OpenUCT :: Browsing by Subject "Fine Arts"

Browsing by Subject "Fine Arts"

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Ancestral journeys : a personal reinterpretation of identity through the visual display of paper theatre cabinets and books
(2000) Sales, Lyndi; Skotnes, Pippa
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Between echoes an experiment in creative collaboration
(2011) Purvis, Bryony; Younge, Gavin; Van der Schijff, Johann
I had been living in South Africa for almost a year by the end of 2010, when I instigated a series of creative collaborations with seven individuals, symbolically understood to represent the heterogeneous assortment of relationships that make up real-life social worlds. The people I began working with comprised those closest to me, those I live with, friends living in distant parts of the world and others that I have never met, but whose work or labour I have so greatly admired that I considered them to be an integral part of my world. I extended seven invitations to join me in a dialogue from which we could produce a visual artefact together. I asked that this dialogue address experiences and thoughts on the relationship between the individual and another; what makes us feel intimate and what causes us to feel estranged. The core aim of this project has been to develop a methodology/process that will produce art from dialogue. I centralised the need for the process to be sensitive to the identity and values of all those involved and capable of a deep engagement with the particularities of that encounter. Through this, a space between individuals is activated from which genuinely new ideas/social meanings are formed, and art produced. I regard this process of formation rather than affirmation as an approach that can redistribute agency in the production of meaning. Communication theorist Sara Diamond notes a distinction between collaboration that is ‘simply working together, creating in a context where there is an intention to either make that relationship on-going or create a product of that labour’, and the kind of collaboration that is ‘the process which combines the knowledge, experience and previous understandings or methodologies that are substantively different from that which the participants or even the partners entered the relationship with’ (Diamond 2003). Her distinction points towards a need to balance inter-subjective dialogue with the preservation of individual identities. Diamond’s later definition of collaboration implies that participants actively engage with difference, and resist conflating the initial diversity that made collaboration an appealing prospect in the first place. In this model, however, there must be an awareness of the limits of communication to represent an external reality as a shared reference. This is potentially a paralysing limitation: if communication of any kind can fail, where does this leave us? Shedding the security of relativism (of subjective expression) in exchange for the perilous task of cumulative, inter-subjective engagement has been key to the development of these eight experiments. The artist in this framework is a provider of ‘context’ rather than ‘content’, entering into collaborative encounters and communicative exchange (Dunn, cited in Kester 2004: 1). This document outlines the complexities of collaborative works, so as to do away with an easy reading. It contextualises the subtleties that define the collaborative approach in which I am interested. Much of what I understand about the work we have made, and the process that produced it, has only come about upon reflection and as a result of countless exchanges and conversations with the seven individuals I have worked with. As such I present the following document as both a retrospective of the collaborative experience, as well as a condensed cluster of ideas that help anchor this project’s core meaning. To structure this ‘research’ document, I have divided my work into nine chapters. The first describes my methodology in a wider context of collaborative practice from an ontological and genealogical perspective, before refining the key concerns that inform my making. These are: the space collaborative art occupies; a pluralistic sensibility towards multiple perspectives; and, finally, the role of dialogue in collaborative projects. The subsequent seven chapters are the visual and textual documents of the process of each collaboration. They illuminate aspects of the process specific to the seven working partnerships. Through separating each partnership my aim has been to preserve their authorship and prevent each collaboration from collapsing under the weight of my own agency. However, the process that unfolds in each of the chapters is only the process thus far, and many of these projects continue to evolve and form a part of my ongoing practice. I regard this research and the practical work it supports to be the generation of a specific collaborative methodology.
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Classroom facilities : a body of creative work exploring representations of knowledge through schematic means
(2004) Clark, Julia Rosa; Payne, Malcolm
I had just turned thirteen and it was the summer before high school started. My mother and I went over to the Roberts' house. Ruby had just matriculated from the same school and was handing down her faded old checked uniforms. To my amazement, there in the lounge bathed in afternoon January sunlight, was her father Billy, kneeling, deeply absorbed in a large strange chart that had been laid out on the floor. It was a school timetable and it was his task, as vice principle, to organise the day-to-day workings of the year ahead. The timetable was scattered with various coloured shapes that he shuffled back and forth across the gridded surface, trying to make a coherent system. This anecdote is important to my body of work for three reasons. The first is that Mr. Roberts' challenging activity that day is not unlike the process of sorting and reordering that is central to my work. The appearance of the chart is mimicked in the schemata-like quality of many of my pieces, as is its conceptual framework - an urge to order a set of already existing pieces into a new, meaningful and functional relationship. Ruby's uniforms are also important. I cherished these second-hand dresses precisely because of the qualities they acquired through having been worn already. These dresses were softer to touch, had a better fit and more beauty in colour --soft pink checks as opposed to harsh maroon-- than other girls' crisp new sacks.
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Clubs of Night: An artistic response into spaces of collective association and coping in a patriarchal time
(2022) Chydenius, Isabella; Brundrit, Jean; Campbell, Kurt
This academic and artistic research investigates ideas about safety in relation to gender1 and femininity in the heterotopian2 time-space of urban nightclub culture in the context of the current patriarchal time. 3 My aim is to examine the experiences of safety and unsafety within these particular spaces from an individual and socio-political perspective and discuss how contemporary artists have engaged with similar issues in their own practices. Most importantly, I will investigate the need for safety: where, when, how and for whom it “exists” – but, at the same time, it will also be crucial to consider if safety is not merely, as Gay (2014:194) put it in her book Bad Feminist, a much-needed illusion that is “as frustrating as it is powerful”. It is against this background of seeking to identify shared experiences of (un)safety that I will explore the night as a form of metaphor; highlighting it as a romanticised site which can potentially open up the space for imagining alternative possible futures against the oppressive elements in one's day-to-day life (DeGuzman, 2012). At the same time, it is vital to consider the time-space of the night from the rational perspective of caution; as it is often a heightened time of day for emotional and physical violence, specifically with regard to young girls and womxn who are warned of epistemic gendered violence through society and the mainstream media since childhood (Massey, A., 2017). It is from this perspective that my body of work aims to shed light on the theoretical and symbolic meaning of the intentionally created physical “safe(r) space” (Austin, B., 2018) of specific nightclubs and events that challenge patriarchal norms. 4 In other words, I am interested in how these oftenoverlooked spaces can create new configurations of belonging between like-minded people and able to induce new forms of shared subjectivity in the time-space of the night. I draw on art-historical examples of how nightclub culture has historically provided the time-space for expression and reimagination of the ‘Self' and society, and how this has served as a catalyst for change into mainstream culture, as well as national and global politics. While the discourse is mainly produced around the concept of patriarchal violence, there is, nevertheless, a constant search for signs of unity between the marginalised by patriarchal society in the midst of violence (and the night) as will be evident in the work of the artist Gabrielle Goliath (pg. 19). This move, to ensure I use the past (Histories of Art) to participate in finding paths of flight for the present (and future) in my own visual research is an explicit acknowledgment of both the recurring social gender/class/racial challenges faced in society across time and space, and at the same time the role of contemporary artistic production to give form to these challenges so as to enable the production of critique.
Open Access
Culture's “In-Betweens”: Diaspora and artistic practice of Gavin Jantjes, Marlene Dumas and Moshekwa Langa.
(2017) Speakes, Olga; Lamprecht, Andrew; Martitez-Ruiz, Barbaro
In 2017, the term “diaspora” is ubiquitous in any form of engagement with contemporary art and artists from Africa. Whether we scroll through the titles of the latest contemporary art exhibitions on the continent and outside, learn about the buzzy new additions to the annual art fair calendar, leaf through the pages of art publications, hear of the new museums of contemporary African art being inaugurated or engage in the theoretical discourse through art history conferences, catalogue essays and scholarly monographs, the talk is no longer about African art or even contemporary African art, but about contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora (s). The term “diaspora” is certainly not new, and originated in the discipline of history and, particularly, in Jewish studies. Its current omnipresence in the fields of art history and theory, however, is the result of a number of new critical, theoretical and curatorial tendencies that have gained particular momentum since the last two decades of the twentieth century.
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Culture, Commerce and Value: The Contemporary South African Fine Art Market in Relation to Concepts of Artistic and Financial Success
(2015) le Clus-Theron, Jean; Lamprecht, Andrew; Conradie, Annemi
In this study I investigate two main premises: firstly that art intermediaries are imperative in value creation in an artist's career, and secondly that high prices are used as a way to justify, measure or reflect an artist's “importance”. The motives for these investigations are, firstly, that there would seem to be insufficient academic research on these notions in the South African art scene, and secondly, the existence of a counter argument, namely, that the high prices attained on the art market may be deemed arbitrary and irrational. This study investigates the South African contemporary fine art scene along with the role of South African art intermediaries and their perceptions on ideas of “importance” and “success”, using two case studies. These case studies comprise the career trajectories of two living artists residing in South Africa, who compared to all other living artists residing in South Africa, have attained the highest prices in their careers for work on auction, namely, William Kentridge and Dylan Lewis. In this study twenty-six intermediaries were interviewed and the ensuing data used to investigate how these and other intermediaries influence perceptions of the importance and success of these artists' work. This dissertation incorporates Pierre Bourdieu's theory of field, capital and distinction, and uses Alan Bowness's four conditions of success as a framework for investigation.
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The enigma machine : unravelling the domestic experience
(2004) Grobler, Nicola; Van der Schijff, Johann; Younge, Gavin
In today's capitalist society, the environment of the home has become increasingly insular. Though there may be television, Internet and other forms of technology that connect one to the 'outside world', time spent indoors is for many people time spent alone. My body of work is concerned with an individual's experience within the confines of the home, where the exterior (physical space) becomes a reflection of the individual's interior experience.
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Ex Nihilo : emptiness and art
(2006) Michael, Michael John
The purpose of this document is the elaboration of a system of thought that sees art as an empty structure, in a way that is analogous to the conceptual mechanics of Buddhism. What is meant exactly by the term Buddhism will I hope, become clearer as the reader moves through it. Likewise, it is hoped that a perspective on art that sees it as sharing certain conceptual tendencies with Buddhism will emerge. What must be borne in mind for the meantime is the following; firstly, that the concept of emptiness in Buddhism is not nihilism, and this holds true for the system that I describe; it is my position that much art is empty (in a way) and necessarily so. Secondly, that both systems (though not exclusively), are ways of relating, rather than bodies of text or specific images. Wittgenstein's view of philosophy is analogous to this last point in that he insisted on seeing philosophy as a method rather than a science (Perloff 1996: 46). This tendency of mode over product, or way of relating over the thing made, is a critical underlying component of what follows in this document and in my practical production.
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Filling in the gaps
(2007) Sacks, Ruth; Alexander, Jane; Mackenny, Virginia
In 2007, Brian O'Doherty's words still apply. The art object and its context are intrinsically intertwined. A variety of contexts make up the mechanisms of the contemporary art world. From established organizations to more informal platforms, each performs a necessary function. Representation in a national museum or a respected public collection bestows a measure of credibility on a piece. Outside of austere exhibition rooms and refined gallery spaces, more informal arenas have their own authority. An independent artistic intervention on a busy pavement or a remote beach can suggest an anti-institutionalist stance. The artist is not bound by the conventions of more traditional structures. Yet, a great deal of interventionist work ultimately makes its way into galleries and collections in the form of residue and documentation. These become marketable and collectable products. Similarly, reputed organizations sometimes orchestrate potentially disruptive insertions into the public sphere in the form of performances or temporary installations. Even when they appear to be at odds, the different forums in which artworks exist rely on each other.
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Fixing the Shadows: A photographic exploration of beginnings and endings
(2023) Cowling, Vanessa; Josephy, Svea
Fixing the shadows is a photographic project that focuses on processes of cameraless photography and seeks out new ways to work with darkroombased photography that I regard as less environmentally and personally destructive. I explore how methods of fixing an image trace can technically represent a form of mending, which I associate with the practise of care. The project is reliant on the reciprocal relationship between myself and plants, acknowledging plant agency. Fixing the shadows is also a personal project that began with the death of my father, and in this sense seeks to mend a personal grief. Together with students, family, friends and colleagues, I have planted and grown a sustainable photographic garden. It is a gesture of reciprocal practise to heal a small piece of ground, which is indicative of a larger world in environmental crisis. The exhibition is comprised of the garden, lumen prints, anthotypes, phytograms and a light installation presented in immersive form. The presence of plant life is traced through chemical processes of cameraless photography and the unusual colour emanations that result from its shadows. It is hoped that this immersive, dynamic exhibition will for a moment dispel fear and grief, bringing the viewer out of the shadows and into the light
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The gloaming : narrative in contemporary painting
(2007) Nowicki, Andrzej Jan; MacKenny, Virginia
The key to understanding my project lies in the assumption that the task of representation for contemporary painting is different from that of newer media such as photography and film. I see the role of painting as being the representation of the past; an engagement with history. Many of the painters who have inspired my way of seeing are artists who re-imagined the role of pre-modernist narrative painting and re-asserted it in contemporary practice. Contemporary narrative painting occupies a different role from that of its pre-modernist predecessors, such as Romantic painting. It also occupies a different role in relation to dominant narrative media of photography and film.
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Identity : a study of representation with reference to District Six
(2004) Sauls, Roderick K; Alexander, Jane
Racism is a phenomenon of inferiority. Our blackness is a phenomenon of pride. We are not out to hate Whites. We are out to treat them simply as people. The point, however, is that we can no longer care whether or not Whites understand us. What we do care about is understanding ourselves and, in the course of this task, helping the Whites to understand themselves. Now we are rejecting the idea their idea which unfortunately has also become deeply embedded in the souls of many of us - the idea that we live by their grace. We may live by the grace of God, but we do not live by the grace of the Whites. (Small, 1971)
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In/Between: Phillipi Photographed
Hammond, Michael Brian; Josephy, Svea
Philippi, a farming area outside Cape Town, is strained by social relations and spatial concerns, the pressures of development, industry, farming, sand mining and environmental issues. This photographic project investigates how the people of Philippi live in their immediate space, where particular historical, social and political influences mark their identities. These identities are constructed through the legacy of apartheid and manifest themselves in socio-economic and racial dynamics. This photographic project focuses on the Phillipi area and its people. I chose the horticultural area of Philippi in the Cape Flats for its complex and intricate socio-political structure. During this investigation I made a photobook In/ between, which speaks to topics of land and identity in the microcosm of Philipi, but also in the broader macrocosm of South Africa. In this document, I investigate the position of the photobook within the contemporary arts, with a particular focus on the South African photobook. I also look at the shifting understanding of documentary photography in South Africa, and my position within its' traditions. Making the photobook In/between allowed me the opportunity to explore photography as a tool for self-reflection and pursuing my own understanding of the world around me; to move away from a more traditional journalistic approach to other ways of telling a story through the medium of photography. This document situates, contextualises and explicates my visual research for this project.
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Iyarara: Loss and Found
(2023) Nsabimana, Jean Claude; Josephy, Svea; Alexander, Jane
This MFA research project investigates the issue of e-waste in Africa, drawing attention to the cycle of trade associated with the extraction and exploitation of minerals in Africa and the impact on the environment and lives of people on the continent. The project uses e-waste to highlight sponsored conflict in Africa, the displacement of millions of people and the dumping of outdated and unwanted electronic goods back on the continent. The attendant exhibition, foregrounded the impact of colonialism, capitalism and the competition for mineral resources that have impacted millions of lives. Personal experience is woven into this wasted landscape, considering the repurposed materials used by many artists in Africa historically and contemporarily and their relationship both to these social and environmental issues and to European and North American art history.
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Just Don't Know How She Does It: a Feminist's Showroom of Subversive Machinations
(2018) Robertson, Emily Harriet Bulbring; Zaayman, Carine; Skotnes, Pippa
I have created a body of work that takes the form of a series of inventions or products aimed at giving their users the appearance of conforming to existing gender stereotypes pertaining to the roles of women, whilst actually allowing them to live a life of their own choosing. I have communicated my intentions through the media of collage, montage, installation and mixed-media assemblage. The collective body of work is displayed in the mode of a showroom, as one might encounter in a home exposition or convention. Some of the stereotypes I have found most pervasive in my lived experiences, and those of the women I know, include sentiments such as: all women should be docile and submissive; a woman's life is incomplete without a husband and child; women's primary concerns should be the domestic space and serving their families; a career or other personal goals should never be prioritised over family and home; a woman's body and sexuality is purely for male pleasure and consumption, and she should be damned if she behaves otherwise. As a point of departure in the development of this project I have focused on how these stereotypes are perpetuated within popular culture. I have taken cues from Pop art especially concerning the way in which these artists have employed images and objects from everyday consumer culture. To recall, Pop art was a movement that emerged in the 1950s and responded to the increasingly pervasive and omnipresent consumerist culture. Through mimicry of consumer product design and making use of mass media objects, artists critiqued the agendas of their capitalist society. One of the major instances of parody that occurred within the movement was in the elevation of ordinary products or celebrities to subject matter for high art, such as in Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup Cans (1962) or in Jeff Koons's New Shelton Wet/Dry Doubledecker (1981). The framing of consumer culture as high art invited a reconsideration of the value of such objects as well as the institution of high art. The title of this exhibition acknowledges its Pop art lineage, as it references Richard Hamilton's seminal collage piece Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? (1956). The inter-textual reference to Hamilton's work is further articulated by my use of collage and the ironic, self-aware employment of references to consumer culture. Artists working within the Pop milieu, such as Hamilton, are noted for their use of irony and parody, which cuts into both consumer culture and fine art practices. Such double-edged critique also underpins this project
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Locating me in order to see you
(2007) Mntambo, Nandipha; Alexander, Jane
I have produced a series of sculpted cast figures in the medium of cowhide as part of my Masters degree. This document, titled Locating Me in Order to See You, serves as an explication of the practical component. Initially I examine the broad context in which my sculpture has been produced, and that in which it will be presented and likely to be received. In attempting to position myself within Contemporary Art discourse, I have specifically considered how Contemporary Art from Africa is often read and comprehended by both those producing work on the continent and the Diaspora, and those interpreting, critiquing, collecting and marketing it, mainly in the West. The basic premise for this is a discussion of the inescapable labels of Black Artist and Black Art and what they imply within the context of Contemporary Art discourse with reference to Africa and more specifically, South Africa. As an emerging Contemporary African Artist I am faced with confronting some of the stereotypes and assumptions associated with art and artists of the continent and! or the legacy of the Apartheid regime.
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Not Making Big Rocks Small: Decolonising and Queering the Archive through Personal Narrative in the Film Essay
(2018) Heilig, Megan-Leigh; Siopis, Penny; Josephy, Svea
For my MFA, I aimed to reflect on my personal experiences and family history through the medium of a film essay and installation. By showing it in a public space, I hope to start a conversation about how white South Africans can reimagine their role within the decolonisation project as one that is active, present and uncomfortable.
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Other observations
(2004) Van der Byl, Gretchen; Teale, Julia; Lamprecht, Andrew
Painting presents an almost infinite range of possibilities to convey meaning through the versatility and potential of the medium. It is to this potential for mimicking and representing the real world that I wish to turn; for whilst the word painting refers to the manifestation of the physical object, it also, more importantly for this discussion, refers to the act of painting itself, the application of paint onto a surface in the articulation of an illusory reality. This ability to represent in paint, upon a two-dimensional surface, the real world in such a way as to cause in the viewer an experience which is somehow like that of looking at the world, is called naturalism.
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Out of sight : re-imagining Graaff's pool
(2009) Brett, Justin; MacKenny, Virginia
This paper attempts to set out the parameters for a discussion of my Masters exhibition, entitled Out of Sight. It traces out the progress of this exhibition over the course of two years, attempting to account for the parallel development of my work across the media of sculpture, drawing and figure painting. As such the paper traces out my engagement with the two major thematic concerns of my masters exhibition: the representation of the gay male body and architectural space and site. The latter concerns both my strategies for the re-modelling of the gallery space, and my approach to the representation of the specific site of Graaff's Pool, on the Sea Point Promenade in Cape Town. I set out to explain how this site, located in a liminal space, geologically, architecturally and historically, becomes a nodal point for the concerns of my masters project. As such, I begin to trace out the .themes that intersect in my sculptural re-presentations of the site of Graaff's pool operating within zones of visibility and invisibility. My translation of this site into a site-specific installation in the gallery space intentionally disturbs the viewer's ability to see, in its treatment of scale and surface, as well as obstructs and directs their movement through the space. This discussion of visibility lin visibility extends to my treatment of the figure in drawings and watercolours, paying particular attention to my working of the surface in order to trouble the act of looking, hence the visibility or presence of the figure. This enables me to introduce ideas around the difficulties of representation in general, but particularly of the gay male body and the expression of a gay male subjectivity. I introduce into my discussion, if cautiously, the ideas of Michel Foucault and Mikhael Bakhtin. I do not in any way present a synthesis of these ideas, but begin to introduce their thinking as a way of reading specific works in the exhibition. As such, I trace out a possible connection between Foucault's idea of powerlknowledge and the invisible operation of disciplinary power as placing limits on the representation of the gay male body, and as such on its visibility.
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Plan B, a gathering of strangers (or) this is not working.
(2018) Hutton, Dean; Searle, Berni; Lambrecht, Andrew
The text and images that follow queers2 a dissertation submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the award of a degree of Master of Fine Art at Michaelis School of Fine Art, as a cohort of the Institute of Creative Arts. The student explores methodologies of Self-Writing, Performance (studies) as Research; Technology as self-reflection and Radical Sharing; considers the Phenomenologies of Whiteness, embodied power and performing the transgressive white body to contribute to understandings of how the white body performs visuality, hypervisibility, reproduction3, considers its relationship to surveillance and embraces becoming monster. The design of this dissertation is an engagement with the current expectations of an object of academic enquiry – the publication bridges disciplines of Fine Art, Media and Performance studies. Treat this as a notebook, a work-in-progress, in transition – an object of research. Add your own notes, doodles and comments. Share it.

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