Browsing by Author "Saptouw, Fabian"
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- ItemOpen AccessApart(2021) Smith, Elizabeth; Skotnes, Philippa; Saptouw, FabianThe exhibition is comprised of a collection of objects that I have gathered over the course of this project. The objects have been tinkered with, cobbled, and transformed in order to generate new outlooks on function, materiality and studio- based processes. Through these objects and in partnership with them, I am a tinker, a cobbler, and a transformer. Objects have come apart and been reassembled to suggest new modes of use, and in doing so pays homage to the object often ignored and discarded.
- ItemOpen AccessCape Mongo(2015) Knoetze, Francois; Saptouw, Fabian; Alexander, JaneCape Mongo is an anti-fable to the mythologies of Cape Town’s consumer culture. This anti-fable takes shape through an amalgamation of sculptural, performative and video-montage processes, culminating in five films. Each of these films follows a different Mongo character as it journeys through various urban spaces. Throughout these journeys, the project attempts to construct a form of social commentary on the current spatial, economic and political conditions of the city by exploring the variety of possible contexts and urban spaces that these discarded objects may have inhabited during their life cycles. This process has also involved a great deal of reflection on my personal entanglement with the conditions of living and consuming in the city. The journeys of the commodities that I consume and discard on a daily basis can be traced to reveal the intricate economic networks which underpin the consumer culture of Cape Town. The recyclable packaging of consumer goods is presented as mnemonic vessels of interconnectedness which expose the relationship between myself and the spaces and lives these objects inhabit. As the films follow the Mongo characters through various cityscapes, their journeys conjure up imagery relating both to my childhood as well as to several of the historical trajectories that have lead up to the endemic inequality2 and social alienation which characterise present day Cape Town.
- ItemOpen AccessDenotations of memory a familial archive(2019) Williams, Joshua; Saptouw, Fabian; Alexander, JaneDenotations of Memory: A Familial Archive is an evocative exploration of memory centred on a familial archive. Notions of memory as well the memories themselves in the archive are explored in the form of paintings, sculptures, photographs, installation and videos. A major part of this work focuses on living in Cape Town, South Africa, which was the central location of my lived reality while I was reflecting on the past as embodied in the familial archive.
- ItemOpen AccessHomunculi of the Digital City(2020) Minnie, Heinrich; Zaayman, Carine; Saptouw, FabianEmploying the media of video and installation, Homunculi of the digital city explores what it means to live in a digitally-mediated city. In my work, I personify both the city and city dwellers as cyborgian characters, by drawing on Donna Haraway's definition of the cyborg. I expand my personification further by employing the Homunculus from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust II (1950, originally published in 1832). I utilise Matthew Gandy, Ingrid Hoelzl and Rémi Marie's discussions around the broader city so to consider the material and immaterial elements that constitute it. The screens that populate contemporary cities embody both these elements: they are physical objects that perform invisible data, in the vein of Boris Groĭs' analogy of an image file being analogous to a piece of music that needs to be performed in order to be sensible. By drawing on these frameworks, I position the city as a high density of screens that are physically ubiquitous, often a prosthetic, and function as a gateway to the immaterial elements of the city.
- ItemOpen AccessMasters, master, masturbate (a master's debate) - relooking at the home, body and self through seventeenth century Dutch still life painting(2020) Labuschagne, Emily; Saptouw, FabianThe still life genre has been, and arguably still is, regarded as the lowest form of painting in Western fine art history. The absence of the human figure in still life painting means that the artist does not require knowledge of either human anatomy or history for the production of the work. Given seventeenth century female painters' exclusion from the academies where anatomy was taught, it was thus a genre regarded as appropriate for female painters in Europe prior to the nineteenth century. Such dictates of propriety were indicative of gender constructs that relegated women to the private sphere of society and the domestic environment. As an accompaniment to my Masters in Fine Art exhibition titled Masters, Master, Masturbate (A master's debate), this text explores what still life painting may reveal about the relationship between the home, the body and the self in the present day. Produced from my position as a contemporary, white, female painter of Dutch descent raised within an Afrikaner culture in the context of South Africa, I suggest that a critical reconsideration of this apparently constrictive genre offers potentially liberating perspectives of gender constructs and the female painter.
- ItemOpen AccessMend: a personal exploration of healing(2016) Niederhumer, Gina; Zaayman, Carine; Saptouw, FabianAs the title suggests, this dissertation text deals with repair, and while 'mending' also refers to sewing, here I use it in conjunction with healing and the transformation of an inner conflict. Coming from a family of embroiderers in Austria I use needle and thread as my tools and physical objects as triggers in search of what has been forgotten or repressed. The work centers largely around a shared history between my mother and myself, which though marked by many separations, the love for needlework connects us again and provides a meeting place that bridges the divide caused by absences in the past and in the present. Divided into two columns, 'academic' and 'personal', in subtitled paragraphs elaborate and reflect on 'memory', 'family narrative', 'trauma', 'needlework' and 'art-making as a way of personal transformation' in an attempt to understand the story of my life and how it fits into the larger family narrative. The catalog section of the text lists the art works that resulted from this engagement with my personal story, while the accompanying artists book offers an in-death view into the process.
- ItemOpen AccessOut of order(2024) Juries, Andrew; Saptouw, Fabian; Mahashe, GeorgeThis research project considers the tensions between deliberate acts and unexpected encounters that emerge in the activity of making art. The dissertation presents a discussion on the role that the activity of engaging with materials plays in the shifting conceptions of artistic process in the work of Robert Morris and his contemporaries throughout 1960s art historical discourse. During this time, Morris explored rigidly-defined approaches to art production associated with Minimal art, as well as more uncontrolled, materially curious tendencies associated with works of Process art. Specific focus is given to his interest in the tensions that arise between pre-determined and indeterminate aspects of making art, and how engaging with these tensions can be a means of exploring the nuanced relationship between human systems of order and a material world outside of our control. The artworks and theories of Morris and his contemporaries provide a foundation for a discussion on my own work, addressing specific themes of overlap and divergence between his practice, my own, and those of other contemporary artists. My methodology involved conceptualising a material object with a pre-determined purpose and extensive, multifaceted production requirements that would offer a rigid framework for ongoing creative activity. Throughout the object's physical production I remained receptive to unexpected and unintended encounters with the tools, materials and environment I was working with, reading them as manifestations of the indeterminate conditions of art making. The insights derived from this process were used as starting points for further avenues of creative inquiry, while generating the artworks that embody the dynamic relationship between my predilection to impose order on the aesthetic encounter against the tendencies of objects and materials to undermine those efforts. In this way, the artworks presented for exhibition are the result of a recursive process. Their forms, materials and arrangements reflect the tensions that I experienced while translating idea to material form, while offering the viewer an indeterminate web of experiences for their own consideration. This project considers how an art practice that is receptive and responsive to unintended and unexpected encounters with the matter of the world might be a means of exploring the nuanced relationship between human systems of order and a material world outside of our control.
- ItemOpen AccessTrace and Time’s Arrow(2016) Milligan, Janis; Brundrit, Jean; Saptouw, FabianTrace can be thought of as a copy, a small amount of something, evidence, a remnant, vestige, residue or mark. Trace can also be considered more actively as a verb, meaning to follow, track or locate. The studio production that I am engaged with encompasses all of these meanings. My MFA research project specifically investigates trace from rust. Rust, also referred to as iron oxide, is a by-product of the breakdown or oxidation1 of iron, and it develops in the presence of oxygen, moisture and time. In my studio practice, I transfer rust onto various materials and it is the resultant vestigial marks, or ‘traces’, that are at the core of my MFA studio explorations.
- ItemOpen AccessVariations on a theme by John Herschel(2014) Groenewald, Madeline; Langerman, Fritha; Saptouw, FabianHerschel resided in Cape Town until 1838. He set up a telescope in the orchard of their estate, Feldhausen, in Wynberg, and worked towards completing a systematic survey of the southern hemisphere for stars, nebulae and other celestial objects (Warner, 1996:55 & Buttmann, 1974:104). Herschel’s observations in the Cape were not only focused on astronomy. His scientific contributions included work in the fields of geology, meteorology and botany and this scope of diversity extended beyond the disciplines of science since he also pursued his interests in poetry, music and visual art (Buttmann, 1974:112 & Schaaf, 1989:10). Herschel played the flute and was also an avid draughtsman, evident in the extensive collection of sketches that he made of Cape botanicals and landscapes (Schaaf, 1989:10). In addition to these sketches, his diary entries from his stay in Cape Town, published in “Herschel at the Cape: diaries and correspondence of Sir John Herschel, 1834 to 1838” provide another affirmation of his variety of skills, since poetic descriptions and multi-sensory observations can be found amongst scientific and analytical inquiries. For example, in his diary entry March 1836 he commented on a nightjar’s song and included a music staff with an accurate notation of the bird’s melody. In a letter to William Henry Harvey in 1837 Herschel wrote about the scents of Cape flowers, applying perceptive metaphors for each flower species, such as cinnamon, pepper and ginger (Warner, 2011:34-35). He often created links between his observations from these different fields, such as applying his study of botany to that of photography by using Cape flower juices for photographic colour filters (Schaaf, 1992:98). The title of my MFA project references John Herschel as well as the Theme and Variation form in music in which a single musical theme, often written by a different composer, is followed by a series of developments of this theme through the employment of a range of compositional techniques (Lindsay, n.d.). The body of work that I created is structured according to this musical form. I used Herschel’s representations from and of the Cape as the basic theme which I then developed through a series of variations, employing media and methods across disciplines, time periods and sense modalities. By way of this process of mediation, the resulting art works become parallel records of my own specific experience of Cape Town.
- ItemOpen AccessWorking Remains(2023) Emmett, Rory; Saptouw, Fabian; Searle BernadetteWorking Remains grapples with colonial legacies and their remnants inscribed on the cultural, socio-political, and topographical contemporary Cape landscape. The remnants suggested by the project's title pertain to concerns about self, place, labour, and culture that permeate personal, and collective history and memory. Working Remains adopts a self-reflexive and critical approach to representation through painting, installation, sculpture, performance, and video.