2011 in review

SUBSTATION

Wits University, Cnr Station Street & Jorissen Street, Bramfontein

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For updates regarding Substation exhibitions, please email zen.marie@wits.ac.za

2011 Exhibitions

Substation Exhibitions: February - December

TOP Achievers Show

17 February 2011

The 2011 Top Achievers Exhibition was a showcase of the best work produced in 2010 by students in their first to third year of study. The exhibition has been held annually for many years and was championed by the late Professor Crump during his professorship at the School. The exhibition was thereafter taken over by Fine Arts lecturer Zen Marie in 2011.  

Wide Angle

23 – 28 March 2011

WIDE ANGLE was a multi-platform project that took place from 23 to 26 March 2011 in Johannesburg. It included a discussion forum and an exhibition, which considered and reflected upon participatory photographic practice; how photography can be used as a way to participate in the world, rather than solely as a means of observing it. The 3-day forum brought together an exciting group of local and international practitioners and theoreticians. They discussed and explored projects that were produced with the participation and collaboration of individuals, groups and communities associated with particular public or social issues and spaces.

 http://www.wideangle.org.za/

ABDULRAZAQ AWOFESO AND THUSO MORUTHANE

1 – 15 APRIL 2011

Abdulrazaq Awofeso and Thuso Moruthane were two of the first artists working on the newly devised Substation Residency program. Awofeso and Moruthane worked in a variety of media including sculpture, installation as well as various multimedia practices. Their collaborative work interrogated and negotiated ideas around contemporary and traditional art practices.

Keleketla! Library at the Substation: Nonwane

29 April – 12 May 2011

Keleketla! Library’s residency was a walk-in research/ social space that explored the texts Welcome to Our Hillbrow (Phaswane Mpe, 2001), The Quiet Violence of Dreams (K. Sello Duiker, 2001) and Darkness Pass (Moses Taiwa Molelekwa, 2005). Furthermore, the residency was an encounter of screenings, listening sessions, walks, talks, jammings, recordings, workshops, readings, writing, discovery and creation. These encounters were a method of research and practice towards an unusual performance.

Keleketla! Library is based at the Drill Hall, Twist Street, in downtown Johannesburg

Process This: Wits MFA Show at Michaelis Galleries, UCT

25 July – 10 August 2011

Process This was an exhibition that reflected on, engaged with, and derived from a series of thought processes and experiments by second-year Masters in Fine Arts students from Wits University, contextualising a moment in each student’s research process. The exhibition included works by Serge Alain Nitegeka, Tamara Osso, Haifeng Xuan, Quinten Edward Williams and Patricia Driscoll.

Original/Copy: Martienssen Prize 2011

03 August – 10 August 2011

Framed around the theme “Original/Copy”, the 2011 Martienssen Prize took into consideration one of the fastest growing discourses in contemporary art; the questions of authenticity and anxieties of authorship as its starting point. This year’s award invited students in their third or fourth year of the Fine Arts degree to explore the framework without necessarily deviating from their present studio and off-studio explorations. The idea was to invite productive tensions rather than forced binaries, assumptions or simple assessments of what a copy or an original looks like, what context it is for or what effect it has.

The Winners of the 2011 Martienssen prize were Danielle Wepener, Mbali Khoza and Mary Mandivavarira. The 2011 Martienssen Prize was curated by Gabi Ngcobo with the assistance of Naadira Patel

Currents: A Presentation of Prints

12 August – 19 August 2011

The print portfolio is a collaborative project undertaken by third and fourth year Fine Arts students at Wits School of Arts and Michaelis Art School. The objective was two-fold. Firstly, students within each university were encouraged to work collaboratively in creating their print for the portfolio. Secondly, these prints were exchanged between the two art schools and each participant received a portfolio of their own.

The 15 participants approached varied print media including etching, monotype, silkscreen, digital printing, lithography and linocut with an experimental spirit, resulting in work that challenges the conventions of the medium and its display.

Heimlich Manoeuvers: Michaelis MFA Show at the Substation

23 August – 3 September 2011

Heimlich Manouevers: showcased work by Michaelis Masters students in their second year of study, who engaged with the secret, the hidden and the uncanny as strategies within their work.

URBAN GAMES

Urban Games Johannesburg - The Substation, Wits School of Arts

Urban Games is a joint research project by the centers of Public Spaces and Scenic Spaces of the Design programs (François Duconseille & Jean-Christophe Lanquetin) and the “Arts Hors Format” workshop of the Art program (Eléonore Hellio) from the ESAD Strasbourg ,  the Wits School of Arts in Johannesburg (Georges Pfruender,  David Andrew, Natasha Christopher, Zen Marie, Naadira Patel), and VANSA the Visual Arts Network of South Africa (Joseph Gaylard and Lester Adams)
The Urban Games project is a moment of research and interaction with the aim of generating new research tools or methods for engaging with the urban city space. Urban Games explores and experiments with urban territories and the ways of life/lives that they generate, inscribing within them artistic and theatrical practices that question notions of public space and communal living.
Furthermore, the project seeks to problematize the question of public space in its articulation with the scenographic practices initiated by ESAD Strasbourg. These practices engage with and generate questions around the notion of spectacle, performance, play and audience. These questions, situated somewhere between representation and presentation as historical components of urbanity, in a postcolonial and multi-polar world, are constantly being reconfigured in relation to developing megalopolises, the scale and singularity of which compels us to rethink our relationship to urban environments, and the prospects offered by new technologies.

http://urbangamesjhb.wordpress.com/

Now you see me, now you do - A Substation Residency by correspondence.

Gabi Ngcobo and Nastio Mosquito

22 September – 18 October

"Now you see me, now you do" - a Substation residency by correspondence featured Nástia Mosquito and Fine Arts lecturer Gabi Ngcobo. During the residency the Substation gallery space had been transformed into a lounge and a waiting room, to wait for Nástia who, like Kafka's messiah, “will only come when he is no longer necessary; he will come only on the day after his arrival; he will come, not on the last day, but on the very last. He will come on Friday 14 October at 4pm.”

Christopher Cozier / Luis Jacobs / Jimmy Ogonga

22 October – 5 November

Trinidad based Christopher Cozier and Toronto based Luis Jacobs took up residence in the Substation in preparation for and alongside the Utopias/Dystopias conference at WITS University, hosted by CISA (Center for Indian Studies Africa) in which they also presented papers.

Their residency also featured a visit by Kenyan multi-media artist and founder of the Nairobi Arts Trust, Jimmy Ogonga, for a week-long series of discussions with the Substation Residency at WITS, and the possibility of setting up links with the Centre for Contemporary Art of East Africa (CCAEA). One of these discussions, titled: (Dis)locating Critical Spaces: A South-South Dialogue took the form of a short presentation by each artist on the ideas of alternative / dislocated spaces of production, and was followed by a live skype discussion with Nicole Awai, a Jamaican artist who, at the time, had a show on at the Vilcek Foundation in New York City.

EZRA WUBE:

8 November – 8 December

Ezra Wube, an Ethiopian multimedia artist is the final artist in residence at The Substation Residency: Dislocating the Studio for 2011. Ezra will be in residence from November 8th - December 8th 2011

Watch out for more details on events related to the residency on www.facebook.com/dislocatingthestudio.

http://www.ezrawube.net/about.htm