Browsing by Author "Godby, Michael"
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- ItemOpen AccessBeyond the frame : a liminal space in contemporary South African photography(2009) Hotsko, Jennifer; Shepherd, Nick; Godby, MichaelAnthropologists and ethnographers documenting the African subject – as soldiers of the colonial enterprise, dominated early practices of photography in Africa. These endeavors manufactured a visual narrative that was uniform in its approach to Africa's landscape, which largely persists in the popular imagination.In the early 1990s with the fall of apartheid and transition towards democracy, South Africa's landscape witnessed a new current in the medium of photography; photographers who had been documenting the 'struggle' were suddenly deprived of the central focus of their work. Creative artistic expression, which had been largely restricted, blossomed. This paper examines four of South Africa's 'new generation' of photographers who have seen unprecedented success both in South Africa and in the West. This paper examines whether these photographers and their images are confronting and challenging the stereotypical stock photographs that have misrepresented South Africa's landscape.
- ItemOpen AccessChaos and context : speculations about the prominence of participatory art since the mid 1990s(2009) Daehnke, Nadja; Godby, MichaelIn his essay The Poetics of the Open Work, Umberto Eco suggests that 'open work' of the 1960s, which stressed audience involvement, contingency and an anti-institutional stance, is an expression of a Quantum paradigm. Here, the irrationality and lack of order of Quantum Theory is seen as paralleled in artistic expression. Since the mid 1990s, participatory art has gained prominence, both in terms of current art production and retrospectives of Dadaist and 1960s 'open work'. Using Eco's essay as a model, this could be seen as a result of the progression of a Quantum Theory worldview to a view that is understood in terms of Chaos Theory. The patterns that mathematical models such as natural numbers, Calculus, Statistical Mathematics and Quantum Theory propose have parallels in social and artistic expression. In an extension of this, Chaos Theory is the latest mathematical model that social and artistic trends express. This is suggested by the mirroring of Chaos patterns in current social phenomena such as the Internet and experience economy. The similarity in approach between social phenomena and participatory art suggests that they answer the same social/audience demands. My primary contention is that the environment in which audiences and artists currently operate is such that demands and expectations raised by Chaos Theory are answered by participatory art, just as they are answered by wider social trends. The primary Chaos patterns that can be observed are interconnection, phase change and feedback. This is not a matter of a linear influence of cause and effect. It is not that Chaos inspires certain characteristics which are then expressed in various social phenomena. Rather, encountering Chaos characteristics in daily life raises expectations that these characteristics will be encountered elsewhere. We are thus not speaking of a causative relation between Chaos theory and social phenomena. Rather, there is a complex pattern of escalation which encourages interaction, feedback and phase change in a dynamic, chiasmic system which itself can best be analysed as another Chaos phenomenon.
- ItemOpen AccessThe churches of Bishop Robert Gray & Mrs Sophia Gray : an historical and architectural review(2002) Martin, Desmond; Godby, MichaelBishop Robert Gray, the first Anglican Bishop of Cape Town, came to South Africa in 1848 to establish a province of the Established Church, the Church of England in the Cape Colony, adjacent territories and the island of St Helena. Gray's fourfold objective was to increase the number of clergy, to build churches and schools, to establish missions among the 'heathen' and to found a training college for young men. The focus of the thesis is Gray's second objective - his church building programme.
- ItemOpen AccessOn Distance: From art history to Ernest Mancoba(2007) Ralphs, SCT; Godby, MichaelIn this thesis the central narratives of Western art history, specifically those related to modernism and African art, are considered in light of a climate of criticism concentrated over the past thirty years in Western and South African an historiography. In considering complexities of interpretation of the life and work of the African modernist painter, Ernest Mancoba, I address a perceived need for a critical discourse pertaining to early black South African modernist art. As a way of organising both my critique and contribution, I establish and use the thematic of distance. This work argues for greater consideration of individual motivation and circumstance in our understanding of early African modernist art production.
- ItemOpen AccessThe potential of visual and participatory approaches to HIV literacy in South Africa(2007) Wienand, Annabelle; Godby, MichaelAn estimated 18.8 % of South African adults aged 15-49 are currently living with HIV. While HIV literacy campaigns and other strategies have aimed to reduce HIV incidence, there remains a general lack of knowledge of the biomedical nature of the disease. This not only inhibits attempts to reduce HIV transmission, but also discourages voluntary counseling and testing (VCT), accessing clinic care and the uptake of antiretroviral therapy. This dissertation identifies the essential role played by community health workers and treatment activists who offer 'HIV literacy' in their communities and assist the formal health care system. The aim of this study was to complement these initiatives with the development and analysis of a visual and participatory HIV literacy workshop.
- ItemOpen AccessSouth African landscape painting, 1848-2008 : a handbook for teachers(2010) Newham, Priska; Godby, MichaelMy dissertation looks at South African landscape painting with the requirements of high school art teachers in mind. It has been written in consultation with Professor Michael Godby, at the University of Cape Town, the curator of the landscape exhibition, to be held at the Old Town House in Cape Town from 9 June to 11 September 2010. The handbook is designed to be distributed to educators at the Ibhabhathane Project Workshop organised to coincide with the exhibition. This is a teaching resource for Visual Culture Studies for Grades 10 to 12. It focuses on an analysis of artists in the school curriculum who have engaged with the genre in diverse and interesting ways.
- ItemOpen AccessStrategies of representation: South African photography of the HIV epidemic(2014) Wienand, Annabelle; Godby, Michael; Nattrass, NicoliThis thesis is concerned with how South African photographers have responded to the HIV epidemic. The focus is on the different visual, political and intellectual strategies that photographers have used to document the disease and the complex issues that surround it. The study considers the work of all South African photographers who have produced a comprehensive body of work on HIV and AIDS. This includes both published and unpublished work. The analysis of the photographic work is situated in relation to other histories including the history of photography in Africa, the documentation of the HIV epidemic since the 1980s, and the political and social experience of the epidemic in South Africa. The reading of the photographs is also informed by the contexts where they are published or exhibited, including the media, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and aid organisations, and the fine art gallery and attendant publications. In addition to the theoretically informed analysis of the photographic projects, I interviewed the photographers in order to learn more about their intentions and the contributing factors that shape the production of their work. Interviews were transcribed and used to develop my analysis of their projects and working process. While a number of photographers are included in the thesis, the major focus is on David Goldblatt, Gideon Mendel, Santu Mofokeng and Gisèle Wulfsohn. This thesis is not a comparative study but rather seeks to differentiate between four very different approaches to representing HIV and AIDS in South Africa. I specifically chose to focus on projects that demonstrated alternative visual and intellectual forms of engagement with the experience of the HIV epidemic. The selection aimed to reveal the relationships between the working processes, the contexts of display and publication, and the visual languages the photographers employed. My interest lies in how and why the photographers documented this challenging subject. A close examination of South African photography reveals diverse and complex visual responses to the HIV epidemic. Importantly, some photographic projects challenge existing approaches and encourage alternative ways of looking at, and thinking about, the experience of the epidemic in the South African context.
- ItemOpen AccessThe Charles Davidson Bell Heritage Trust collection : a catalogue and critical study,(1992) Lipschitz, Michael Roy; Godby, MichaelThis thesis comprises two parts. Part One is a biography of the life of Charles Davidson Bell (1813-1882), who was the Surveyor General at the Cape from 1848 to 1872. Part Two consists of an illustrated catalogue and critical study of the the pictures by Charles Davidson Bell in the Bell Heritage Trust Collection at U.C.T. The Biography of Charles Davidson Bell has been researched from unpublished sources and from secondary published sources. The chronology of his life is placed in relationship with his versatile accomplishments as an artist and his achievements in other diverse fields. In the Catalogue, the history, formation and restoration of the Bell Heritage Trust collection is reviewed. The criteria used in cataloguing and attribution of pictures is discussed. The cataloguing terminology that has been employed, is defined. The various collections of sketchbooks are introduced and discussed in terms of the ordering and arrangement of the pictures. The pictures are catalogued and placed in their historical context. The inter-relationship between pictures in the Bell Heritage Trust and in other collections is considered.
- ItemOpen AccessThe critical history of the New Group(1992) Kukard, Julia; Godby, MichaelThis research had two aims; to clarify the history of the New Group, and to examine the way in which this history has been constructed and distorted. The first section of the dissertation presented a history of the New Group. Chapter One discussed general aspects of the Group's history such as their activities and administration, and Chapter Two focused on the reasons for the New Group's formation and its dissolution. It was indicated in these chapters that the Group formed in order to provide production and retail structures which would enable artists to earn a living from their work, and that once these had been established the Group disintegrated. Chapter Three considered the issue of nationalism and proposed that most art writers during the New Group's existence were primarily concerned with the development of a national South African art. Furthermore, that many of these writers considered modern European art movements after Post-Impressionism and African art, undesirable influences in the development of a South African art. chapter described the way in which these writers' concern for the development of a national art caused the history of the New Group to be linked to the history and institution of Post-Impressionist art movements in South Africa. Later writers, using earlier writings on the Group as source material, were led to believe that the New Group formed in order to promote art influenced by modern European movements such as Expressionism. The Group's existence was explained by these authors as resulting from a desire to institute art influenced by European, modern, Post-Impressionist art styles as an accepted art form. Part of this understanding of the Group included the belief that the New Group was as a whole a group of modern artists who had to battle for recognition and acceptance from the critics. Chapter One indicated this not to be true. Chapter Six found that the use of early writings as source material caused a further distortion in the history of the New Group. The first chapter indicated that African art was an important influence on the work of the New Group artists but, because this was not recognised in the earlier writings on the Group, this influence was not acknowledged in the later writings. The researcher concluded by indicating that a new approach to the history of the New Group was necessary. That is, that the New Group be seen in relation to the construction and extension of accessible production and retail structures in art, rather than in relation to the institution of European modern art in South Africa.
- ItemOpen AccessThe mythic feminine in symbolist art idealism in fin-de-siècle painting(1994) Cole, Brendan; Godby, Michael
- ItemOpen AccessWomen's beauty in the history of Tanzania(2005) Nchimbi, Rehema Jonathan; Klopper, Sandra; Godby, Michael; Lihamba, AmandinaBeauty, in particular, women's beauty, has been a preoccupation of human societies throughout history. Encompassing not only physical appearance, but also aspects of dress and adornment and, in some contexts, more abstract notions like morality and spirituality. notions of beauty are shaped by complex social, cultural and economic considerations. By focusing on specific case studies, this study investigates the history of beauty in Tanzania, taking into account both past and present debates on the role female beauty plays in human relations.