Gallery News
Work by Gerald Machona on show at NIROX Sculpture Park in Gauteng
Three of Gerald Machona’s flower sculptures feature on the group exhibition Power of Site at Nirox Sculpture Park (4 May – 31 May). The exhibition explores and reflects on the sources, control, sustenance and sharing of the energy that underpins and defines existence. Curated by Lorena Guillen Vaschetti and Adam Jeppesen, the exhibition brings together 20 international artists to respond to this curatorial concept and location beside the cradle of humankind.
Work by Sue Williamson on view in Cape Town at Zeitz MOCAA, as well as the Smithsonian in Washington DC
Sue Williamson’s portraits of women from her historic series, A Few South Africans opens at Zeitz MOCAA (opening 13 May). The installation process will involve papering the walls of the gallery with old Miriam Makeba posters by Williamson. In addition, Williamson’s large scale installation The Last Supper Revisited, which is in the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington DC, will be reinstalled at the museum as part of an exhibition titled I Am: Contemporary Women Artists of Africa (19 June – 15 March 2020).
Photographs by Jabulani Dhlamini feature on group exhibitions in South Africa, Lesotho, and Réunion Island
After it’s 2018 critically-acclaimed debut at Johannesburg’s Alliance Francaise, Five Photographers: A tribute to David Goldblatt, is set to travel around South Africa and Lesotho. This exhibition, featuring photographs by Dhlamini, was one of the last projects Goldblatt worked on and reflects on his contribution to photography by looking at a new generation of photographers. Dhlamini will also be exhibiting photographs he took as part of La Cité des Arts residency in Réunion Island (10 May – 23 June).
Grada Kilomba and Kiluanji Kia Henda included in new book titled ‘Atlantica: Contemporary Art from Angola and its Diaspora’
Grada Kilomba and Kiluanji Kia Henda are included in Artistic Research Center’s first book, Atlantica: Contemporary Art from Angola and its Diaspora. This book marks the launch of publisher Hangar Books, which will specialise in publications within the context of contemporary art, with particular focus on bodies of knowledging originating from the southern hemisphere.
Hank Willis Thomas and Tabita Rezaire on group exhibition at Cairns Art Gallery in Sydney
Selling the Shadow, a group exhibition at Sydney’s Cairns Art Gallery, presents nine media works by contemporary African-American and African artists including Tabita Rezaire and Hank Willis Thomas (4 May – 1 July). The exhibition examines the relationship between art and social practice through video and features artists who explore themes of identity, history, and the social structures that play a role, not only in creating their own work but also in its consumption and the way in which it is activated.
Kapwani Kiwanga on a group exhibition at Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art
Works from Kapwani Kiwanga’s ongoing Flowers for Africa series feature on Undefined Territories: Perspectives on Colonial Legacies at Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) (17 May – 20 October). The exhibition addresses the legacy of colonial repression and dispossession, as well as the ways in which imperial powers have exerted control through epistemic structures, such as political mapping and language. Kiwanga’s Flowers for Africa: Namibia and Flowers for Africa: South Africa will hang in the museum, slowly wilting over the course of the exhibition.
Shirin Neshat and Kendell Geers on official collateral event group exhibitions at Venice Biennale
Shirin Neshat is included on a group exhibition about climate change organised by independent arts publication, The Brooklyn Rail, at the Chiesa di Santa Maria delle Penitenti in Venice. Titled The Social Environment, the show brings together 73 artists of different generations and cultural backgrounds, whose works consider the fragility of nature and human life (8 – 31 May). Also coinciding with the opening of the 58th Venice Biennale, Kendell Geers presents a site-specific project as part of Venice’s first permanent contemporary art zone, the Giudecca Art District, launched together with Yoko Ono and the British feminist October! Collective. The Giudecca Art District will host independent projects, exhibitions and cultural events under the umbrella of the 2019 curatorial programme titled Take Care of Your Garden. Cultivating a New Humanism (9 May – 24 November).
Tabita Rezaire on film screening programme at Minneapolis Institute of Art
As part of its exhibition Mapping Black Identities, The Minneapolis Institute of Art screens recent video works (4 May – 8 September). Featuring work by Tabita Rezaire, the exhibition unapologetically confronts the legacy of systemic white supremacy by presenting conflicting realities. The films presented on the exhibition give voice to the experiences of black artists by providing differing worldviews that envision the transformative righting of past wrongs, and the pursuit of freedom in an unjust world.
William Kentridge’s ‘The Head & The Load’ included on Holland Festival
William Kentridge’s critically-acclaimed multimedia performance The Head & The Load opens the 2019 Holland Festival (29 – 31 May). The Head & The Load tells the untold story of the almost two million African porters and soldiers who served in the British, French and German armies during the First World War. Featuring music by long-time collaborators Phillip Miller with Thuthuka Sibisi, Kentridge’s unique vision brings together an international ensemble cast of musicians, singers, dancers, and performers alongside film projections and shadow play to create a landscape of extraordinary proportion and imagination that unfolds across a 50-metre wide stage.
Yinka Shonibare CBE’s ‘The British Library’ acquired by the Tate
The Tate has acquired British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare CBE’s seminal installation, The British Library. Originally commissioned for HOUSE 2014 and Brighton Festival, The British Library is a celebration of the diversity of the British population, containing 6,328 books bound in ‘Dutch wax print’, some of which have the names of first or second generation immigrants’ inscribed in gold leaf on the spines. Among these are names such as Hans Holbein and Dame Helen Mirren as well as those who opposed immigration. Other books are unmarked, suggesting that the story of immigration in Britain is still being written.
Group exhibitions for mounir fatmi at Musée du Château de Penthes in Switzerland, and Centre d'art contemporain de la Maison Populaire in Montreuil, France
Art & the Press: Free Exchanges, a group exhibition at Musee du Chateau de Penthes features work by Moroccan artist mounir fatmi (30 April – 1 October). The exhibition focuses on the artistic treatment of the press, exploring ways in which artists have used this theme as a subject in their work. In addition, fatmi will be on the group exhibition Come as you are at the Centre d’art contemporain de la Maison Populaire (7 May – 13 July). Taking its title from the iconic Nirvana song, the exhibition presents work which places the artist in the role of mythologist, helping to map our complex modern society.
Yinka Shonibare CBE and David Goldblatt solo exhibitions open at Norval Foundation
The Norval Foundation in Cape Town is hosting major solo exhibitions by Yinka Shonibare CBE and David Goldblatt (13 February – 26 August). Anchoring Shonibare’s exhibition, titled Trade Winds, will be his African Library, an installation of around 4,900 books covered in Dutch Wax fabric first shown at Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg last year. The library will be shown alongside Shonibare’s five part photographic series Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters as well as the sculptures Boy Balancing Knowledge II and Butterfly Kid (Girl) IV. Elsewhere at Norval Goldblatt’s iconic photographic series On the Mines is exhibited as a complete set for the first time. The series documents the communities and landscape associated with the gold mines of Gauteng, South Africa in the 1960’s and 1970’s. The exhibition will be accompanied by texts by Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer.
El Anatsui's solo exhibition at Haus der Kunst, and work in atrium at Zeitz MOCAA
Haus der Kunst is set to open the largest survey ever mounted for El Anatsui, titled Triumphant Scale (3 March – 28 July) The exhibition, curated by Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agaul, will incorporate every medium the artist has worked in over the course of his fifty-year career, including wood and ceramic sculptures, wall reliefs, drawings and several new site-specific sculptures. Tsiatsia, a massive tapestry by Anatsui which once covered the facade at the Royal Academy of Art in London, will hang in the BMW Atrium at Zeitz MOCAA from February until December.
Kudzanai Chiurai and Mikhael Subotzky on group exhibition at Fowler Museum of Art UCLA
Video works by Kudzanai Chiurai and Mikhael Subotzky feature on Inheritance: Recent Video Art From Africa, a three-person group show at Fowler Museum of Art at UCLA (17 February – 28 July). Chiurai’s We Live in Silence and Subotzky’s WYE will be screened alongside a work by a Nigerian artist, who similarly raises questions around inherited political, social, and environmental realities. In bringing together these artists, the exhibition seeks to contrast their different viewpoints, specifically in relation to what the work reveals about our future.
Solo exhibitions for Yinka Shonibare CBE at Davis Museum at Wellesley College and Hereford Cathedral, and curator of exhibition at Royal Albert Memorial Museum
A solo exhibition of work by Yinka Shonibare CBE held by the Davis collection is on show at Wellesley College (7 February – 9 June). Titled Guns Drawn, the exhibition ‘exemplifys [Shonibare’s] theatrical depictions of beauty and violence, and his exploration of the inheritances of colonialism in our contemporary, globalised world’. Another Shonibare solo exhibition, titled Creatures of the Mappa Mundi, is on at the Hereford Cathedral (until 1 June). For this exhibition Shonibare presents a series of textile works that respond to the scenes depicted in the Mappa Mundi, the largest medieval world map still in existence. Criminal Ornamentation, a touring exhibition of nearly 100 works by over 50 artists from the Arts Council Collection curated by Shonibare, is on show at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum (until 17 March).
Work by Tabita Rezaire features on various group exhibitions around the globe
Work by Tabita Rezaire is on Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender, Resistance, Act 2, a group exhibition at De La Warr Pavilion in Sussex, United Kingdom (9 February – 31 December). Featuring over 50 artists, designers, architects and archives, the exhibition considers resistance from a gender perspective. Rezaire is also on Producing Futures – An Exhibition on Post-Cyber-Feminisms at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst (16 February – 12 May). The exhibition surveys in the words of the museum ‘the causes championed by feminists in the post-internet era… to stimulate a more comprehensive discussion and generate ideas for a liveable future of emancipation, gender justice, and social equality’. Refiguring Boundaries, an exhibition at Pioneer Works (22 February – 21 April) similarly features Rezaire and other artists who are considering the intersection of identity, the body and the politics of technology.