Launch of William Kentridge Nose, 26 January 2010.

The Handspring Puppet Company book was launched in Cape Town on 18 December 2009 at Kalk Bay Bookstore . The Handspring founders Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler and many of those who have collaborated with them over the thirty years of their existance were present. The event was opened with speeches from Bronwyn Law-Viljoen managing editor of David Krut Publishing, followed by Jane Taylor, editor and contributing author, who delivered a speech on the history of Handspring. As a member of the performing arts and contributing poet to the book, Lesego Rampolokeng recited a poem at the launch.

The book  was extremely well received with the bookstore selling the largest number of books ever sold at one of their launch. David Krut was present from David Krut Johannesburg with his partner Grethe Fox and many professionals from theatre and the performing arts. Alastair Whitton the manager of David Krut Projects Cape Town arranged the launch in association with Ann Donald of the bookstore. The evening allowed city dwellers the opportunity to come to Kalk Bay and enjoy summer’s evening with good company and excellent food provided by the wonderful Olympia Cafe of Kalk Bay.

There will be a signing by Adrian and Basil on 23 January 2010 at David Krut Publishing in Cape Town at 11:00 for those who were unable to attend at Kalk Bay.

November 11, 2009, 6:19 pm

Performa 09: William Kentridge on Divided Selves

Paula Court, Courtesy of Performa William Kentridge’s “I Am Not Me, the Horse Is Not Mine.”

The South African artist William Kentridge was part of a successful puppet troupe before he became known as a visual artist who explored the painful legacy of apartheid in tragic-comedic stop-action animations. His films unfold in vigorously hand-drawn charcoal scenes that mutate as we watch, with images often emerging from and disappearing into small cyclones of sooty black. A frequent character in these tales was Soho Eckstein, a wealthy, sometimes guilt-ridden Johannesburg businessman with an active fantasy life who bears a striking resemblance to the artist.

Given all this, it was not surprising that Mr. Kentridge stepped into his work, as himself, on the occasion of an animation that he showed at the Venice Biennale in 2006. Still, that didn’t necessarily prepare you for the aplomb and authority with which Mr. Kentridge took to the stage at Cedar Lake last night to play the lead – again himself — in a performance-with-video-and-video-animation titled “I Am Not Me. That Horse Is Not Mine.” His motivation was to provide an update on his work on a new production of Dmitri Shostakovich’s 1928 opera “The Nose,” commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera.

This was however no simple interim report, but rather an exquisitely polished work of art in itself, thanks largely to Mr. Kentridge’s marvelous stage presence. Characterizing the content of “The Nose” as the divided or fragmented self, Mr. Kentridge began by outlining the eponymous short story — by Gogol – on which the Shostakovich opera is based. Describing the way Gogol doubted the credibility of his own tale of a runaway nose, he then cites earlier authors divided against their narratives, along with earlier stories of lost noses, in Laurence Sterne and Cervantes.

To illustrate the divided selves within us all, he described his experience of being of two minds about whether, at midnight in a foreign city, to go bar-hopping or back to the hotel to sleep. Soon identical second and third versions of Mr. Kentridge were wandering around behind him (on video), coming and going, listening skeptically, moving furniture and in one bravura sequence, catching the flying sheets of paper as he started throwing out his notes.

Moving forward in time, Mr. Kentridge delves into his own anxiety about this performance, which he calls a “lecture.” We see him fretting in bed, fully dressed, while his wife sleeps. On another tangent, he takes up the Soviet purges of the 1930s, describing Shostakovich’s brush with death, Soviet-style, and wondering whether Trotsky was the “nose” of the Communist Party. In one riveting sequence he reads from the transcript of the show trial of Nikolai Bukharin jousting brilliantly but futilely with his accusers.
Mr. Kentridge’s magical 40-minute star-turn whets the appetite for his version of “The Nose,” which debuts at the Met in March. Perhaps a walk-on part is in order.

November 10, David Krut and Gary Schneider on West 26th Street, New York.

A chance siting of a DHL vehicle promoting South Africa was too good a Kodak moment to miss. Unfortunately, David did not have his camera and strangely enough, Gary Schneider the famous photographer, never walks around with his camera. Fortuitously, a man walked past carrying a tripod and was commandeered by David to take a few snapshots. Harry Wilks, (www.harrywilks.com) kindly obliged. Harry normally photographs Manhattan from the top of buildings. We could not get him to the top of the building where we have our gallery at 526 W. 26th (between 10th and 11th avenue). Harry’s work is included in museum collections such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the International Center for Photography and the New York Historical Society.

© Harry Wilks 2009.

The theme for this years Biennale is Borders and Whitton’s work Patmos and the War at Sea series was chosen to feature amoung four other South African artists. Whitton relates his work to the Borders theme by stating that ”Patmos considers the space between parallel landscapes. Landscapes evoke the notion of borders and the border between worlds, where at the point of impact the front line blurs.” In Patmos, Whitton also makes use of words; words used to evoke pictures. As the words in the series are difficult, if not impossible, to decipher (as they are laser-cut Braille text), so are the World War Two images that Whitton uses. This ‘blurring’ in both image and text relates the work to two worlds; the physical and spiritual.

Edtions of the Patmos series are also up on display at David Krut’s new space at Arts on Main. For those of you that have not heard, AOM is a hub for artists and creatives. It is located in teh Joburg CBD and the building breathes with a history of the city. Whitton’s work sits beautifully in a venue that speaks of new and old worlds colliding.

For more info on the Biennalle log onto the Creative Africa Network:

• http://www.creativeafricanetwork.com/

For info on AOM log onto:

• http://www.artsonmain.co.za/

For more on Patmos and the War at Sea try these posts from DK Publishing:

• Alastair Whitton’s Encrypted Island
• Alastair Whitton interviewed by Jacqueline Nurse
• Patmos and the War at Sea, an Engaging Exhibition
• Patmos and the War at Sea
• Alastair Whitton Screenprint Project at Halftone Studio with Lingo Rodrigues

Alastair Whitton’s Patmos and the War at Sea exhibition ended its run last month at David Krut Projects, Jan Smuts and has since moved onto to two new locales, Art on Main and the Bamako Biennale. It is an exhibition that places a lot of emphasis on the viewer’s willingness to engage with the work and subject matter. If one takes time with Whitton’s digital laser cut prints, meaning reveals itself in surprising ways. An example of this are the small letters interspersed among the laser cut brail text.

There is also a hidden narrative within his works, which were exhibited along all the DK Project’s walls, filling the gallery with memories and visions of the past. Although the artist offers up so much for the viewer to engage with, the meaning of the images still remains elusive. Whitton has aimed to express the inability of historicisation through visuals or writing to capture the past. Ways of Seeing, the title of the famous John Berger text, is what this exhibition is about.

Whitton does not present history, in this case of World War Two, as something finite, rather the archival war imagery transform into new and surreal objects through their digital replication - Parachutes look like jelly fish, an aerial photograph of trains becomes a murky river. One could see a genuine desire from those at the exhibition to understand or at least attempt to understand the meaning behind each work. Considering it was the Spring Art Tour that night and with all the hullabaloo  and the Grolsch flowing strong, Whitton works provided a meditative and intellectual space, if but for a moment.

The following Saturday was Whitton’s walk-about with some introductory words from David Krut. Krut spoke of Whitton’s interesting life thus far; his spell in Holland at the studio of Marlene Dumas to his time living in the Karoo and finally his current position managing David Krut Cape Town. After a brief thanks to David, Whitton spoke about the work that had taken him a year to complete. He explained about the highly technical of the Braille lettering and exacting digital replication. Whitton alluded to the many messages and theme’s in the work and chose a few works in particular to ’decode’ so the audience could have an insight into the inner workings of the artist. Finally, Whitton answered a few questions from the audience and was back to Cape Town.

The bookstore will be hosting a number of events in the coming months, beginning with the launch of our new book Handspring Puppet Company on the 19th of November, and a poetry Saturday on the 5th of December.

text by Jacqueline Nurse, taken from iArt Exhibitions

Colbert Mashile has been heralded as a contemporary African surrealist of sorts. His imagery has developed over the years into a sophisticated language of symbols and characters that are, although often almost recognisable, drawn completely from journeys into deep imagination. Mashile declines to offer any direct interpretation of his own work, and so viewers are left to cast around for visual affinities in order to decipher his artistic code.

When the stream of attention from writers and critics began around 2000, Mashile was almost completely pre-occupied with his own responses to the experience of the male circumcision ritual undergone by boys from the Mapulana clan of the Northern Sotho tribe before they reach their teens. Mashile attributes much of the imagery in his early work to his attempt to confront the horror and trauma of this event. The time Mashile spent living in Johannesburg had similar dark effects on his work. However, once re-located to Bushbuckridge, a rural setting in which he was able to experience his home landscape in a more direct way and live with a greater sense of peace, his work began to take on different and lighter forms.

Looking at work selected from over the years exposes interesting shifts in the artist’s modus operandi: from the ‘psychological images of phallic towers, cowrie shells, zoomorphic and anthropomorphic forms, huddled crowds, whispers and an ominous secrecy’ cited by Kate McCrickard in Mashile’s early work, to a shift toward figuration and subtle development in colour palette in more recent years.

Colbert Mashile on davidkrutpublishing.com

Colbert  Mashile artwork

Colbert Mashile