conrad botes
with Berni Searle, Wim Botha, Nandipha Mntambo, Penny Siopis, Serge Alain Nitegeka + Sabelo Mlangeni
18 november – 16 december 2011
Turner Galleries is very proud to announce the opening of a group exhibition of contemporary South African artworks. Seven outstanding artists have been selected from STEVENSON gallery, one of the leading contemporary galleries in Cape Town and Johannesburg. These artists represent a cross section of different backgrounds, ages, races and gender, resulting in an exciting and eclectic mix of artistic styles.
All seven artists have international exhibition experience, have won major art awards and have artworks in major collections. Conrad Botes, who is also our artist in residence and will be in Western Australia from 1 to 26 November, was featured in the 2010 Biennale of Sydney along with Nandipha Mntambo and Penny Siopis.
Conrad Botes will be exhibiting a range of self portrait paintings, reverse painted on glass and mounted on a large wall painting. In these head-and-shoulders images, Conrad overlays the image of his face with his characteristic scrawl of anarchic figures running amok. Rather than tattoos, he describes these figures as representations of the ideology and hatred that inevitably contaminate the human condition. Discursive elements – devils, the sacraments of salvation, the conundrums of passion, divinity and mortality, the mystical narrative of good versus evil – continue to carry an archetypal and visceral charge, a kind of trace memory of their formerly numinous status. As a white Afrikaans boy coming of age in the late 1970s and 80s, his imagination is embedded with the evils of apartheid, its obsession with power and repression, the violence and anarchy of the times and, of course, the moralising role of the Dutch Reformed Church. He makes these overbearing themes his own by using a comic aesthetic and (dark) humour to reflect on the continuing contradictions in our society. He has created a powerful limited edition print for the Turner Galleries Art Angels, some of which will also be available for the public to purchase. Conrad was born in 1974 and lives in Cape Town. He has won a number of prestigious awards. View his full CV here.
Penny Sciopis continues her longstanding interest in the tension between form and formlessness, figure and ground. As before, her medium and process of working are as much conceptual as they are the means to create an image within her ink and glue paintings. Her work is a chance driven process, energetically working the materials to see what floats, falls, fractures and fixes, forcing form to the edge of formlessness. Her recent work draws on the notion of ‘the multitude’, and its relationship with the individual, along with referencing historic catastrophes. The titles of her paintings in this exhibition, Cloud, Red Tide and Black Rain, conjure images of nuclear fallout and devastation. Yet her exquisite handling of the translucent painted surfaces brings much beauty to these dark themes. Penny was born in 1953 and lives in Johannesburg. Her artworks can be found in many prestigious collections.
View her full CV here.
Berni Searle’s evocative and enthralling video Black smoke rising trilogy (2009-10), comprising Lull, Gateway and Moonlight, will be shown consecutively as single-screen projections. This body of work was sparked by the rising levels of discontent among the poor in South Africa, which became overwhelmingly apparent in the wave of attacks against foreigners in 2008 and continues to manifest in protests by unions and mass demonstrations against poor service delivery. Fire is a recurrent image throughout the trilogy, as is - in the first and third videos - the burning tyre, a potent symbol of civil unrest since the apartheid era. More recently this image has also come to be associated with poverty and unemployment, as tyres are burnt to recover the wire inside - giving off toxic smoke with harmful effects for the environment. Berni was born in 1964 and lives in Cape Town.
View his full CV here.
Wim Botha’s work incorporates sculpture, painting, drawing and printmaking. These reflect on and subvert the symbolic imagery of power, religion and art history, and reflect his interest in the hierarchical structures of statehood and society. By visually interfering with venerated forms of art, artefact and decoration, he offers comment on the distorted and ephemeral nature of grandeur and tradition. He carves sculptural busts and winged forms from bibles, dictionaries encyclopaedias or recycled wood. His subversive questioning of edifices to authority and self-importance is not without a sense of humour, a dash of irony and a poke at art history. He has created two new busts carved from Rhodesian teak, parquet blocks for this exhibition that will be exhibited along side two drawings. Wim was born in 1974 and lives in Cape Town.
View his full CV here.
Nandipha Mntambo has developed a distinctive aesthetic through her use of cowhide, which she tans and moulds onto casts of the female body, usually her own. Her intrigue with this material has led her to explore the Greek myths of Europa, Zeus and the Minotaur as well as the sport of bullfighting and the Hindu legend of Nandi the bull. On exhibition will be a photographic diptych, Black Bull, which forms part of the artist’s first foray into performance in which she rehearses the steps of a bullfighter. In the accompanying video, Paso Doble, also linked to the bullfighting spectacle, she represents through her dance the matador’s shadow, his cape and the bull itself. Nandipha was born in 1982, is the recipient of numerous awards, and lives in Cape Town.
View her full CV here.
Serge Alain Nitegeka, born in 1983, is one of South Africa’s rising young art stars. His work with the poetics of displacement relates to broader international issues of forced migration, asylum seekers and refugees. These themes are explored through site-specific installations in which the viewer takes on the role of the displaced person as they navigate their way to freedom. He is interested in the possibilities through which the human form can be stripped down and reduced into simple lines that articulate the relationship between movement and load. From these installations he composes dynamic paintings, using a minimal colour palette, exploring the relationships of form and space. Serge lives in Johannesburg.
View his full CV here.
Sabelo Mlangeni is a young photographer, born in 1980, who will be showing black and white artworks from two series in this exhibition; Ghost Towns and At Home. Both series explore the small South African towns and rural areas that have been abandoned and largely forgotten whilst their former inhabitants forge new lives in the growing urban centres. Left behind are the young and the elderly, whose slow and empty lives are fraught with poor sanitation, teenage pregnancy, and a lack of basic health, information and communication infrastructures. These are poignant and beautifully composed photographs, captured in the local light and dust that makes everything appear suspended in time.
View his full CV here.
Turner Galleries would like to acknowledge the sponsorship of STEVENSON gallery, the Turner Galleries Art Angels and Wildlife Safari, without their support and enthusiasm this superb exhibition could not take place. Thank you also to the Central Institute of Technology for providing support and accommodation for Conrad Botes.
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- TURNER GALLERIES | showcasing contemporary art
at 470 WILLIAM STREET NORTHBRIDGE WESTERN AUSTRALIA 6003 - TURNER GALLERIES HAS NOW CLOSED.
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