Some of my videos

Making video on a PC is a real pain in the butt, especially when it comes to compressing videos for web or making a DVD. At some point when I am rich and famous, well maybe just rich, I will buy a Mac and making videos will be easier - thats the plan anyway.

Here are some videos of mine that are online though they are strangely squashed.

First, Untitled (Nightwatch) which I was told the other day was too 'creepy' for the vision a certain curator had for their exhibition. One would think that an exhibition that has marginalisation in the urban landscape as its curatorial angle would not expect the content of such work to be sweetness and light. I can think of pleanty of reasons my work may be unsuitable but 'too creepy'. Hell, on a scale of creepy I don't think this rates at all.

I was however, interested to see some of my words said in conversation with said curator, quoted verbatim in the exhibition's press release. I'm not on the show, but my words are.

Next is 'The Critic' an old animation from 2004. Perhaps I have too little reverence for the hierarchical structures of the art worlds to be included on certain kinds of exhibitions. No matter I write a damn fine press release by remote control.;)

Doll Face by Andrew Huang

3D Animation by Andrew Huang

Johannesburg Art Fair Special Project - Art for Online Spaces

Public call to artist with a digital and new media practice.

Three organisations, Digital Arts Division of the Wits School of Arts , the Upgrade International Network of digital media artists and organisers and the online arts publication Artthrob are getting together for a special project at the 2009 Johannesburg Art Fair that focuses on artwork made for online platforms.

This special project will include a selection of online artworks, a good deal of press coverage and an in-depth talk and discussion on artwork made for online platforms and the extension of creative practice into the online world.

Online spaces are public spaces and since the mid-1980’s artists across the globe had been using the internet as an online platform to make artworks, perform, radically subvert and represent ideas. Internet art has been largely ignored by the South African scene because of infrastructural difficulties. Yet as this is rapidly changing and more of our community is using the Internet - there is a growing interest in the Internet as a place for public engagement and artworks – to the extent that commissions are being made for online interventions as public artworks.

There is a theme. The 2009 Johannesburg Art Fair is making its focus the “Global South”. This special project is doing the same by showing works that address the politics of increasingly stable emerging markets and developing contexts.

The selection will be put together in two ways:

Firstly curators and organisers who are members of Upgrade! International network have been asked to put forward works for this selection – thus far we have submissions from across South and Central America, Korea, Canada and Johannesburg - this list is still growing.

Secondly we are making a call to Southern African artists that have a history of new media and digital media practice to put forward work for this selection. We will also give you all the technical support that we can.

Proposal to be submitted via email by 30 November 2008 to Tegan.Bristow@wits.ac.za

Two positions available at Graham's Fine Art

Applicants are invited to apply for the following positions at:

GRAHAM’S FINE ART GALLERY
BROADACRES LIFESTYLE CENTRE, BROADACRES, FOURWAYS

POSITION: JUNIOR GRAPHIC AND WEB DESIGNER

and

POSITION: GALLERY ADMINISTRATOR


JUNIOR GRAPHIC AND WEB DESIGNER
Qualification:

BA (Fine Arts) Degree, preferable Honors or Masters in Fine Arts / Art History
Or
Qualification in Creative Communications (Graphic and Web Design)

Experience:

No experience required. A portfolio of work done would be required during the interview process.

Key Responsibilities:

o Photographing of paintings and editing colour correction thereof
o Management of stock images for database and website
o Website administration
o Management of images and articles on the website
o Preparing of images and data collection for valuation portfolios
o Creating presentations for sales and marketing purposes
o Assisting in planning and setting up of the exhibitions
o Creative designing of various media elements

Skills required:

1. Strong interest and knowledge in art
2. Attention to detail
3. Computer literate (MS Office and Adobe creative software)
4. Creative approach

Salary: Negotiable

Please e-mail CV to hannie@grahamsgallery.co.za and Sarah@grahamsgallery.co.za

Enquiries: Laurelle Baard - 011 465 9192

Closing Date: 3 October 2008 (ASAP)

GALLERY ADMINISTRATOR

Qualification:

BA (Fine Arts) Degree, preferable Honors or Masters in Fine Arts / Art History

Experience:

One year appropriate experience would be a recommendation

Key Responsibilities:

o Management of the art database
o Research on artworks
o Stock Control
o Management of framing & restoration of artwork
o Management of valuation portfolio
o Selling of artwork
o Drawing contemporary artists to the gallery
o Administrative functions

Skills required:

1. Strong interest and knowledge in art
2. Attention to detail
3. Computer literate (MS Office)
4. Strong organisational skills

Salary: Negotiable

Please e-mail CV to hannie@grahamsgallery.co.za and Sarah@grahamsgallery.co.za

Enquiries: Laurelle Baard - 011 465 9192

Closing Date: 3 October 2008 (ASAP)

CALL FOR PROPOSALS FOR CAPE 09

The CAPE AFRICA PLATFORM (CAPE) is a groundbreaking cultural project located in Cape Town, South Africa. CAPE aims to culturally connect Cape Town, South Africa, Africa and the Diaspora by creating a contemporary African art event - rooted in the local but global in impact.

CAPE is seeking multiple proposals from artists for CAPE 09, its second biennale exhibition of contemporary African Culture, to take place from 2 May till 19 June 2009. Please download our 1-minute video if you are interested.

CAPE 09 is about life today: the people, the connections and networks they make up - from creatively understanding new media, to analyzing how questions of colonialism have been deeply transformed by networked society.

CAPE 09 seeks to explore networks that accentuate the contemporary characteristics of Africa and provide a stage for communications between communities and citizens activities.

The narrative of the event is initiated from the city of Cape Town itself. The city as a network requires a re-imagining of how we move and engage with each other. Artists are therefore asked to propose public interactions rather than exhibitions, and to intervene or present their works in a series of pre-selected networked spaces that represent the every day that is our common ground: venues and sites, both public and private, along the axis Church Square (CAPE’s office/gallery space) - Metrorail Station, through Parliament and Plein Street. Potential satellite exhibition sites are Lookout Hill, Khayelitsha and the CAPE’s Arts Awareness Programme areas Nyanga, Manenberg and Klapmuts.

For its second biennale CAPE has been working with a team of five young curators. In addition to their proposals CAPE is currently seeking proposals for small and medium-sized interactions through this call.

CAPE aims at a local audience, particularly addressing Cape Town’s youth.

Proposals for CAPE 09 may pre-empt (larger or follow-up) events for CAPE 2010 (May – July 2010).

Proposals must include artists’ biographies, venue/site description (in case this forms part of the proposal) and detailed logistic and budgetary information.

Deadline for proposals: 30 October 2008

Proposals may be posted to PO Box 15806, Vlaeberg 8018 or be hand-delivered to 8 Spin Street, Cape Town 8000.

For more information call 27-21-461 2325 or write to info@capeafrica.org

CAPE reserves the right to select or refuse any submission, even not to select any.

Art Extra presents a solo exhibition by Lawrence Lemaoana

Last Line of Defence, 2008, Pigment inks on cotton paper, 110 x 52 cm, Edition of 10

Fortune Telling in Black, Red and White
A solo exhibition by Lawrence Lemaoana

25 September – 29 October 2008

Please join us for the opening on Thursday 25th September at 6pm

Your state is no accident.

Lawrence Lemaoana’s latest body of work has, as its departure point, a fascination with the role of the mass media in present-day South Africa. In Lemaoana’s work the relationship between the ‘People’ and the media is problematised as a relationship of representation and control – who gets to control modes of representation; and who gets to represent those in control. The power of the media to act as didactic tool or propagandistic weapon, and the power of the media to reveal (and shape) the psyche, or group consciousness of the People, is taken up in Lemaoana’s work with the artist’s trademark cynical satire.

In Lemaoana’s new series of textile constructions, ‘hard press’ becomes soft sculpture –sculpture that shifts between the bluntness of the text, and the seemingly genteel quaintness of the fabric; text becomes object; and narrative is revealed as fiction, authored by particular interests.
In works such as ‘A Tale of Three Zumas’, and ‘Power to the People’, headlines have been reinterpreted, inverted or distorted. “Power to the people” was once a rallying cry of liberation; but in Lemaoana’s work it is no longer a catch phrase of idealistic empowerment. The call is now far more chilling – it is the call of The People who, dissatisfied with the status quo, use the threat of violence in their support of corrupt leaders. Using edited and reconstructed newspaper headlines from daily South African newspapers as their source material, re-imaged as textile hangings, these words and these typographies become markers of a contemporary political crisis.
The fabrics used by Lemaoana are as loaded as the texts themselves.

Lemaoana says the following about his choice of fabrics: “Kanga fabrics (made infamous during the Zuma rape trial) are used extensively in my work. Designed in the Netherlands, manufactured in the East, and brought to South Africa to be sold in markets and bazaars, the journey of the fabrics speaks of the idiosyncrasies and trade imbalances of globalisation. The textiles themselves though have a wholly different life in South Africa – they are regarded as significant markers of spiritual healing, imbued with great religious and spiritual power, used by divinators and fortune-tellers. Each has a metaphoric symbol which renders it worthy of the African ancestors, the most common being the sun. Others, with some kind of animal print represent the animal that stands in for Inyanga or Sangoma. Never intended as metaphoric or spiritual patterns, many are made up of foreign plants, their color remains significant, particularly the “Njeti”.

373 jan smuts avenue
craighall
johannesburg

gallery hours:
tuesday to friday 1030 - 1730
saturday 930 - 1500


t011.326.0034
f011.326.0041
info@artextra.co.za
www.artextra.co.za

Gif - AVANT CAR GUARD - open lecture

You are invited to the following open lecture.
This open guest lecture forms part of the course on Internet Art and Online Culture offered at Digital Arts Division of the Wits School of Arts.
Each year local artists are invited to present and discuss works made for online and networked platforms.

This year AVANT CAR GUARD will be discussing (along with other things) the animated gifs found in their recent Artthrob (www.artthrob.co.za) diary entries.

Gif
A presentation by AVANT CAR GUARD

13:15 Wednesday 23rd September 2008

Seminar Room, Digital Arts Building
WITS School of the Arts

www.avantcarguard.com
www.avantcarguard.blogspot.com