BITS OF JOZI - Curator’s statement by
Mandy Conidaris
BITS OF JOZI is the first exhibition I have curated in my role as #an_uncomplicatedcurator. The stimulus for the exhibition is Johannesburg, known locally as Jozi, as the artists and I have been deeply affected by living in this city of contrasts.
The exhibition comprises older works by the artists, as my intention as a curator is to encourage an awareness that artworks need not be new –i.e., ‘hot off the press’ – to continue to have an immediate significance, especially when presented in conversation with other artists’ works around a fresh curatorial theme.
Jozi has always been about random bits and pieces. This aspect of the city triggered the concept and the title for this exhibition, as well as my choice of Allison Klein and Colleen Alborough as the featured artists.
They have both used a variety of elements of collage to create the works exhibited here, although in completely different ways.
Interestingly, David Hockney created a series of photo collages in the 1980s. He emphasised that that the fragmented nature of the collage process replicates the human perception of our surroundings better: that “fragmenting a scene into several pieces [achieves] a result that is more similar to how the eye works instead of viewing a single-shot photograph of a scene.”
And geographically, the original township of Johannesburg, laid out in 1886, was developed from the left-over bit of grazing land between the registered Boer farms of Doornfontein, Braamfontein, and Turffontein.
In its gold-rush beginnings Jozi was inhabited by, well, gold-diggers, and those who serviced them one way or another - individuals from different parts of the country and other continents in search of chance wealth.
As the population evolved and grew, a stable city developed, comprised of South Africans and folk from many countries and backgrounds who usually continued their own traditions, celebrating their heritages.
Even the apartheid regime - which not only repressed the country’s socalled non-white races but also disapproved of and discriminated against other cultures and religions migrating here from Europe’s instabilities and economic depressions - did not manage to quash this multi-ethnic spirit.
Which was fortunate for our city, and historian Luli Callinicos (2012)
pointed out that ‘Jozi’s greatest asset has always been its rich diversity of human resources’.
But back now to the artwork.
Klein photographed the graffiti on the walls of Yeoville as a starting point for her collages, from which she creates original giclée prints.
Her works present both the joyful character of these streets, as may be seen in Blindspots in Bertrams, along with their darknesses, as in Still in Bertrams.
Alborough’s collograph prints and mixed media works show both the mechanics of Jozi’s mining history, in part to indicate the level of buried anxiety that living in Jozi can provoke, and the metaphor of the Sacred Ibis bird – a notorious Jozi scavenger. These two aspects of her symbolism are combined in Remains and Joburg scavenge.
Of her own work, Klein states:
“Created in 2019, these works are rooted in the exploration of place, memory, and the layered histories embedded within the Johannesburg (Jozi) urban landscape. As a Jozi-based artist, I am deeply influenced by the city’s complex social fabric, particularly the visible and invisible scars left by apartheid and its enduring inequalities which still shape daily life. The works reflect my intimate engagement with the Jozi neighbourhoods of Hillbrow, Bertrams, and Yeoville - areas marked by urban decay, yet filled with resilience and the vibrant energy of communities navigating their existence.”
She continues:
“The starting point for the original series of mixed media prints were photographs I took of some walls, graffiti, and pavements, within a few kilometres of my home in Yeoville. I was attempting to capture the textures and contrasts found in these areas through digitally collaging these photographs. Then I further manipulated the images by overprinting with the techniques of linocut and screenprint, to create the effect of a ‘stamp’ to echo the repeating nature of urban transformation and decay. I sought to reconstruct their fragmented narratives by layering the images to suggest the contradictions and overlapping realities of life in these communities.”
Of her work, Alborough explains:
“I am a Jozi-based artist and for over 15 years have been making artwork, mainly mixed media and prints, related to the anxious emotions evoked by living in this city. The works exhibited here are just a fragment of a much larger body of work that began with my creating Balance, a stopframe animation. Its focus revolved around the complex, disconcerting, and chaotic place that is Jozi. Moving beyond Balance, most of the same materials I used to generate the animation have formed the substance for further works, namely, cotton waste, and cut-out elements from the drypoint and monotype prints.
She goes on:
The cotton waste refers to the tangle of disorder in the city’s unseen but ever-present underworld, using here the symbol of the network of mining tunnels that lie underneath us. Since Jozi’s mining beginnings, there has been a sense that it’s been a place to exploit, for people to come in, take what they want, and leave. So, I have used the Sacred Ibis as a symbol for human scavengers, again built up of other waste materials to create the monotype images of these birds. My small, later ink wash landscapes are really ‘minescapes’, again referring to above and below the ground, the layering of Jozi’s foundations.”
[The making of Balance, a studio visit catalogue.]
As a curator, I feel privileged to have interspersed the installation of Klein’s and Alborough’s artworks with etchings by David Koloane and Michael Chibogo-Khumalo.
Many of us are familiar with the works of the late David Koloane, one of Jozi’s modern masters. Vibrant images of Jozi were his primary subject matter. The etchings on show demonstrate transitory moments of movement through his use of dynamic line work, which animates the images and creates street scenes of a Jozi pulsating with energy. City Traffic I especially reflects the chaos experienced when driving in the city.
Michael Chibogo-Khumalo’s etchings on the other hand, speak of the isolation and lost identity of the often-migrant workers.
Despite his queue of weary commuters crammed close together in What’s happened to the people, as the title suggests they appear to be absent to each other, lost in their own thoughts. The man portrayed in
A Place near Joburg seems individualised yet anonymous, present yet nostalgic for another place in time. These sensitive works were created in the 2000’s, and the artist himself - like so many others - has vanished from the Jozi artworld.
This exhibition’s small visual fragments of Jozi’s backdrops – historical, physical, psychological, and metaphorical - are but a fraction of what could be revealed about our complex city.
Worldwide, the city and urban life have been the focus of much artwork.
Véronique Tadjo (2002) suggests that ‘Art has the power to rejuvenate the city by making her more beautiful, more human, more likeable.’
And Jozi has had its fair share of artists who use our city as source material for their artmaking.
Finally, Allison, Colleen, and I thank Gordon Froud for his support.
LIST OF SOURCES IN ORDER OF USE
CAI David Hockney collage quote
Luli Callinicos, 2012. WHO BUILT JOZI: Discovering Memory at Wits Junction.
Johannesburg: Wits University press.
Colleen Alborough Balance Artist’s Statement
Véronique Tadjo, 2002. David Koloane. Johannesburg: David Krut Publishing.
Panoramic photo courtesy of David Ceruti.
The exhibition starts here …
Allison Klein
Blindspots in Yeoville
2019
Giclée print and screenprint
Edition 5
Paper size 42 x 56 cm
Ophelia in Hillbrow II
2025
Giclée monoprint with linocut
Edition 1/1
Paper size 44 x 32 cm
2025
Giclée monoprint with linocut
Edition 1/1
Paper size 44 x 32 cm
City Birds I
2015
Collograph monotype
Image size 16,5 x 26 cm
Paper size 24,5 x 32 cm
2015
Collograph monotype
Image size 16,5 x 26 cm
Paper size 24,5 x 32 cm
City Birds III 2015
Collograph monotype
Image size 16,5 x 26 cm
Paper size 24,5 x 32 cm
Allison Klein and Helena Uambembe (collaborative print)
As birds do, Mother
2019
Screenprint Edition 15
Size 30 x 30 cm
City Traffic I
Image size 13 x 19 cm
Paper size 26 x 29 cm
David Koloane
Etching
Image size 15 x 21 cm
Paper size 28 x 31 cm
David Koloane
Pollution
Etching
Edition 20
Image size 14 x 20 cm
Paper size 27 x 30 cm
What’s happened to the people 2005
Etching Edition 10
Image size 24,5 x 29,5 cm
Paper size 39,5 x 42 cm
Image size 24,5 x 29,5 cm
Paper size 39 x 42 cm
The Prophet’s song
Size 42 x 32,5 cm
x 24.5 cm
Klein
Squatting 1
Giclée print with linocut
Edition 3 E.V.
Size 35 x 42 cm
Squatting 2 2019
Giclée print with linocut
Edition 1
Size 35 x 42 cm
Colleen Alborough
Hadeda watching
2024
Ink wash and drawing, and collage
Paper size 30 x 35 cm
Allison Klein
Blindspots in Bertrams
2019
Giclée print and screenprint
Edition 5
Paper size 42 x 56 cm
Squatting 3 2019
Giclée print with linocut
Edition 3
Size 35 x 42 cm
Ink wash and drawing
Paper size 15 x 21 cm
Ink wash and drawing
Paper size 15 x 21 cm
A place near Joburg
Image size 24,5 x 29,5 cm
Paper size 39 x 42,5 cm
drawing
size 21 x 15 cm
Back and Forth I
2015
Collograph monotype
Image size 16,5 x 26 cm
Paper size 24,5 x 32 cm
Back and Forth II
2015
Collograph monotype
Image size 16,5 x 26 cm
Paper size 24,5 x 32 cm
Ink drawing Paper size 15 x 21 cm
Tired
2010
Monotype
Image size 16,5 x 26 cm
Paper size 26 x 35
Image size 16,5 x 20,5 cm
Paper size 31 x 33 cm
Allison Klein Still in Bertrams
Giclée print and linocut Edition A/P
Size 37,5 x 27 cm
Ink wash and drawing
Paper size 21 x 15 cm
Remains
Size 58 x 33 cm
artwork need not be brand-new to have a current impact
webpage: #an_uncomplicatedcurator