RESEARCH AS PRACTICE 2014 by Eugene Hön

Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Johannesburg

Volume 1 2014

Editor

Brenda Schmahmann

Editorial Committee:

Leora Farber Tracy Murinik Vedant Nanackchand

Art Editor

Eugene Hon

Graphic design and layout: UJ Graphic Studio Karien Brink

A journal published by the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Johannesburg

Volume 1 (2014)

Table of contents Editorial 4 Brenda Schmahmann

Promoting green solutions

Green Week 2014 Christa van Zyl

Curatorial landmarks

Taiwan Ceramics Curatorial Coup Reshma Chhiba

House Jones Ken Stucke

Coming of Age: 21 years of Artist Proof Studio Kim Berman

Between classrooms and communities

Thinking Design: UJ Industrial Design Alumni Exhibition Angus Campbell

Major one-person exhibitions

Safety belts, pirates and Slim Shady: Effecting positive social change in our own neighbourhoods Robyn Cook

The Purple Shall Govern: Mary Sibande Leora Farber

Supporting a community through Graphic Design: Melville, Johannesburg Christa van Zyl

Separ(n)ation 22 Alex Opper

Assegai Awards Christa van Zyl

…and the ship sails on Eugene Hon

Gordon Froud: A retrospective of exhibitions I never had David Paton

Telkom Convergence Competition Clairwyn van der Merwe on behalf of Telkom Group Communication Children’s Chair Designs Andrew Gill

Collecting the Landscape Landi Raubenheimer

Performances, films and new kinds of media

Hallmarking Jewellery Design: an emerging UJ brand of excellence Judy Peter

White Fence Tracy Murinik

Reconfigure: Thuthuka Jewellery Exhibition staff writer

The Rhythms of Minutes Mocke J van Veuren

Drawing on the book: Book arts, “bookness” and bloodletting David Paton

Uncles & Angels Mocke J van Veuren

New creative platforms and spaces

Sober & Lonely: On generosity, artist-run platforms and new institutional strategies Robyn Cook

Phumani Archival Paper Mill Kim Berman

Community-based-research Art Interventions at HaMakuya Kim Berman

Editorial A warm welcome to Research as Practice, a journal providing an indication of just some the myriad ways in which the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture (FADA) at the University of Johannesburg uses creative practices as forums for enabling the development of new insights and understandings. Undertaking practice-based endeavours involving ‘pure’ as well as applied research, staff members of FADA work in numerous design disciplines as well as in the visual arts. The faculty is, furthermore, one in which practitioners have developed particular strengths in social development and creative education – strands of capacity which mean that the activities of research, community engagement and teaching often intersect in dynamic and fruitful ways. In conceptualising this new journal, the editorial committee sought to create a forum in which practice-based (or practiceled) research within the faculty might be celebrated through a visually rich form. There were two primary reasons underpinning our belief that a journal which is image-weighted could be valuable. Firstly, we are mindful of complexities surrounding an author’s interpretation of his or her own creative practice and the difficulties of setting out to ‘analyse’ it, as such, but recognise that visual practices do nevertheless often benefit from – and indeed in many instances even require – contextualisation if they are to read in insightful and productive ways. In such instances, the capacity to show practices through rich visuals accompanied by brief texts can be very helpful. Secondly, by focusing on images and by making available video, RAP seeks to complement rather than complete with accredited art journals in and outside of South Africa. Providing a much-needed forum for clear and comprehensive visualisations of work and activities, an area often compromised in scholarly journals, its design and form is premised on the understanding that more discursive interpretations of art and design by staff members in the faculty can – and should – be submitted to subsidy-earning publications rather than being featured on its pages. The 2014 volume of RAP commences with discussion of some important curatorial work done within the faculty. Wendy Gers, Research Associate in the Visual Identities in Art and Design (VIAD) research centre, was appointed curator of the 2014 Taiwan Ceramics Biennale – a great honour and a wonderful coup for FADA. Reshma Chhiba provides an overview of the Biennale. Also of significance was the impressive large-scale retrospective of the Artist Proof Studio, curated by its co-founder, Kim Berman. Shown at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, it had various spinoff shows in the United States, as Prof Berman indicates. Finally, this section introduces an engaging exhibition

which was mounted in the faculty and which featured works by five alumni of the Industrial Design department. As Angus Campbell, its curator, observes, the show involved showing “the process of their [these alumni’s] design thinking in commercial design projects and the results thereof”.

Institute for Contemporary Art, which she operates along with Lauren von Gogh. A forum for hosting and enabling creative work, it is a key space within the paradigm termed ‘new institutionalism’. Kim Berman examines the move of the Phumani Archival Paper Mill from the Doornfontein campus to its new home on the Bunting Road campus, where it is able to play a dynamic role within not only the faculty but also a larger community. She also introduces as arts-based approaches to development at HaMakuya – a project in the Tshivenda area of Limpopo which involves three departments in the faculty (Visual Art, Industrial Design and Fashion Design) as well as Sociology in the Humanities faculty and the Drama for Life programme at Wits University.

RAP then engages with five one-person exhibitions by an alumnus and four staff members. Mary Sibande was recipient of the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist Award (Visual Art) for 2013 – an accolade involving a travelling exhibition which began its run at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in 2013. Leora Farber introduces this impressive show which is visualised here through photos of its incarnation at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg. Alex Opper discusses his Separ(n)ation, a compelling engagement with the palisade fence and its impact on the marking out of territories in the city. Eugene Hon introduces his …and the ship sails on, an inventive exhibition in which he coupled ceramics with projection and challenged narrow understandings of ceramics as ‘decoration’. The more than 80 works included in Gordon Froud’s A Retrospective of Exhibitions I never had, which was shown at NiROX Projects on Arts on Main, were described in its press release as “having common threads of humour and found objects as source or medium”. David Paton opened the show, making the point there – and reiterating it for RAP – that these compelling works may have a more sombre underpinning than tends to be recognised. Landi Raubenheimer identifies her concerns in Collecting the Landscape, revealing how the intriguing works on her show explore the “notion of collecting, or owning parts of the landscape, making it a nostalgic place to visit in photographs and through the handling of found objects”.

Environmental sustainability is a focus within the faculty. Christa van Zyl reveals how the faculty’s Green Week 2014 involved FADA working with two new partners – the Faculty of Management and UJ Enactus – and the exciting work that emerged. Ken Stucke shows how a focus on the environment also underpinned the prize-winning House Jones which he designed. Last but certainly not least, the faculty has distinguished itself through projects involving students which extend into, and engage in important ways with, South African communities. While Robyn Cook shows how, for the Design Indaba’s “Your Street” competition, Graphic Design students devised usercentred design strategies for their own neighbourhoods, Christa van Zyl explores how the Graphic Design BTech class worked on developing a brand for Melville. Christa van Zyl also explores the success of students at the University in the “Assegai Integrated Marketing Awards” – that is, awards for advertising agencies and student campaigns that excel at direct marketing – as well as a competition organised by Telkom. FADA often enables helpful and productive collaborations between departments, and one such scenario took place in 2013 when, as Andrew Gill indicates, the Interior Design and Industrial Design departments collaborated on the production of children’s chairs which were donated to the Ethembeni Children’s Home in Doornfontein. Issues around branding and hallmarking jewellery have been explored by students in the Jewellery Department, as Judy Peter indicates. We also discuss the Thuthuka Jewellery exhibition and awards, which are the product of a focus on skills training and development. David Paton examines how he and Kim Berman have focused on a project of introducing students to book arts.

Tracy Murinik introduces the conceptually rich and creative engagements with fashion – sometimes via performance – by Regine Steenbock, who visited the faculty in October 2013. Mocke J van Veuren discusses his impressive MTech submission, which won the University of Johannesburg Chancellor’s Gold Medal in 2013. Including a video installation, a short film and a performance, it explored, as he notes, the “question of how to develop methods for the study of urban everyday life, combining empirical data and poetic interpretation”. He also introduces Uncles & Angels, an engaging film and dance project he produced in collaboration with Nelisiwe Xaba. Staff at the University of Johannesburg not only curate and work in standard exhibition spaces but also establish new creative platforms. Robyn Cook introduces the Sober & Lonely

Brenda Schmahmann

Curatorial landmarks Taiwan Ceramics Curatorial Coup Reshma Chhiba

VIAD Research Centre would like to congratulate one of its research associates, Wendy Gers, for being appointed the curator of the 2014 Taiwan Ceramics Biennale. The Taiwan Ceramics Biennale 2014 (TCB) offers visitors a rich and expansive overview of key trends in contemporary international ceramics. It includes works and installations from 65 artists, designers, architects and makers from over 30 countries. Four distinct thematic concerns are explored.

(Photos: EP Hรถn)

Curatorial landmarks

Glocal Identities: people, places & perspectives:

It may be argued that clay is type of metaphorical DNA of humanity. Through the thematic of “Glocal Identities: people, places & perspectives”, the TCB considers the notion of ceramic traditions as a kind of global DNA. The oeuvres of artists and designers in this section evoke various sub-themes including: post-industrial heritage / culinary heritage (rethinking beer and tea vessels) / cultural heritage / religious heritage / social history / architectural heritage.

(Photos: EP Hön)

Sustainable futures: Shattered, upcycled & recycled ceramics: In light of growing international concern for the environment, as a consequence of global over-consumption, the theme of “Sustainable futures: Shattered, upcycled & recycled ceramics” focuses on artists and designers who are involved in socially responsible and engaged practices of upcycling, recycling and revalorizing shattered ceramics.

Sustainable futures: Shattered, upcycled & recycled ceramics:

(Photos: EP Hön)

3-D ceramics: The advent of affordable 3-D ceramics printers and other digital tools have ensured that ceramics practices are now engaged in a new historical trajectory. The TCB focuses on artists and designers who are at the forefront of this digital revolution. Works in this section are engaged with: 3-D printing / digital milling / bricks & building materials / digital wheel / copyright & creative commons / exploring codes in natural & digital systems.

(Photos: EP Hรถn)

Digital technology: Digital technology offers the possibility of new understandings and experiences of the ceramics medium. Works exhibited do not merely incorporate digital technologies but also use these tools to ask pertinent questions about ceramics, art and society. The works in this section explore: greed and gluttony in the West (via virtual reality) / empathetic, sensorial and utilitarian possibilities of domotic ceramics / personal and environmental life cycles / ceramics & music contemporary soundscapes / digital divides and technological dystopias.

(Photos: EP Hรถn)

Coming of Age: 21 years of Artist Proof Studio Kim Berman

Artist Proof Studio (APS), which I co-founded with the late Nhlanhla Xaba in 1991, held a retrospective exhibition between May and July 2012 at the Johannesburg Art Gallery called Coming of Age: 21 years of Artist Proof Studio. The exhibition was a showcase of the various phases of the development that followed a timeline and key events. A total of 13 exhibitions, some with multiple components in 18 gallery spaces on both floors, spanned the museum. For each gallery, I selected a curator and assistant as a process to reflect the multiple voices as well as the education and training component of the studio. Most of the co-curators for each installation were 4th-year student interns from the UJ Department of Visual Art and APS. The show was introduced by a wall of carved woodcut blocks of approximately 100 portraits of artists working at APS (Fig 1). This led the viewer into the introductory exhibition, “The story of Artist Proof from 1991-2012”, which I organized with my University of Johannesburg research assistants. It included printed portraits, historical and current photographs, a timeline, and two monumental prints by first-year students depicting historical milestones (Fig 2).

Figure 1: Woodcut blocks representing portraits of artists working at Artist Proof Studio Figure 2: “The Story of Artist Proof from 1991-2012” Figure 3: “Artists trained at Rorke’s Drift who were founding members and active during the first decade of Artist Proof Studio’s history”

A founding member of APS and veteran curator, Bongi Dhlomo, assisted by UJ intern Nompumelo Ngoma, curated the first phase of the exhibition which focused on work by many of the Rorkes Drift-trained artists who were founding members and active in the first decade of the studio’s history (Fig 3). “International Collaborations” was co-curated by Pamela Allara, emeritus professor from Brandeis University in Boston, and UJ intern, Jade Mahlagu (Fig.4). Hayley Berman, art psychotherapist, and Stompie Selibe, APS alumnus, curated “After the Fire”. Through a poignant installation of burnt fragments and Vandyke photographs (printed by UJ students) as well as a film by Thenji Nkomo, this section of the show captured the moment that changed the history of Artist Proof Studio – namely, the fire that resulted in the tragic death of Xaba and the loss of work by up to 100 artists (Fig. 5). Many of the other components were curated by APS staff members. Amongst these was “Paper Prayers Projects”, an exhibition of advocacy campaigns though crafts and community engagement that was curated by Shanin Antonopoulo and assisted by Lydia Zungu (Fig. 6). Robyn Nesbitt and I curated “New Releases”, which contained ten large-scale commissioned works by prominent artists such as William Kentridge, Walter Oltmann, Gerhard

Marx, Norman Catherine, Wim Botha, Kudzanai Chirai and Colbert Mashitile (Fig.7). “Pro-shop Highlights” was curated by the team of studio printers - Motsamai Thabane, Pontsho Sikhosana, Cloudia Hartwig and Charles Kholobeng – each of whom selected their collaboration highlights with renowned and emerging South African artists (Fig. 8).

an educational display curated by UJ MTech graduate Cloudia Hartwig, and Lucas Ngweng (Fig. 9); “APS staff show”, which consisted of between six and 12 works by 15 artists; and “Portfolio Highlights”, which Robyn Nesbitt and I curated (Fig. 10). Significantly, this exhibition resulted in a number of international spin-offs, including a major exhibition, “BostonJoburg Connections” at Tufts University in Boston, and a smaller showcase on the “International collaborations” which travelled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where it was showcased at the Southern Graphics International Print conference attended by 1500 printmakers in March 2013.

The lower level of the gallery contained staff and student exhibitions, and metaphorically provided the pillars for the showcases on the upper floor. Exhibitions included “The best of student work”, coordinated by Shannin Antonopolou; “Emerging Impressions”, curated by Wits University trainee curator, Tiffany Mentoor; “Printmaking Processes”,

Figure 4: “Printmaking Processes”

Figure 5: “International Collaborations” Figure 6: “Paper Prayer Projects” Figure 7: “New Releases” Figure 8: “Pro-shop Highlights” 9

Figure 5: “After the Fire”

UJ Industrial Design Alumni Exhibition

In August 2013 the Department of Industrial Design in FADA invited five past alumni to exhibit the process of their design thinking in commercial design projects and the results thereof. The exhibition, which I curated, was envisaged as celebrating the process of creativity and design as opposed to offering a display of decontextualized design objects on pedestals. The participating designers, chosen because of their active involvement in the Department of Industrial Design over the last five years as well as their range of professional disciplinary pathways, were Jonathan Fundudis (BTech ID) and David Holgreaves (BTech ID) of Snapp Design (www.snappdesign. com); Peter Harrison (BTech ID) of the freelance design firm called Harrison Design cc (www. harrisondesigns.co.za); and the collaborative team of Trevor Hollard (BTech ID) and Rowan Mardghum (BTech ID) of Maeker Products Pty Ltd (http://maeker.wozaonline.co.za) and amoq furniture (www.amoq.co.za) respectively. The inversion of ‘design thinking’ in the title of the exhibition accentuated my intention to highlight the thinking behind design – in the case of Industrial Design, the physical evidence of thinking in the process of design or problem solving. ‘Design thinking’ generally focuses on making the process of problem-solving explicit in design practice and is now promoted as a holistic approach to problemsolving in various business pursuits (Brown 2008). In 2010 Donald Norman was highly criticized (see Moggridge 2010) for describing ‘design thinking’ as a myth, and suggesting that the term was not some mystical process but rather described something that all designers do in order to come to any design solution. However, in 2013, Norman revised his earlier opinion after extensive personal experience of designers, business people and engineers “who jump to solutions and fail to question assumptions” (Norman 2013). Norman’s experience of many mindless design solutions has led him to believe that not all designers inherently follow such a considered approach to design problems; in order to negate mindless solutions, ‘design thinking’ is an important skill to teach and encourage in design students and designers. Norman describes ‘design thinking’ as a way to limit narrowly conceived design solutions by broadly exploring initial design problems through an iterative process until the real problem is identified: a range of solutions are then explored before a final convergent solution is proposed. The Opening of Thinking Design (Photos by KGBrand)

There are many interpretations of ‘design thinking’ as a process that have been conceptualised by design organisations. IDEO’s Human Centered Design (HCD) toolkit proposes a process of Hear > Create > Deliver (IDEO 2009) to describe the explorative and observational, then creative and finally evaluative process of design thinking. The d.school at Stanford University presents their process as sequential: empathize > define > ideate > prototype > test (Stanford d.school 2011). In contrast Richard Buchanan (1992: 5) highlights how “design eludes reduction and remains a surprisingly flexible discipline”. He also explores the complexity of wicked problems (as defined by Horst Rittel in 1972), in the attempt to find ‘solutions’ to problems that are so complex in their embedded context that finding a solution is almost like a dog chasing its tail. What is ultimately important, however, is to make the process of design and problem-solving more overt and, in the case of this exhibition, to document and celebrate the process of arriving at a design ‘solution’.

References Brown, T. 2008. Design Thinking. Harvard Business Review. June: 84-92. Buchanan, R. 1992. Wicked Problems in Design Thinking. Design Issues 8 (2): 5-21. IDEO, 2009. Human-centered design toolkit. Available: http://www.ideo.com/work/humancentered-design-toolkit/ Accessed 10 Jan 2010 Moggridge, B. 2010. Design Thinking: Dear Don… Available: http://www. core77.com/blog/columns/design_ thinking_dear_don__17042.asp Accessed 10 Dec 2012 Norman, D. 2013. Rethinking Design Thinking. Available: http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/ rethinking_design_thinking_24579.asp Accessed 20 Apr 2013 Norman, D. 2010. Design Thinking: A Useful Myth. Available: http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/ design_thinking_a_useful_myth_16790. asp Accessed 10 Dec 2012 Stanford d.school. 2011. Bootcamp bootleg. Available: http://dschool.stanford.edu/ wp-content/uploads/2011/03/ BootcampBootleg-2010v2SLIM.pdf Accessed 20 Nov 2012

snapp designs (Photos by KGBrand)

The Opening of Thinking Design (Photos by KGBrand)

Major one-person exhibitions

The opening of The Purple Shall Govern: Mary Sibande at the Standard Bank Art Gallery in Johannesburg (Photo: Paul Mills)

Major one-person exhibitions The Purple Shall Govern: Mary Sibande Leora Farber

The University of Johannesburg’s Visual Art Department are proud of their alumnus, Mary Sibande, who was the recipient of the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist Award (Visual Art) for 2013. For her exhibition, which travels to seven South African national galleries/museums, Sibande has created a new body of artworks that include an installation comprised of two life-size figures, three digital pigment prints of her alter-ego Sophie and an installation of suspended creatures made of polyester and cotton fabric. The exhibition marks a shift in Sibande’s artistic practice. From her earlier sculptural and photographic works (20072013), in which the artist assumes the fictional character of a South African domestic worker named “Sophie Ntombikayise”, the works on this exhibition make dual references to both Sophie and Sibande herself, often shown as being in direct physical and psychological conflict with one another. The Sibande figure is dressed in an elaborately styled, deep purple gown, whereas Sophie is recognisable by the indigo blue colour of her dress that predominated in earlier representations. The colour purple is a visual

signifier of this shift from one phase of Sibande’s artistic development to another. In using the colour purple, Sibande refers to an event in South African history: in 1989, the police sprayed a gathering of anti-apartheid protesters with dye so that they could be identified and picked up later. The new artworks privilege Sibande herself; they are manifestations of her own processes of self-crafting. In these works, she gives priority to her own desires and experiences without making reference to her maternal great grandmother, her grandmother, and her mother -- three generations of women in her family whose history and experiences of domestic servitude are embodied in the figure of Sophie. These new works seem to allude to Sibande’s personal fears and anxieties that have arisen from the transition from the known to the unknown, or as Thembinkose Goniwe (2013: 4) puts it: “[The exhibition] is an exploration carried out from Sibande’s personal perspective to confront the apprehensive experience of surrendering things that are part of her identity, experience and history.”

Reference

Goniwe, T. 2013. Ten theses on Mary Sibande’s new works. Exhibition catalogue. The Purple Shall Govern. Johannesburg: Gallery MOMO: 4.

The opening of The Purple Shall Govern: Mary Sibande at the Standard Bank Art Gallery in Johannesburg (Photo: Paul Mills)

The opening of The Purple Shall Govern: Mary Sibande at the Standard Bank Art Gallery in Johannesburg (Photos: Paul Mills)

Separ(n)ation

A solo exhibition by Alexander Opper 24 October â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 17 November 2013 GoetheonMain, Johannesburg

Alexander Opper, Uitval (2013) 132 steel palisade-pales (dimensions variable)

Separ(n)ation, a solo exhibition held at GoetheonMain in Johannesburg between 24 October and 17 November 2013, is part of my on-going body of artistic research which carries the working title “Undoing Architecture”. This project addresses the ostensible inoffensiveness of the palisade fence. By shedding light on this well-known readymade and ever-present South African built-environment feature, I considered the ways that palisades are both formally and informally ‘woven’ into the fabric of the city.

Johannesburg, I traced visual and spatial aspects of both banal and often curious bricolage-like fence constructions – built expressions which stem from the defensive and separation-driven repetition of palisading. The exhibition, amongst other material and symbolic conditions, revealed a peculiar ‘curtain-wall’ phenomenon which has emerged over the last two decades or so, particularly above the silhouettes and against the facades of Johannesburg’s inner city, but also more generally across the larger urban-scape. These ‘floating’ phenomena manifest as sometimes undesigned, sometimes imaginatively-concocted, accretions of steel in the service of defence.

The palisade, a typological derivative of the suburban ‘white picket fence’, lends itself to Johannesburg’s and – by extension – South Africa’s continued (post-apartheid) territorialisation. Seen differently, the defence-driven use of palisading in Johannesburg might be defined as a material-driven, exacerbated collage of horizontal and vertical separation. In true Johannesburg fashion, the expedient palisade component has been appropriated as an affordable and easily applicable device. Its material manifestations reveal a range of imagined and real undercurrents and fault lines of insecurity.

The works on display were arranged in the form of an inter-textual relational assembly. Visitors were invited to meditate on possible meanings of separation, nation and the multiple in-betweens so difficult to define. The results of this research translated into a series of constructions and objects which oscillated between the literal and the abstract. These collective iterations, and the relations between them, questioned the all too comfortable binaries of location/dislocation, belonging/not belonging, safety/ danger, doing/undoing, us/them, security/insecurity, inside and outside.

For the exhibition I collected and re-framed various fencedriven scenarios of delineation and (re)territorialisation. Across the surfaces that make up a still disjointed

To experience the activation of one of the seven works (Uitval (2013)) that comprise the show, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11lfplrkM1c

Alexander Opper, Monument #1 (2013) 63 framed digital prints, archival pigment ink on Innova FibaPrint Baryta paper.

Alexander Opper, Who’s Afraid of …? (2013) Medium Density Fibreboard, paint.

Alexander Opper, Monument #2 (2013) Medium Density Fibreboard, paint.

Alexander Opper, Monument #3 (2013) Ice.

Alexander Opper, Curtain Wall (2013) Shade-cloth, wood, yarn.

Alexander Opper, Fallout (2013) 13 framed digital prints, archival pigment ink on Innova FibaPrint Baryta paper.

Alexander Opper, Uitval (2013) 132 steel palisade-pales (dimensions variable)

Alexander Opper, Curtain Wall (2013) Shade-cloth, wood, yarn.

Alexander Opper, Uitval (2013) 132 steel palisade-pales (dimensions variable)

â&#x20AC;Ś and the ship sails on Eugene Hon

Still Image 2. Ceramic Installation with projected Ballpoint pen drawing animation.

Visual label Preparatory drawings

As the barriers between art and design blur, it is important that ceramic artists, designers and craftspeople confront drastic shifts amidst great uncertainty regarding their contribution to visual culture. Ceramics has always been labelled as Decorative Art, and thus approaching decoration as projected animation onto a ceramic installation suggested new possibilities for this art form. For the ceramic installation with projected animation titled … and the ship sails on, I did not want the ceramic installation to act merely as a canvas for the projection. Rather, the entire work had to reinforce the rich tradition of ceramic discourse. It was vital that the animation embody aspects of the craft of ceramics in its use of symbols, colours, shapes and textures. The animation was first treated as a surface development exercise realised through preliminary ballpoint pen drawings. Viewing the projected animation as surface pattern and the ceramic installation as merely a canvas would have been a travesty, and hence the animation took centre stage, clinging to the ceramic installation of slip-cast decoy ducks in a new and exciting way – reinforcing the three-dimensionality of the final statement. Fundamental to the success of the installation was the animator, Lukasz Pater’s ability to capitalise on my drawings and to reinforce the notion of the handmade, albeit virtual, decoration. All the clichés and notions of craft making – the ‘studio’, the ‘handmade’ and even the word ‘craft’ itself – are abandoned in the final statement. The only evidence of these is in the ‘artist’s book’ exhibited at the site of the installation, reaffirming my intention of thinking through craft without remaining entrapped in its demise. On one level, … and the ship sails on reiterates the significance of the crafts as a liberated tool in celebrating surface decoration both stylistically and conceptually. The work alludes to a revival of the ideals of the Pattern and Decoration movement, established in 1975. However, it is more than simply a response to minimalism. It refers to Michael Petry’s advocating of a return to a highly crafted aesthetic in contemporary art and attempts to put a nail in the coffin of modernism’s mantra that decoration is a crime. Still Image 3

Gordon Froud: A Retrospective of Exhibitions I never had David Paton

Gordon Froud’s A Retrospective of Exhibitions I Never Had took place at NiROX Projects at Arts on Main between 12 May and 5 June 2013. The press release for the exhibition in artthrob.co.za contextualised the show as follows: Gordon Froud is well-known for his modular sculptures of viruses, taxis, animals and other objects. Froud has consistently shown on more than 20 shows a year often working in a variety of forms and mediums suited to the theme or guidelines of a particular show. Although recognizable as his work, few viewers make the connection with the diverse range of approaches used by this versatile artist.

But in my opening speech I read Froud’s body of work as less humorous and with a more cynical edge: I want to say a few things … which might, hopefully, act as a form of re-assessment of Froud’s work and undercut what I can only describe as often insultingly frivolous readings which often bedevil the reception of exhibitions of his work. Perhaps those of us who have looked carefully at this selection of work (from the Cooling Towers of 1983 to the work of a few weeks ago … ) might already have discerned an inkling of Froud’s darker, more sombre, serious and critical mood. It is always revealing when an artist is their own curator, something utterly more visceral, more personal and challenging often emerges.

For this show A Retrospective of Exhibitions I never had, he has selected to show these ‘other’ works. The works on show include: bronze casts, ceramic plates, artist’s books, photography, digital printing, etching, linocut, wood carving and drawing amongst others. This show of more than 80 works has common threads of humour and found objects as source or medium that run through them. As a body of work, seen together for the first time, the hand and eye of the artist are patently obvious even in the diversity of approach.

I proceeded to thread together selected pieces from the exhibition which illustrated Froud’s work as “an acute, encyclopaedic melancholia” and described the artist as, “someone deeply entrenched in the music, literature, film and visual art of human despair and their implications for living in South Africa today”.

Autumnal Thoughts (or How Kafka saved my life) (Digital print on archival paper) 2013

Reference

A Retrospective of Exhibitions I never had, 2013. artthrob. http://www. artthrob.co.za/Listings/Gordon_Froud_at_NiROX_PROJECTS_at_Arts_on_ Main_in__May_2013.aspx

Wall piece. Title.

Lost and Found (Artistâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s book of digital images) 2003 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; collaboration with Carla Crafford

Adam and Eve Digital print on archival paper) 2011

Blue Velvet (Found object reworked with velvet, Needles and digital print) 2013

Skyline 60 x 120 cm dyed 100% cotton rag paper pulp 2012

Collecting the landscape Landi Raubenheimer

Pigeon breast and frogs 20 x 20 x 20 cm pigeon breast and frogs cast into resin 2013

Collecting the landscape, a solo exhibition of my work, showed at the Artspace Gallery, Johannesburg, in March 2013. The exhibition consisted of artworks related to two aspects of how I experience landscape in Johannesburg â&#x20AC;&#x201C; one aspect being photography, while the other is embodied in objects that I collect from the landscape. Both of these interactions are about the notion of collecting, or owning parts of the landscape, making it a nostalgic place to visit in photographs and through the handling of found objects.

1986 20 x 20 x 20 cm photographs and found postcards cast in resin 2013

Cabinet 2 80 x 40 cm found objects cast into resin 2013

Pink Skyline 2 57 x 75 cm gouache, watercolour on fabriano, printed perspex 2013

This body of work explores the colour palette of the city, in blues and burnt oranges, reflecting the brickwork present in much of its architecture. Johannesburg is industrial, with smoke stacks and geometric buildings from the 1970s, but it is also claimed to be the largest man-made forest, and is a unique landscape. The exhibition represents three ways through which I interpret landscape. The first is photography, the photographs depicting Johannesburg as I experience it, often through car windows, as a â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;touristâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; in the city. The photographs I have collected for the last couple of years reveal how significant light and colour are in capturing a place. This informs the second component of the work, namely paper pulp skylines, made in

collaboration with the Phumani Paper Mill. These artworks were made from dyed pulp in saturated blues, greens, aquamarines, burning pinks and oranges, and deep black shades. The third way in which I explore the landscape is through my collection of found objects from it. As I travel around Johannesburg I come across things like dead insects and birds, jacaranda blossoms, seed pods, containers, packaging, old keys, coins and so forth, and they remind me of places, streets, days in the city. Each object has a history, whether with the landscape or with the people who once used it, and these are the same histories I capture in my photographs of the landscape. In this exhibition I made the landscape of Johannesburg my own, and sought to take it home with me; a keepsake.

Performances, films and new kinds of media White Fence Tracy Murinik

a “real life” situation, by creating garments that explore conceptually, but are tailored for everyday suitability. From a creative point of view, as well as an economic one, she believes it is essential for her to retain a large degree of independence from the mechanisms of the global fashion market economy, and although her work operates in a small niche, Sium nevertheless maintains a solid worldwide audience and demand for its garments, having garnered a strong and dedicated following over the years, in Germany – in Hamburg and Berlin where she maintains retail outlets, across Europe generally, as well as elsewhere, including East Asia, especially Japan, to which she feels a close intuitive and aesthetic affinity, and where she has twice been invited as a participating artist at the Nishinomiya Funasaka Art Biennale (in 2010 and 1012).

In October 2013, Regine Steenbock was invited to provide the keynote address at the Fashion Threads conference, which was hosted by the Fashion Department in conjunction with the VIAD Research Centre. Steenbock, who is based in Hamburg, Germany, was an experimental filmmaker for ten years before embarking on a career as a fulltime fashion designer, which she has pursued for the past eighteen years through her own fashion label, Sium. Her approach to fashion considers dress as an extension of art creation and experiment and, in exploring the possibilities that such an approach offers, she regularly incorporates performance as part of how her garments are shown and presented, including sound and filmic elements. Such performance events often evolve as collaborations with those wearing or co-creating the garments, extending the possibilities of how the garments may be worn, and blurring the lines between fashion and art.

FADA was hugely fortunate to have Steenbock spend an additional three weeks in the University’s company beyond her participation at the conference, during which time she presented a public lecture, was a jury member of the University’s Architecture Department, and ran a three-day workshop with fashion students, assisting and guiding them to create a total of 21 new garments. The garments were then included and performed as a fashion/art event behind the School of Tourism and Hospitality, to much acclaim.

Steenbock’s thinking in relation to fashion is also greatly influenced by an artistic and anthropological analysis of colour, form and the human body, and her designs pay particular attention to honing and refining development work into the cut and shape of the human body. She further seeks to reflect elemental artistic questions directly in

MJVV Bree Taxi Still Large.jpg Still image from Bree Taxi Rank stereoscopic time-lapse film, presented as part of the Minutes 2010 exhibition by Theresa Collins and Mocke J van Veuren. Courtesy of the artists.

The Rhythms of Minutes Mocke J van Veuren

MJVV Graph Comp 01.jpg Rhythmanalysis graph representing patterns and intensities of movement over time. M J van Veuren 2011. Courtesy of the artist.

MJVV RA Movie Comp 01.jpg Combined stills from Minutes 2010: Time, Bodies, Rhythm, Johannesburg. T Collins & M J van Veuren 2010. Courtesy of the artists.

This project was conducted towards an MTech in Fine Art through the UJ Department of Visual Art, completed in October 2012. The work was awarded the UJ Chancellorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Gold Medal in 2013.

The practical elements of the project progressed in dialogue with theoretical investigations, and comprised three main outputs: The Minutes 2010 video installation, a short film titled Minutes 2010: Time, bodies, rhythm, Johannesburg, and the Jozi Rhythmanalogues performance in November 2011. Overall, the iterations of the work struggled with the question of how to develop methods for the study of urban everyday life, combining empirical data and poetic interpretation. Specifically, the study aimed to engage with Henri Lefebvreâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s incomplete account of the poetic science of rhythmanalysis, a science of rhythms where the body and senses are given prime place as instruments of measure. This partial framework was brought into dialogue with the Minutes Project: a long-term study, in collaboration with artist Theresa Collins, of everyday urban Johannesburg through the mediums of time-lapse film and sound recording. Culminating in the Jozi Rhythmanalogues performance, the project explored a relation between the measuring function of indexical graphic traces and the rhythmic measure of bodily, sensory experience.

MJVV Swimming.mp4 Selection from underwater public swimming pool studies, presented as part of the Minutes 2010 exhibition by Theresa Collins and Mocke J van Veuren. Courtesy of the artists.

A novel method of creating graphs from the patterns of movement in urban public spaces led to a musical rendition of these graphs as graphic scores, interpreted and performed by extraordinary musicians Siya Makuzeni, Bradley B Maponya and Joao Orecchia. The various outputs of The Rhythms of Minutes are intrinsically collaborative and cross-disciplinary, and represent a continuous, creative and critical conversation rather than a single, fixed point of view. While this decentred approach to the generation of knowledge often meets with resistance in our current academic milieu, I hope that this work may contribute to a shift towards more collaborative approaches to local knowledge production.

Uncles & Angels Mocke J van Veuren

A film by Nelisiwe Xaba and Mocke J van Veuren Stereoscopic back projection or framed 3D monitor, 11’50” Uncles & Angels is a collaborative dance and film project created by Nelisiwe Xaba and myself in 2013. Based on our internationally successful stage performance of the same title, the stereoscopic film employs a minimal, constrained aesthetic within a box-like spatial frame to metaphorically elaborate on conceptions of feminine purity and virginity under patriarchy.

The central allusion within the piece is the Reed Dance – well known in Southern Africa as a colourful, cultural celebration that is meant to promote respect for young women and preserve the custom of girls remaining virgins until marriage. In light of this annual cultural happening, Uncles & Angels is a dream-like, sometimes nightmarish meditation on questions of chastity, virginity testing, purity, and tradition.

Uncles Still Broadway.jpg Nelisiwe Xaba on the set of Xaba and Van Veuren’s Uncles & Angels, 2013. Photo: Zelé Angelides

Uncles Still Reeds.jpg Nelisiwe Xaba on the set of Xaba and Van Veuren’s Uncles & Angels, 2013. Photo: Zelé Angelides

The film uses interactive, live projected video elements to play on different levels with singular/multiple bodies, repetition, mimicry and power relations between Xaba’s ‘real’ three-dimensional figure and flattened, projected bodies.

unpredictable, mutual interaction. Re-imagined elements of the Reed Dance and virginity testing are deliberately playacted by Xaba; sometimes as the dreams or anxieties of a little girl, sometimes as a role-play of imagined adulthood. Choreography that integrates allusions to the Venda Domba snake-dance and drum majorette routines is echoed through the use of delayed video signals.

I, in turn, use programmed video manipulation and a novel optical projection method to create a montage of live video images. The technology creates a backdrop of multiplication and temporal dissonance against which the choreography unfolds as a sometimes playful,

The Uncles & Angels film was awarded the FNB Art Prize in 2013. CREDITS: Uncles & Angels, Nelisiwe Xaba & Mocke J van Veuren Nelisiwe Xaba: Choreography and performance, Mocke J van Veuren: Live video, cinematography, post production and sound design. With music by João Orecchia Filmed at the Soweto Theatre, 2013. Special thanks to Goodman Gallery, Russell Bowden and Visual Impact, and ASE Screen Arts

Video MJVV Uncles 01.mp4 Selections from Uncles & Angels, stereoscopic film by Mocke J van Veuren and Nelisiwe Xaba, 2013. Courtesy of the artists.

New creative platforms and spaces Sober & Lonely:

On generosity, artistrun platforms and new institutional strategies Robyn Cook

At last year’s annual SAVAH conference, hosted at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town, I presented a paper in which I suggested the idea of generosity (the act of giving time, resources and attention) as a productive and innovative working methodology within a South African artist-run (new) institutional context. Whilst the process may seem initially quixotic (or less euphemistically: flaky/hippy-esque/treehugging), there are a number of independent artist-run projects currently operating successfully and sustainably in South Africa based on this exact premise. The Parking Gallery (operated by Ruth Sacks and Simon Gush) is one such space, as is the Sober & Lonely Institute for Contemporary Art (operated by myself and Lauren von Gogh). Both spaces have been running autonomously, with no institutional support or funding, for over two years. The working methodology is based on the giving of available resources and time to peers, and in turn, a reciprocity of spirit. This framework has resulted in numerous talks, seminars, residencies and group shows, many of which have involved cross-national collaborations. In a South African art context which, from the outside (to

Bas Schevers, Failure House – event in collaboration with the Sober & Lonely Institute for Contemporary Art

paraphrase my friend Joseph), potentially seems quite mean-spirited and competitive, and where the heat generated is usually in inverse proportion to the actual significance or consequence of what is happening, creating alternatives to ‘capital’ is, I believe, of paramount importance in encouraging states of flux and open-endedness within critical debate and artistic and curatorial practice. And perhaps within a South African context, with such a limited artmarket, these sorts of initiatives have the potential to become less the alternative and more the mainstream. In the words of Supertramp: “Give a little bit”. Aw, bless. But really.

Anthea Moys and Jonathan Cane, Dinner / Supper â&#x20AC;&#x201C; event in collaboration with the Sober & Lonely Institute for Contemporary Art

Audrey Cottin, Johannesburg Clapping Group, for the collaborative group show An Experiment to Test the Destiny of the World, curated by Sober & Lonely Institute for Contemporary Art at Ithuba Arts Gallery

Pop/Soda (Jimmy Fusil & Mike Wait), Feel the Churn: Butter Aerobics, for the collaborative group show An Experiment to Test the Destiny of the World, curated by Sober & Lonely Institute for Contemporary Art at Ithuba Arts Gallery

Installation of Jelly Weavers, three-dimensional paper-based sculptures hanging in the FADA foyer, May 2014 (Photo: Michelle Samour)

4 Figure 2: Landi Raubenheimer working on her piece at the Phumani Mill Figure 3: Nathi Ndladla working on Landi Raubenheimerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s piece at the Phumani Mill Figure 4: BTech Visual Art students working at the Mill with Michelle Samour, Visiting artist from the Boston Museum S chool of Fine Arts, May 2014. (Photo: Michelle Samour)

Phumani Archival Paper Mill Kim Berman

The Phumani Paper Mill is the only archival papermaking facility of its kind in South Africa. It produces highly specialised art papers from cotton, sisal, hemp, banana stem fibre which it supplies to the conservation industry and artists. It also conducts artist collaborations in paper-based artwork. Papermaking as a research and development activity has been ongoing, and was funded by the NRF from 1998 until 2009. In December 2012, the Phumani Paper Board of Directors at the University of Johannesburg dissolved the Phumani Section 21 Company for various reasons â&#x20AC;&#x201C; amongst them, promised funding from the National Lotteries which did not materialise. The Phumani national office and the Phumani Paper Mill on the UJ Doornfontein campus were then re-allocated to the Faculty of Health Sciences, requiring the office to close. The Phumani national office did not have the funding to re-establish itself in new premises, however. This in turn affected the sustainability of all the Phumani community sites which depended on the national office as a marketing and sales network.

Happily, the Director of the Bunting Road Campus made a triple garage available, enabling the Archival Paper Mill to be moved from the Doornfontein campus and become part of the Faculty of Art Design and Architecture. It was launched at its new site in May 2013. Establishing the Mill on this site enables it to be available as a teaching and income-generating resource to the Visual Art Department and allied design departments. The objectives of the Phumani Mill are to: • Continue manufacturing specialised craft products in response to client demand • Act as conduit for orders of paper craft products for the Phumani enterprises • Conduct ongoing research into appropriate and available plant fibres to make acid-free papers • Produce specialised papers for artists and the conservation and craft industry • Collaborate with visual artists in the making of paper-based artworks • Hosts international papermakers and workshops (planned for 2014)

Nest: detail of installation by Michelle Samour, visiting artist from the Boston Museum School, and BTech Visual Art students, made during a three-dimensional paper workshop

The benefits of the Phumani Mill • This is the only archival hand paper making facility in the country that attracts visiting researchers and artists. • It provides a valuable workshop resource for art students, paper mouldmaking and community engagement. • The partnership with Artist Proof Studio enables joint artist collaborations in paper-based and print artworks. • Artists and the conservation industry benefit from the only local “proudly South African” archival papers available for sale.

Community-based-research Art Interventions at HaMakuya, Limpopo Province (2011-2013) Outputs: CE Curriculum, workbooks, murals and posters

My research project, Arts based approaches to Development, is a community-engaged programme that was funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF) from 2011 to 2013 and housed in the Visual Art Department at UJ. The interdisciplinary programme, involving lecturers and students from the UJ Departments of Visual Art, Sociology, Industrial Design, Fashion Design and Drama for Life at Wits University, initiated ambitious arts action interventions responding to public health campaigns that took place in the remote Tshivenda-speaking region of HaMakuya. HaMakuya is a government-registered poverty node in the far north-east corner of Limpopo that borders Zimbabwe and Mozambique, and has an estimated unemployment rate of 90-95%. The Tshulu Trustâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mission is to contribute towards alleviating poverty by assisting community development and facilitating employment opportunities in this particularly impoverished rural area (www.tshulutrust.org).

5 1

1. BTech student, Frank Wabo on the fieldtrip 2013. 2. Wits Music Lecturer working with Home-based-carers to include a Venda song about teen pregnancy 3. Using drama for team-building among the Tshulu staff and fieldworkers 4. Photovoice by Adiziambeyi Mutele Ahuna tshifhinga tshau thamba (There is no time to bath) I took this picture as it is me collecting the water for domestic use like dishwashing, drinking and cooking. I go everyday five times a day. I only use 25 l drum. I also hire the donkey cart for R40. It can take 20 drums but sometimes I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have the money. This is the only water for drinking and cooking (Interview by Heidi Mielke 2012)

5. Students during their homestays 6. Khaya Mchunu (MTech 2014), with his co supervisor Dr Lara Allen, at the Zwonako Sewing co-op that he co-operatively established as his Masters Research intervention, 2013 7. Stove developed by Chris Bradnum and the Industrial design team for introduction and testing in the Hamakuya Community 2013 8. Paper Prayers printmaking workshops for schools and the HaMakuya clinic 9. Murals for schools and the HaMakuya clinicâ&#x20AC;&#x192;

Promoting green solutions Green week 2014 Christa van Zyl

“No design works unless it embodies ideas that are held common by the people for whom the object is intended.” – Adrian Forty The theme for Green Week 2014, an annual inter-departmental collaboration launched in February in the FADA Auditorium and which I organised, was “Community Matters”. It focused on participatory and human-centred design, with an emphasis on community engagement in the field of service learning. It was a Green Week of many firsts, including the introduction of a new UJ strategic partner, the Faculty of Management. Another new partner was UJ Enactus, an international organisation that brings together students, academics and business leaders using entrepreneurial action to enable progress around the world. With the help of Joyce Sibeko from UJ Enactus and the Faculty of Management, and her team of tireless assistants, fourteen cooperatives and small businesses from areas including Soweto, Orange Farm and Alexandria were identified for Green Week students to work with.

The 30 Green Week groups each comprised ten/eleven students from FADA and two or three third-year students each from the Faculty of Management. The groups were introduced to a member from an entrepreneurial cooperative, with two groups per cooperative. Students had to interview this representative on the various challenges and issues faced by their small business, as well as in regard to any social and environmental issues within the community where they operate. Based on these interviews, site visits and a

research folder provided by Enactus, a needs analysis was drawn up to identify an existing issue within the co-op. Groups had to apply a range of design methods, processes and techniques competently to devise a creative presentation of their design solution, as well as an executive summary of a business plan from the Business Management members. The top projects were then selected by judges from both faculties, with the top three groups hosting a variety of innovative projects:

New brand and logo for Disciples Village Bakery devised by Group 27

Group 19, in third place, designed marketing and branding materials for a clothing manufacturer, Mnkhosezwe Trading Cooperative, as well as a bag design, to apply to fabric they had purchased but had not been able to use. They also included a business strategy to help Mnkhosezwe get out of debt with the help of their bag design. Group 11, in second place, designed branding and marketing materials, packaging and a fully functional website for Home Hatched Poultry farmers. The group also worked out a new business strategy to get community members involved by starting their own home-based chicken farms. Group 11 also designed a solid, but foldable, chicken coop as part of this chicken farming â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;starter kitâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

Design by Group 11 for a coop for Home Hatched Poultry

Group 27, in first place, rebranded the logo and business name for Disciples Village Bakery to Wake ‘e Bakee, giving the business a fun, edgy, lively profile. They also designed a start-up kit needed for each baker, consisting of an apron, tray and trolley to assist with the distribution of the product. Additionally, they designed packaging with “HOW TO BAKE” recipes printed on them. The packaging was designed to be inexpensive, re-usable for different functions, and eco-friendly. Further, they created a website and Facebook page, details of which were also printed on the packaging. The tray and trolley were designed to make it easier to carry the product when selling and moving to different hot spots. In addition to these top three projects, there were many more strong examples of innovative, highquality and informed ideas developed. These included a biodegradable coffin, safety gear for recycling trolleys, and a transportable herb market with packaging. The top three groups presented their projects to a panel of creative experts, as well as an audience of interested students and members of industry, organised by Creative Hustles – a platform for young creatives to engage with established industry professionals and arts, receive creative and career advice and build relationships with peers and professionals alike – together with Live Magazine and Connect ZA. The panel gave valuable feedback on how to improve the designs and on making the projects feasible in the real world.

Design by Group 19 for Mnkhosezwe Trading Cooperative

UJ Enactus plans to apply the students’ concepts within the fourteen cooperatives that participated, and to help obtain funding to make these innovative design solutions a reality. Top projects will be presented at Enactus regional and national competitions and winners of the national competition will advance to the prestigious international Enactus World Cup.

House Jones Ken Stucke

Working through ERA Architects, my company, I recently won the Enviropaedia Eco-Innovation Award for my design of this “island” home in Hurlingham, Johannesburg. Although designed around the principles of climate responsive design, comfort, and water conservation, this building has used these methodologies to create an aesthetic that is still guided by the traditional architectural ideas of composition, symmetry, hierarchy and progression. Nevertheless it challenges conventional ideas of domestic architecture and offers a new “green aesthetic”. The primary concept of the design is the mediation between interior and exterior spaces. To this end, a second envelope of planted steel structures creates individual “green bubbles” of tempered microclimates onto which each living space opens. These provide cooler intermediary spaces in summer and sunny protected areas that collect warmth in winter. The results are mediating spaces that naturally pre-condition the air that enters and circulates into the home. The same planted-steel framework concept is used for solar shading and results in a living cladding that almost envelops the entire northern façade. The building is able to change in appearance and environmental response as the seasons transform the surrounding landscape. The resultant aesthetic is unusual and ever changing. The stepped footprint of the building allows the penetration of the morning winter sun into the living spaces, while blocking out the harsh afternoon sun. This stepping of the buildings also allows for the form to be fragmented into a more visually interesting series of smaller volumes. The smaller volumes produce a structural efficiency with small spans across simple load-bearing walls. The individual volumes allow varying roof heights above each space and create a visually interesting profile through simple, efficient forms.

A triple-volume entrance hall defines the spirit of space and abundance of the house. The staircase rises in the volume to a double height glazed window facing north through planted solar shading. On the south side another double-height window affords soft natural light to flood the house. The house has a comprehensive energy strategy; with a sealed and efficient thermal envelope, and carefully arranged passive solar gain. A sophisticated solar energy system provides all heating requirements. An extensive photovoltaic array is installed. Summer cooling is by effective solar shading and supplemented with direct evaporative cooling. These have been integrated into the architectural aesthetic through the stone chimneys that mirror the planted â&#x20AC;&#x153;green chimneysâ&#x20AC;? that temper the external microclimate bubbles.

The house collects all available rain water and recycles its waste water in a garden wetlands system. Only three potable taps are fed with filtered municipal water; all other water is produced by the intensive water conservation and recycling strategies. The garden wetlands and storage dam create another microclimate that encourages biodiversity and a restorative approach to urban dwelling.

Between classrooms and communities Safety belts, pirates and Slim Shady: Effecting positive social change in our own neighbourhoods Robyn Cook

Last February, the BTech Graphic Design students were tasked with developing and implementing a user-centred design strategy for the Design Indaba’s Your Street competition. In consultation with community members, students identified a microtopiac social or environmental “challenge” within their immediate neighbourhood (Witpoortjie, Braamfontein, Muldersdrift, Sebokeng and so on). Then, utilising a variety of conceptualising and ideation techniques, the students attempted to create a human-centred design-thinking solution that addressed the identified objectives. Design-thinking is best described as a mindset rather than a specific strategy; IDEO (the international innovation consultancy and designthinking trailblazer) describes design-thinking as human-centred, optimistic, collaborative and experimental. The following case studies outline a few of the approaches taken: Case Study 1: Seres Oliver looked at the trolley pushers in her area who collect plastic bottles for recycling. Through a series of interviews with her neighbours and with the trolley pushers themselves, Oliver found that the trolley pushers in her area start work at 3am and often end at 9pm when it is dark on the roads. Realising the important function of the trolley pushers within her community and taking into account the on-going safety concerns for both the road-users and the trolley pushers, Oliver developed the Pullsafe – Recycle Bag Safety Belt. This 300mm x 4500mm reflective safety belt fits around the 900mm tall container, increasing the visibility of the bags (which due to their size conceal the pushers), safeguarding both the trolley-pusher and the road user. Special consideration was given to the longevity of the materials used, cost and flexibility.

Case Study 2: Osmond Tshuma looked at the act of selling pirated DVDs by vendors in the CBD. While cognisant of the legalities surrounding the sales, Tshuma chose to look at the difficulties faced by the mostly immigrant vendors trying to make a living in the “City of Gold”. Faced with xenophobia and constant harassment by the Metro Police, Tshuma set out to create an efficient point-of-sale device to aid with sales and to give the vendors a sense of dignity. Through a bottom-up collaboration with a specific vendor, Tshuma identified a set of problems to resolve. These include the fact that hawkers generally display up to 80 DVD covers on a tablecloth which they then quickly strip when approached by the Metro Police, meaning they have to lay the display out over and over again. As the vendors travel by taxi, the pointof-sale also needs to be transportable and compact. The result was the Egoli Raider – a concertinaed point-of-sale device that can accommodate 80 DVDs in waterproof plastic sleeves, be set up as a display system, and packed away within seconds into a neat travel case.

Case Study 3: Tasneem Moola looked at the lack of bus stops and shade in her neighbourhood, Mayfair. Noticing the groups of people standing waiting for the Metro bus services in the sun, between 07h00 and 09h00 and again between 15h00 and 18h00, Moola designed the Slim Shady (a pun-like take on Eminem’s “The Real Slim Shady”). The device needed to be attachable to the existing street poles in the area, be lightweight and cost effective. Through a series of maquettes, Moola examined the angles needed to create shadow during the identified times of day. Basing her design on the children’s toy, the Hoberman Sphere, Moola created a lightweight aluminium sculptural solution that utilises the angle of the sun to create shade for commuters waiting for transport.

Between classrooms and communities 2

These are just three of the very successful user-centred design strategies implemented by the BTechs. Other projects included an ingenious device to separate plastic bottles and left-overs from trash for the trolley pushers, a way to shift attitudes in Muldersdrift, an area devastated by a recent spate of murders, a seating system for the local skater-boys (blome skaters) and a packaging solution to prevent litter collecting in a local nature reserve. In total fifteen projects were successfully implemented within the relevant communities.

Figure1: Osmond Tshuma, Egoli Raiders, original point of sale used by CBD vendors ~ Figure 2: Osmond Tshuma, Egoli Raiders, Logo design for Egoli Raiders point-of-sale unit Figure 3: Osmond Tshuma Egoli Raiders, Prototype of the Egoli Raiders point-of-sale unit ~ Figure 4: Jamie Camfferman, With New Eyes – “Don’t Seek”, environmental typography. Figure 5: Jamie Camfferman, With New Eyes – “See”, environmental typography intervention

Supporting a community through Graphic Design: Melville, Johannesburg Christa van Zyl

In 2012 the Melville Community Development Organisation (MCDO) approached the Department of Strategic Communications at UJ to propose a collaboration between the University and the Melville community, with the support of the Melville Residents Association (MRA). Groups of Strategic Communications Honours students were asked to research and propose solutions to curb urban degeneration in the area, as perceived by its businesses, tourists and residents. After extensive research the majority of the students recommended that Melville should follow in the footsteps of the Madibeng area and Braamfontein, as well as other international examples, such as Londonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Camden Town and Overhoeks, Amsterdam, and design a brand for the area. Using this research, the UJ Department of Graphic Design BTech class of 2013 was approached to develop a brand for Melville.

From interviews with various stakeholders and interested parties within Melville, however, it became clear the community’s more settled residents pride themselves on their individualism, and that they would not be open to a single brand for their suburb. The interviews also confirmed the theory of user-experience design that socially responsible design should in practice not be about the designer, but rather about the experiences of the community utilising and viewing the designs. The 16 Btech Graphic Design students were thus tasked with identifying an existing challenge or community initiative, and its stakeholders, with the help of the MCDO and MRA. The end-goal of the project was to provide implementable design solutions that could potentially boost tourism, bolster economic growth, encourage new residents to buy property and stimulate community participation.

Jo’burg city by-laws by Jamie Camfferman The MRA challenged Jamie Camfferman to help educate new and existing residents of Melville regarding Johannesburg’s bylaws to address current problems in the area. Camfferman needed to get the message across in an efficient and aesthetically pleasing manner, using the MRA’s corporate colours. While Melville is viewed as a suburb people visit, the MRA also wished it to be perceived as a good suburb for people to live in. Together they came up with the slogan, “Melville: the heart of Joburg culture” – the main target market being prospective residents of Melville, and the secondary target market being current residents.

Figure 1 Jamie Camfferman, Bylaw booklet, loyalty card, license disk sticker, panic whistle, flash drive and smart phone application.

The project’s design strategy was to create a pocket-sized booklet summarising Johannesburg’s bylaws concisely, and in language that would be easily understood. The booklet was designed to be available through the MRA and online through their website and as a Smartphone application, and would be included in a “Welcome Kit” designed for new Melville residents, which would also include a safety whistle, licence disc sticker, USB flash drive and a loyalty card to support local businesses. Individual pages could also be taken out, enlarged and used as posters. The booklet would also direct residents to the Melville Smartphone application, helping to create dialogue, enhance communication and create a sense of community, with a focus on safety within the Melville precinct (see Fig. 1).

The Melville architectural tour by Osmond Tshuma Looking to constructively promote daytime tourism in Melville that would be informative, entertaining, and inexpensive, Osmond Tshuma worked closely with Marie-Lais Emond from the MCOD to develop an architectural tour of the area, which hosts a wide variety of architectural styles, ranging from Edwardian, Art Deco and 70s modernist buildings, to interesting contemporary designs.

Tshuma was introduced to Monika LĂ¤uferts and Judith Mavunganidze, TSICA Architectural Heritage consultants, who had completed an architectural survey of Melville in 2008. Their research included floor plans, architectural drawings, old photographs and histories for many of the historically relevant buildings in the suburb. Excited by Osmondâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s project, TSICA gave Tshuma permission to use their images and research to strengthen his designs for the tour. He also interviewed residents from the area. Sadly, most of the owners of the restored historical buildings that he wished to include were not willing to participate or to be interviewed. Tshuma wanted his booklet and marketing materials to be educational, elegant, historically themed and inexpensive to reproduce. The logo he designed was inspired by the Edwardian architecture in Melville, specifically the beautiful

pressed ceilings still found in many of the houses, as well as Victorian illuminated letters. The brand identity placed two ideas in juxtaposition: the Victorian classic design of the logo and the modern design of the sans serif font, inspired by the modern architecture that would also be included in the tour. Tshuma additionally designed plaques (Figs. 2 and 3), containing relevant information about the featured building, to be placed on architectural structures featured on the tour. Tourists would be able to buy an A6 tour booklet (Figs. 4 and 5) available at featured buildings, galleries and stores in the area for ten rand. These black and white pocket-sized booklets include a map of the area, old photographs, floor plans and architectural drawings. All proceeds from the sale of the booklet would go towards printing, marketing, and into an urban architectural regeneration fund to restore more buildings in the area.

Figure 2: Osmond Tshuma, Melville Architectural Tour logo Figure 3: Osmond Tshuma, Tour Plaque Figure 4 : Osmond Tshuma, Tour booklet Figure 5: Osmond Tshuma, Tour booklet 5

Tshuma further designed a smart phone application (Fig 6) as an alternative option to the tour booklet that would enable visitors to follow the tour using their smart phones and would be linked to a Melville Architecture Tour website and Facebook page. The application would be available for download at the same cost as the booklet.

Conclusion These projects were clear evidence that Communication Design as a discipline can aid urban renewal if the correct stakeholders are identified and consulted during the research and design process, and if the relevant people are receptive to support.

Most students who participated gave feedback that, while it was challenging to make contact with community members, the feedback greatly improved and guided their designs. Ultimately, effective communication designers do not design “for” the community, but “with” the community.

A branded tuk-tuk (Fig. 7) design was handed to the MCOD for potential implementation, and was also entered in the 2013 Loerie awards for excellent design.

Figure 6: Osmond Tshuma, Smart phone application Figure 7: Osmond Tshuma, A branded tuk-tuk

Assegai Awards Christa van Zyl

Figure 1: “Tell a story” Organ Donor Foundation campaign Figure 2: Cari Williamson, “Complete someone else” Organ donation foundation CFampaign. Figure 3: Caption; Jamie Camfferman,“Got guts?”

In 2012 Strategic Communications lecturers Caroline Azionya and Anna Oksiutycz approached me to team up for a collaborative project between their department and my own, Graphic Design. They were joined in this collaboration by the Direct Marketing Association of South Africa (DMASA), which would help streamline projects after their completion. Second-year Strategic Communications Students were divided into research groups and each group was allocated a third-year Graphic Design student to act as Art Director. The idea with this project is that, each year, Strategic Communications students are asked to research and develop a creative brief for a specified institution or non-governmental organisation. This brief is then handed over to the Graphic Design student who is asked to design a direct marketing advertising campaign for a specific target group.

The Organ Donation Foundation - 2012

In 2012 the chosen NGO was the Organ Donation Foundation of South Africa. The ODF wanted to change their core message in such a way that, rather than inducing a negative emotional response, it would be positive. Students were required to use “SAVE SEVEN LIVES”, their current brand strategy which refers to the fact that, donations from one organ donor (a heart, liver, two kidneys, two lungs and a pancreas) can save the lives of seven people. As the Organ Donor Foundation is a charitable institution that runs on donations and the work of volunteers, the budget was very limited and students had to present a very cost effective strategy. The top 5 campaigns, as voted for by the lecturers involved and the DMASA,

were then reworked in terms of their marketing strategy. These campaigns were all then entered into the Assegai Integrated Marketing Awards, the South African awards for advertising agencies and student campaigns that excel at direct marketing. In 2012 UJ students received gold, silver and bronze for the campaigns entered, as well as the leader award for a fourth campaign. Jessica Strydom, along with her group members, received gold for her sensitive “Tell a story” campaign (Fig. 1). Cari Williamson won silver for “Complete someone else” (Fig. 2), Mothei Letlabika achieved bronze for “UJ sports” and Jamie Camfferman the leader award for her “Got guts?” campaign (Fig. 3).

UJ Faculty of Art, Design and Architect In 2013 the chosen institution was FADA itself. FADA wanted to communicate its core message using an Integrated Brand Communication (IBC) plan. The aim was for the faculty to be recognised within different creative industries; to attract more top-quality students without losing its current support base; and to create awareness of its excellent facilities and quality courses to teachers, prospective students and parents. As part of their task, students were required to use “Rethink Education, Reinvent Yourself”, the University of Johannesburg’s slogan at the time, and ensure that UJ’s branding was employed correctly in all campaigns.

2013

The top five campaigns were again identified and modified, after which they were presented to the Dean of FADA, Prof Federico Freschi, for further feedback. Prof Freschi chose adverts designed by Yunisha Naiker to be used as street-pole adverts during September (Fig. 4). UJ again enjoyed enormous success at the Assegai Awards, receiving gold, silver and bronze, despite stiff competition from other South African institutions. Chevaun Towell and her group, Creative Heights, won a golden Assegai award (Fig. 6), Yunisha Naiker and her group, Cogne-Creative, won silver (Fig.5), bronze was won by Kegaugetswe Sethusha and her group, Aureus Communications Specialists, while Stephie Rous and her group, Infinity Group, won the leader award.

6 Figure 4: Yunisha Naiker, UJ Branding campaign; street-pole adverts. Figure 5: Yunisha Naiker and her group, Cogne-Creative Figure 6: Kegaugetswe Sethusha and her group, Aureus Communications Specialists

Telkom Convergence Competition Clairwyn van der Merwe for Telkom Group Communication

In October 2013 second-year Graphic Design students were asked to interpret “Telkom Convergence” in the form of a design. This competition challenged the students creatively and intellectually as well as teaching them to work with a client – the Telkom Art Collection in this case. Participants were invited to create design works in any medium they chose, including sculpture, poster, art on paper, painting, mixed media or electronics. To assist them, while also promoting recycling, Telkom gave each student blue boxes and frames to use for the competition. Participants were given two weeks, until 12 November, to complete their entries and fifteen finalists were then selected by the panel of judges, consisting of University of Johannesburg lecturers and the Telkom Art Curator. The finalists’ entries were then posted on the Telkom Facebook page where visitors could vote for their favourite works. While three of the winners were chosen by popular vote, a fourth prize was awarded for an exceptional design work, as chosen by the Telkom Art Collection. Mala Suriah, Executive for Strategic Enterprise Marketing

at Telkom Business, handed out the prizes to the four winners at the annual Graphic Design prize-giving ceremony at FADA. “For me, convergence is about technology bringing people together regardless of where they are,” says Simphiwe Mangole, whose design (Fig. 1) received the most Votes and Likes on the Facebook competition page. His prize-winning entry was a digital print of a blue robot standing in front of a globe. “The robot has Telkom colours and is an embodiment of what Telkom is – a big robot trying to bring the world together,” he says. If you look closely, you will see a myriad of connecting lines and glowing areas on and around the globe. “These represent the places that Telkom has touched with technology,” says Mangole. Chrystal van Niekerk, who received the second highest number of Votes and Likes, used recycled computer components to create her entry, a three-dimensional city called ‘Convergence Ville’ (Fig. 2). The third winner was Lauren Speirs (Fig. 3), while the winner of the overall prize

for his artistic creation was Jeremy Miller (Fig. 4) whose three-dimensional work, measuring more than one metre by one metre, was built around the word ‘Convergence’. Miller’s work is one of the six pieces that the Telkom Art Collection has purchased from students to display on the walls of Telkom Business’s offices in Centurion. Christa van Zyl, lecturer in graphic design at the University of Johannesburg, says the Convergence competition challenged the students intellectually and creatively. While graphic designers usually receive a detailed brief from a client and are expected to follow it closely, the Telkom competition gave the students free rein to express what Convergence means to them. “They had to come up with an original concept on their own and then decide how to illustrate it,” van Zyl says, pointing out that figuring out how to use the boxes which Telkom gave to the students presented them with an additional challenge: “Bear in mind that graphic design is mostly two dimensional and they have little exposure to 3D.”

Figure 1: Simphiwe Mangole’s design, which was voted best online Figure 2: Chrystal van Niekerk’s design, which was voted second place online Figure 3: Lauren Speirs’ design, which was voted third place online Figure 4: Jeremy Miller’s winning design

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Chair design resulting from a collaboration between the Interior Design and Industrial Design departments in FADA

Children’s Chair Designs Andrew Gill

In 2013, the Interior Design and Industrial Design departments in FADA collaborated on an innovative community engagement project. The project process required interior design students to design, and industrial design students to manufacture, chairs which would be suitable for use by young children. This initiative included an important component of community engagement – namely, service learning. Service-learning is defined as being “curriculated into (and therefore also assessed as part of) a credit-bearing academic programme”. An initiative of this type presents challenges in the sense that it needs to dovetail into established curricula and meet existing learning outcomes. Service-learning in collaborative projects may also mean that this integration may need to occur across different disciplines, years of study and specific module outcomes. The design criteria that needed to be considered by the students for this project were: user-safety, appropriate construction methods for the specified material, ergonomics and budget constraints. The students were also required to propose a solution for the painted finish on the chairs, and consider the semiotics of signs and symbols that may appeal to children. The interior design students were additionally assessed on their ability to communicate the design proposals through a series of annotated and

rendered drawings and scaled cardboard models. The designs were then presented to the first-year industrial design students, who were asked to refine the designs in order to fabricate a functional prototype of each. This aspect of the project was conducted within the Industrial Design Practice 1 module. The final prototypes were assessed according to: the student’s ability to integrate skills learnt in the first semester (Prototyping 1 and Drawing 1), appropriate use of commercial board materials, joining methods and finishing techniques. The project was concluded with the donation of twelve chairs to the Ethembeni Children’s Home for use in their library area. Ethembeni, situated in Doornfontein, provides care for up to 60 children from birth to three years in age who have been placed there by the Commissioner of Child Welfare. This home cares for babies and toddlers who have been abandoned, or removed from abusive situations or carers unable to adequately meet their needs. This project proved to be successful for both departments not only as a teaching and learning exercise, but also in mimicking the professional practices of these disciplines and promoting a sense of civic responsibility amongst our young designers. All costs involved in the design and manufacture of the chairs were carried by the students themselves.

Chair design resulting from a collaboration between the Interior Design and Industrial Design departments in FADA

Hallmarking Jewellery Design An emerging UJ brand of excellence Judy Peter

Mariambibi Khan, Haute couture design range. B-Tech: 2012, Technique: Chain mail Materials Used: Silver and brass

Thato Radebe, Translating the craft of weaving into into fine contemporary jewellery . B-Tech: 2011, Technique; Weaving. Materials used: Sterling silver and copper.

3 Figure 1: Christian Lambo Kangang, New Technology and Fine Jewellery B-Tech: 2013, Technique; Weaving, Materials Used: Sterling silver, beads and gemstones Figure 2: Thatho Radebe, Translating the craft of weaving into fine contemporary jewellery. BTech: 2011. Technique; weaving, Materials used; Sterling silver and copper. Figure 3: Michelle Terresa Evans, Bridal range, B-Tech: 2012.Technique: Claw setting, O-rings and granulation. Materials used: Sterling silver.

The ongoing fascination with the decorative arts, such as jewellery design, conceivably lies in the design possibilities often structured around the use of precious and semi-precious metals and stones. Although there are important cultural, economic and ecological shifts related to manufacturing processes used today, creative responses to the broad purposes of wearable objects – for adornment and utilitarian objects – are frequently still appraised for their technical dexterity. In several contexts, this has given rise to formalising the training of artisans in a similar way to the model of the medieval guild system. And this system arguably still forms the basis for contemporary trade schools and vocational programmes at tertiary institutions. A continuation of these creative and technical practices in the UJ Department of Jewellery Design and Manufacture is differentiated from other national practices in its two-fold application – of high-end commercial design, and of contemporary commercial design. A further distinguishing creative practice in the Department is the emphasis on both the design process and the technical execution of jewellery. Over the past five years, examples of Jewellery Design from the Department have been representative of a wide range of design, aesthetic and conceptual processes. Students have explored the ideas of establishing unique brands responding to niche markets in the jewellery industry. These common niche areas include, amongst others, designing bridal ranges, and the desire to hallmark a South African identity or aesthetic. Other research areas frequently explored by students look to assimilate creative practices used by international jewellery brands. Also, connected to jewellery design and creative practices, are the use of new technologies that lend themselves to new and high levels of technical excellence. There is similarly a continued drive by jewellery designers to conceptually frame the design process with meaning, calling into question traditional hierarchies of decorative cultural divides, such as the on-going art/craft debate.

6 Figure 4: Mariambibi Khan, Haute couture design range. B-Tech: 2012, Technique: Chain mail Materials Used: Silver and brass Figure 5: Retshepile Mametja, Alternative approaches to setting and redefining an African aesthetic, B-Tech: 2012 Technique; Alternative setting, riveting. Materials Used: Sterling silver, bone and wood Figure 6: Thatho Radebe, Translating the craft of weaving into fine contemporary jewellery. BTech: 2011. Technique; weaving, Materials used; Sterling silver and copper.

Mildah Motshegwa; Innovation award winner, 2nd Year. Bead, Materials used; sterling silver, cotton and copper wire. (Photo: B von Veh)

Reconfigure: Thuthuka Jewellery Exhibition staff writer

The 2013 Annual Thuthuka Jewellery exhibition and gala awards ceremony took place at the FADA Gallery in October last year. This is an annual forum that encourages and promotes the design abilities of young talented designers wanting to enter the jewellery trade in South Africa, focusing on talented aspirant young jewellery design students and providing inspiration and support for their creative hands and minds. Thuthuka Jewellery Development Programme, under the guidance and drive of founder and director Carola Ross, has been a Department of Arts and Culture sponsored project for the past seven years. It is a partnership between tertiary education facilities, community jewellery schools, and independent designers. Thuthuka recognises that jewellery offers a plausible way of making art with economic viability, and seeks to provide support for the students to assist them to make a meaningful contribution to the economy. Jewellery also poses creative and conceptual challenges, and has an immediate market, with a built-in sibling in fashion. But while creativity also needs practicality and hard work to yield tangible results, talent also needs the skills and tools to develop a sustainable career and livelihood.

Figure 1: Mildah Motshegwa; Innovation award winner, 2nd Year. Bead Drawings; Design development- thinking through drawing.

Figure 2: Mildah Motshegwa; Innovation award winner, 2nd Year. Earring, Materials used; Sterling silver and cotton thread. Figure 3: Mildah Motshegwa; Innovation award winner, 2nd Year. Earring Drawings; Design development, thinking through drawing. Figure 4: Mildah Motshegwa; Innovation award winner, 2nd Year. Ceramic Bud vase. Material used; Slip casting and underglaze colours.

Thuthuka’s approach is around skills development, combining focused one-to-one mentoring, while encouraging critical and analytical thinking, key to the development of any good design, and equipping aspiring jewellers with the tools they need to be successful in the trade. The Thuthuka Jewellery Exhibition/Awards includes students from all participating universities and community jewellery schools. The programme is rolled out via a series of intensive workshops and training sessions for the participating students, to facilitate rapid learning exchange, and empowers students wanting to design contemporary jewellery, with competitive design skills. In order to ensure a competitive edge in the students, the programme challenges them to think outside the box by transforming original jewellery design into various homeware items. These items are assessed for both their design merit and functional applications. Every year the entrants are given a theme to create their pieces. In 2013 the students were tasked with creatively reconfiguring the African bead in a contemporary manner – a theme that has had a strong cultural connection with the continent for centuries. The students were also required to take some design elements from the bead and translate them into a piece of wearable jewellery. First-year participants were required to make a ring; second years designed earrings and third years neckpieces. Finally the bead concept had to be transformed into a miniature bud vase. Winning designs were awarded bursaries as well as prizes in the form of the tools essential to the jeweller’s practice. In 2013, the project focused on youth empowerment in the sector, with a new development that introduced young graduates to act as mentors to younger student jewellers. Within this group of mentors were Cailin Els from UJ, Nikiwe Mathebula – a graduate and past Thuthuka category winner from UJ, and Argyris Papageorgiou, the 2009 Thuthuka Winner, who is a UJ graduate and young mentor at the SEDA Limpopo Jewellery Incubator. Keeping with the tradition of exceptionally high standards achieved by students from UJ’s Jewellery Department, the 2013 award winners again included a proud UJ showing. Nonhle Mzobe was awarded the joint prize for Technical Excellence; Milda Motshegwa, for the Innovation Award (2nd year students), and Zadie Becker was recognised for her highly commended technique across all elements.

Zadie Becker; Highly commended, 2nd Year. Patternmaking (Origami); Design development, thinking through drawing.

Zadie Becker; Highly commended, 2nd Year. Bead. Materials used; Sterling silver and resin. (Photo: B von Veh)

Drawing on the book:

Book arts, “bookness” and bloodletting David Paton

Kim Berman and I, mindful of a lack of any formal book arts programme in our curriculum, began introducing a small crash-course in book arts history and binding strategies into the making of small, unique artists’ books in our third-year ‘Bloodletting’ teaching module some six years ago. In this time, a number of remarkable book-objects have been forthcoming. The idea behind ‘Bloodletting’ is to throw our third-year Visual Art students into a hectic and stimulus-rich two-week period in which each student confronts their own identity, grapples with some difficult and uncomfortable questions about themselves, deals with a flood of briefs, demands, on-the-spot projects and seemingly impossible deadlines, all in the hope of generating a set of sustainable ideas for development into viable artworks in the first semester. In a three-hour session, the students grapple with our bombardment, attempting to contextualise a wild diversity, which includes hearing about, for the first time, the Livre d’Artiste, Ed Ruscha and the self-conscious codex; “bookness”, signatures, stab bindings, Venetian-blind fold, gate-fold, accordion-fold books and the notion of recto vs. verso, all washed along by the idea of a book which is aware of its own conventions and conceits, one that can interrogate these conventions through the agency of the students’ hands: its structure, materiality or shape. On the tables are examples from our personal collections, which include gems from Robbin Ami Silverberg, William Kentridge, Susan Johanknecht, Katharine Meynell, Sam Winston and Ed Epping. The V&A Museum London’s controversial 2008 book arts exhibition, titled Blood on Paper, seems serendipitous in relation to our ‘Bloodletting’ teaching programme. The range of artists’ books demonstrated during a ‘Bloodletting’ introductory lecture. Department of Visual Art, 2014

Jessica Doucha. Of Pattern and Habits. A 2nd-year response to the project: ‘Personal Identities’. Altered encyclopaedia and found and mixed media. 2013.

book in which the relationship between the two poems is reflected on in some way. This can be done through using alternate pages, recto vs. verso or back-to-front accordion-fold structure as a means of containing and referencing the content of the two poems: the first through additive methods, while the second must be achieved by cancellation, elimination, covering and cutting. Using the third-year ‘Bloodletting’ weeks as a node of book arts engagement, some second-year students, if I feel they are ready to begin the exploration, are also exposed to artists’ books. Some remarkable and compelling objects have been forthcoming from second-year students as meaningful vehicles for topics such as “The landscape of Johannesburg” as well as “Personal Identities”.

After this introduction, and in the time remaining, students are expected to produce two small bound books: the first, in which the cover-boards must reflect upon how each student believes they are ‘seen’ by the world, while the pages document a self-aware narrative in which hidden, private and little-known elements of their identities are explored in various media. What we expect are visual surprises and a grappling with difference – not only in drawing/print media, but in the very materials used to construct the book as a meaningful interplay between interiority and exteriority. The second project responds to the reading of two poems. This year, I read Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven and Philip Larkin’s Next Please. Each poem grapples with aspects of death, and the students had to produce a small

Perhaps the most visible and successful exploration of the idea of the book-as-art, to emanate from UJ’s Department of Visual Art, has been consistently undertaken by Penny Payne, who turned the idea of experiencing a book into both her third- and fourth-year final installations. Penny’s fourth-year work was featured in the Book Arts Newsletter 78 (December 2012-January 2013), University of the West of England, Bristol, UK. Kim and I are always excited about what the students produce, demonstrating that the book arts is a field of ever-expanding possibility within a set of finite structures. We are confident that these few examples of excellence demonstrate the rich excitement and possibility of this art form. From here it might be possible for us to formalise a successful stand-alone book arts module in the Department.

Figure 1: Natalie Davey. Inside outside. Mixed media on paper, found images and sweets. 2009 Figure 2: Kim Berman introduces the students to binding structures during a ‘Bloodletting’ introductory lecture. Department of Visual Art, 2014

4 Figure 3-4; Chelsea Rowley. 2 poems. Accordion-fold book with found texts & objects, paper, pen, graphite, oil, marking pen. 2013

Figure 1-2: Penny Payne. The Four Corners of the Mind. 4th-year graduate book installation exhibition. Books with found texts, objects and multiple media. 2012. Figure 3-4: Penny Payne. Therapeutic Psychology. 3rd-year Diploma book installation exhibition. Found books, texts, objects and multiple media. 2011.

Natalie Davey. Inside outside. Mixed media on paper, found images and sweets. 2009

A journal published by the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Johannesburg