Wesley van Eeden

'Secret Country'

Secret Country explores the idea of a place that has not yet been found or disclosed because of a lack of education and the opportunities that a government should be providing for its young people. (van Eeden - catalogue)

Wesley van Eeden

Secret Country

Ltd Edition archival print

29.7 x 42cm

From van Eeden's proposal ........
This artwork was originally created for the inaugural Cape Town Art Fair in October 2013. A film is in the process of being edited showing the process of the artwork being produced at the art fair as it was a live painting / installation. If the video is ready it would be great to show the video as well.

The artwork represents an African school girl, her school badge is representative of South Africa as a “school”. The school in this case has taught us very little and our vision is limited with the knowledge we have attained. This knowledge could be the new government, our parents, society etc. The title “Secret Country” is alluding to a place that has not been discovered yet and or been kept under cover for the fear of individuality and self reliance. The artwork is about celebrating our own individuality and self worth and the flowers, fauna and birds are metaphors for this.

Also if there is sufficient funding a live painting could be cool for the opening night. The artwork is digitally produced and wheat pasted onto a canvas at any size with abstract painted imagery under and on top of the design as the photo below. 

This artwork depends on the 'New Media' advent of graphic design. Graphic images have been used in the past in the world of advertising and also of graphic novels and comics. van Eeden's technique moves them into the gallery space as 'painting'. He emphasizes this shift by actually painting onto the digital canvas as seen above.

- what is digital and what is painted? TAKE A GUESS!

Link to an article on graphic novels

All the images surrounding the schoolgirl are metaphors for what is available in the world. van Eeden says that 'the artwork is about celebrating our own individuality and self worth and the flowers, fauna and birds are metaphors for this". 
Do you think schools help or hinder learners in discovering their new identity in the global world? Do they protect learners from too much happening in the world out there or do they keep us insular and unaware? 
The global world 'out there' exposes young people to many attractive possibilities.
Can you define a 'global identity'? Debate this briefly ........

Activity link: This could be used in your school's studio OR at the gallery workshop.

Link to interview with van Eeden (under construction pending artist's response)

Possible NCS Curriculum Theme links:
5. Multi-media and New Media - alternative and contemporary art forms in South  Africa

6. Post-democratic Identity in south Africa (including issues of language, ethnicity, globalization, urbanization in the new South Africa)

Doung Anwar Jahangeer

'stepping into freedom'

stepping into freedom - proposed video installation

stepping into freedom - performance in the Warwick Junction as part of the City Initiative programme

steppingintofreedom - construction detail

Doung's interest in 'anti-form' could be useful in art-making activities in your school.

Link to suggested activity with questions.

Link to dala website

  dala  -  verb to make / create (isiZulu)

Link to interview with doung  

The influence of Dada and Kurt Schwitters  
Link to MoMA

Scwitters - Merzbau  - early 20th century - Germany

The beginning of the 20th Century saw an interest in ‘anti-form’ with the ‘merz-bau’ (maze buildings) of Kurt Schwitters of the DADA movement in Germany. Schwitters was motivated by the trauma of the First World War in Europe, and the resulting chaos in Germany.

Is it possible to comment on the elements and principles of art in Doung's piece - such as composition - when the main interest of the work is its anti-form? 
In the performance piece, the artist resembles a municipal official and so questions the role of of these officials in the regulation of traders in Durban. The maze of gazebo scaffolding has no function as a shelter and makes viewers curious about its purpose. This starts to make them think about what could be going on and  to question the authorities - it 'conscientises' the public. 
Doung's hope is that this gives rise to alternative negotiated solutions for traders in Durban, and as such, the piece has a socio-political purpose.

Possible NCS  Curriculum Theme 

5. Multi-media and New Media - alternative and contemporary art forms in South  Africa

Pascale Chandler

'Wounded tread of gentle souls'

Pascale Chandler

Wounded tread of gentle souls

Oil on canvas

63 x 196cm

Chandler's intention in this work is to raise the  issue of censorship of art works, as well as to look at the function of the creative process in public (social) spaces. It makes specific reference to the censorship of Andries Botha's Three Elephants public sculpture in the Warwick Junction - Durban.

Link to the controversial censorship issue - Mail & Guardian

Central to this controversy - Chandler says - is "a collision of power and multiple egos traded as particular perspectives on social identity".

This raises questions of social identity within our own Durban (eThekwini) environment. Who are we? How do we react to others? What right do we have to impose our views on others - or others on us? What differences in power exist around us? What other collisions of values have you experienced?

Chandler says that "The painting explores (a) metaphorical sombre space where a sinister machine secretly shifts a mass of debris." The debris are the carcasses of the sculpture which Chandler says 'has been held hostage by the eThekwini Municipality." The colours that Chandler uses (dark grey/blues) and their loose application suggests a sombre sad Durban with the identifying horizontal bank of the Bluff in the far background.

The bright orange 'sinister' machine contrasts strongly with these grey/blues and suggests power as it seems to emerge from the sea in pursuit of the scared elephant on the right. The long thin shape of the canvas format could suggest a moment in time in a long narrative.

The title of the painting is extremely evocative. Wounded tread of gentle souls.

It suggests that there is a bigger issue at stake here - that of the elephants themselves and their endangered status in our country. This is the intention of the original Botha sculpture as commissioned by the Human Elephant Foundation. www.humanelephant.org

Link to interview  

Did you know that elephants used to walk down to Durban Bay to wallow in the mud?

Link to Elephants in Durban

“Andries Botha and the municipality have agreed that Botha will complete the sculpture of a small herd of elephants at Warwick Junction on the original site,” Photo from M&G

(All quotes are from the artist’s statement - Exhibition catalogue)

Activity for class:

Issues of social identity - 'Us' and 'Them' discussions as a visual dialogue.

Think of a metaphor for YOU or for something you value. (You can’t use a ‘selfie’ ...... that’s literal, not metaphorical!) Do the same for a ‘sinister’ other. What happens between them? Create a visual image in any medium that explores a moment in time in your story / narrative.

Possible NCS curricular themes:

3. Socio-political art - including resistance art of the 1970s and 1980s(??)

6. Post-democratic Identity in south Africa  (including issues of language, ethnicity, globalization, urbanization  in the new South Africa)

Sifiso kaMkame

'Letters of Home'

Sifiso Ka-Mkame

Letters of Home (detail)

Oil pastel on paper

122 x 150cm

2012 – 2014

Detail

With a group of like-minded artists in Durban, (ka Mkame) began searching for symbols of an African identity beyond the confines of his own region and this is reflected in his paintings.

And yet...... his Letters to God of 1988, shows a similar keen view of the South African socio-political world. As ka Mkame says of this earlier painting - "my work is just what I see when I wake up in the morning." (Sue Williamson - Resistance Art in SA)

Letters to God 1988 Sisiso ka Mkame

What does ka Mkame see when he wakes up in 2014?

Xenophobia? Eradication of our animal heritage?
Look at his work and identify some more of his socio-political concerns. 

How do they resonate with what you have noticed around you?

Link to interview   (under construction pending artist's response)

ka Mkame’s technique is based on an unusual manipulation of oil pastels.

A heavy white cartridge paper is covered with a light base colour (e.g. yellow) and this is polished so that it stains the paper. Other coloured layers are applied over this to define and suggest the subject matter. 

kaMkame scratches through these top layers with the blade of a Stanley knife. In this way he creates an illusion of form and space, and a subtle layered effect of translucent colours. The work is then sealed by polishing or by applying a layer of PVA glazecoat.

This will be demonstrated at a workshop. 

(gallery@kznsagallery.co.za for enquiries)

Link to practical activity

"I am a child of Africa" says kaMkame in 10 Years: 100 Artists. [ISBN 1-86872-987-7]

The layering of the oil pastels creates a rich patterned surface of textures, tones and colours that relates to Africa both visually and conceptually. 

ka Mkame's African identity is truly post-democratic in the sense that it is based on inclusivity. In an interview from 2003, ka Mkame insists that we are all Africans. His 'Ancestral Spirit' series from that year, refers to the ancestors that are common to all people. 

Link to Ancestral Spirits

This is an interesting idea in light of the discoveries of Early Man in the African Great Rift Valley.

Link to 'Common Ancestor' Theory

Possible NCS curricular themes:

3. Socio-political art - including resistance art of the 1970s and 1980s.
6. Post-democratic Identity in south Africa (including issues of language, ethnicity, globalization, urbanization in the new South Africa)