FADA

FADA

Wednesday, September 16, 2015

HYPERSAMPLING IDENTITIES, JOZI STYLE: FADA Gallery, 21 September - 6 October 2015.

The Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre (VIAD), in association with Life-style and Trend Analyst, Nicola Cooper, VIAD Post-Doctoral Fellow Daniela Goeller, and the FADA Gallery, presents:

HYPERSAMPLING IDENTITIES, JOZI STYLE

Chris Saunders, Swenka
An exhibition of photographs, videos, garments, films, archival materials and installations focusing on emergent and established performances of fashion(able) and fashion(ed) identities by South African subcultural groups the Swenkas, Pantsulas, Isikothane and Sbhujwas; design collectives   DearRibane113, Khumbula, the Sartists, the Smarteez; as well as cultural practitioners
and photographers: Anthony Billa, Tyrone Bradley, Andile Buka, Christian Courrèges, Don Dada, Harness Hamese, TJ Lemon, Mack Magagane, Justin McGee, Macdee, Jamal Nxedlana, Dr Pachanga, Chris Saunders, Jürgen Schadeberg, Alexia Webster and Simon & and Mary. 
Chris Saunders, Two Pants Two Shoes.


These vibrant, dynamic, youth-orientated forms of production currently taking place in the urban Afropolitan environs of Jozi express a range of ever-emergent and ever-changing transnational, transhistorical, transcultural, Afro-urban and Afrofuturist black masculine identities.

Also including work by UK-based design duo, Art Comes First (Sam Lambert & Shaka Maidoh).

Images courtesy of Baileys African History Archive (BAHA); content support from the Warren Siebrits Collection; and City Outfitters.

With opening night performances by the Swenkas, Soulistic Fusion Trio and Intellectuals Pantsula.


Opening Reception: Monday 21 September from 18h00. FADA Gallery, Bunting Rd. Campus, University of Johannesburg
  
Exhibition duration: 
21 September – 6 October 2015
Chris Saunders, Dr Pachanga for NOT X, 2014

PUBLIC PROGRAMME:

PUBLIC LECTURE | Dr Christine Checinska
Wednesday 30 September 2015, 18h00 for 18h30, FADA Gallery

FADAFILM Premiere BLACK DANDY 
Thursday 1 October 2015 at 19:00, FADA Amphitheater/Auditorium

About the Exhibition.

Hypersampling Identities, Jozi Style features work by contemporary sartorial groups such as the Sbhujwas and Isikothane; young, street-savvy design collectives including the Sartists, the Smarteez, Dear Ribane II3 and Khumbula; and individuals such as Dr Pachanga and Jamal Nxedlana, working in the urban Afropolitan environs of Jozi. 


Chris Saunders, Smarteez, II.
Many of these cultural practitioners draw on or reference fashion styles of more established South African subcultural groups, specifically the Pantsulas and Swenkas. As sub-cultures originating in the 1970s, Pantsula and Swenking have contemporary relevance, not only as they are currently active, but also because both have created particular images of male black identities in apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa, two prominent ones being the ‘streetwise gangster-with-a-heart’ (the Pantsulas) and the ‘perfect gentleman’ (the Swenkas).



Socks.Arrival. Oswenka arrive at the
Jeppe hostel 
Ways in which these two images of black masculine identities inform the work of the Jozi-based cultural practitioners are highlighted in the exhibition. Following the multidimensional, interdisciplinary nature of their diverse practices, the work on Hypersampling Identities, Jozi Style is represented through a range of genres and media, and includes vernacular-, fashion- and documentary- photography; archival materials; imagery from popular visual culture; installations; artefacts; visual art; advertisements; films; and music videos.





Christian Courrèges, Mdelwe Khanyile

Operating within, and moving between, Jozi’s seams (the inner-city, Daveyton, Soweto, Alex, Tembisa), young cultural practitioners manifest the diverse means of leveraging fashion style and movement culture that characterises Generation Z. An underpinning thread of connectivity in this digital creative network of production, dissemination, promotion and consumption, is the strategy of ‘hypersampling’: the remixing, re-appropriating, reintegrating, fusing, conjoining, and mashing-up of elements gleaned from a multiplicity of sources to produce new fashion styles. 

Working within the urban context of an ever-changing Jozi cityscape, scaffolded by consumerist, marketing and digital technologies, and fed on soundbytes of apartheid and colonial Southern and South African histories, they hypersample freely, even playfully, from a range of transhistorical, transcultural, visual, and material sources to express a range of ever-emergent and ever-changing transnational, transhistorical, transcultural, Afro-urban and Afrofuturist black masculine identities.


About the Artists
TJ Lemon. Group. Ready for performance on Saturday night
TJ Lemon
Dingani Zulu, In a brief case. Broaches
and rings, cosmetics and in some
 cases muti are brought to the show
 to apply the finishing touches
TJ Lemon has been a professional photojournalist and trainer for 25 years. Completing studies at Rhodes department of Fine Art in 1988 and teaching at the Rhodes journalism department, he worked as a freelance news photographer in Johannesburg from 1990 up to the ’94 elections. The work was published in European magazines through a London agency. In this period Lemon coupled his photographic work with training young photographers at the fledgling Market photo workshop.

TJ Lemon. Dingani Zulu, Cuffs. Dingani Zulu displays his cuff.
From 1994, Lemon was employed as chief photographer at the Sunday Independent until 2010. He ventured into solo photo features, where he was writer and photographer. After leaving “the Independent” he trained photojournalism students at the Market photo workshop and Wits University journalism department where he currently works.
TJ Lemon. Piet. Piet Zulu is a security guard at the run down ERPM 
Lemon has won a number of photographic awards including the 2001 World Press Photo, Arts and culture, essay category. He has exhibited and been part of exhibitions in a number of countries including Spain, France, Germany, Holland, USA and South Africa.

Alexia Webster, Bhanzele Masango, Tembisa
Alexia Webster
Alexia Webster, Sibusiso Mthembu,
Real Actions 
Alexia Webster is a South African documentary photographer born in Johannesburg and has worked widely through out the African continent as a documentary photographer.After graduating from Wits University and completing the Intermediate Photography course at the Market Photo Workshop, Alexia worked briefly in the film industry on music videos. 

Alexia Webster,  Sibusiso Mthembu, Real Actions.
Having always seen photography as a powerful tool through which one can explore and agitate, she left the world of moving images and began working as a freelance photographer for both local and international newspapers and magazines.
Sibusiso Mthembu, Real Actions, Orange Farm.
In 2007 she received the Frank Arisman Scholarship at the International Center of Photography in New York City where she completed the program in Documentary Photography and Photojournalism. She has since won the Artraker Award for Art in Conflict- 2013, the POPCAP‘13 Piclet.org Prize for Contemporary African Photography 2013 and received a Honorable Mention at the Bonani Africa Photo Festival 2010. She has also received grants from the Prince Claus Fund and the Ithubu Arts Fund. She is currently based in Cape Town where she continues to explore both the visible and invisible with her camera.
Chris Saunders, Free Styling (Soweto).
Chris Saunders
Hailing from a background in fashion photography, Johannesburg-based photographer and video director Chris Saunders approaches his projects from the standpoint of a visual storyteller. His documentary work investigates the people and environments of South Africa and Africa, particularly subcultures and local 'culture crews' (his project on Pantsula dancers was recently accepted into the 2015 Lagos Photo Festival). 
Chris Saunders, VIP (Sebokeng)
Chris Saunders,
Real Actions Pantsula Women
He has worked across Africa and internationally, with recent projects including Alicia Keyes' 2014 'Keep a Child Alive' campaign; British Council funded music video Ghost Diamond, in collaboration   with British musician OK Zharp!; and Not X CS, with New York fashion designer Jenny Lai, exhibited in New York in 2014. 

Chris Saunders, Smarteez 
Saunders has worked with leading agencies, brands and magazines both locally and internationally, and is represented by Lampost for stills photography, and Ola! Films for his work in video direction. He was the recipient of a year long grant at Fabrica, Benetton's Creative Research Facility in 2010.
Mack Magagane, Wanda Lephoto, 2014






Mack Magagane.
Mack Magagane, 23, was born in South Africa, Soweto, southwest close to the city of Johannesburg. After his matriculation in 2008, he joined the Market Photo Workshop where he would be able to explore an artistic interest of architectural design and drawing through photography. He has had a solo-photography exhibition at the Photo Workshop Gallery, Johannesburg, with a series of work titled …in this city. This work was produced during his 2011/12 Tierney Fellowship at the Market Photo Workshop. 

Mack Magagane, Bobo Ndima, Wanda Lephoto,
Kabelo Kungwane
, 2014, 9.5 x 9.5cm
In 2011, he was invited to the 2011 Photoquai Biennale in Paris with a body of work titled, I’ll be gone soon... In which he recreates intimate stereotypical and familiar suicidal imagery of moments before one commits suicide, in view of increased suicidal deaths in South Africa over the past years. Magagane has exhibited at the FNB Joburg Art Fair 2011-12 and has received the 2011 ACT ImpACT Award within the field of Visual Art in South Africa. 

Mack Magagane, Kabelo Kungwane, 2014
He has shown works', Light Hours and ...in this city in mid 2013 at the Present Tense group exhibition; part of the Next Future programme at Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, Portugal, which also travelled to Paris, opening at the Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Délégation en France. Mack was recenctly on a residency at Centre Photographique d’Île-de-France in Paris, France.  Which was part of the French - South Africa season in France 2013. He exhibited the works’ Southern Suburbia during his stay in Paris as an invited artist at YGREC gallery and …in this city in Strasbourg, France; also part of the French - South Africa season in France 2013 in COMMITMENT #1. Magagane lives and continues to work in Johannesburg, South Africa.
 
Christian Courrèges, Adolphus Mbuyisa
Christian Courrèges.
Christian Courrèges (Aix-en-Provence, 1950) lives and works in Paris. He is a Professor at ENSAD (National School of Decorative Arts).
 
Christian Courrèges, Zero Khanyile

Untitled II, From the Brooklyn Circus x Sarti

Andile Buka (B.1990)
Andile Buka is a self-taught photographer. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Johannesburg and Cape Town. In 2014 he was part of Don’t be afraid of the shadow, a collaboration with Philippe Bousquet at the South African Human Rights Commission. In June 2015 he showed at 18th Internationale Schillertage Festival in Mannheim, Germany and later this year he will exhibit at the Lagos Photo Festival.

A Buka, Untitled III, From the Sartist Sports Project – Part1
A Buka, Untitled IV, from
the Sartist Sports Project.
Part 1
His present work focuses on people’s stories and their persistence. By engaging with locals in various communities, listening to stories and documenting their narratives through photography, he is developing a body of work entitled Crossing Strangers. Crossing Strangers aims to document people and their spaces in the heart of the Johannesburg and Orange Farm. 

A Buka, Untitled IV, From the Sartist Sports Project - Part 1
 For more information, please contact: 

Maria Fidel Regueros

VIAD Curatorial Team Member 
mariafr@uj.ac.za 
011 559 1442
  
Eugene Hon
FADA Gallery Director 
eugeneh@uj.ac.za 
011 559 1386


Saturday, September 12, 2015

2015 JJC Schools Art and Design Awards Exhibition: Announcing the winners.



Elá Aguiar, Narcissus. Installation
Reddam House Bedfordview
First prize.

FADA Gallery in association with the Johannesburg Junior Council (JJC) presents the 2015 JJC Schools’ Art and Design Awards Exhibition. A diverse range of art and design work was selected for the awards exhibition and includes artists’ books, paper sculpture installations and digital media (animation). Schools in the Gauteng province were requested to submit work produced by grade 11 and 12 learners.





Paper Installations by Elá Aguiar and Maia Lehr-Sacks respectively.


And the winners are!

Ela Aguiar, Narcissus. Paper installation.
Reddam House.




First Prize
 

Ela Aguiar 
Narcissus
Paper Installation
Reddam House
Art Teacher:
Renee Koch

Victoria Bench, Untitled Coloured pencil drawings.
National School of the Arts.



Second Prize:
Victoria Bench
Untitled
Coloured pencils, drawings
National Schools of the Arts
Art Teacher:
Anthousa Soltiriades
Third Prize:
Victoria Bench
Adcock Ingram Advertisement
Animation 
National Schools of the Arts
(video to be uploaded soon) 


3 x Merit Awards.

Maia Lehr-Sacks, Nautilus. Folded Paper Mobiles
Greenside High School


Maia Lehr-Sacks
Nautilus 
Folded paper mobiles 
Greenside High School
Art Teacher:
Mrs S Van Zyl.

Avalon Gullan, Untitled. Wood sculpture.
St Stithians Girls



Avalon Gullan 
Untitled
Wood sculpture
St Stithians Girl’s School. 
Art Teacher: Gary McIver.



Giggs Kgole
Scarcity/surplus: initiation
Digital prints
St John’s College
Art Teacher: 
Lesley Mackensie.






Ela Aguir (First prize) receives her
award from the Vice Dean,
 Amanda Breytenbach with

Sango Socikwa, JJC Mayor.


The awards exhibition provides a creative platform to acknowledge and encourage creative skills development amongst the learners in the province. 


Sango Socikwa, the JJC Mayor,
announced the winners.






Those whose works were selected have the opportunity to view their art, professionally displayed, in a public gallery space. However we also wish to acknowledge the role played by art and design teachers at secondary schools in the Gauteng Province.

Gala awards event.
Exhibition Lower ground floor.
Giggs Kgole (St Johns College)
 receives his merit award, from 
John Adams and the Vice Dean, 
also present, the JJC Mayor, 
Sango Socikwa.

The organisers’ applied high standards associated with curatorial and display criteria in setting up the exhibition. The awards exhibition will hopefully encourage more pupils to embrace their creative skills, especially at a crucial stage in their career development, seen in the context of a knowledge and digital economy.



Victoria Bench receives the
second and third prize.
National School of the Arts
Personal expression is of far greater significance in the twenty-first century, as learners are expected to embrace new media in their quest to communicate with each other in a global village. This requires a variety of creative skills, technology and insight.

Awards Gala event.

Maia Lehr-Sacks receives her merit award
from John Adams and the Vice Dean.
Greenhill High School.

We also hope to encourage a culture of visiting museums and galleries in preserving and valuing our cultural heritage amongst the youth.  The exhibition has been held on an annual basis for the past six years and as in previous years a number of awards are made, sponsored by Herbert Evans. 

John Adams,
Handed over the prizes.
Inspired the audience
 with his few words.










Innovation, creativity, inherent meaning and technical execution are the key criteria in adjudicating the awards.



Alessia Landi Chairperson
Arts and Culture (JJC)
Giving her speech



We wish to thank all the art and design teachers of participating schools, and our sponsors Hebert Evans, for making this awards exhibition possible. Working closer with the Johannesburg Junior Council, we trust this annual awards exhibition will become more inclusive and manifest their creative endeavours, as captured in the following statement.

Art is not just pretty pictures and light entertainment: art is a great unifier, a tool for promoting awareness by critically reflecting on society and an educational tool that can provide useful skills development and simultaneously inspire self-confidence in the youth of SA.  JJC Arts and Culture. 2014. Available, Accessed 6 September 2014.


Aims and Objectives for the awards Exhibition.

  • To Provide the youth of the province with a unified platform for creative expression, whilst honouring their art skills and talents.
  • To acknowledge creative output produced at local secondary schools: as work made formally for an art and design (including Technology) subject portfolio and informally, as part of the school’s extramural activities.
  • To raise awareness amongst schools of the significant role creativity plays in a pupil’s development.
  • Contribute to the development of standards in art and design teaching and leaning amongst secondary schools.
  • To promote art and design disciplines as a lucrative career choice and study option at tertiary institutions. 
  • To stimulate the development of creative role models amongst school peers in awarding prestigious prizes normally associated with achievements in sport and other extramural activities.
  • To create a ‘visual platform’ for teaching and learning art and design at secondary schools.
  • Exposing work of a high standard produced at a secondary level in a formal gallery space, in a curated fashion, meeting museum standards.
  • Encourage a culture of visiting museums and galleries in preserving and valuing our cultural heritage amongst the youth.

Annual Exhibition

We encourage schools to become members of the Johannesburg Junior Council to participate in next year's art and design awards exhibition. Follow the provided link to access information about the JJC on their Facebook page and website.

Follow this blog and or like the FADA Gallery Facebook page, to receive information about future exhibitions and events associated with arts and culture.

FADA wants to thank the judges, the participating schools and and our sponsor, Herbert Evans. A special thank you to Emme Stols, Director at Herbert Evans, for loyal support.