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Multi-layered, multimedia art at the Fest

1 July 2009

History, with its layers of fiction, lies, secrets and erasures, provides the material for key works on the exhibition programme for the 2009 National Arts Festival taking place in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape from 2 to 11 July.

"Blood Diamonds", a performance art installation by Brett Bailey, takes audiences into the dark corners of Grahamstown, and into the murky crannies of our past. The raw power of Bailey's assault on the imagination guarantees catharsis.

The ghosts of installation haunt many of the images in a collection "Beyond the Documentary Photograph", curated by Heidi Erdmann and Jacob Lebeko. The overall proposition is that the photographer's art starts with making an image or installation and then translating it into two-dimensions with the camera. Again, a sense of layers in time and practice reinforce the disquieting portent that hovers in the gallery.

Xhosa rituals that mark passages of personal history are the under layers of "Umtshotsho" by Young Artist Award Winner Nicholas Hlobo. A keen and irreverent social observer, Hlobo pinpoints the high-tech urban moves that can be equated to older traditions for celebrating identity and social status.

Hlobo joins a prestigious group of previous awardees in the Standard Bank Young Artists 25: Retrospective. The 25-year history of the visual art Young Artist Award, sponsored by the Standard Bank, is tracked in a retrospective of winners' work curated by the late Professor Alan Crump and Barbara Freemantle. The work on show invites the imagination to walk through a quarter of a century of aesthetic innovation and inspired patronage.

Engaging with the practice of shaving young men's heads when they join the army, Paul Emmanuel's Transitions summons up the ancient link between identity and appearance, with hair as an emotional focus. His evocative video is accompanied by extraordinary drawings on photographic paper that takes photo-realism to a new plane.

Gillian Ruth de Vlieg's exhibition "Rise Up!" demonstrates the fact that the documentary photographer, whose aim is to capture moments in history, also produces timeless images with universal resonance. De Vlieg was one of the few women photographers working on the front line of South Africa's struggle for democracy.

The medium is part of the message for Bronwen Findlay, whose lifelong love-affair with colour and the physicality of paint manifests itself in the exhibition "Matter and Treasure and Paint". The idea of the painted image as a repository of history is reinforced by personal objects imbedded in the layers of several of the works.

South African advertisers have always had something to say both explicitly, and embedded in the images, sounds and suggestion contained in the work they produce. Over the last 40 years, South Africa has undergone massive change in virtually every aspect of society. The exhibition "Commercial Culture" by advertising agency Ireland/Davenport tracks how advertising has kept step with – and often anticipated – social change, often in a startling, humorous, cheeky, bold or outright subversive way.

The Eastern Cape Art and Craft Exhibition ranges over time and space to offer a metaphoric map of the richness and diversity of creative production in this fertile province.

More regionally produced craft art is on sale at the Village Green, and a wealth of exhibitions on the Fringe amplifies the opportunities to feast the eye and imagination.

Now in its 35th year, South Africa's National Arts Festival is one of the leading arts festivals in southern Africa.

The National Arts Festival is supported by Standard Bank, the Eastern Cape Government, the National Arts Council, the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund and The Sunday Independent.

For more information, visit www.nationalartsfestival.co.za.

SAinfo reporter and the National Arts Festival