Beyond politics: art at the Fest
28 June 2006
Travelling beyond the introspection of the "struggle years", the exhibitions at the 2006 National Arts Festival, taking place in Grahamstown from 29 June to 8 July, examine the self and self-representation freed from the polarizing influence of politics.
Standard Bank Young Artist Award Winner Churchill Madikida invites his audience to risk self-examination in a very personal engagement with his own story. He grew up in and around Butterworth, a nomadic youth who never knew his father. Using a range of media, including video and performance, his exhibition, Like Father Like Son, proposes forgiveness as a route to personal growth.
The historical projection of the exhibition Making Waves reaches back almost a century. Drawn from the formidable SABC art collection,
around 180 works by over 100 artists enable the viewer to trace the evolving patterns and trends in the ways South Africans have portrayed themselves and their experiences of lived reality.
Figuring Faith: Images of Belief in Africa is another collective exhibition, this time of objects from the Wits Art Gallery and Standard Bank collections of classical African, historical and contemporary South African art, along with pieces from private collections and other institutions. Interpretative themes include worship and ritual, clothing, body modification and decoration, ancestor worship and new experiences of death and dying.
The destabilising gaze of the observer is implicit in an exhibition of small intimate still lives by Andries Gouws and in a collection of surreal photographs by Roger Ballen.
In Hiding Behind Simple Things, Gouws invites the viewer to reconsider the meanings in simple domestic subjects which are often taken for granted. Ballen's
photographs explore the Shadow Chamber of the subconscious, where familiar objects are rendered strange, as in a dream.
Anton Brink's Dogma is a collection of mixed media assemblages that articulate outrage at what he sees as the subversion of democracy by power-mongers who get away with murder because the electorate is too apathetic to think critically.
In the media-based collection Drum in the '70s, pages from Drum magazine 30 years ago present a composite snapshot of life at a crucial moment in South African history.
In Comics Brew International, seven leading new generation artists from Africa and Europe challenge viewers to question the divide between popular culture and art and literature.
A special sense of place informs the Eastern Cape Exhibition, which features seven artists, one from each of the province's seven regions. Festinos will also be invited to meet 14 of the Eastern Cape's top craft producers, who will be at
work in a special tent at the Village Green.
Sharing the experience is the essence of festival week, and visual art experts will conduct open discussions on a number of the exhibitions during informal walkabouts.
In addition, a plethora of exhibitions on the festival Fringe will ensure that no art-lover goes home without a sated imagination.
The festival is sponsored by the Eastern Cape government, Standard Bank, the SABC, the National Lottery Distribution Trust Fund and the National Arts Council.
Business & Arts South Africa has also made a special grant to the festival this year. The major portion goes to the artists on the festival fringe, the rest to festival newspaper Cue, the Youth Audience Development Project and the Art-Walk Meander Map.
For more information, see the related articles on the right - and visit the National Arts Festival website.
SouthAfrica.info reporter
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