Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
London 13 June - 7 August 2016
Cape Town 11 - 18 June 2016
Nú Barreto Othello De'Souza-Hartley Christine Dixie Paul Emmanuel David Lurie Wycliffe Mundopa Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude Vivien Kohler Neill Wright Ralph Ziman
Introduction Rites of Passage: Between Light and Shadow Rites of passage are experiences that mark the transition from one phase of life to another; we are wanderers constantly travelling between passageways of light and darkness. These unfolding linear progressions bound to time, or fluid journeys from a past to future-nows, can be understood through Arnold van Gennep's tripartite pattern of human transitions; 'detachment' (movement away from a previous state of being), 'liminality' (journeying through a state of ambiguity) and 're-aggregation' (realigning oneself with the shifts and reintegrating into society). These fleeting moments become the markers of living, birth rites, religious or cultural initiation rites, mortuary rites and everything in between, first words, birthdays, educational milestones, and adolescence to adulthood. In contemporary society some of these ceremonial devises, once shared through communal ritualistic practices, have been abandoned, and others transformed to reflect contemporary conditions. Artists extend these rituals into modern life, articulating rites of passage through their practice. They bring our awareness back to these moments of release, transgression and transformation, by documenting, reenacting or translating rites of passage in various mediums. Like the chapters of our stories, these junctures in life are momentous ceremonies that are performed and remembered, or the intimate shifts that silently go unnoticed. We become the product of these experiences. These attuning practices that we design and ascribe meaning to, rights that are scripted and imposed upon us or granted to us, shape our sense of identity. Rites of Passage: Between Light and Shadow was curated by Kefiloe Siwisa, assisted by Antonia Bamford.
Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Nú Barreto Born in 1966, in São Domingos, in the north of Guinea Bissau, Barreto moved to Paris in 1989, where he currently lives and works. He was initially interested in photography and studied briefly at the Photography School AEP in Paris, in 1993. He then pursued his studies at the Ecole Nationale des Métiers d'Image au Gobelins from 1994 to 1996, where he finished his photography studies.
Multidisciplinary artist using drawing, found objects and collage, Nú Barreto looks to awaken the viewer through his paintings, drawings, photographs and videos. His leitmotiv has been the condemnation of the oppressive acts in our world, especially denouncing the misery and suffering that plagues the African continent. He incorporates in his work the language of shapes, symbolic colors and motifs carrying a strong meaning.
Nú Barreto's work has been shown in several solo exhibitions in France, Portugal, Spain and New York. In 1998, he exhibited his work at the Lisbon World Exposition. In 2013, he participated for the second time in UNESCO's Art for Peace exhibition in Paris. His work has also been discovered during collective shows, such as at the FrenchMozambican Cultural Center, in Maputo, in 2005, as well as at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; the Dakar Biennial, in Senegal, in 2006; the Centre Culturel des Rencontres de Neumünster (CCRN) in Luxembourg in 2007; the Kunstraum Kreuzberg, in Berlin, Germany; the Vieira da Silva Museum, in Lisbon, Portugal; the Mémorial de América Latina à Marta Traba, in São Paulo, Brazil; the Boribana Museum Dakar, in Senegal, and most recently, at the MUCANE Museum in Victoria, Brazil.
Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Isolados 2016 Mixed Media Size: 110cm x 110cm
Pasmo 2016 Mixed Media Size: 110cm x 110cm Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
L'autre en Soi 2016 Mixed Media Size: 130cm x 130cm
Libre, vraiment 2016 Mixed Media Size: 130cm x 130cm Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
O ser no Impasse 2016 Mixed Media Size: 110cm x 110cm
Qui est qui? 2016 Mixed Media Size: 130cm x 130cm Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Entre Noir... Blanc 2015 Mixed Media Size: 130cm x 130cm
Curator’s Statement - Nú Barreto “Nobody is insensitive or indifferent to differences.”(Barreto, 2015) Nú Barreto 's leitmotiv is the condemnation of the oppressive acts in our world, especially denouncing the misery and suffering which plagues the African continent. He incorporates in his work the language of shapes, symbolic colors and motifs and explores the societal transitions denied the people of Guinea Bissau by the tradition of Funguli - the separating of people in social classes according to the whitishness of a person's skin.
Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Othello De'Souza-Hartley Othello De'Souza-Hartley is a London-based visual artist working with photography and film. Inspired by the mood and psychological themes of classical painting, his unique approach to composition, light and gaze combines to unveil the inner workings of his subject.
De'Souza-Hartley's aesthetic is enriched by paradox, injecting dynamism into static imagery and inviting the viewer to question the condition of his characters. Past photographic projects have sought to unmask the construction of masculinity in the 21st century, the ethereal haze of dreams and the inimitable nature of sartorial self-expression. Recent films bridge the relationship between photography and the moving image, while maintaining the flow of the avant-garde.
The artist has received commissions from a range of institutions including, Museum of Liverpool, National Portrait Gallery, The Photographers' Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum. He has had solo shows at the Camden Arts Centre and The Underground Gallery, and featured in-group shows at the Gasworks Gallery and the APT gallery London.
De'Souza-Hartley was awarded an MA in Fine Art from Camberwell College of Art and previously studied photography at Central St Martins. In 2011, the artist received an Arts Award from the University of Arts London.
Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Masculinity Project Phase 4, Coal Mine in Wakefield 2013 C-type hand print 101.6cm x 76.2cm
Masculinity Project Phase 4, Coal Mine Lift 2013 C-type hand print 101.6cm x 76.2cm Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Masculinity Project Phase 4, Barbershop 2013 C-type hand print 182.8cm x 121.9cm
Masculinity Project - Othello De'Souza-Hartley This project explores notions of masculinity in present-day. The work has several components consisting of Phase 1, a portrait series of male participants, Phase 2 a video project, and Phase 3 a photographic project using myself as the subject. Phase 4, what we see in this exhibition explores masculinity in the North of England and finally, Phase 6, a sound piece constructed of interviews with men discussing their masculinity. De'Souza-Hartley'sinterest in masculinity grew from questioning his own masculinity. Through this exploration the work becomes the vulnerability of his own masculinity and other men in today's society. This leading him to question,What does masculinity consist of and the foundations it is based upon? Can masculinity be a performance? Fundamentally, what is masculinity in the 21st Century?
Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Christine Dixie
Christine Dixie is a South African artist whose training in printmaking has extended into installation. Her work is predominantly focussed on two interlinked concerns, the visual strategies deployed in frontier landscape representation and the narratives used in constructing images of gender. Her work is intent on drawing the viewer into a mesmeric yet disquieting space. A deceptively calm surface is disrupted by an undercurrent, a counter-narrative that threatens to disrupt a tenuous vision of logic and stability. In 2010, along with several other key works from her oeuvre, Christine Dixie's three-part Installation, The Binding, which examines the relationship between sacrifice and male identity, was acquired by the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. The print component from the installation was exhibited in 2014 in curator Simon Njumi''s The Divine Comedy Heaven, Hell, Purgatory and Hell Revisited by Contemporary African Artists. The Binding, a Special Edition Artist's Book, 2014 was acquired by the New York Public Library. Even in the Long Descent, also owned by the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art was exhibited in Earth Matters: Land as Material and Metaphor in the Arts of Africa, 2013 (curator Dr. Karen Milbourne) and her work Unravel is part of the exhibitionConversations:African and American Artworks in Dialogue. Dixie's most recent work, a video installation, To Be King, forms part of an on-going body of work. To Be King is located within a destabilizing post-colonial narrative that travels between the place of the Spanish Court in the northern hemisphere in the seventeenth century and the place of the south in contemporary South Africa.
Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
For Days and Nights (The Binding) 2009 Etching on hahnemuhle paper Editions: 8 + 4 AP 49cm x 86cm
Among the Dreams (The Binding) 2009 Etching on hahnemuhle paper Editions: 8 + 4 AP 49cm x 86cm Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
A Deep Impression (The Binding) 2009 Etching on hahnemuhle paper Editions: 8 + 4 AP 49cm x 86cm
A Beloved Body Burned (The Binding) 2009 Etching on hahnemuhle paper Editions: 8 + 4 AP 49cm x 86cm Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Fragments I (The Binding) 2009 Lithograph on Archival paper Editions: 8 + 4 AP 49cm x 86cm
Fragments II (The Binding) 2009 Lithograph on Archival paper Editions: 8 + 4 AP 49cm x 86cm Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
The Binding Book (The Binding) 2009 Artist Book Editions: 15
The Binding - Christine Dixie The Special Edition Artists Book, The Binding, is visually and conceptually linked to Christine Dixie's installation The Binding acquired by the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington D.C. Working collaboratively with bookbinder Helene van Aswegen, Dixie brought the deluxe edition into being as a project in its own right. The different surfaces of the book – leather, mohair, embossment, paper, string- were carefully considered and constitute a conceptual point of departure for the book. The selected prints are a combination of etching and embossing, the embossed bandage link the pages and become a metaphoric thread recalling wounding and the violent rituals enacted in the establishment of male identity. The two duo-tone digital prints are details taken from the embodied shadows in which a sleeping boy was made from toy soldiers. The toy soldiers locate the images in a contemporary practice that performs particular constructions of male identity. Dr. Deborah Seddon in her essay 'Paternity and Intertextuality in Christine Dixie's The Binding 'writes: The Binding can be understood as a work of mourning as it records Dixie's response as the mother of a son in a patriarchal culture and sets her personal experience alongside paradigmatic texts that speak to the role of the father-son bond in Western culture and its impact on our ways of structuring parental roles, gender, and kinship. Dixie's work may be read as a mother bearing witness to a sacrificial culture in which she is implicated but also deliberately excluded, as her embodied maternity gives way to the law of the Father: the patriarchal ties that bind. But The Binding, in making us inhabit the view of the father, while witnessing the experience of the son destined for sacrifice, asks the viewer (whatever our own gendered identity) to reckon with our own complicity. What is revealed is how we too have been bound, socialized into a view of the male child. Yet we may also inhabit the view of the son, or even his mother, putting into motion a provocative discordance of identification.
Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Paul Emmanuel Born in 1969 in Kabwe, Zambia, Emmanuel graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in 1993. In 1997 The Ampersand Foundation (NY) made him the first recipient of the Ampersand Fellowship with a three-month residency in New York. In 2002 he was awarded first prize for AIR ON THE SKIN in the Sasol Wax in Art Competition, Sasolburg, South Africa. Emmanuel employs various media to reveal layered visions concerned with his identity living in post-apartheid South Africa. In 2004 Phase 1 of his series of counter-memorials THE LOST MEN, was launched on the Grahamstown National Arts Festival main visual arts programme. In 2007 Phase 2 of this project took place in Maputo, Mozambique. In 2008 his touring solo museum exhibition TRANSITIONS premiered at The Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg, featuring his critically acclaimed short, non-narrative film 3SAI: A RITE OF PASSAGE. The film won the 2009 jury prize at Edinburgh's 4th Africa-In-Motion International Film Festival, UK & the 2010 Best Experimental Film Award on the 5th Sardinia International Film Festival, Italy. TRANSITIONS debuted its 2010 international tour at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, USA. Emmanuel was selected as the 2011 Featured Artist with his solo exhibition TRANSITIONS MULTIPLES for the FNB Joburg Art Fair, South Africa & in 2012 he was granted the Institut Franรงais Visas Pour la Creation research residency, Paris, France. In July 2014 THE LOST MEN FRANCE was temporarily installed adjacent to the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, Northern France as an intervention in the Somme Circuit of Remembrance & as an official event of the World War One Centenary. In June 2015, the remains of this anti-memorial were installed at Freedom Park Museum, Pretoria, South Africa in an exhibition titled REMNANTS which tours to Boston University's 808 Gallery, Massachusetts, USA in January 2016. Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Number 05000674PV (Transitions Multiples) 2010 Black lithographic ink and watercolour pigment on 285 gsm Fabriano Rosaspina Avorio paper Edition of 35 81cm x 159cm
Parade of Shadows (Transitions Multiples) 2009 Black lithographic ink and watercolour pigment on 285 gsm Fabriano Rosaspina Avorio paper Edition of 35 81cm x 159cm Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
3SAI: A Rite of Passage Video Still Frame 2008 High-definition fil, colour, no narration 14 Minutes
Transitions - Paul Emmanuel In late 2004 I was exploring how the military influenced and perpetuated notions of masculinity in South Africa. One morning, while thinking about moments of change, I decided to photograph an actual military recruit head shaving while it was happening – to witness to an unfolding drama. After some research, I discovered that there were only two remaining military bases in South Africa which still perform this obligatory ‘rite of passage’ on their premises, one in Oudtshoorn and the other, Third South African Infantry Battalion (3SAI) in Kimberley. I phoned the Kimberley base, spoke to the Officer-in-Command and arranged a visit to photograph head shavings from the January 2005 intake. I remember feeling apprehensive of what I would find. I did not do military service. I only had references to military experiences told to me by my older brother and friends, who described their head shaving experiences of the apartheid military regime of the 1980s – their stories of feeling dehumanised, lots of shouting, indifference, bigotry and fear. Instead, I found a very different setting ... quiet lawns with well tended flower beds full of roses. Lines of recruits waiting patiently. No shouting. No authoritarianism. No evidence of the violent breaking down of the human spirit. Compared with the horror stories related to South Africa’s past, the equanimity of the scene was arresting. I was spellbound. These liminal moments of transition, when a young man either voluntarily – or is forced to – let go of one identity and take on a new identity as State Property with an assigned Force Number, prompted me to ask many questions: What was I actually witnessing? What is a “Rite of Passage” and how have similar “rituals” helped to form and perpetuate identities and belief systems throughout history? Why was I so powerfully drawn to and transfixed by these dramatic spectacles of subtle change and moments of suspended possibility and impossibility? And so began an intensely reflexive outward and inward journey, in and beyond my studio, which was to last four long years ... – Paul Emmanuel 2008
Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
David Lurie David Lurie (1951) is a photographer from South Africa. He studied economics, politics and philosophy and taught philosophy at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Lurie lived in London where he undertook research in the Department of International Relations at the London School of Economics, co-edited Millenium, Journal of International Studies and worked as a consultant-economist. His scholarship has continued to influence his photographic content; focusing on the effects of urbanization, social marginalization and economic disparities in Africa.
His bodies of work can be read like visual journals, harmonizing a documentary approach with the finesse of a painter. Lurie’s ability to capture the often-overlooked commonplace and reveal its effluence, beauty and humanistic ‘spirit of place’, to be experienced anew, gives poignancy to his considered compositions.
“His portraits display a rare interaction ('two-way gaze') between photographer and subject; an often disconcerting transformation of spectacle into spectator, where the viewer (photographer) appears to be under scrutiny. His cityscapes are 'personal', with obsessive attention to detail. The fascination and strangeness often lies in the minutiae. His subjects are portrayed unflinchingly and truthfully, yet caringly.”
Lurie’s work has been widely published and exhibited in galleries and museums in Europe, the United States, Australia, South Africa and the Middle East. He is the recipient of numerous awards including Pictures of the Year International, the World Understanding Award, Nikon (UK), Ilford Pro Photo (SA), and Arts Council of Great Britain Grant Awards.
Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Somali Mother and Daughter, Blue Waters Camp for Refugees (The Right to Refuge) 2009 Fibre base, archival, digital prints. Editions: 8 + 2 AP 40cm x 49cm
Somali Refugee Sisters (The Right to Refuge) 2009 Fibre base, archival, digital prints. Editions: 8 + 2 AP 40cm x 49cm Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Masks, Ocean View (Cape Town Fringe) 2007 Fibre base, archival, digital prints. Editions: 8 + 2 AP 39cm x 57cm
Manenberg, Released from Prison (Cape Town Fringe) 2004 Fibre base, archival, digital prints. Editions: 8 + 2 AP 40cm x 49cm Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Prince (DRC Priest) (The Right to Refuge) 2009 Fibre base, archival, digital prints. Editions: 8 + 2 AP 40cm x 49cm
Right to The City - David Lurie The works selected for this exhibition are about mass migration to the cities, from foreign countries (refugees), from rural areas (mostly the eastern Cape) as well as the children of people who had been uprooted during the apartheid 'forced removal' years. Recent studies have alerted us to the fact that the global urban unemployment crisis, a worldwide catastrophe of urban poverty, is as serious a threat as climate change to our collective future. This series attempts to give a 'human face' to studies about the urban excluded; how this surplus humanity improvise survival in the city. These photographs are an attempt to distill Lurie's experience of these fragments of life – of unfinished stories – on the precipice beyond the edge of Cape Town. It is a study of the people involved in informal survival in a profoundly unstable world. They are portraits, in which David began to develop his compelling 2-way gaze. Where the spectator, himself, becomes the spectacle. He wanted the subject to scrutinize him; so that when the viewer views the picture on a wall, they feel they are being scrutinized. Reversing the 'expected', conventional idea about power relations between the viewer and the viewed. The shock of the gaze returned. Compelling stares that seek out, follow and find the viewer.
Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Wycliffe Mundopa Born 1987 in Rusape, Zimbabwe. Lives and works in Harare, Zimbabwe.
Wycliffe Mundopa is undoubtedly one of the most passionate painters of the lives of women and children in Harare's underprivileged neighbourhoods. His works speak out with relentless commitment to acknowledging those too often swept under the carpet by society. His work also becomes an opportunity to see how painfully and vibrantly women's lives reflect the conflicts of tradition and change of life in contemporary Zimbabwe, from the clash of moral codes to the economic strain, which makes children into adults too soon. He presents people without adornment or judgment – the mothers, the prostitutes, the caregivers, the breadwinners, the beautiful and the ugly, the selfish and the greedy.
His exceptional skill as a draftsman brings a masterful ease to his paintings, stencil collages and spray-paint drawing/painting. It has also won him acclaim and popularity with both collectors and critics. His works are collected and exhibited as far wide as Hong Kong, Kenya, Australia, France, UK, Germany and The Netherlands, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.
Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Cooking in the Same Pot 2016 Oil on canvas 147cm x 100cm
The Ties that Bind 2016 Oil on canvas 147cm x 100cm Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Engine of Progress 3 2016 Oil on canvas 155cm x 128cm
Curator’s Statement - Wycliffe Mundopa These particular selections of Mundopa's painted works speak out to the vulnerability he sees of woman's lives in Harare. They face universal matters and touch on emotions that we have simply become accustomed to in today's society - anger, cynicism, compassion. By touching upon these territories of his known world he is attempting to highlight the slipping that is taking place between the past and present, traditional and future values, being formed by our complicity and silence. He is asking us to observe what he observes, and also presenting a response that is bold, loud, questioning - asking us to question the significant transition taking place in Zimbabwe within ordinary lives, every day. Where is it leading? Is it okay? Is this what we will accept? He presents these vulnerable women in his paintings, without adornment or judgement to show these intimate shifts that have silently gone unnoticed. Mundopa has been shortlisted for the Villa Lena residency award at ART16 with this series of work.
Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude Born in 1988 in Harare, Zimbabwe. Lives and works in Harare Mbare is Harare's and perhaps Zimbabwe's most vibrant and notorious ghetto. Allegedly ridden with hooliganism, violence and prostitution, Mbare is said to parallel the conditions of Harare for Zimbabweans during the colonial segregation era (in respect of its hardship and quality of living space). To this day Mbare retains the character of a port city with its trade, shady deals and otherwise bustle of unremitting human traffic amid urban decay. Born and raised in Mbare, Nyaude works against the sweeping identity that has been defined by the voice of the state. His images oscillate between figuration, abstraction and hallucination, drawing from the restless energy of the ghetto. Living on the verge between survival and demise has been somewhat of a call to poetry, at times proving brutal and at others sentimental or cynically satirical. His figures defy characterisation, underscored by the humanity of their quest to attain a quality of life that appears even beyond the reach of dreams.
Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Future Leader 2016 Oil on canvas 80cm x 60cm
Hands in the Cookie Jar 2016 Oil on canvas 100cm x 100cm Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
The General and His Ride 2016 Oil on canvas 154cm x 124cm
Curator’s Statement - Gresham Tapiwa Nyaude Nyaude delivers packages of satire, drawn from intimate and wry observation of the rich and colourful life in his notorious neighbourhood. Nyaude's quest is to get under the skin of life in Mbare. His depiction of his subjects is fragmented and sometimes disfigured, presenting us with psychological insights of a world that only an insider can communicate. Here we see life in broad daylight and the depth of night, in all its complications, pain and beauty, awkwardness and desire, which show us an intimacy and human vulnerability – the truth of human condition This fight for quality of life is evident in these works, reenacting powerful bonds that are a necessity to survive.
Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Vivien Kohler Vivien Kohler (1976) is an experimental mixed media painter based in Johannesburg, South Africa. He received his National Diploma in Fine Art from the Ruth Prowse School of Art and Design in Cape Town, 2000. The concept of liminality; the liminal city and its people, lies at the core of Kohler’s work, which explores migration, marginalization and displacement in the urban landscape of post Apartheid South Africa. “His work has an immediate and intimate relationship with the materiality of the city” - Prof. Gore Kohler constructs two and three dimensional assemblage pieces; appropriating discarded material, painting naturalistic figures and detailed replications of packaging material (a layered visual metaphor signifying transience, migration, displacement), to articulate challenging social and economic circumstances that affect those on the periphery.
“My works do not hide the realities of the unfair perception, but symbolically display it in relation to the liberating verdict of the human spirit” Fascinated by man’s ability to transcend ‘the conceptual decay’, he captures, with gentle rawness, the complexity of human disposition. His work seeks to illuminate the duality of lived experiences by depicting, with an air of surreality, meditative moments of the individual, mentally cocooned from, yet physically enveloped by life’s detritus. Kohler has exhibited in art fairs and group shows locally and internationally ("Is There Still Life" curated by Prof. Michael Godby which featured William Kentridge, Penny Siopis and Willie Bester). He has produced two solo shows to date; Given to Fly (2012) and De(re)tritus (2014). He has received awards; the ItWeb / brainstorm competition (2012) with his entry commissioned by Vodacom, and in 2013 he was the winner of the Lovell Gallery artist competition. His work is housed in both public and private collections, including the Nandos Collection, the Hollard Collection, SAB and Fusion UK. Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Of Iron and Clay detail (De(re)tritus) 2014 Found metal objects, grout and oil on board
Of Iron and Clay (De(re)tritus) 2014 Found metal objects, grout and oil on board 285cm x 460cm x 4cm
My Iron Lung (De(re)tritus) 2014 Found metal objects, grout and oil on board 146cm x 170cm x 4cm
De(re)tritus - Vivien Kohler
Vivien Kohler's body of work De(re)tritus explores the notion of 'retritus', human nature's ability to overcome life's challenges; be it political injustice, financial circumstance, ancestral inheritance or ill-conceived perceptions, all of which take a concerted re-evaluation to overcome. Through the assemblage of found scrap metal, objects and painted forms, Kohler reflects and juxtaposes shared internal and external challenges of existence.
Detritus is organic matter produced by the decomposition of organisms. It can be described as waste or debris of any kind, that which is discarded due to corrosion. There are many forces that corrode not only physically but also psychologically and emotionally. In many cases it is this emotional decay that leaves us deficient of the strength to walk the path of our destiny.
The idea of drawing sustenance, strength or meaning from somewhere other than ones immediate circumstances or one's own ability, is what Kohler has based this work on. It is this innate optimistic ability, this “retritus� or overcoming of life's detritus where hope begins to ignite dreams.
Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Neill Wright Neill Wright is a multidisciplinary artists based in the pulsating city of Johannesburg, South Africa. His satirical work braves the world of social commentary in a bold, colourful and humorous manner.
Wright explores various mediums; such as sculpture, printmaking and painting as modes of expression, drawing inspiration from the interconnected worlds of media, popular culture, politics and societal interactions in an attempt to create panoramic views of current issues, hardships, complexities and paradoxes present within South African and to some extent African society as a whole.
Through highlighting the absurdities of a collectively experienced 'everyday' his work subverts the tragic, placing the viewer in a space where they are confronted by opposing feelings; the melancholic reality and the ironic hilarity or joy of his compositions.
Wright (1985) holds an Honours in Fine Art from Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, and a Postgraduate Diploma in Fine Art, majoring in printmaking. In 2013 Wright was named one of the 10 emerging South African artists to watch by The Times.
He has exhibited in numerous group and solo exhibitions, including South African and International Art fairs. He has gained that rare position of running an 'empty studio', where as he produces, his works sell regularly to private collectors in Europe, the United States, Australia and South Africa.
Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Piggyback questions how liberated a girl or child is when forced into the role of parent through circumstance, often an unfortunate product of their environment. The long dress, big feet, closed eyes and tired posture juxtaposed with the smiling, protected baby illustrate the hardships of 'forced' motherhood.
Piggyback (Legacies of Liberation) 2014 Patinated Bronze 35cm X 39cm X 37cm
Last Resort (Legacies of Liberation) 2014 Patinated Bronze 32cm X 90cm X 65cm
"Last Resort" deals with refugees. For many they are just considered a number, strain on a country’s resources and a burden. I think people fail to acknowledge the sheer desperation a person must be experiencing to become a refugee. The posture of the character illustrates the reluctance to move and the weight and burden of the journey. . Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Hobby Horse (Legacies of Liberation) 2014 Patinated Bronze 35cm X 74cm X 55cm
Rain (Wilderness) 2016 Acrylic on Canvas 85cm diameter Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Fence (Wilderness) 2016 Acrylic on Canvas 85cm diameter
You (Wilderness) 2016 Acrylic on Canvas 60cm diameter Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Wilderness - Neill Wright, Written by Andrew Lamprecht Neill Wright’s ‘Wilderness Series’ makes extensive use of the circular, tondo, form of painting. Tondi were usually utilised in the Renaissance to portray the Virgin and Child or the Holy Family and it was believed that the round shape of the panels aided in heightening emotion and concentrating focus in such works. While Wright’s subject matter is different in ‘Wilderness’, here he too has used the form to concentrate our attention and present an intense, even overwhelming scenario to our view. The culture of excess, consumerism and abundant consumption in which we all live (or in some cases aspire to live) is a condition that affects Africa as much as the West – though often the Western indulgence in such a condition is usually at the expense of the global South. Wright, in his bottle caps, tondi and bitten-into apples, unfurls a dizzying, bilious series of explosions of colour, words and symbols before us. On one hand these seem to be playful things but on closer inspection we see that what lies beneath the heady splashes of colour and intersecting abstract forms are hints of devastating things, as if in being dazzled by the bright lights of contemporary life we are simultaneously being blinded to the future that such indulgence and carelessness will manifest. Almost as a counterpoint to his ‘Legacies of Liberation’ series in which the most horrific situations experienced in contemporary Africa are evoked through Lego-like figures, in ‘Wilderness’ Neill Wright portrays nuclear proliferation, genetic manipulation and the constant, unremitting environmental disaster that we are all heir and progenitor to through happy, bright, even cartoonesque layerings and juxtapositions. In the series lactations and ejaculations; explosions and implosions compete for our attention with lush foliage and sunny vistas about to turn dark. And constantly we are presented with grasping hands, perhaps signalling for the artist the act of play as much as manipulation and control. For in this work we are not in control. This dreamscape is a fever dream, and we are rushing headlong into a painted world whose flatness and abstraction belies the complexities that the artist has embedded into the seemingly happy-go-lucky surface that he paints. Like the ‘superflat’ artists of Japan, headed and theorised by Takashi Murakami at the turn of the twenty-first century, who wished to critique the superficiality of their time through the post-painterly abstraction of extreme flatness in their work, Neill Wright seems to have developed a new language a painting to consider the space in which we live today, often torn between Western desires and demands and the needs, iniquities and aspirations of living in South Africa. Is Wright’s ‘Wilderness’ a jungle of our own making? Or is there, beneath the surface, a hint of an Eden to be seen? If so, have we bitten into Eve’s apple; or popped the cap of a fizzy, heady drink that will make us sicken at its sugarfree sweetness as it gushes over our hands and indeed, in viewing it, over our eyes?
Andrew Lamprecht is a senior lecturer at UCT’s Michaelis School of Fine Art. He is active as a curator and writer with focus on contemporary South African art.
Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
Ralph Ziman Ralph Ziman (1963) was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and currently practices and resides in Los Angeles, USA. He is an internationally renowned, award winning filmmaker with over four hundred videos and critically acclaimed feature films in his filmograhy.
Ziman has now embarked on a new visual vocabulary, which includes; photography and urban inspired public interventions supported by video documentation.
His multidisciplinary work, which began with a photographic and installation series entitled ‘Ghosts’, and a public art project and global awareness campaign ‘The Resistance Project’, challenges the tumultuous occurrences that rupture in the shadows of the African continent. Ziman sheds light particularly on the ravenously increasing international arms trade that has fuelled the continents extorting and fevered cycles of war, corruption and impoverishment.
“While spending time again in Johannesburg, my birth town, I was horrified by the crime and the proliferation of weapons, the ease with which they can be acquired and the fascination the culture has with guns in general and the AK-47 in particular. The ways that struggle songs lionize the gun. The sound the gun makes, the look of it. I wanted to find a way to explore the subject.”
Traversing the lines between the alluring and unsettling, his use of saturated hues and intrepid gestural figures brandishing replicas of the AK47, result in evocative visual compositions; ‘shocking, beautiful and sad’. The AK-47, a symbol of perceived power and struggle is estimated to have claimed over one half of a billion deaths in conflicts since its conception.
Ziman subverts this iconic artillery through embellishing and recreating it with Africana visual signifiers. Employing traditionally inspired beaded artistry, beads which historically served as a trade good, he illustrates the degree to which weaponry has violated not only the past but is pervasive in the current ‘everyday’. Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
untitled 43 (Ethopia) 2014 Ultrachrome HDR Ink on on Moag Entrada Paper 122cm x 168cm
untitled 6 (Ethopia) 2014 Ultrachrome HDR Ink on on Moag Entrada Paper 122cm x 168cm Rites of Passage Between Light and Shadow
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