05a / CHAD ROSSOUW: A history of failure
Until May 2012

To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. It is a very serious task, young man, and possibly a tragic one. – Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game 1943

A History of Failure uses South Africa’s past to examine both the complex nature of history and of South African identity. Using a variety of media, including lithographs, sculpture and found objects, Rossouw shows moments of melancholy, bathos and bombastic failure against the relentless march of historical time. Two main ideas connect the various artworks in A History of Failure. The first is that historical progress is merely an illusion. The second proposes an inherent failing in projects, monuments or nations that are dependent on the illusion of history.

The Union of South Africa, for example, presents a railway (a symbol of progress and imperial ownership of land) spiraling to the ceiling with a model train teetering on the brink of disaster. Other works, such as The De La Rey, invent fictional histories, in this case the development and destruction of a South African Zeppelin in the 1930s. Here history is a tale told from mutable evidence.

Chad Rossouw is a writer, lecturer and artist based in Cape Town. He has recently completed a Masters in Fine Art at Michaelis, UCT. In 2009 Rossouw was included in Syndrome alongside Charles Maggs at WHATIFTHEWORLD/GALLERY. He has been on numerous group shows and examples of his work reside in the IZIKO South African National Gallery's collection. Presently he is teaching photography at the Ruth Prowse School of Fine Art in Cape Town

For more information:



www.brundyngonsalves.com
71 Loop Street, Cape Town

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

05b / History: and its complications

The presentation of history depends on who is writing/recording it and from what aspect of the social, economic and political scale it portrays. The places of these registers, either as written primary sources, oral memories, as artistic or photographic depictions, are a country’s national archives, national libraries, university libraries, museums, cultural depots and papers privately owned and curated. People sometimes chronicle their own private past merely for family members to read. An important change has taken place in the recording of history in recent times from the subject being an exclusive one devoted only to the well known, the rich, the powerful, to becoming more inclusive with accounts of the poor and everyday population being carefully researched.

When war is a writer’s theme unless details from all view points are examined carefully one country that is allegedly the victor may be presented in such a way as to suggest that one side was heroic and the victim while the other country is the absolute opposite. Where human beings are concerned such purity of happenings are not always the case. For a writer and a reader to obtain unbiased details of events means delving into deep rooted primary research of events as well as secondary sources and oral records. The tone of both written and oral accounts may well be of a prejudged nature. It is true that one often depends on the living for source material but living memory only goes back one lifetime. Human memory dims with time and certain details referred to might not be personal ones but rather an interpretation of what someone has been told. Bias is never far from rearing its head!

Historians are trained to work with written records but the same difficulties as suggested above in regard to oral records apply to the written words. Governmental records, those of political parties and newspapers can be useful but one has to be on the lookout when reading through the files, for the political and social views involved, the accuracy and or prejudices towards events covered, the personal views and analysis of all of the individuals involved.

Mind you, having written these words, some historians have not been free, despite all the records available to them, of personal prejudice and inaccurate interpretations.

History is a complicated subject. Perhaps greater care from the moment the first lessons on the subject take place in primary school will lead to a more careful and respectful attitude to the subject.

05c / Collaborative Exhibition: featuring Klaus Tiedge, Sandy Mclea and Martin Osner at the Cape Quarter Piazza –until the 10th of April 2012

Klaus Tiedge, wildlife photographer extraordinaire, who will showcase his latest 2012 Pride of Africa, wildlife collection.
Sandy Mclea, a young contemporary artist, who will be showing his Pinhole photography of dramatic seascape imagery.
and
Martin Osner, renowned South African fine art photographer, who will be unveiling a new body of work portraying derelict, windswept structures which he photographed in a deserted Ghost Town last year.

KLAUS TIEDGE: Pride of Africa is an anthology that presents a clear break from documentary wildlife photography. In this series, the animals play as important a role in the images as the environments that they inhabit. Tiedge often composes his images against dramatic backdrops, creating breathtaking scenes which portray a certain fictional quality. Through taking advantage of the “modern digital darkroom”, this artist has successfully traversed the boundaries between painting and photography. This year he will be unveiling his new collection at his second exhibition in March, where signed limited edition Giclée prints on German Etching will be available for purchase in four different sizes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SANDY MCLEA: A young, up-and-coming artist has broken new boundaries with his latest work, Seascape on Eden. Using a self-made box camera with a pinhole for a lens, Mclea photographed moody coastlines in the Channel Islands and Cape Town. Embracing the distortion, lack of detail and vignetting that this historic yet classical type of photography delivers, he exposed broody compositions onto analogue film and then, after processing, enlarged them onto metallic paper. These limited edition photographs have such an authentic feel to them! They portray complex subjects in a very simplistic manner. Quite magnificent!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MARTIN OSNER: Over the past thirty years Osner has walked a path of self discovery, a journey that has refined a relaxed a tentative consciousness in his work. Photography holds an undeniable sense of realism to the artist, a modern correlation that he feels is easy for the viewer to associate with. Intently concentrating on symmetry, pattern and texture, he has photographed an engaging body of work captured in a Ghost Town in Namibia. Soft, muted tones, in contrast to weathered texture are the underlying theme to the exhibit. A masterful transformation of a complex subject transformed into simple art realism, using a lens and light as the expressive substitute for paint and brushes. For this exhibition he will present large photo-realistic prints that are a sight to behold.