Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin

Goodman Gallery Cape Town proudly presents the first solo show in South Africa by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin. Ficciones centres around two related series of works that extend the artists’ pre-occupation with the role of representation in places of trauma and conflict.

The first, Afterlife, is a re-reading of a controversial photograph taken in Iran on 6 August 1979. This remarkable image, taken just months after the revolution, records the execution of 11 blindfolded Kurdish prisoners by firing squad. The image, which captures the decisive moment the guns were fired, was immediately reproduced in newspapers and magazines across the world. The following year it was awarded a Pulitzer Prize and for the next 30 years its author was simply known as “Anonymous.” Only recently has the photographer’s identity been revealed as Jahangir Razmi, a commercial studio photographer working in the suburbs of Tehran.

The artists sought out and interviewed Razmi, and based on these discussions along with an examination of the 26 neglected images on the roll of film Razmi produced that day, they present a series of collages–an iconoclastic breakdown or dissection of the original image – that interrupts our relationship as spectators to images of distant suffering.

The second series of works, American Landscapes, takes the interiors of commercial photography studios across the United States as its ostensible subject. The artists reject the foreground and highlight instead the space in which images are literally “made.” In these occasionally abstract photographs the surfaces of walls, floors and ceilings junction along straight lines and parabolic curves to create the unspoiled white space known in the photography industry as Cycloramas. The artists refer to these spaces as ‘scenography for a free market economy’ or simply ‘Landscapes’. For just as the American West came to represent unbound possibility in the minds of early pioneers, so these studio walls act as a blank screen on which any sort of fantasy may be projected.

Adam Broomberg (b. SA, 1970) and Oliver Chanarin (b. UK, 1971) have been collaborating for over a decade on works and publications that in different ways examine the language of documentary photography. Together they have produced six monographs, and have exhibited in many of the world’s most prestigious museums including the V&A, the Stedelijk Museum, The Photographer’s Gallery, Circullo des Bellas Artes, The International Center of Photography and The Hasselblad Center.

In a new exhibition at Goodman Gallery Johannesburg, South African born and UK based Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin bring together three powerful series produced in the past four years. People in trouble laughing pushed to the ground (2010), The Day Nobody Died (2008) and The Red House (2007) are all located within zones of conflict – Northern Ireland, Afghanistan and Iraq respectively.

At times hauntingly beautiful and engagingly uncanny, People in trouble laughing pushed to the ground was produced by Broomberg and Chanarin in response to an invitation to work with the Belfast Exposed photographic archive in Northern Ireland. The archive, established by photojournalists around the beginning of the Troubles in the early ’80s, is equally concerned with protests, funerals and acts of terrorism as it is with the more ordinary stuff of life – drinking tea, kissing girls, watching trains. In each instance, the presence of the archivist is discernable through a range of marks and incisions on the contact sheets. Broomberg and Chanarin acknowledge and thank the original photographers Mervyn Smith, Sean Mc Kernan, Gerry Casey, Seamus Loughran and all other contributing photographers to Belfast Exposed’s archive.

The Day Nobody Died was realised by Broomberg and Chanarin in June 2008 during a trip to Afghanistan, where they were embedded with British Army units on the front line in Helmand Province, arriving during the deadliest month of the war. On their first day a BBC fixer was dragged from his car and executed and nine Afghan soldiers were killed in a suicide attack. The following day the number of British combat fatalities was pushed to 100, with casualties continuing until the fifth day when nobody died. In response to these, as well as a series of more mundane occurrences, Broomberg and Chanarin turned an armoured vehicle into a temporary darkroom, producing a series of peculiar abstract forms modulated by the heat and light, presenting an alternative to the photographic documentation of war.

The Red House is a series of 27 photographs of wall drawings and graphic marks made by Kurdish prisoners held in the former headquarters of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist party in northern Iraq. After the 1991 Kurdish uprising this notorious place of incarceration, torture and sometimes death, remained as a monument to the cruelty of war. Cropped and isolated, there is no visual information other than these curious markings, revealing an unexpected bout of expression amidst the monotony, solitude and terror of captivity. “History presents itself as a palimpsest” writes author David Campany. ”The traces recorded by these photographs may relate to past events in the history of the Red House but nothing is settled in Iraq yet. While the photographs are fixed forever, these may not be the last marks made on these walls.”

Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin have been collaborating for over a decade. They have produced six books, which in different ways examine the language of documentary photography; Trust (2000) accompanied their first solo-show at The Hasselblad Center; Ghetto (2003) a collection of their work as editors and principal photographers of Colors magazine, was exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum; Mr. Mkhize’s Portrait (2004) documented South Africa ten years after apartheid and accompanied a solo show at The Photographer’s Gallery; Chicago (2006), an exploration of contemporary Israel was published by SteidMACK in conjunction with a solo-show at The Stedelijk Museum; Fig which was published in Autumn 2007, also by Steidl, to accompany solo exhibitions at the John Hansard Gallery and Impressions Gallery, UK. The Red House (2007) is published by Steidl Editions. Broomberg and Chanarin regularly teach workshops and give master classes in photography, as well as teaching on the MA in Documentary Photography at LCC in London and the MFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York. They are the recipients of numerous awards, including the Vic Odden Award from the Royal Photographic Society.

Ryan Arenson | Walter Battiss | Deborah Bell | Justin Brett | Lisa Brice | Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin | Adam Broomberg | Kudzanai Chiurai | Marlene Dumas | Claire Gavronsky | Robert Hodgins | William Kentridge | David Koloane | Moshekwa Langa | Alexandra Makhlouf | Brett Murray | Sam Nhlengethwa | Walter Oltmann | Jonah Sack | Kathryn Smith | Jaco Spies | Clive Van Den Berg | Diane Victor | Jeremy Wafer | Sue Williamson

For many artists, drawing forms part of a larger process – a loose way of visualizing an artwork before committing to it in a more permanent medium. But the act of drawing itself remains one of the oldest and most eloquent forms of artistic expression. Goodman Gallery Cape is proud to present a group exhibition of drawings entitled ‘The Marks We Make’, exploring notions of mark-making as assertions of ownership and expressions of violence, memory and play.

Drawing usually refers to pencil marks on paper. In this exhibition we approach the term more loosely, featuring a range of media to question what constitutes a drawing and what gives it power. Works will include photographs from the Red House series by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, depicting the marks left behind by prisoners of Saddam Hussein in Iraq; wire and sculptural elements by Walter Oltmann and William Kentridge; installations by Jeremy Wafer, Jonah Sack and Justin Brett, as well as more traditional pencil, oil and charcoal drawings by Sue Williamson, Lisa Brice and Sam Nhlengethwa.

‘The Marks We Make’ brings together South African artists to explore the ways in which marks shape our environments and inform our perspectives. Bodies are circumscribed, silenced or marginalized by the invasive marks of violence. But these marks can also be used to express an identity, stake out a position or form communities. Territory is claimed, land contested, and ownership asserted through the use of marks, both physical and symbolic. The exhibition seeks to interrogate the ways in which these marks act to create the contingent, political spaces within which we form ourselves, and the role they play in shaping our personal and cultural memories.

This winter the Goodman Gallery will relaunch its Parkwood space, which has been extensively reconsidered, both physically and conceptually. This launch will be initiated with a group exhibition simply titled Winter Show, featuring a range of luminary-status local and international artists. The show will not only present recent works by Goodman stalwarts such as William Kentridge, David Goldblatt, Sam Nhlengethwa and Mikhael Subotzky, but will also reveal a shift in the Gallery’s approach, showcasing work from around the Continent and beyond that is both explicitly and implicitly concerned with synergies and tensions between Africa and the rest of the globe. Some of the participating international artists, such as Ghada Amer and Hank Willis Thomas, are not only being showcased by the Goodman Gallery, but are now officially represented by us.

The Winter Show will act as a confluence of the Goodman Gallery’s top represented artists, as well as artists participating in In Context – a series of exhibitions and interventions currently taking place at Arts on Main and other venues in Johannesburg. Artists such as Jenny Holzer, Amer, Willis Thomas, Bili Bidjocka, Willem Boshoff and Kara Walker will participate in both shows, with the Winter Show presenting some of their more recent work. While In Context manifests an intimate and often candid exploration of the dynamics of the African continent, the Winter Show will offer a broader conceptual platform, covering many aspects of South African, African and global landscapes and conditions.

The Winter Show will elaborate on the thorny notion of the politics of representation, which Brenda Atkinson and Candice Breitz confronted in their 1999 collection of essays Grey Areas: Representation, Identity and Politics in Contemporary South African Art. The book was a direct response to the critique of Nigerian curator Okwui Enwezor, who was the creative director of the Second Johannesburg Biennial in 1997. At the time, Enwezor interrogated the practice of artists such as Breitz, Minnette Vári and Penny Siopis, intricately considering the question of ‘who has the right to represent whom?’ Now, over a decade later, accusations of misrepresentation have been revisited and reconsidered not only by Enwezor himself and those whose essays were included in Grey Areas, but by the art community at large. In Context magnifies these issues, while the Winter Show augments the dialogue, bringing new voices into the conversation.

Compelling features of the Winter Show include two of Walker’s 2009 films – which are based on narratives from archives of a bureau established in 1865 to assist African Americans with the transition from slavery to freedom – presenting the artist’s signature black-silhouette cut-out figures, which almost impossibly convey the complexities of race, gender, sexuality and power in their stilted and provocative movements. Jenny Holzer’s Purple Red Curve (2005) transmits a coalescence of master narratives through a curved electronic LED sign. Jeremy Wafer will create a site-specific wall drawing in the Goodman Gallery specifically for the show. Kentridge will present a series of new drawings produced this year as well as a maquette of the structure World on its Hind Legs, created in collaboration with Gerhard Marx. A large scale, steel version of this work will be launched at the Apartheid Museum on 8 July 2010 as part of In Context. The Winter Show will also feature an ongoing screening of all of the Goodman Gallery’s top art films by leading artists such as Kentridge and Vári.

The Goodman Gallery in Parkwood has undergone numerous physical transformations and now boasts a new showroom and a space dedicated to photographic works. We are in the process of establishing an art library accessible to the visiting public and will offer a range of educational art talks and events during the Winter Show.

With Goodman Gallery firmly established as a prestigious, world-class contemporary art institution, the Winter Show will reveal how the Gallery – beyond representing artists of the highest caliber – is dedicated to bringing an innovative programme of relevant and compelling international works to South Africa, offering audiences exposure to some of the best contemporary work being produced locally and abroad.

“I am only interested in what’s not mine. The law of men. The law of the cannibal.” – Oswald de Andrade, from The Cannibal Manifesto, 1928
 
Eat Me has not much to do with food. Instead it explores relationships between works by artists that mine recent art history and popular culture, through cannibalistic processes of referentiality and consumption to uncover new directions and meanings, either critically or aesthetically. In theoretical explorations by art historian Paulo Herkenhoff and Augustus Klotz, cannibalism is seen as a philosophical process of renewal and regeneration, as well as a form of cultural emancipation.  
 
The show brings together works by South African and international artists to discover the ways in which visual culture is harvested, consumed and given new form. Violence, suffering and eroticism are collapsed and digested to bring forth new visual discourses, and perhaps new ways of seeing.

Reza Aramesh uses familiar scenes from news footage to restage, reclaim and re-represent events and identities we think we understand. Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin recycle archival photographs from the conflict in Northern Ireland to make way for new readings and new narratives. Frances Goodman, Ghada Amer, Mickalene Thomas and Joel Andrio use the language and imagery of romance and sex to push against the constraints of popular culture and undermine its hold on our imagination.

Eat Me also features new work by Hank Willis Thomas, video installations by Tracey Rose, Sigalit Landau and Kalup Linzy, and works by Gavin Turk and Kendell Geers. While the ingredients and methods differ, the resulting works all share a concern with the problems and processes of consumption, reclamation and renewal.

Goodman Gallery Johannesburg welcomes you to 2012 with Advance/… Notice, an exhibition of new works by a dynamic group of contemporary artists from around the world. As we advance into a new calendar year, this exhibition gives notice of innovations from some of our artists who are already familiar to you, and of our new ventures into an intellectual exchange with artists with whom we are excited to work for the first time. This show will also give audiences a preview of what is to come, as many of the featured artists have solo shows planned for 2012 at Goodman Gallery spaces and other prestigious South African institutions.
Advance/… Notice introduces newly perfected techniques or processes for some of our well-known artists, such as platinum photographic prints by David Goldblatt, and a completely new turn of direction and field of interest for African American artist Hank Willis Thomas, who first exhibited with us on In Context in 2010, as well as for Sigalit Landau, the acclaimed Israeli artist we co-hosted at last year’s Venice Biennale. These international savants are joined by South African artists such as Hasan and Husain Essop, Moshekwa Langa, Mikhael Subotzky, Sue Williamson, William Kentridge, Rosenclaire, and Frances Goodman revealing either brand new works, or works not yet seen in Johannesburg. Also featured are works by Kendell Geers, whose retrospective exhibition will open at IZIKO South African National Gallery in late March 2012.
Our first show of the year seems an apt time to introduce the novel and the unexpected in the work of a number of artists and to also welcome prominent figures including Liza Lou, a world-renowned American now living and working in KwaZulu Natal; South African Candice Breitz, now resident in Berlin; Chilean-born New Yorker Alfredo Jaar; London-based Iranian Reza Aramesh, as well as Carla Busuttil – a young South African artist based in Berlin who is well-established in the United Kingdom, but has never before exhibited in her home country.
Liza Lou presents a work titled Gather Forty, one of a series of forty individual sculptures made from gold-plated beads that have been expertly threaded onto four hundred individual pieces of stainless steel wire and bound in a sheaf – continuing the shift of the beadwork medium from craft to conceptual art. Alfredo Jaar, internationally recognised artist, filmmaker and architect, celebrated for the public interventions he has created all over the world, shows From Time to Time, a panel of nine Time magazine covers focusing on Africa that either feature animals or malnourished Africans – revealing how the rest of the world often encapsulates its second largest continent. Breitz, who opens a major survey of her work titled Extra! at the Standard Bank Gallery this February, presents The Character, a video installation filmed in Mumbai that seeks to understand the role and influence of child characters in mainstream Indian cinema through interviews with a group of young moviegoers. In Action 78, Aramesh uses familiar scenes from news footage of the first Gulf War to restage, re-present and destabilise any easy readings of the conflicts we think we understand. Oil paintings by Busuttil offer a sinisterly-executed perusal of the exploitation of power and cruelty.
We are also very pleased to present for the first time the work of Nelisiwe Xaba, who will be presenting an interactive dance and video collaboration with Mocke J van Veuren at Goodman Gallery Projects in February. The crossover into visual art is exciting new territory for this renowned performer/dancer.
Goodman Gallery hopes you will join us to be inspired, challenged and excited by this exhibition and its promise of advances in the visual arts of South Africa. We trust you will find the exhibition gives notice of an innovative and exciting programme for 2012 in Johannesburg and Cape Town.