Frances Goodman

In a solo exhibition at Goodman Gallery Johannesburg, Frances Goodman resumes her exploration of our deep-seated obsessions, specifically those triggered by social prescription. Titled Till Death Us Do Part, the fixation in question here is matrimony and its constructed mythologies and ideals as experienced by South African women. In immersive sound pieces presented as installations, as well as other mixed media work, Goodman simultaneously veils and unveils the pressures, anxieties and expectations women feel and in turn exert on themselves.

The focal installation for the exhibition, The Dream – originally commissioned by Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland – consists of metres and metres of draped bridal fabric hanging in cascades from the ceiling, forming a massive cloud. Emanating from the froth of textile is a soundscape constructed from Goodman’s interviews with dozens of unmarried South African women, revealing the strong and varying opinions and feelings women have with regard to marriage and the societal pressure placed on them. Their opinions and voices are powerfully interlaced, forming what almost becomes an open and candid dialogue about the heated subject of weddings, marriage and their associations. Goodman admits that the level of honesty and disclosure surprised her. “That’s what women do, they get married,” declares one anonymous voice. “If I was out with my mom and her friends and there was a 30-something year old woman who wasn’t married and she didn’t have children, I would think ‘how very strange’”, says another. “I think, ‘oh I’d have a better cake. I don’t want a wedding, but I would have a better cake’” admits another. “I feel like I’m getting older, I feel like I’m reaching my expiry date.” Another voice states “I’m much happier when I’m single. I don’t have anyone to question me, I’m not trying to please anyone.”

Goodman will also be exhibiting interrelated mixed-media series that consider relationships, how they are simplified through statistics and how their failure can manifest in bellicose actions. This is revealed through internet-sourced diagrams made out of wedding dress material and car bonnets that have been riveted with stock declarations such as “I’m the one that got away”. “Cars are people’s avatars these days,” says Goodman. “When you want to lash out at people, you go for their cars.”

In beaded works that allude to wedding dress bodices, Goodman takes on other things that we are married to in our lives such as pets, social networks, sport and money.

Born in 1975 in Johannesburg, South Africa, Frances Goodman studied Fine Art at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. She then moved to London to join the MA course at Goldsmiths College, graduating in 2000. From 2001 to 2003 she lived in Antwerp where she was artist in residence at HISK, Higher Institute for Fine Art. She has had numerous solo exhibitions in South Africa and has participated in major international shows such as Sphères, at Le Moulin, France in 2009 and Lust and Vice: From Durer to Nauman
at the Kunstmuseum Bern in 2010.

Historically seen as criminal, or sinful, the idea of dependency as an illness is a recent one. Morbid Appetites is Frances Goodman’s upcoming exhibition at the Goodman Gallery Cape that takes its name from an antiquated term for addictions. In keeping with her long-running interest in obsessions, this exhibition is an objective study in sound, text and sculpture of what happens to the human condition when a psychological line is crossed. On their most basic level, Goodman’s pieces are a detailed examination of how contemporary society is able to transform harmless activities like eating, shopping and taking medicine into deadly vices. More critically, her works comment on the economic and cultural conditions that accelerate this perversion.

Mother’s Little Helper are a series of six sculptures that are, in fact, precise models of the molecular structures of the most over-prescribed prescription drugs on the market. The adornment of these unfamiliar forms in jewel-like pins and crystals is more than a matter of keeping up appearances. It’s a paradoxical reference to the absence of the packaging that would allow us to recognise these microscopic machines on our shelves. Viewers are invited to search for a correspondence between the forms within the shiny surfaces and their effects on the psyche.

The layered works of StealthWealth are the authentic shopping bags of fashion boutiques, which Goodman has upholstered, using and morphing the materials of the fake designer handbags of the same label. These grotesque hybrids are a study of the in transience of brand loyalty, in a recessionary context in which certain high-end outlets have actually stopped marking their carrier bags as a response to their customers reluctance to be seen consuming.

‘Nothing Tastes as Good as Being Thin,’ and ‘Starve Me Sane’ are just two of the slogans of the text pieces Goodman has crafted from the hook-and-eye fastenings typically used to make clothing tighter or looser. Entitled Bodycopy, the series is an investigation of eating disorders, and the subcultures they have produced. The slogans themselves come from websites that ‘Pro-Ana’, (pro anorexia) girls host online. Again, there exists within the work a reference to addiction, but in this instance the emphasis is on deprivation, rather than indulgence. At same time the pieces intimate that there is a certain amount of luxury implicit in choosing not to eat.

The exhibition will culminate in the sound installation MINDONTHEMONEY. Branded, sequined suitcases, with their notions of physical and social mobility, are static before the visitor as Goodman unfolds a soundscape composed of the calls of the hawkers who peddle ‘fake’ goods from suitcases because of their need to evade the authorities quickly when necessary. It is up to the listener to decide whether those who cannot, or will not part with the money for the authentic should be the objects of derision or praise, but more profoundly MINDONTHEMONEY illustrates the irony of the way in which the brand-dream, and the addiction to the label, unite humanity from sweatshop to boutique.

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.

Goodman Gallery Cape presents Summer Show – opening on 15 December and running until 14 January. The exhibition has been designed as a review, focusing on new and recent work by South Africans artists either represented by or associated with the gallery. Important works from series produced by the artists over the past year are showcased, and the show also features a selection of works recently shown at the gallery’s Johannesburg spaces.

The exhibition includes prints from Siemon Allen‘s Records series, in which the artist explores images of South Africa through the collection and archiving of music records from the beginning of the 20th Century to the present day. Photography is strongly represented, with works from Jodi Bieber’s vibrant, urban-denizen take in her Soweto series, in marked contrast with David Goldblatt’s large-scale colour prints of rural South Africa. Mikhael Subotzky (who recently won the 2012 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Art) and Patrick Waterhouse show recent work from their ongoing collaboration on the Ponte City project.

A text piece by Stuart Bird is shown in anticipation of his upcoming solo show in January, Gerhard Marx presents exquisitely detailed and artisanally worked surfaces in his new works, continuing his preoccupation with notions of mapping, place and nature, and Walter Oltmann shows a powerful new addition in aluminium wire to his series of insect suit sculptures.

Paintings by Moshekwa Langa, Lisa Brice and Clive van den Berg explore abstraction and gesture in different ways; all three have produced significant bodies of new works which were well received during 2011. Minnette Vari‘s uncanny brush and ink drawings of the goddess/crone Baubo sit in awkward dialogue with Kendell Geers’ La Sainte Vierge.

This exhibition affords a fascinating look at the output of some of South Africa’s major artists, and will also showcase from our Johannesburg spaces works not yet shown in Cape Town, including Kudzanai Chiurai’s Revelations, a series of photographic tableaux exploring politics and power in Africa, new wood sculptures by Willem Boshoff, and a selection of drawings, linocut graphics and sculpture by William Kentridge.

“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.

‘Language’ is the system of communication, in the form of speech and writing, employed by a specific group of people, usually originating from a specific geographical area or region. Human language is inseparable from human thought and distinguishes man from animals.

Different aspects of language had become the source for many conceptual artworks by the time the group Art & Language was founded by Michael Baldwin, David Bainbridge, Terry Atkinson, and Harold Hurrell in 1968. These artists considered language to be a crucial aspect of their practice, in which they critiqued the underlying assumptions of modern painting and sculpture, formalist processes, art practices, production, and criticism. Since the 1970s, language has been seen as a means of moving from form and image-based works to a more theoretical and conceptual artistic discourse. This shift, away from the image and towards text, has led to a new relationship between image and text, in which images are translated to symbols, and symbols to text. It has meant that text – rather than image – becomes a basis for art production, which in turn has meant the appearance of ‘art as idea’.

Questioning the process of art production, American artists like Jenny Holzer have built on the traditions of conceptual and installation art of the late 1960s. Holzer developed a mode of textual art during the 1970s, using electronic signs and various printed media to explore language and text as a form of art. Her ‘Inflammatory Essays’, conceived in the late 1970s, are indicative of the way in which she has created a division between text and image. Prior to this, Joseph Kosuth proposed the use of text in his work as means of replacing painting, exploring the production and role of language and meaning in art. Text in Kosuth’s work of the 1960s facilitates a conceptual mode of production and the dissolution of the art object.

Language continued to be fundamental in the work of many American artists during the 1980s. Lorna Simpson, for example, used language as a device to move away from purely image-based photography. Simpson’s combination of text and photography allowed her to construct readings of the black woman as an erotic curiosity and, at the same time, to change the simple reading of images, and to create layers of signification in her work.

In the contemporary South African context, artists such as Willem Boshoff make works which are informed by language. Boshoff’s sculptures and dictionaries suggest a relationship with language that extends beyond the simple use of text, to a specific interest in language itself and what constitutes language as a form.

Similarly, Frances Goodman has explored the desires, compulsions, insecurities, and obsessions hidden in our use of language, saying that ‘After working with a number of media I eventually found that words and language had the uncanny ability to unnerve and get under people’s skins, in a way that visual images and modes could not … sometimes [words] are simple and clear, and yet they are often full of innuendoes and subtexts’.

Language also defines power relations, and in the colonial context, the language of the coloniser reinforced power structures and symbolised authority. Artists have often made reference to this in their works, showing the role that language plays in our relation to society and to power. Brett Murray for example, plays with words in order to critique South African politics. Kudzanai Chiurai uses posters, such as the kind used in political campaigns, , to demonstrate state violence, political unrest, and corrupted power.

Kendell Geers uses language to interrogate the art establishment and society in general, questioning our existing moral codes and suggesting new approaches. He has argued that ‘Language is a self-replicating virus that can only be destroyed by a stronger, more resilient virus. Through the mirror of the colloquial, the tongue gets twisted and forgets its place in collecting our thoughts’, and that ‘language is oppressive for it only acknowledges that which can be named. It is not the result of any particular individual’s design as much as the external manifestation of culture’.

Works by these artists and the others on this show have been chosen for their engagement with language and discourse. Sometimes this engagement is enacted on the level of form – so that words and characters become images – and at other times the engagement is an interrogation, through text, of what constitutes the image.

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.

Sphères 2009 Galleria Continua / Le Moulin

Joel Andrianomearisoa / Kader Attia / Willem Boshoff / Chris Burden / Angela de la Cruz / Carlos Garaicoa / Claire Gavronsky / Kendell Geers / Liam Gillick / Frances Goodman / Mark Handforth / Camille Henrot / Carsten Höller / Ann Veronica Janssens / Christoph Keller / Joseph Kosuth / Ange Leccia / Claude Lévêque / Pierre Malphettes / Thomas Mulcaire / Hans Op de Beeck / Nathaniel Rackowe Anselm Reyle / Ugo Rondinone / Bruno Serralongue / Rose Shakinovsky / Sudarshan Shetty / Nedko Solakov / Katja Strunz / Mikhael Subotzky / Sun Yuan & Peng Yu / Gavin Turk / Minnette Vari

Opening during the FIAC, Saturday, 24th of October 2009.
Preview from 12h00 – 14h30, brunch on the river bank.

For the second edition, the Spheres project re-involves the participation of several contemporary art galleries of international dimensions prompted by one desire: to join their diverse forces and energies to develop a shared exhibition – a new kind of exhibition experience – with no submission to any restricting theme. The Galleries will present artists from the five continents, whose works will be installed in and will relate to various parts of the exceptional complex. In doing so, they will engage with the rich history of the site.

24 October 2009 – 30 May 2010

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Participating galleries:

AIR DE PARIS
GALLERIA CONTINUA
GALERIE KRINZINGER
KAMEL MENNOUR
ALMINE RECH GALLERY
ESTHER SCHIPPER
GOODMAN GALLERY

Us is a show of new work by younger and more established local and international artists around the theme of group identity, whether nation, culture, class, gender, sexuality or race. This show emerges out of the context of the xenophobic violence in South Africa last year, as well as the ripple effects of the world economic crisis. There was an open call for artists to develop new work in conversation with their diverse contexts and each other around the complexities of difference and belonging. The show explores how the ‘substance’ of any US is often less fixed than constantly shifting, fluid and unstable. Taking place at two venues, the show opens with a daring and original selection of new performance work, sculptural installation, painting and photography, each exploring a point of view as unique as the show’s many Us’s.

Artists include Cape Town based collective, the Gugulective, Kemang Wa Lehulere, Donna Kukama, Mikhael Subotzky, Dorothee Kreutzfeldt, Bili Bidjoka, Laurence Bonvin, Dunjia Herzog, Andrew Putter, Themba Shibase, Kudzanai Chiurai, Zen Marie, Bridget Baker and others.
The show is curated by Simon Njami, founding editor of Revue Noir and curator of Africa Remix, and Bettina Malcomess, a writer and artist.

The show takes place at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, in partnership with the generous support of the Goethe Institute, as well as Prohelvetzia, and the Goodman Gallery at the Goodman Gallery Project space at Arts on Main.

Opening: 20 September 2009. JAG. 4pm

Opening: 26 September 2009. Goodman Project Space. Arts on Main. 12pm

A series of walkabouts and discussions of the show will be held by the curators.
Walkabout, Sat 26 September, Johannesburg Art Gallery, 11am-12. Bettina Malcomess and Simon Njami.

Discussion: at the Goethe Institute Project Space, Arts on Main, 3pm.

Title: Support group for those who feel they don’t belong – a discussion of difference in contemporary art. Hosted by the Gugulective.

Walkabout, Sun 11 October, 3:30 – 4pm, Johannesburg Art Gallery. Bettina Malcomess

Walkabout, 4pm – 5pm, Goodman Project Space, Arts on Main: with Bettina Malcomess and artists, showing performance work from the opening night by Zen Marie and Donna Kukama.