the pubic to visit Durban’s many galleries. It is being hosted for the second year by VANSA (Visual Arts Association of SA, KZN) as part of the Celebrate Durban season supported by the City. It receives supplementary support from the Department of Arts and Culture. People are encouraged to visit a selection of Durban’s premier galleries through an “art gallery trail”. Members of the public will be able to park their cars in Glenwood and hop on the specially-decorated free Art Bus at the KZNSA Gallery which leaves the gallery at 9am every Saturday. It will travel
a dedicated circuit to these venues throughout the day allowing visitors to visit some of Durban’s top galleries every Saturday. Arts Bus tour guide King Zorro will be providing narrative along the route about the galleries and exhibitions on show. The following galleries will be part of the initiative KZNSA Gallery in Glenwood; Durban University of Technology Art Gallery in Steve Biko / Berea Road; Durban Art Gallery in Durban City Hall; BAT Centre along Margaret Mcnadi Ave; African Art Centre and Artisan Gallery both in Florida Road; artSPACE durban is in Millar Rd, off Umgeni Road and the Kizo Art Gallery in Gateway. A ninth stop is the Kunene Museum in Churchill Rd, close to the KZNSA Gallery in Glenwood. Bus entry is free and all are welcome. Seats are limited so booking is advisable Enquiries and bookings: Domy Cortes 031 208 9430 / 073 719 0444 / domy@saol.com. Detailed info / online booking on www.pubmat.co.za Free Saturday Durban art galleries bus Leaves KZNSA Gallery 9am Returns mid afternoon
Sometimes it’s the most obvious things which can be the most powerful. Personally speaking of course – because it was only myself and a friend who thought that the projection of a rotating geometric pattern onto the ridged textures of the monolithic City Treasury building opposite the City Hall was one of the most beautiful things we’d seen in ages It wasn’t conceptual. It wasn’t breath-takingly intelligent. It wasn’t even going as art. It was supplied by a production company and was the kind of thing you might even see at one of those boring alcohol or cigarette sponsored parties. But it was reeeaal pretty, and building-sized reeeaal pretty at that. The supersized disco eye candy was a sign of the art-based event Red Eye returning to the Durban Art Gallery, and the citizens of Durban – well those who were prepared to shell out forty bucks – reclaiming the streets, or at least the stretch of road outside city hall, which had been cordoned off from traffic and which connected the gallery to the King Club and Zulu Jazz Lounge where a rocking after party took place. I had been helping out with the evening, my contribution being organising the music inside the gallery, for which had I gathered one of Durban’s most loved DJs, a hot electronic band named Seak and Mbongeni Ngema’s new favourite isicathimiya band uSuthu into what was supposed to be a collaboration but which ended up with barely a sound-check between them. It didn’t really work, but not because the three different musical styles didn’t meld. The acoustics in the circular gallery sent the sounds flying around the room’s domed structure. And a big whole in the middle of the room didn’t really help to gather rapport between the entertainers and the audience, who were also blocked from each other by a group of superstyled models posed in picture-
perfect stillness. None of that seemed to matter though, partially because there was so much going on over the course of the evening, and partially because much of the joy of Red Eye lies in watching things happen and enjoying a full diversity of human beings and art run amok in the gallery’s baroque colonial space. The fact that no-one on the other side of the room could hear the choral singers for their first two songs seemed to matter only to a few; most people seemed content to hear them whispering, although I was greatly relieved when the group broke with tradition and brought in backing tracks for their last three songs. But the fact that people will watch singers they can’t hear doesn’t mean that they they’re being blindly receptive. It’s more about the fact that the audience become immersed in the process of Red Eye, including anything that might go wrong, and so when things do go wrong, they are strangely invisible, the distance between the performers and the audience shrunk by the sense that everyone in the space is part of a larger performance. And Durbanites like to perform, albeit as casually and unconsciously as possible, like the crew of goth-looking boys who had rows of metal studs – and even feathers on one angel boy – inserted under their their freshly reddened skin for the evening, the adornments applied publicly with all the ceremony of a back stage make-up room. But more than anything, this latest Red Eye – the first in several years – was an indication of how much the event had been missed, “isn’t it great to have it back” being the evening’s mantra. A week earlier, I’d been a few hundred metres away at the ICC, where the Heritage Awards ceremony was being held and where six South African creative talents – some famous, some less so – were re-
ceiving credit where credit was overwhelmingly due. Sculptor Noria Mabasa, choreographer Jay Pather, cartoonist Nanda Sooben and cross-cultural muso and high kicker Johnny Clegg all had awards bestowed upon them, as did genius jazz pianist the late Bheki Mseleku and theatre personality the late Alfred Nokwe. Now, as anyone who’s attended an awards ceremony will tell you, they tend to be deathly boring and overflowing with pomp, pretension and exclusivity. Which was what I was pretty much expecting. But I was more than pleasantly surprised to find instead an event infused with good feeling, warmth and a remarkable inclusiveness, something I found hugely encouraging, and which induced in me the feeling that I am part of the broad family of eThekwini, something I haven’t felt in some time. Much of this feeling came from the premier Zweli Mkhize, who spoke humbly and off-the-cuff about the patchworked collective culture of KZN, where the continuing geographical and economic divisions of apartheid don’t preclude a common enjoyment of each other’s cultures, something that was reflected in the Ceremony itself and then re-echoed at Red Eye a week later. But what was even more impressive than Mkhize’s tenderness and humanity was the fact that he arrived on time. In all my years of cultural function-going, this was, I’m pretty certain, the first time that an audience has not been kept waiting by a member of provincial government. For that alone, Mkhize has my respect. But most importantly, in a province in which ethnic and cultural divisions continue to remain central parts of the vocabularies of many politicians, his words – and hopefully his actions – can only help to heal our culture and broaden the language of our arts. Photo: Christopher Laurenz