Layers Opens at Goodman Gallery Johannesburg

South Africa Wed 27-10-2010

Layers Opens at Goodman Gallery Johannesburg
Press Release

Layers, a new exhibition by young curator Nontobeko Ntombela, launches at the Goodman Gallery Project Space at Arts on Main in inner city Johannesburg this October.

The exhibition continues the overall vision of the Project Space, which is to offer a platform for young artists who have begun to garner interest, but need an established space and institution to further expand on their output.

Layers Exhibition Poster

Layers Exhibition Poster

Every year guest curators are invited to use the Project Space as an opportunity to bring new, fresh and singular work to the public’s attention. Layers follows on from Us (2009); a show of work by younger as well as established local and international artists curated by Simon Njami and Bettina Malcomess.

Layers is the first part of an ongoing research project by Ntombela based on creative strategies used by artists – women artists in particular –that aim to contextualise socio-political issues. Yvette Dunn and Nothando Mkhize are the first selected artists to participate in this series of curated exhibitions.

The curatorial framework of Layers, Ntombela explains, is centred on the aesthetic and procedural artistic strategies that both Dunn and Mkhize employ. Indicated in title of the exhibition, both of the artists' concerns foreground the process of layering, coating, and depositing in ways that connect their works aesthetically. Yet both artists operate very differently in the framing of their concepts.

Dunn uses the strategy of self-insertion and autobiography as an exploration of the issue of identity in a way that becomes performative. Working with the notion of the changing definition of identity, Dunn's take on the subject no longer implies a representation of any particular group but that of an individual.

In Dunn's video work, titled Painted portrait, she paints her face in an arduous attempt to colour 'herself' creating a new form of identity. "I enjoy reinterpreting racial labels through the paint palette and camera," Dunn explains. “For example I am labelled 'Coloured'; I play with this word, stripping it, [lamenting] it, celebrating it and re-inventing it until it has multiple definitions and experiences [that depart] from racial connotations."

Mkhize, on the other hand, uses self-insertions in a different way. She uses found objects to reconstruct new meaning, re-presenting traces and tensions that the urban landscape offers through ready-made collages. "My work stems from a fascination with found objects as visual texture in the urban context, specifically the city of Johannesburg," Mkhize says.

"The recurring concept is the urban environment as a space of constant tensions and contested opportunities particularly in the aftermaths of apartheid. The escalating tensions between different people, histories, languages, cultural identities and commodities have become part of a post apartheid urban discourse."

Both works speak to contemporary issues in a way that maintains a sense of immediacy and agency. While both Dunn and Mkhize tackle different concerns, their works ultimately connect beyond the surface and enter a compelling dialogue that confronts issues of gender, culture, race and economical classifications.

Layers functions as a parallel or inter-textual component of Ntombela's research study, which will later reveal a larger group exhibition drawing from the overall series of curated exhibitions scheduled to take place at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2011.

Opening Saturday 30 October 2010, 12h00
Goodman Gallery Projects at Arts on Main, corner Main and Berea Street, downtown Johannesburg
Please join us for a drink
Closes 16 December 2010

For more information on the exhibition contact:

Goodman Gallery Johannesburg at Arts on Main, corner Main and Berea Street, downtown Johannesburg
P. +27 (0)87 830 0880 | F. +27 (0)11 788 9887 | projectspace@goodman-gallery.com | www.goodman-gallery.com

Posted By: Hirum Ndungu

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