More about the Artist
Zanele Muholi
Trained at the Market Photo Workshop, Muholi came to national attention in September 2004 with her exhibition Visual Sexuality at the Johannesburg Art Gallery. Her work is without precedent in South Africa, where there are very few instances of black women openly portraying female same-sex practices. As a gender and sexual rights activist, and as a photographer, she confronts the notion that lesbian practices are alien to African cultures, and offers a radical break from stereotypical narratives about black female sexualities. She succeeds in transgressing the taboos surrounding black female same-sex practices because of her intimate relationships in these communities, negotiating the boundaries through trust and respect. Her photographs offer a view from the inside, a personal perspective on the challenges facing black lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people in the townships and other communities.
Muholi was born in Umlazi, Durban, in 1972 and lives in Johannesburg. She works as a community relations officer for the Forum for the Empowerment of Women (FEW), a black lesbian organisation which she co-founded. She has participated in a number of conferences and exhibitions including Gender and Visuality and Doing Gender at the University of the Western Cape; Visual Culture at the University of Pretoria; World Beyond Words at the Centre for African Studies, UCT; Sexual Rights and Moral Panics at the International Association for the Study of Sexuality, Culture and Society, California, United States; the Klein Karoo and Month of Photography festivals; and, most recently, the South African group exhibition Olvida Quien Soy - Erase me from who I Gran Canaria. She will present a solo exhibition at the Vienna Kunsthalle project space in April 2006.
ANITA LATEGAN
Opening Speech by Ingrid Stevens for Solo Exhibition 2006
In her earlier works, Anita Lategan used to focus mainly on figures, but these figures were often placed in gardens, or surrounded by flowers and plants. She says that she simply loves flowers and gardens, and is furthermore interested in them as symbols of the cycle of life and death. In her recent work, the flower becomes the focus, making it part of a very long tradition. Flowers have appeared in art and cultural products since the earliest times, such as in Neanderthal burials, in Egyptian and Cretan murals, in Greek and Roman art and in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The greatest period of flower painting was seventeenth century Holland, when flower painting became an independent genre, and artists produced beautiful, extravagant, complex flower paintings. This was because of the demise of religious and history painting in response to the Reformation, and also in response to the demands of a growing bourgeoisie for paintings suitable for their homes. This is the time of flower-mania, specifically tulip-mania, when the tulip reached Holland from Turkey. These flowers were all the rage, and people paid incredible prices for bulbs. The painted flower was a sign of luxury, beauty, sensuality and also of the vanity of our hopes of permanence. The short life of flowers was a symbol of the transience of human life.
One other aspect of these works that I want to comment on is their femaleness, or perhaps their feminism. Anita Lategan has chosen to make paintings that are unequivocally female, that could hardly have been painted by a man. Flowers have traditionally been associated with women. As Leon la Grange, a French critic, wrote very patronizingly in 1874, “Let women occupy themselves with the type of art they have always preferred, paintings of flowers, those prodigies of grace and freshness which alone can compete with the grace and freshness of women themselves”. Of course, feminism rejects such stereotyping, but Lategan has chosen to embrace, celebrate and at the same time parody this association of women with nature. I find these to be personal, contemporary and visually delightful works.
ARDMORE CERAMIC ART STUDIO
Ardmore Ceramic Art Studio opened its doors in the Champagne Valley of the Natal Drakensberg in 1992, under de direction of Fee Halsted.
Ardmore has grown into the largest ceramic studio in South Africa. The studio provides the infrastructure for a large and diverse group of self-employed artists, giving them training and direction, material and equipment, a place in which to work and a guaranteed market for every piece of artwork completed.
The artists have the opportunity to work in an environment that encourages the expression of their inmagination based on nature, Zulu folklore and tradition.
ABRIE PIETERSE
Abrie was born in South Africa on the 6 August 1979. He Studied at the Technikon Pretoria where he received the Aardvark Award in 2000 for Design. He exhibited in various galleries in Pretoria and Johannesburg.
CLIFFORD CHARLES
Water as the basic medium was a challenge - its nature is liquid, uncontained, fluid, and transparent. It is nothing yet everything.
"Writing about your art is like catching a glimpse of your reflection, while you keep walking."
And I have walked, unwilling to be frustrated by the shifting grounds that inform our lives. I walk m
Painting is an uninhabited space of not being - yet being. A contradictory and ironical motive: for the action of painting becomes an act of nothingness. Unbundled by the known. Active meditation and contemplation, not to defy or define - just being. Moving to a thoughtless moment of listening (to oneself), till one exhausts words.
My South African lessons are many - the futility of ideological battles being only one.
All this drew my art into an introspective gaze. Instead of being seduced by sentimental and melancholic images that reflect 'Post Apartheid' programmes, I gazed upon my own reflection. This 'talking to myself' became an attempt to assess my existing patterns of our thinking - a silent self-reflection, moving on to new plateaus.
Where are we going wrong? Who or what do we fragment - in the process to humanize? Discarding the narrative of democratic struggle while simultaneously embracing it is a new position. 'In-betweens' balance ambivalently on the fulcrum of past and present. In this inaccessible position of safety and healing we opportunistically submerge and emerge when appropriate. This perpetual momentum defies closure. A built-in mechanism to live day to day.
Finishing new work is a pausing moment: punctuation, a realization - or maybe the last step where effort ceases. It becomes for me both a culmination of experience and a dilution of conformity.
CARINA CLAASSENS
Carina Claassens has been living and working in Amsterdam for the past year and a half, after having moved there from Mozambique. Her disciplines are painting, drawing, and ceramics. At this exhibition she will show some of her paintings and drawings.
It is obvious that she is inspired by her cultural background. She uses the intense colors and figures derived from the South-African culture.
The position of women is central in her work: the beauty of a woman’s body and the role a woman takes on in life are portrayed in her work. Claassens is an artists that can place spiritual matters and involvement in life in a visual way.
Her art style vaguely resembles Art Nouveau, Expressionism and Post-Impressionism.
She exhibited her artworks at several well-known institutions, ranging from the Polokwane Art Museum to the American International School in Maputo (Mozambique), and Artquake in Hoofddorp, Jerry’s Restaurant in Amsterdam, and a solo exhibition with WG-Kunst in Amsterdam from 8-20th December 2005.
Other exhibitions included an exhibition at Galerie Zuidvliet 8(GZ8M) in Maassluis from 15 Jan – 18 Feb 2006, and at an art festival at castle the Keukenhof, the Netherlands.
This year she will be exhibiting at the UBUNTU art event, of which she is also theorganizing festival director and curator. Asked why she is doing this she replied: “I’m tired of hearing how artist in South Africa are being exploited, this is a wonderful opportunity for Artist to help other Artists!!!!”
She is also invited to participate at the BIENNALE in Florence, Italy 1-9 December 2007.
Besides working on her own art, she is also an Art Teacher for young Students ranging from 5-12 Years, where she combines art with acting and dance. She started working with children in Mozambique the year after she studied, and it is one of her passions.
On a final note, she also performs her own One Woman/Comedy show for big corporate companies (IBM/ABNAMRO bank) through which she educates people about South African culture, habits in all its various facets.
CARL JEPPE
Carl Jeppe was born in Krugersdorp in 1949. After matriculating at St John's College he enrolled at Pretoria College for Advanced Technical Education. In 1981 he was appointed full time lecturer at the Technikon in Pretoria. He was appointed to the council of SA Association of Arts in Northern Transvaal where he served until 1984, and in 1989 he was appointed part time lecturer at the University of Pretoria, Fine Art Department.
Jeppe has also served on the New Signatures selection committee in the years 1977, 1979, 1981, 1982 and 1984. Other activities include the presentation of a workshop at Soshanguwe Teacher's Training College in Bophutatswana, 1988, 1989, and 1990. Served on selection committee for "Art Alive" Ruddel Theatre, 1991.
CLEMENTINA VAN DER WALT
DANIE DE WET
Danie de Wet has had a long interest in figurative art. His fascination is with the clarity of Renaissance painting - especially that of the Northern Renaissance. The painting of Rogier van der Weyden holds a special interest to him.
In today’s Post-Modern world it is acceptable to refer to and to use art from other eras. The use of the Renaissance-style of painting connects very well with certain pictorial conventions and is meaningful for many observers. Thus the Renaissance idiom is used to portray modern, yet timeless issues by also using modern elements, such as clothing, environments, etc. His work is mostly allegorical, and are metaphors for particular personal states of mind, expressed through beauty and mystery. These are portrayed through the use of figuration, landscape elements (such as water) and architectural structures (such as tiling), which could indicate a meaningful interaction between culture and nature and our existence among such phenomena.
A painstaking, time-consuming technique is employed, since the very act of the slow manipulation of materials is a contemplative and meditative process, and is analogous to apprehending one’s being in the world in a meaningful way. Possibly at the root of it all lies a desire to understand and derive meaning from the minutae and possible meaninglessness of existence. It is a positive way of bridging the abyss.
In this triptych the issue of peace and strife is portrayed. The two side panels depict communal and personal struggle, while the centre panel depicts harmony.
ERIC RANTISI
In its visual structures, houses, buildings, developed and underdeveloped areas etc., you can trace the past and see the present situation of a place, culturally and politically. My interest lies on how the past continues to influence the present.
‘Art as process’: Through the symbols used and the process of making an artwork, I explore the relationship between people, place and condition.
FRANCOIS DU PLESSIS
"Book-Stories" is what Francois du Plessis calls his newest work series. The title relates to the "storytelling" of the Aborigines, which hands down their tradition of identity, endowing narratives from generation to generation. In du Plessis' case they are the multifarious stories connected to books in various ways. This does not refer to the actual contents of a book in the form of words and pictures, but the entire object book, its life history, its haptic appearance and the memories, thoughts and fantasies connected to it.
At an earlier stage Du Plessis' had developed a body of work comprising of paintings in bright natural colours, motifs like rhinoceroses or stylised mountains and tents as well as totem-like steles. It displays the artist's preoccupation with his homeland South Africa, where he grew up and lived until 1985. In 1988, he moved to Germany and in 2002 he discovered the book as a new medium which henceforth would occupy and captivate him with its nearly infinite creative possibilities. Just like with wood or clay, the artist began to process found, collected and read copies. Reading matter effortlessly turned into art objects.
JON EISLIN
A highly distinctive way of painting and control of paint enable the South African born artist Jon Eiselin, currently based in Amsterdam, to express his views and reflections on art.
He has moved on from doing classical figurative paintings to applying a more diverse vocabulary which now includes motifs and symbols such as light, air, water, animals, insects, earth, landscape, vegetation and degrees of abstraction. In his paintings one can find references to the vastness and diversity of Southern African nature. This is the nature he cherishes, feels most related to and is definitely inspired by. In short, these elements determine the character of his more recent paintings.
The human figure hasn’t been abandoned altogether and at times reappears in the midst of this all. His paintings are usually done with oil paint on canvas. They vary in size from intimate to wall covering polyptychs. Jon Eiselin reduces his images to their bare necessity: bright, bold and colourful. Because all paintings are different, each one calls for its own unique solution and, in their development, an unique approach and commitment. Drawing and sketching are therefore essential in the coming into being of his work.
JUSTICE MOKOEWENA
I am thinking so loud whether to be or not to be… led to a collective loss of memory. Refusing to compromise knowledge in contrast to the notion of uncontaminated thinking, this moves ahead in time and space of any faculty. My work suggests an alternate space within which to position a rather disturbing personal experience. The excessive emotionalism and excitability that guides my activity at bringing about an act of anxiety to the mind and body of human’s reputation is quite playful. It’s just a mind’s game for me to help myself to learn and understand how love, mercy and peace relate to one another. I may wish to know or establish opinions and attitudes regarding my Individuality.
African history has been erased to a point, where Identities are questioned and communities moved around.
Some years ago we witnessed the shifting of politics in South Africa, which resulted in terms such as the Rainbow Nation. In 1997, President Thabo Mbeki coined the phrase “Those who have eyes let them see… African Renaissance is upon us. As we peer through the looking glass darkly, this may not be obvious. But it is upon us”
We are facing a challenging task to build this African renaissance.
KGALALELO LEOTLELA
My name is Kgalalelo Phiri. I am a 23 year old female B-Tech student in Fine Arts. Printmaking is what I do and I also did glass design. In printmaking I work with silkscreen and etching. I am highly influenced nature and the everyday paths of life. According to me and what I believe everything in life is defined by a line and shapes and repetition as some in life would all karma, what goes around comes around. My latest work is about the power of the mind and illustrates that though line repetition and tone.
MARTLI JANSEN VAN RENSBURG
Martli is a South African qualified glass artist who completed a Fine Arts Degree at the Technicon, Pretoria, with a specific focus on the subjects of Glass Making, Sculpture and Art Theory. (1996-1999). Currentely she is busy with her Masters Degree in Fine Arts at Tshwane University of Technology.
As sculptor, she was fascinated by glass forming and its possibilities in the arts and design world. Therefore after completing her formal studies in 2000 she moved to England to develop her skills in glass blowing. During the two years Martli worked and trained at various studios in England and Germany and had time to develop art works for various exhibitions. In 2002 she was chosen to be an artist in residence at Northlands Creative glass in Scotland. At Northlands there was time to develop and refine her work and communicate her skills in workshops and at the end of this period she held an exhibition.
At the end of 2002 she moved back to South Africa to apply her knowledge. In 2003 she established a glass company called MOLTEN, where they produce recycled glass ware.
Martrli has worked on various projects with Cell C, Rand Water, Absolut Vodka and magazines like Elle decorations, House and Leisure and Garden and Home. Her art works has been on various international and local exhibitions and has been chosen for Awards like FNB Arts Award, Absa Atelier and Brett Kebble artist Award. Her work has been is part of international, private and cooperate collections.
Martli teach glass forming part–time at Tshwane University of Technology for second and third year students.
MICHELE TABOR
Michele Tabor studied and graduated at the University of the Witwatersrand from 1969-1972
Since 1975 she has been living and working in Amsterdam.
Michele Tabors art reflects her concerns about and observations of society and some of the individuals it is comprised of. Whether a person is simply doing something or as a statement about being in a wider sense her work is always inspired by a particular person, place or experience.
She both draws and paints using a variety of media.
For several years Michele has also been engaged in drawing or painting South African subject matter. She is involved, as it were, in an evolving contemplation of her motherland.
On a more specific note her work is concerned with our never ending needs. Our hopes and illusions. How diverse, misled, and sometimes triumphant we are. How we are victims of history, fate and ourselves.
RUNETTE KRUGER
Runette Kruger is a fulltime lecturer. Exhibition of her ceramic work at Decorex 2005: Three of her works were exhibited at Decorex held in JHB in August 2005. Decorex is the premier annual design event in South Africa. Invited selector (and guest exhibitor) for the Ceramics Southern Africa Regional exhibition, Arts Association, October 2005. Winner of the First Prize for sculptural ceramics at the National Exhibition of Ceramics, Pretoria Art Museum, Southern Africa, August 2004.
RENIER LE ROUX
Renier le Roux was born in Cape Town in 1973 and lived in Kempton Park where he matriculated at Hoërskool Birchleigh in 1990. He completed his National Military Service at the engineer school in Kroonstad, the Free State, and did further Contract Short Service as an instructor in the Instructor Training Course at the same school. He enrolled at the Pretoria Technikon (now known as the Tshwane University of Technology) in 1993, where he studied fine arts. He excelled in Sculpture, Drawing and Painting, and completed his National Diploma in Fine Arts in 1995. During these years he also worked as a student assistant and was appointed the Senior Technical Assistant by 1997. Renier is still employed at TUT and enjoys teaching methods and techniques to sculpture students. He has participated in many national Art Competitions in both student and professional categories, and has been recognized and awarded through many of these. His work has also been taken in to art collections like the SASOL collection and the Pretoria Art Museum Permanent Collection. Commercially he has been awarded many commissions, and is active in trophy design and manufacture. He is currently working on a body of work for a solo exhibition.
BRIGETTE MOULANG
Born on the 1 September 1967, Pretoria, South Africa. Birgette is Currently a second year Visual Communication student at the Open
Window Academy in Pretoria, has been working in the Advertising industry in Europe and America for the past twelve years, Bridgette has participated in several group shows and one solo exhibition titled: "Our father doing art in heaven."
The current series is open to interpretation and - apart from commenting on popular culture and vernacular. it suggests an
atmosphere of South Africa as an autonomous and unique society as well as a part of the African continent."
SERETSE MOLETSANE
Seretse Moletsane was born in Sowetho in May 1981. He studied Fine Arts at the former Pretoria Technikon.
From 2002 untill 2005 he participated in a number of exhibitions, fashionshows and worked as a Printed image Technical assistant at the Tshwane University of Technology. In 2004 he produced commissioned work for women’s day and for Telkom’s corporate collection. Besides his work as a artist, Seretse is fashiondesigner for Feilpoppie.
STRIJDOM VAN DER MERWE
Born in 1961 he resides in Stellenbosch, South Africa. In 1983 he obtained a BA Degree in Fine Arts from the University of Stellenbosch; received the
Jon van Reenen bursary as the best graphic design student. Strijdom finished a BA Hons Degree in Fine Arts in 1984 at the same university. From 1984 onwards he worked as a graphic designer and in 1990 received a bursary from Dutch Government to study print-making at the Hoge School voor de Kunsten, Utrecht.
During 1995 he studies sculpture for six months at the Acadamy of Art, Architecture and Design in Praha, the Chezh Republic and went on to become artist in residence at the Kent Institute of Art and Design, Canterbury, England.
Since 1996 he is working full time as an artist.
SHANY VAN DEN BERG
...I sit at my table where I am busy creating an outfit for the celebratiën of freedom...
Shany was born in Riversdale in the Western Cape in 1958.
Studied parttime at Ruth Prowse School of Art from 1990 – 1992. Since then she works as a fulltime artist, developing her own technique in oil painting and three dimensional work. She succeeds in communicating the multilayered emotions, ideas and modern concepts with a classical approach to portraiture, and captures these ideas with a meticulous attention to detail, simplicity and symbolism.
TANYA VAN BRUGGEN
“....ek dra my land met my saam en in hierdie kunstwerke word dit sigbaar....”
I was born in South frica, Johannesburg in 1966. My work is strongly influenced by this beautiful country and it’s people.
However, having travelled between Europe and South Africa throughout my life, some of my work is directly marked by European experiences and encounters. My travelling has broadened my outlook and given me a global perspective.
The binding factor in my work is the return to the essence and he quest for authenticity.
TERESA JO WESSELS
...Ek put my inspirasie uit eenvoud en dit wat funksioneel is. Dit moet ’n primitiewe, ongedwonge manier van skep bly...
Timeless and sophisticated, the beauty of Teresa Jo’s cutlery range complements any contemporary interior. With a primitive, almost ancient appearance, the range is characterized by simple, yet striking design, apposite materials and decorations that enhance one another.
Layers of different metals – usually brass, bronze and silver – are worked and flattened, rather than cast or moulded. Their colours are deliberately patinated and oxidised.
VUSI BEAUCHAMP
I was born in1979 mamelodi (township). I first studied art in high school, clapham high school. After high school I studied fine art at the university of tswane 1999-2005 , I majored in painting, printed image and drawing. I have participated and curated numerous exhibitions independently. My other interests include short story writing and producing stage plays.
Jennifer Carbutt
I was born in Ladysmith in 1961, South Africa. My passion for fabric, texture, colour and form began as a child – my mother was, besides being a farmer’s wife, also a dressmaker. This passion shaped itself into a fascination with design and fashion. On completing my schooling, I enrolled at the Cape Town School of Fashion Design for a two year diploma course in design and pattern-cutting.
After graduating, I started a small business designing and manufacturing clothing, under the KASUGA label. KASUGA means “parrot” in KiSwahili and is also the name of a holy mountain in Japan. The exuberance of Africa and the serenity of Japanese design are major influences in my work.
Within a few years, I relocated to Johannesburg and continued my clothing business. In this period I came into contact with the TV and film industry, doing costumes for a television program and working as set-dresser and decorator on a number of films.
The political climate in South Africa at that time was extremely oppressive and repressive on every level so it became steadily more difficult to function creatively. I made a decision to leave the country. In April 1987 I flew to England. Shortly thereafter I came to Amsterdam by chance, fell in love with the city and stayed.
At the end of the 80's the South African exile community here was fairly large, but not really represented by the anti-apartheid movements in the Netherlands. Therefore, the ANC allied South African Community Cultural Centre was formed, and I became involved as a voluntary cultural worker.
Inspired by a friend, I learnt to walk on stilts, which led to a long collaboration with a French performer, and the formation of Alien Voyagers Stilt Theatre Company in 1997. My focus expanded to include performing, and our group travelled to and performed in many European cities and street-theatre festivals. An other important part of my work in these years were the hundreds of costumes that I designed (and made) for Stichting Beestenbende, a multicultural group doing theatre workshops with refugees and schoolchildren, often in Asylum Seekers Centres.
Since 2002 atelier KASUGA has been situated in Ruigoord, a small artist's village just outside Amsterdam, next to the recently expanded Afrika harbour. Surrounded by “nature” and also rapidly encroaching industry, I continue my hat, costume and accessory work. All the items exhibited are either exclusive or part of a limited edition.
The Kasuga website is presently under construction.
Atelier KASUGA
tel: 0646236126 | 
