Jeremy Wafer
Gallery News for Jeremy Wafer
Hasan and Husain Essop, Jeremy Wafer and Kagiso Pat Mautloa on Next Generation
Works by Hasan and Husain Essop, Jeremy Wafer and Kagiso Pat Mautloa form part of Next Generation, an exhibition of 20 South African ex-artists-in-residence at the Thami Mnyele Foundation in Amsterdam.
The exhibition opens Saturday 2 June 2012 at the Pulchri Studio in the Hague.
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Solo exhibitions
Group exhibitions
Structures
Goodman Gallery Cape Town presents Structures, a group exhibition bringing together works by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, Carlos Garaicoa, David Goldblatt, Mikhael Subotzky and Jeremy Wafer. The exhibition is concerned with structures both monumental and mundane, and aims to examine the ways in which they inform the environments we inhabit, and what they suggest about the underlying systems that give rise to them.
David Goldblatt’s series South Africa: The Structure of Things Then deals in part with the architectural landscape of Apartheid South Africa and the relationship between the governing ideology of the time and its physical manifestations across the country. Mikhael Subotzky’s ongoing Security series is in some ways a contemporary response, documenting the surveillance cameras, security huts and electrified fences of the modern suburban landscape, and examining the links between poverty, race, crime and the effects of a legacy of discriminatory spatial planning.
Bertolt Brecht’s War Primer is a book of what Brecht called ‘photo-epigrams’: newspaper and magazine clippings of images of the Second World War, each captioned with a 4-line poem. In Poor Monuments, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin juxtapose pages from Brecht’s original book with images of modern conflicts (in particular the so-called War on Terror) to look at the changing (and sometimes unchanging) narrative of war, and the systems responsible for crafting and disseminating it.
Cuban-born Carlos Garacioa’s Para transformer la palabra política en hechos, finalmente II (To transform political speech into facts, finally) takes as its subject the city as a site for collective memory and imagination, while a new floor sculpture by Jeremy Wafer contemplates abstract and physical notions of space, and the degree to which a space is produced by the structures it contains.
Winter Show
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.
The Marks We Make
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.
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Biography
Born in Durban, South Africa in 1953. Lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa
Jeremy Wafer was born in Durban in 1953, grew up in Nkwalini, Zululand, and studied at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg (B.A.F.A.1979) and at the University of the Witwatersrand (B.A. Hons. in Art History 1980 and M.A. Fine Art 1987). He has taught since 1982 in the Fine Art Departments of the Technikon Natal and the Technikon Witwatersrand before being appointed Associate Professor in the School of Arts of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg from 2004 where he is currently Head of the Department of Fine Art and History of Art. He has exhibited regularly in South Africa and abroad. His work is represented in the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC, the South African National Gallery, the Johannesburg Art Gallery and in many other museum, private and corporate collections.
Artist Statement
“While my work has come from a deep involvement in a South African context I am continually interested in exploring issues that extend outwards from this personal and geographic centre. My work could be seen as traversing a South-North axis in which the global languages of contemporary art are intersected with the particularities of a local geography and history. I have been particularly interested in exploring, in the context of the South and its relation to the North, common issues of colonial legacies, the tensions between centres and margins, the layering of indigenous and settler cultures, and the effects of a shifting world economy on cultural practice. My work has since 1994 engaged with a practice which integrates and responds to aspects of African sculpture in the context of a broadly post minimalist sculptural idiom.”
Solo Exhibitions
2009 Structure, KZNSA and Durban Art Gallery, Durban, South Africa*
Paradise, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa2007 Jeremy Wafer – Recent Work, Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
2006 Geography, Sasol Art Awards Winner, Sasol Gallery Johannesburg and Aardklop Festival, Potchefstroom, South Africa
2005 Tropic, Square Space Gallery, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
2004 Measure, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
2003 Artfirst Gallery, London, UK
2002 FNB Vita Art Awards, Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
2002 Survey, Sasol Museum, University of Stellenbosch, Cape Town, South Africa
2002 Survey, Durban Art Museum, Durban, South Africa
2001 Walter Oltman Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
2000 Walter Oltman Artfirst Gallery, London, UK
1999 Walter Oltman The Thami Mnyele Foundation, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
1998 Walter Oltman Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
1996 Cheltenham College of Art, Cheltenham, UK
1993 Walter Oltman Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
Group Exhibitions
2009 Sources: Contemporary Sculpture in the Landscape, NIROX Foundation,
Johannesburg, South Africa*2009 2nd Jobug Art Fair, Johannesburg, South Africa (Goodman Gallery booth)
2008 1st Jobug Art Fair, Johannesburg, South Africa (Goodman Gallery booth)
Spier Contemporary, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
(travelling)*2007 Spier Contemporary, Spier, Cape Town, South Africa, (travelling)*
Light, Bank Gallery, Durban, South Africa*2006 Body of Evidence, The National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, USA*
2006 Group exhibition: Brande International Artists Workshop, Brande, Denmark
2006 Sasol Art Awards (1st prize winner), Sasol Gallery Johannesburg and
Aardklop Festival, Potchefstroom, South Africa*2005 In the Making: Material and Process, Michael Stevenson Contemporary, Cape
Town, South Africa2004 Tangentia, international site specific art project in Cato Manor, Durban, South
Africa*2004 The Brett Kebble Art Awards (Merit Award), Cape Town, South Africa*
Insights, National Museum of African Art, Washington DC, USA*2003 Topographies, joint exhibition with Sandile Zulu, Michael Stevenson
Contemporary, Cape Town, South Africa2002 FNB Vita Art Awards (Finalist) Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa*
2001 Open Circuit, NSA gallery, Durban, South Africa
2000 Xoe 2 site specific, Nieu Bethesda and Grahamstown Festival, South Africa
Suitcase, NSA Gallery, Durban, South Africa2000 A.R.E.A, Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland*
2000 Outpost, Association of Arts Gallery, Pretoria, South Africa
2000 Unplugged 5, Market Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
1999 blank – architecture, apartheid and after, Netherlands Institute of Architecture, Rotterdam, Netherlands (travelling in Europe and South Africa)*
1998 30 S 30 E, Lipschitz Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
1997 Unplugged 2, Market Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
1997 Jeremy Wafer, Bronwen Findlay NSA Gallery, Durban, South Africa
1997 Printmaking in a Transforming South Africa, Grahamstown Festival,
Grahamstown, South Africa*1997 Photosynthesis: Contemporary South African Photography, Grahamstown
Festival,Grahamstown, South Africa*1997 The Johannesburg Biennale, Newtown Cultural Precinct, Johannesburg,
South Africa*1997 The New Delhi Triennale, New Delhi, India
1996 Earth and Everything, Arnolfini, Bristol, UK (travelling UK)*
1996 Ground Swell, Mermaid Theatre, London, UK*
1996 Hitchhiker, Generator Art Space, Johannesburg, South Africa
1995 Edwards, Munyai, Wafer, Newtown Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
1995 Barry, Allen, Wafer, Market Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
1995 Natal Artists, Thompson Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
1995 Vita Awards, Johannesburg Art Gallery, South Africa*
1995 Panoramas of Passage, (travelling) Meridian Foundation, Washington, USA*
1994 Contemporary Art from South Africa, Galarie d’Esplanade, Paris, France*
1994 Places of Power, Newtown Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
1994 Images of Metal, Grahamstown Festival (touring), South Africa*
1994 Vita Awards, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa*
1993 Critics Choice, ICA Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
1991 Il Sud del Mondo, Galleria Civica del Arte, Masala, Italy*
1991 The Cape Triennale, South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa*
1989 Volkskas Awards Exhibition (Merit Award), South African Association of Arts Gallery, Pretoria, South Africa
1987 The Standard Bank National Drawing Competition, Grahamstown Festival,
South Africa*Teaching, Lectureships and Workshop
2004 – present Associate Professor, Wits School of Arts, University of the
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa2002-2003 Department of Fine Art, Technikon Witwatersrand, Johannesburg,
South Africa1983-2002 Department of Fine Art, Technikon Natal, Durban, South Africa
1996 Department of Fine Art, Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education, Cheltenham, UK
Conference and Workshop Participation
2008 Invitation to International Artists Workshop, Manaus and Sao Paulo, Brazil
1997 South African representative on the New Delhi Triennale, New Delhi, India
International Artists’ Workshop, Garhi Studios, New Delhi, IndiaAwards and Merits
2007 The Sasol Wax Art Award, Johannesburg, South Africa
1989 The Volkskas Bank Merit Award, South Africa
1987 The Standard Bank National Drawing Prize, South Africa
Academic Record and Residencies
Academic Record and Residencies
Residencies:
2008 Fellowship at the Ampersand Foundation, New York, USA
2006 Brande International Artist’s Workshop, Denmark
2005 RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia as part of the South Project
2001 Fellowship at the Civitella Ranieri Centre, Umbria, Italy
1999 Thami Mnyeli Foundation, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
1990 Cité des Arts, Paris, France
Postgraduate:
1987 M.A. Fine Art, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
Undergraduate:
1980 B.A. (Honours) History of Art, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg,
South Africa1979 B.A. Fine Art , University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa
Collections
The Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, America
The Library of Congress, Washington, USA
Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
Durban Art Gallery, Durban, South Africa
Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria, South Africa
Tatham Art Gallery, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa
University of the Witwatersrand Collection, Johannesburg, South Africa
Natal Technikon Collection, Durban, South Africa
MTN Collection, Johannesburg, South Africa
BHP-Billiton Collection, Johannesburg, South Africa
Didata Collection, Johannesburg, South Africa
BoE Collection, Cape Town, South AfricaCommissions
2009 Sculpture for the One and Only Hotel, Cape Town, South Africa
Sculpture for the International Convention Centre, Durban, South Africa
Sculpture for the new football stadium, Durban, South Africa2004 Sculpture for the Arrabella Estate, Knysna, South Africa
2003 Sculpture for the Arrabella Sheraton Hotel, Cape Town, South Africa
2001 Design of a memorial wall for the Gugu Dlamini Park, Durban, South Africa
2000 Sculpture, Metal and Glass for the Dorothy Nyembe Community Centre, Cato Crest,
Durban, South Africa1999 – 2001 Metal gates and Glass for the Diakonia Centre, Durban, South Africa
1997 Sculpture and Glass for the Poynton Chapel, Koinonia, Botha’s Hill, South Africa in
collaboration with Sarkin and Jain ArchitectsSelected Articles and Reviews
Edmonds, P. ‘Jeremy Wafer and Sandile Zulu’, www.artthrob.co.za, August 2003
Edmonds, P. ‘Jeremy Wafer at the Sasol Art Museum’, www.artthrob.co.za, November 2002
Smith, K, ‘Life Sciences: Jeremy Wafer’, www.artthrob.co.za, November 2000
Enwezor, O, ‘FNB Vita Art Now’, Frieze, Issue 30, September 1996, p. 84
Publications
Books
Perryer, S (ed) 2004. 10 years, 100 Artists: Art in a Democratic South Africa. Bell-Roberts Publishing in association with Stuik Publishers, Cape Town, South Africa. ISBN 978-84-934879-5-9
Stevenson, M and Rosholt, A. 2003. Moving in Time and Space: Shifts between abstraction and representation in post war South African Art, Michael Stevenson, Cape Town, South Africa.
Frost, L. 2001. Jeremy Wafer, Taxi-003, David Krut Publishing, Johannesburg, South Africa. ISBN 0-620-27380-1
Geers, K (ed) 1997. Contemporary South Africa Art. The Gencor Collection, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Hobbs, P. and Rankin, E. 1997. Printmaking in a transforming South Africa. David Phillip, Cape Town, South Africa.
Williamson, S.and Jamal, A. 1996. ‘the future present’ in Phillip, D. Art in South Africa: the future present Cape Town, South Africa.
Rankin, E. 1994. Images of Metal Johannesburg, Wits University Press, Johannesburg South Africa.
Jounnais, J-Y. 1994. Un Art Contemporain d’Afrique du Sud Paris, Editions Plume, Paris, France.
Strano, C. 1991, Il Sud del Mondo: l’altra atre contemporanea Milan, Mazzota, Italy.
Williamson, S. 1990. Resistance Art in South Africa, David Phillip Publishers and Catholic Institute for International Relations, Cape Town, South Africa.
Catalogues
The Brett Kebble Art Awards 2004, Barret L, Marulelo, Cape Town, South Africa
Tumuli: Conversations with Jeremy Wafer, Jeremy Wafer: Survey, 2002, Sasol Art Museum, University of Stellenbsch, Stellenbosch, South afrcia
The Scheme of Things, FNB Vita Art Prize, Goodman Gallery Editions, 2002, Johannesburg, South Africa
Trade Routes: History and Geography, 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, 1997, Johannesburg, South Africa
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