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The Marks We Make / 2010

21 January - 11 February 2010
Goodman Gallery, Cape Town

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.

Artworks

Ink transfer, charcoal and oil on Fabriano paper
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Pen on paper
13 x 9
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Dust on paper
150 x 94.5 cm
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C-type print
152 x 122 cm (165 x 135 x 6 framed)
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Ink on paper
14 x 15 cm
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201 x 75.3 cm (drawing) 300 x 110 x 66 cm (sculpture)
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Ink on paper
48 x 65
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Pencil on paper
65 x 50.5 cm
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Pen on paper
17 x 24 cm
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C-type print
100 x 76 cm
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C-type print
100 x 76 cm
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C-type print
100 x 76 cm
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C-type print
100 x 76 cm
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C-type print
100 x 76 cm
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C-type print
100 x 76 cm
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C-type print
100 x 76 cm
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Ink on paper
13 x 12
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Pen on paper
13 x 9 cm
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Ink on paper
19.5 x 22.5
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Ink on paper
18.5 x 20 cm
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Print from a lost drawing made in situ in Cradock in 1989
83 x 60.5 cm
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Pencil on paper
65 x 50.5 cm
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Ink on paper
42 x 59 cm
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Pen on paper
9.5 x 7 cm
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Charcoal on paper
25 x 26 cm
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Pen on paper
16.5 x 21 cm
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White pastel crayon on paper
200 x 200 cm
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Ink on paper
21.5 x 22.5
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Ink on paper
16 x 16 cm
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Charcoal on paper
25 x 26 cm
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Chappies, bubblegum and saliva
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Site specific pencil and varnish drawing on wall
130 x 340 cm
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Pencil on paper
65 x 50.5 cm (both)
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Ink on paper
41 x 59 cm
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Ink on paper
19 x 19 cm
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Pen on paper
13 x 9
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Indian Ink on pages of Russian encyclopedia
36 x 46.5 cm each
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Aluminium wire
220 x 220 cm
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Watercolor on paper
53.5 x 84 cm
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Ink on paper
14.5 x 16.5
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Mixed Media On Paper
87.5 x 189cm
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Ink on paper
17 x 14.5 cm
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Pen on paper
13 x 9 cm
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Cut and reconstituted map fragments
80 x 78 cm
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Ink on paper
48 x 65
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Mixed media on paper
158 x 121 cm
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installation with drawing and books
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Ink on paper
16 x 17 cm
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Watercolor on paper
100 x 80 cm
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Ink on paper
12.5 x 12 cm
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Charcoal on paper
25 x 26 cm
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pencil on paper
65 x 50.5 cm
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Ink on paper
13 x 15.5 cm
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Mixed Media
29.5 x 21 cm
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Brush and ink on paper
102 x 410 cm
Paper, Indian ink, printed pages, collage, wooden sticks, wooden board, adhesive tape, glue
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About

David Koloane image

David Koloane

David Koloane (1938 – 2019) was born in Alexandra, Johannesburg, South Africa. Koloane spent his career making the world a more hospitable place for black artists during and after apartheid. Koloane achieved this through his pioneering work as an artist, writer, curator, teacher and mentor to young and established artists at a time when such vocations were restricted to white people in South Africa. A large part of this effort involved the initiatives Koloane helped establish, from the first Black Art Gallery in 1977, the Thupelo experimental workshop in 1985 and the Bag Factory Artists’ Studios in 1991, where he served as director for many years. Koloane also tutored at the Federated Union of Black Artists (FUBA) in 1979 and became the head of the fine art section and gallery from 1985 to 1990.

Through his expressive, evocative and poetic artwork, Koloane interrogated the socio-political and existential human condition, using Johannesburg as his primary subject matter. Koloane’s representations of Johannesburg are populated with images of cityscapes, townships, street life, jazz musicians, traffic jams, migration, refugees, dogs, and birds among others. Imaginatively treated, through the medium of painting, drawing, assemblage, printmaking and mixed media, Koloane’s scenes are a blend of exuberant and sombre, discernible and opaque pictorial narratives.

Koloane’s work has been widely exhibited locally and internationally. In 1999 he was part of the group exhibition _Liberated Voices_ at the National Museum of African Art in Washington DC. In 2013, Koloane’s work was shown on the South African pavilion at the 55th la Biennale di Venezia and on the group exhibition _My Joburg_ at La Maison Rouge in Paris. In 1998, the government of the Netherlands honoured Koloane with the Prince Claus Fund Award for his contributions to South African art. Koloane was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate twice, once from Wits University in 2012, and again from Rhodes University in 2015. In 2019 Koloane was the subject of a travelling career survey exhibition, _A Resilient Visionary: Poetic Expressions of David Koloane_, which opened at IZIKO SANG and later travelled to Standard Bank Gallery and Wits Art Museum in October.

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William Kentridge image

William Kentridge

William Kentridge (b.1955, South Africa) is internationally acclaimed for his drawings, films, theatre and opera productions.

Kentridge’s work is held in collections including MoMA, New York; Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Haus der Kunst, Munich; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah; National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto; Guggenheim, Abu Dhabi and Zeitz MoCAA, Cape Town.

Kentridge’s largest UK survey to date was held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2022. In the same year Kentridge opened another major survey exhibition, In Praise of Shadows, at The Broad, Los Angeles. In 2023 this exhibition travelled to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Kentridge’s work has been seen in museums across the globe since the 1990s, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Albertina Museum, Vienna: Musée du Louvre in Paris, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea; Reina Sofia museum, Madrid, Kunstmuseum in Basel; and Norval Foundation in Cape Town. The artist has also participated in biennale’s including Documenta in Kassel (2012, 2002,1997) and the Venice Biennale (2015, 2013, 2005, 1999, 1993).

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Brett Murray

Brett Murray studied at the University of Cape Town where he was awarded his Master’s of Fine Arts degree in 1988 with distinction. The title of his dissertation is ‘A Group of Satirical Sculptures Examining Social and Political Paradoxes in the South African Context’. As an undergraduate he won Irma Stern Scholarships in both 1981 and 1982. He won the Simon Garson Prize for the most Promising student in 1982 and was awarded the Michaelis Prize in 1983. As a postgraduate student he received a Human Sciences Research Council bursary, a University of Cape Town Research Scholarship, the Jules Kramer Grant and an Irma Stern Scholarship.

He has exhibited extensively in South Africa and abroad. From 1991 to 1994 he established the sculpture department at the University of Stellenbosch, where he curated the show ‘Thirty Sculptors from the Western Cape’ in 1992. In 1995 he curated, with Kevin Brand, ‘Scurvy’, at the Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town. That year he co-curated ‘Junge Kunst Aus Zud Afrika’ for the Hänel Gallery in Frankfurt, Germany.

In 1999, Brett co-founded, with artists and cultural practitioners Lisa Brice, Kevin Brand, Bruce Gordon, Andrew Putter, Sue Williamson, Robert Weinek and Lizza Littlewort, ‘Public Eye’, a Section 27 company that manage and initiate art projects in the public arena with the aims to develop a greater profile for public art in Cape Town. They have initiated projects on Robben Island, worked with the cities health officials on aids awareness campaigns and initiated outdoor sculpture projects including ‘The Spier Sculpture Biennale’. He curated ‘Homeport’ in 2001 which saw 15 artists create site specific text based works in Cape Town’s waterfront precinct. Public Eye have interfaced with cultural funding bodies as consultants and hosted multi-media events across the city.

Murray was included on the Cuban Biennial of 1994, and subsequently his works where exhibited at the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art in Germany. He was included on the group show, ‘Springtime in Chile’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago, Chile. He was also part of the travelling show ‘Liberated Voices, Contemporary Art From South Africa’ which opened at the Museum for African Art in New York in 1998. His work formed part of the shows ‘Min(d)fields’ at the Kunsthaus in Baselland, Switzerland in 2004 and ‘The Geopolitics of Animation‘ at the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo in Seville in Spain in 2007. He won the Cape Town Urban Art competition in 1998 that resulted in the public work ‘Africa’, a 3.5 metre bronze sculpture, being erected in Cape Town’s city centre. He won, with Stefaans Samcuia, the commission to produce an 8 × 30 meter wall sculpture for the foyer of the Cape Town International Convention Centre in 2003. In 2007 he completed ‘Specimens’, a large wall sculpture for the University Of Cape Town’s medical school campus. In 2011 he produced the public artwork ‘Seeds’ for The University of Bloemfontein and in 2013 he was commissioned to produce the 7 meter bronze ‘Citizen’ for the Auto & General Park in Johannesburg.

His solo shows include: ‘White Boy Sings the Blues’ at the Rembrandt Gallery in Johannesburg in 1996, ‘I love Africa’ at the Bell-Roberts Gallery in Cape Town in 2000, ‘Us and Them’ at the Axis Gallery in New York in 2003 and ‘Sleep Sleep’ at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg in 2006. His solo show, ‘Crocodile Tears’, was held at both the Cape Town and Johannesburg branches of The Goodman Gallery in 2007 and 2009. His recent show, ‘Hail To The Thief’, was first held at the Goodman Gallery in Cape Town in 2010, and then at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg in 2012. He was nominated as the Standard Bank Young Artist of the year in 2002.

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Sue Williamson image

Sue Williamson

Sue Williamson (b. 1941, Lichfield, UK) emigrated with her family to South Africa in 1948. In the 1970s, Williamson started to make work which addressed social change and by the late 1980s she was well known for her series of portraits of women involved in the country’s political struggle, titled A Few South Africans (1980s). 

Major international solo exhibitions include: Can’t Remember, Can’t Forget at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg (2017); Other Voices, Other Cities at the SCAD Museum of Art in Georgia, USA (2015), Messages from the Moat, Den Haag, Netherlands (2003) and The Last Supper Revisited (2002) at the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institute in Washington D.C. Williamson has participated in biennales around the world, including the Kochi Muziris Biennale (2019); several Havana Biennales as well as Sydney, Istanbul, Venice and Johannesburg biennales. Group exhibitions include, Resist: the 1960s Protests, Photography and Visual Legacy (2018) at BOZAR in Brussels; Women House (2017, 2018) at La Monnaie de Paris and National Museum for Women in the Arts (Washington D.C); Citizens: Artists and Society Tate Modern, London; Being There (2017) at Fondation Louis Vuitton (Paris) and Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life (2014) at the International Centre for Photography New York and the Museum Africa (Johannesburg), curated by Okwui Enwezor, and The Short Century (2001-2) also curated by Okwui Enwezor, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, House of World Cultures, Berlin, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and P.S.1 New York.

Williamson’s works feature in museum collections, ranging from the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Tate Modern (London), Victoria & Albert Museum (London), Pompidou Centre, (Paris), Hammer Museum, (Los Angeles) to the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution (Washington D.C), Iziko South African National Gallery (Cape Town) and the Johannesburg Art Gallery (Johannesburg). Williamson has authored two books - South African Art Now (2009) and Resistance Art in South Africa (1989). In 1997, Williamson founded www.artthrob.co.za, a leading website on South African contemporary art and the first of its kind in the country.  Awards and fellowships include The Living Legends Award (2020), attributed by the South African government’s Department of Sports, Arts and Culture; the University of Johannesburg’s Ellen Kuzwayo Award (2018); the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Creative Arts Fellowship (2011); the Smithsonian’s Visual Artist Research Award Fellowship (2007) and the Lucas Artists Residency Fellowship (2005) from Montalvo Art Center in California.

Williamson lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa.

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Jeremy Wafer image

Jeremy Wafer

Jeremy Wafer (b. 1953, Durban, South Africa) grew up in Nkwalini in what was then Zululand. He studied Fine Art 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, M.A. Fine Art 1987 and PhD 2016). 

Wafer taught in the Fine Art Departments of the former Technikon Natal (now DUT) and Technikon Witwatersrand (now UJ) before being appointed  Professor of Fine Art in the Wits School of Arts of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.  He retired from full time teaching in 2019.
 
Wafer is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies, notably the Standard Bank National Drawing Prize in 1987 and the Sasol Wax Art Award in 2006. His work featured on the South African Pavilion of the 56th Venice Biennale in 2015. Wafer has exhibited in South Africa and internationally, his work is represented in the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington DC, the South African National Gallery, the Johannesburg Art Gallery as well as in many other museum, private and corporate collections.

Wafer lives and works between London UK and Johannesburg, South Africa.

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Diane Victor image

Diane Victor

Diane Victor (b. 1964 in Witbank, South Africa) has established herself as a major figure in the South African and International art communities and is renowned for her expert printmaking and draughtsmanship. Victor positions herself within the South African art scene through her bold confrontations with difficult and at times taboo subject matter. Her large scale drawings and etchings demonstrate a command of mark-making, which she uses to render her subjects in affecting detail. At times, her work seems to pose challenges to social and political life in contemporary South Africa, considering issues of corruption, violence and an unequal power distribution.

Having received her BA Fine Arts Degree from the University of the Witwatersrand, with a major in Printmaking, and graduating with distinction – Victor has gone on to win various prestige awards including the Sasol New Signatures Award in 1987. In 1988, Victor became the youngest recipient of the prestigious Volkskas Atelier Award which granted her a ten-month stay at the Cité Internationale des Artes in Paris, France. Over this period, Victor was able to work collaboratively with other experienced printmakers and to observe and reflect on a society very different from her own.

Victor has exhibited at numerous venues around South Africa and internationally, some of which include the UNISA Gallery, Fried Contemporary, MoMA New York, Faulconer Gallery, The Highpoint Center for printmaking, The Gus Fisher Gallery, National Museum of Contemporary Art Oslo, Yale University Art Gallery, The Contemporary Museum Honolulu, and Australia and Adelaide Central Gallery. Victor’s work is part of a number of important collections, including Sasol, Pretoria Art Museum, Johannesburg Art Gallery, Durban Art Museum and Santam.

Since 1990, Victor has been a lecturer, teaching Fine Art, at various South African institutions including the University of Pretoria, Tshwane University of Technology, Open Window Academy, the University of the Witwatersrand, Rhodes University and the University of Johannesburg.

Victor lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa. At present, she is a senior Fine Art lecturer at the University of Pretoria’s Department of Visual Art.

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Sam Nhlengethwa image

Sam Nhlengethwa

Sam Nhlengethwa was born in the black township community of Payneville near Springs (a satellite mining town east of Johannesburg), in 1955 and grew up in Ratanda location in nearby Heidelberg. In the 1980s, he moved to Johannesburg where he honed his practice at the renowned Johannesburg Art Foundation under its founder Bill Ainslie.

Nhlengethwa is one of the founders of the legendary Bag Factory in Newtown, in the heart of the city, where he used to share studio space with fellow greats of this pioneering generation of South African artists, such as David Koloane and Pat Mautloa.

Despite Nhlengethwa’s pioneering role in South Africa art, his work has received rare visibility in London. A major survey exhibition, titled Life, Jazz and Lots of Other Things, was hosted by SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Georgia in 2014, which was then co-hosted in Atlanta by SCAD and the Carter Center.

Other notable exhibitions and accolades in South Africa and around the world include: in 1994 – the year South Africa held its first democratic elections – Nhlengethwa was awarded the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year award; in 1995, his work was included in the Whitechapel Gallery’s Seven Stories About Modern Art in Africa in London; in 2000, he participated in a two-man show at Seippel Art Gallery in Cologne.

Other significant international group exhibitions include Constructions: Contemporary Art from South Africa at Museu de Arte Contemporanea de Niteroi at in Brazil in 2011, Beyond Borders: Global Africa at the University of Michigan Museum of Art in 2018.

Nhlengethwa’s work has featured on a number of international biennales: in 2003, his work was included in the 8th Havana Biennale, Southern African Stories: A Print Collection, the 12th International Cairo Biennale in 2010, the 2013 Venice Biennale as part of the South African pavilion, titled Imaginary Fact: Contemporary South African Art and the Archive, and in the 6th Beijing Biennale in 2015.

Nhlengethwa’s practice features in important arts publications, such as Phaidon’s The 20th Century Art Book (2001).

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Walter Oltmann image

Walter Oltmann

Walter Oltmann (born 1960, South Africa) is a practicing artist who lives and works in Johannesburg. He obtained a BA Fine Arts degree from the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg (1981), and an MA Fine Arts degree (1985) and PhD in Fine Arts degree (2017) from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He taught in the Fine arts department at the University of the Witwatersrand from 1989 to 2016.

Oltmann has an extensive record of creative work produced since the early 1980s, including a number of public commissions. Since the 1980s he has developed an interest in the relationship between fine art and craft. In his own practice he employs hand-fabricated processes of making and has researched wire craft traditions in southern Africa. His sculptural works are executed by way of weaving in wire and using handcrafting methods that reference African and Western traditions of weaving. He is deeply interested in the influence of craft traditions in contemporary South African art.

In his artworks Oltmann makes connections to domestic textile practices and explores such forms of making in evoking fragility and the passage of time. He often combines aspects of decorative ornament with subject matter that seems somewhat contradictory or disturbing in relation to handcrafted embellishment.

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