2017 FADA Gallery Exhibition Schedule

Booknesses Exhibition. Kara Walker. Freedom, a Fable.
A Curious Interpretation of the wit of the Negress in Troubled Times
1997. Peter Norton. courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co., NY.

Exhibitions: Summary 2017

1-15 February 
2016 Dean’s Award Exhibition & small selection of GSA works from their summer show held at MOAD.

28 February - 12 March
2016/7 Thuthuka Jewellery Awards Exhibition

25 March – 1 May
Booknesses: Taking stock of the book arts in South Africa.

8 May – 9 June.
Promises and Lies: The ANC in Exile 

24 July – 8 August
Helen De Leeuw retrospective. Curated by Juliette Leeb-du Toit (VIAD Research Associate) – Ground Floor.

24 July – 8 August
De Jong Retrospective. Curated by Lize Groenewald-details to follow. Lower Ground Flooor.

18 September – 29 September
2017 JJC Schools Art and Design Awards

• 1 October – 10 November

African Lens: Priya Ramrakha (provisional title)

• 3 -28 November

Visual Arts B Tech exhibitions.

• 4 -15 December

2017 Dean’s Award Exhibition.

Synopsis of 2017 FADA Gallery Exhibitions

February 1-15.

2016 Dean’s Award Exhibition.

The work on this exhibition is of finalists nominated for the 2016 Dean’s Award Exhibition. Each department selected a student, mainly B Tech and Honours candidates, who demonstrated innovation and creativity. 

The exhibition comprises bodies of work from the following disciplines; Interior Design, Architecture, Industrial Design, Visual Arts, Multi Media, Jewellery Design and Manufacture and Design Communication (Graphic Design). This year’s winner is Kuena Moshoeshoe, a B Tech (Fashion Design) graduate.

28 February 12 March

2016/7 Thuthuka Jewellery Awards Exhibition.

The Thuthuka Jewellery Development Programme is proud to present an exhibition of jewellery designed by students from community schools and universities across the country. Hosted in the FADA Gallery, this annual exhibition celebrates an extraordinary mentorship programme that focuses on design and skills development, the competition enables each student designer to explore their creativity using sterling silver and other metals to meet the brief.

25 March – 1 May

Booknesses: Taking stock of the book arts in South Africa.

The University of Johannesburg’s Department of Visual Art in association with Jack Ginsberg will be hosting two exhibitions of artists’ books, a colloquium and associated workshops. The UJ Art Gallery will feature a selection of artists’ books from the Ginsberg Collection, whilst FADA Gallery will host a broad selection of contemporary South African artists and designers’ artists books. 

Booknesses: South African Artists’ Books: FADA Gallery, University of Johannesburg Bunting Road Campus, Johannesburg. Opening Friday 24 March and running till 5 May 2017. Curated by David Paton, Eugene Hon, Gordon Froud and Rosalind Cleaver. The exhibition of over 100 works will be accompanied by an online catalogue.

 

Laurie Sparham, Untitled, 1989

8 May – 9 June

Promises and Lies: The ANC in Exile 

Conceptualised and curated by UCT academic Dr Siona O’Connell, Director of the Centre for Curating the Archive at the University of Cape Town (UCT

The years 1989 – 1991 marked a world in transition: the fall of the Berlin Wall as a visual marker of the demise of the Cold War and the fall of apartheid through the release of political prisoners, the return of exiles and the negotiations process. Much like those years, the past two years in South Africa has signaled a shift, one that has been brought to the fore by student-lead protests around the slow pace of transformation to the recent Constitutional Court ruling of the Nkandla saga.

These photographs of the ANC in exile in Tanzania and Zambia in 1989-1990, taken by award-winning reportage photographer, Laurie Sparham, offer a chance to consider the sacrifices of the past, the promise of freedom then and a landscape of lies in which we are all complicit. The images compel us to think about links, traces and the contemporary South African moment that seems to be marked by crisis and failure. As such, it is a crucial prism through which we must think about how we want to live, our own accountability and, especially, what questions we want to put to history in order to live up to the still to be realise promise of freedom that was made in 1994.

Dr Siona O’Connell: Curator

24 July – 8 August. FADA Gallery Ground Floor.

Helen De Leeuw retrospective. Curated by Juliette Leeb-du Toit (VIAD Research Associate)

In the proposed Helen de Leeuw legacy exhibition, tribute is being paid to a phenomenal woman entrepreneur, ceramicist and writer, Helen de Leeuw, who in the 1950s began a lifelong challenge to the South African market to rid itself of erstwhile preferences (both anglophile and American) for mass-produced, inferior products that had begun to overwhelm commercial production and suppress emergent and indigenous craft traditions.

Few urban South Africans who lived through the period 1953 to c1988 will fail to recall the impact of the Helen de Leeuw phenomenon. Writing in 1965, Isabelle du Toit noted that Helen de Leeuw’s name was synonymous with ‘good, modern and imaginative taste’ and design in all its aspects – in textiles, craftwork, architecture, furniture, interior design, jewellery and ceramics. De Leeuw’s stores in effect functioned as galleries of contemporary international and national design.

24 July - 8 August FADA Gallery Lower Ground. 

Ernst De Jong Retrospective. Curated by Lize Groenewald-details to follow.

16 August – 8 September

Emerging fashion creatives

The Department of Fashion Design will showcase a collective of the work of young and emerging alumni fashion designers. The exhibition will be accompanied by designer talks, a specialist workshop and a fashion film. Further details to be posted in due course.

18 September – 29 September

2017 JJC Schools Art and Design Awards

The awards exhibition, now in its ninth year, is hosted annually by the FADA Gallery. This year’s competition will be launched at FADA in April – further details to be posted in due course. Prizes are sponsored by Herbert Evans.

September (dates to be announced) FADA Atrium.

Transparency: Art & design competition

The Embassy of Sweden in association with the FADA Gallery invites entries for a national art and design competition with the theme ‘Transparency’. Transparency is the key to developing and maintaining trust. It lies at the heart of the scientific method, the freedom of the arts, and is crucial to allow for a healthy business climate. Creating spaces of openness and accountability is critical for a stronger society and can guide us to see things clearer.

To encourage a dialogue about the significance of transparency, we call upon artists, designers, and other creatives to develop concepts and ideas and apply their creative skills in expressing the competition theme transparency.

1 October – 10 November

African Lens: Priya Ramrakha (provisional title)

The VIAD team in collaboration with Dr. Erin Haney & Shravan Vidvarthi will host the photographic exhibition of works by the pioneering Kenyan photojournalist Priya Ramrakha (1935 – 1968). 

Ramrakha was one of the first widely travelled African photographers to cover the continent’s independence movements in the fifties and sixties. His singular archive, recently recovered in private hands, is straight and unsentimental. Ramrakha's humanist lens recorded the political struggles that persisted across decolonial Africa its expansive ties, to India, South Africa, and African America. 

From Kenya's grassroots to Tom Mboya and Kenyatta, to the consequences of Biafra's terrible war, Ramrakha's kaleidoscopic photography reveals the complex and multi-racial roots of rarely-seen African image histories and stories. 

3 -28 November

Visual Arts B Tech exhibitions.

Two consecutive exhibitions featuring the work of final year Visual Art Students.

November. (dates to be announced) FADA Atrium

Industrial Design Masters Exhibition. The work on display will feature research projects and product prototypes developed by Industrial Design masters students.

4 -15 December

2017 Dean’s Award Exhibition.

The work on this exhibition is of finalists nominated for the 2017 Dean’s Award Exhibition. Each department will select a student, mainly B Tech and Honours candidates, who demonstrated innovation and creativity. The exhibition comprises bodies of work from the following disciplines; Interior Design, Architecture, Industrial Design, Visual Arts, Multi Media, Jewellery Design and Manufacture and Design Communication (Graphic Design).

Two exhibition not listed for the Atrium (second semester) – details to follow.

§  An exhibition featuring 3 Masters in Industrial Design student’s work – completing their studies at the end of 2017. To be confirmed

§  The 2017 Ceramics Southern Africa Regional Exhibition

To be confirmed.