Dear colleagues and friends, the FADA Gallery invites you to the exhibition titled, 

Interventions in Practice

 

The exhibition comprises the work of eight academic staff members from the Faculty of Art Design and Architecture (FADA) and is curated by gallery director Eugene Hön.

The participants are Alexander Opper, Bongani Khoza, Deirdre Pretorius, Khanya Mthethwa, Marc Edwards, Martin Bolton and Thato Radebe. A diverse range of work across disciplines is on display, from photography to jewellery, an artist’s book, industrial design tools and products, ceramic transferware and various forms of visual art expressions in mixed media. Each artist and designer has been provided with a dedicated space, across the gallery’s two floors, in which to exhibit their work. 

 

Marc Edwards. Looking Around; Acts of Noticing.  

The exhibition serves not only as a platform for staff to showcase their practice-based research to the university community and broader public, but also to facilitate their applications to the Department of Higher Education (DHET) to have this work accredited and recognised as creative research outputs. The DHET’s policy on the evaluation of creative research outputs was published in 2017 and its implementation began in 2019. This milestone followed years of lobbying by academics in the creative disciplines across South Africa for the recognition of creative research outputs. Creative practitioners working in universities across South Africa have welcomed this opportunity for their creative work to be formally recognised and rewarded as research outputs through a process of peer review.

 

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue which provides information on each contributor and in which they contextualise and elaborate on their work. The work has been conceptualised within a scholarly framework as a form of research, and hence contributors, in particular those working in the design fields, were free from the constraints which operate within commercial working environments. Participants aimed to create original work which contributes to the production of new knowledge in their fields. Whilst the work will be physically exhibited in the FADA Gallery, it will also be made more broadly available during and after the exhibition through the use of various digital platforms. Viewers are invited to engage with the exhibition in both the physical and digital spaces and participate in the series of talks and walkabouts which will accompany the exhibition run.

 

Martin Bolton. Rotational Casting Machine, Tools and Products.

The installations and bodies of work exhibited reaffirm the FADA staff’s commitment to produce work within and across their areas of expertise and research and the value they place on creative research output. In this way faculty members continuously expand their knowledge in and across various fields. This mode invariably enriches the scope and depth of teaching and learning within the broad range of disciplines on offer at FADA while contributing to the development of creative research outputs.

 

 

Eugene Hon. Windstruck; Transferware.

 

Exhibition run: 

Tuesday 10 August  - Thursday 30 September 2021.

 

Viewing by appointment. 

Email Eugene - eugeneh@uj.ac.za.

 

Gallery Hours

Tuesday to Friday 09:00 – 16:00

Saturday 09:00 – 13:00

Closed Mondays, public and university holidays

 

Eugene Hön

Director

FADA Gallery

Faculty of Art Design and Architecture

Bunting Road Campus

THE FRONT ROOM 'INNA JOBURG' & The ARRIVANTS - solo exhibitions produced by VIAD.

Drinks Cabinet (The West Indian Front Room
-Geffrye Museum 2005-06) ©John Nelligan

The Visual Identities in Art & Design Research Centre (VIAD) take pleasure in inviting you to the opening of the solo exhibitions and related public events:

THE FRONT ROOM 'INNA JOBURG'

by Michael McMillan

FADA Gallery, Ground Floor

&


THE ARRIVANTS

by Christine Checinska

FADA Gallery, Lower Ground Floor

OpeningReception & and Performance, Saturday 30 July 2016 from 18h00

Haywood Magee. A crowd of 700 West Indian immigrants

 in the customs hall at Southampton. 1956. Image courtesy of Getty Images

The opening event will be accompanied by a collaborative performance titled BACK A YARD by Christine Checinska and Michael McMillan

Exhibition Duration: 30 July-26 August 2016

FADA Gallery, Bunting Road Campus, University of Johannesburg.

The West Indian Front Room
(Geffrye Museum 2005-06) ©John Neligan 2005.

ABOUT THE FRONT ROOM ‘INNA JOBURG’ BY MICHAEL McMILLAN

THE FRONTROOM ‘INNA JOBURG’ is an installation-based exhibition in which writer-artist-curator Michael McMillan recreates an African-Caribbean family front room, in which tradition meets modernity, and creolised material culture intersects with memory in a postcolonial Diasporic context. McMillan, who is British born of Caribbean migrant heritage, invokes his youth, his family and their generation as they struggle to establish a Black British identity in England during the 1970s. Image (left) Tina, The West Indian Front Room (Geffrye Museum 2005-06) ©Michael McMillan

THE FRONT ROOM ‘INNA JOBURG’ is a re-contextualisation of McMillan's critically acclaimed exhibition The West Indian Front Room (Geffrye Museum, 2005-2006) that had over 35, 000 visitors. It led to international commissions: Van Huis Uit: The Living Room of Migrants in The Netherlands (Imagine IC, Amsterdam 2007 & Holland tour 2008); and A Living Room Surrounded by Salt (IBB, Curacao, 2008). The Front Room project also includes Tales from the Front Room (BBC4 documentary, 2007) and the publication, The Front Room: Migrant Aesthetics in the Home (Black Dog, 2009). For further information follow the provided link. www.thefrontroom.org.uk. Image. Muhammad Ali (in Linda Small's front room) ©Michael McMillan 2005

ABOUT THE ARRIVANTS BY CHRISTINE CHECINSKA

In THE ARRIVANTS exhibition, UK-based artist-designer-academic Christine Checinska investigates the relationship between culture, race and dress. The conceptual departure point for the work is the 1948 arrival of the Empire Windrush at London’s Tilbury Docks carrying some 500 Jamaican migrants – colonial subjects invited by the British government to assist in rebuilding post-war Britain – hoping to make a better life in the ‘Mother Country’. Image (Detail).Haywood Magee. A crowd of 700 West Indian immigrants in the customs hall at Southampton. 1956. Image courtesy of Getty Images

For more information see: The Arrivants.

Image (Detail).Haywood Magee. A crowd of 700 West Indian immigrants

 in the customs hall at Southampton. 1956. Image courtesy of Getty Images.

PUBLIC PROGRAMME

17 August 2016, 17h30 for 18h00

Public walkabout of THE FRONT ROOM ‘INNA JOBURG’ and THE ARRIVANTS exhibitions with Michael McMillan.

18 August 2016, 18h00

Screening of the BBC4 documentary video, Tales from the Front Room, followed by discussion with Michael McMillan.

All events take place at the FADA Gallery, Bunting Road Campus, University of Johannesburg

Radiogram Rockers

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Michael McMillan

As a writer, playwright, mixed-media artist, curator and scholar, Dr McMillan’s transdisciplinary practice explores migration, identity, gender, sexuality and hidden histories through ethnography, material culture, oral history, performances, texts, installation and audio-visual media.

Dr McMillan’s curatorial practice and mixed-media installations include the critically acclaimed projects: The West Indian Front Room (Geffrye Museum, 2005-2006); Van Huis Uit: The Living Room of Migrants in The Netherlands (Imagine IC, Amsterdam 2007 & Holland tour 2008); A Living Room Surrounded by Salt (IBB, Curacao, 2008). The Front Room project also includes Tales from the Front Room (BBC4 documentary, 2007); and the publication, The Front Room: Migrant Aesthetics in the Home (Black Dog, 2009). Image: Flowers & Vase (The West Indian Front Room-Geffrye Museum 2005-06) ©John Hammond.

Television. (The West Indian Front Room
Geffrye Museum 2005) ©Dave Lewis

Recent work includes: No Colour Bar: Black British in Action 1960-1990 (Guildhall Art Gallery, 2015-2016); Doing Nothing is Not an Option (Peckham Platform, 2015), and Rockers, Soulheads & Lovers: Sound Systems back in da Day (NAE, Nottingham 2015-2016 & 198 Contemporary Arts & Learning, London, 2016).

Dr McMillan is a Research Associate in the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre, University of Johannesburg; Associate Lecturer in Cultural & Historical Studies at London College of Fashion; and an EAS Associate Researcher (UAL). He is also a member of the Royal Literary Fund (RLF). Image: Jim Reeves Album Sleeves (The West Indian Front Room-Geffrye Museum 2005-06) ©John Hammond 2005.

Christine Checinska

As an academic-designer-artist, Dr Checinska’s practice-led, inter-disciplinary work is situated at the meeting point between material culture and contemporary art. Checinska’s practice interrogates the place of textiles within the global flow of objects, ideas and identities characteristic of globalisations cross-cultural entanglements. The cultural exchanges that occur as a result of movement and migration, creating creolised cultural forms, are recurring themes, as is the correlation between personal history and received history. She is the instigator and convenor of the Clothes, Cloth & Culture Group at Iniva, London and was on the curatorial team for the Iniva touring show Social Fabric (2012, Iniva, London).  Dr Checinska is a Research Associate in the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre, University of Johannesburg and an Associate Lecturer in Fashion at Goldsmiths College, London.Image (Detail). Haywood Magee. A crowd of 700 West Indian immigrants in the customs hall at Southampton. 1956. Image courtesy of Getty Images

For further information on the exhibitions and related public programming, please contact:

Maria Fidel Regueros, Curatorial Team member

Visual Identities inArt & Design Research Centre

Office: +27 (0)11 559 1442 / +27 (0)82 373 6127

Email: mariafr@uj.ac.za