Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University Graduate 2010 show by SA ART TIMES

Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University Graduate Show 2010

Upstairs exhibition space with Liam Pretorius and Janno Scholtz sculptures in foreground and Clanelle Burger wall hangings behind.

N M M U DEPARTMENT OF FINE ARTS GRADUATING STUDENTS 2010 Review for Art Times by Gregory Kerr Any year-end show from a large institution is likely to be a bit of a Jumble Sale with a lot of good-enough work, some crap and the occasional delightful surprise. This is a big department so there is some of each, but there seems to be much more excellence than excrescence at the NMMU these days. Institutional exhibitions are not really about the students. They are about the institution and the academics that front it. For curatorship that uses the dreary Art and Design building as if it were the Tate, Ethna Frankenfelder should get a medal; all those odd objects suddenly given space, lux and volupte in a context that makes them worth contemplating. If there has to be a final, qualitative bottom line regarding this exhibition, it should be to congratulate the teaching staff who have turned the expectations of the School from ordinary to extraordinary. The students have learned a lot about art-making, professional practice and their place in the contemporary art world. There is a lot of pretty good stuff. Good drawing, interestingly bad drawing, very interesting execrable painting, clever and competent printmaking on themes of feminine/Afrikaner/African/ identity and technically superb (though oddly dull) bronze sculptures and seashell-themed ceramics. All these pass muster and are perfectly adequate for the basics of what art schools kind of do. But on the Sale of Work table, among the crochet tea cozies, I found the Little Assassin’s Sniper Kit complete with cyanide-tipped ammunition.

For example, next to a perfectly innocuous series of wild life etchings, a manga bondage room! Little kewpie dolls on tik.? A room of psychotic colouring book images and scraps. Stephanie van Vuuren’s installation takes you into a delightful, if dystopian world of dysfunctional childhood. She knows that if you make one odd manga drawing, you will be ignored. If you apply obsessive compulsion to a room full of peculiar relics, you won’t be. Other intriguing environments were Sinead Brennan’s A Relatively Minor Event dealing minimally but evocatively with the metaphysics of violence, and Monique Fourie’s Huis Spataar , a quirky take on the bathos of old age. Leminah Chifadza’s closet full of paraphernalia with a plaintiff and haunting noise seeping out of a pile of luggage got me quite emotional about her interrogation of human trafficking. Without the benefit of an installation environment, but taking evocation to a higher level, was Alison Shaw’s collection of mummified animal forms laid out on and in felt, quilting, cotton duck shrouds and swaddling integuments. Some of the little corpses are poignant in their knitted jackets and cots; some are hysterical. The kraalbrakkie glinting sightlessly from its nimbus of pink fun fur was a highlight of the exhibition.

While all of the works are driven (or at least explicated ex post facto) by earnest asseverations of relevance, historical nexus, conceptual rigour, social mordancy and all of the things that lecturers insist their students stump up as “proposals” and “conceptual frameworks”, I wasn’t that interested or even convinced by much of the accompanying text. So much of it is couched in a style of such high seriousness one wonders that the young champions of the fur seal, the ozone layer and the clitoris have the time to cobble their pieces together. What I did was allow the objects to roam around free to bite me or be ignored. Once bitten, it was likely that I would find the information supplied as justification or extension interesting and enriching, but if the work were just tedious (and here I am tactfully not mentioning whose seashells and wet-fired ceramics I found dull) no amount of deeply held views would be enough to redeem those morose and clumpy blobs. Thus speaks the fuddy-duddy formalist, but it is not a bad thing in my book to want art works to have a presence, a sense of sensuousness and engagement. Take Josh Stumpfer’s concrete and boxed horsy things, for example. In the first place, these pieces are crafted. By this I mean that they impress you by being well made; by looking like someone paid a lot of attention to them. Stumpfer’s work has a gravitas and a presence that is not just about its classical allusions. It is weighty, dignified, intriguing and sustained. I eventually got round to finding out why he puts bits of horse anatomy into a concrete matrix and then molds the entire thing in science lab display cases. He does this because, um, sorry, I forgot. I don’t care really. I just want one of them.

Alison Shaw

Thomas Skinner

Stacy Snodgrass

Pieter lategang

Mzolisa M Daba

Ryan Hugo

Chumisa James

Clanelle Burger

Emma Minkley

Janine Krerrmann

Janno Scholtz

Jessica Drake

Joshua Strumpfer

Justin Roberts

Karen Flood

Kate-Lynn Zeiss

Kayakazi Citwa

Keegan Blazey

Kristy-Lee Kerr

Laura Muller

Laura Wilmot

Leminah Chifadza

Liam Pretorius

Luke Lombard

Luxolo Bukani

Michela Liefeldt

Mary-Ann Kella

Maxi Jachens

Mellaney Ruiters

Michael Wedderburn

Monde Goniwe

Monique Fourie

Mpumzeni Mkonto Gwazela

Nompumezo Gubevu

Ntuthu Dara

Paula Paton

Rosiwah Mogotsi

Saabirah Noorshib

Sharnay Sparg

Sinead Brennan

Siyabonga Ngaki

Stephanie van Vuuren

Tegan Sampson