Spring is upon us and even though it can be windy on some days, the sunny afternoons are a great excuse for you (& myself) to get out the house and enjoy some well deserved art gallery dates with friends, lovers or family.
I compiled a list of art exhibitions that you can check out this spring right here in South Africa at Johannesburg & Cape Town and as well as in Accra, Ghana and Lagos, Nigeria.
Art gallery: BKHZ, Johannesburg, South Africa
Artist: Lunga Ntila
Title: GOD AMONG US!
Dates: 07 August 2021 – 11 September 2021
Lunga Ntila is a fine art photographer whose work is marked by storytelling, identity and deconstruction. As a conceptual photographer she makes use of a practice that brings together self-portraiture and collage making. She uses her practice as a way of understanding ideologies that govern the different facets that exist within us and us around her. The foundation of Lunga’s practice is the dissecting information and subjects to show the multiplicity that exists in each and one of them. She gives the viewer access to a world/self – reimagined. Lunga is known for creating works that are a melding pot of all the images, sounds and feelings that she has come across that she now uses as reference points in her work.
Art gallery: Gallery1957, Accra, Ghana
Artist: Patrick Eugene
Title: Where Do We Go From?
Dates: 20 August 2021 – 18 September 2021
Where Do We Go From Here? borrows its title from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s seminal and final text. The works consist of still, nuanced and pensive vignettes, figuratively representing Black artists as they conceptualize creativity. Eugène has created a body of work that departs from acutely rendered facial features, and deploys loose, layered strokes of pigment that depict the energetic auras of his subjects. The work honors the rigorous mental, and emotional labor that artists are tasked to selflessly encounter and endure, in order to create work that might inspire, heal, spur thought and social change.
Art gallery: SMAC Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa
Artist: Luyanda Zindela
Title: Abangami Bami – Izithombe Zami (My Friends – Images of Me)
Dates: 04 September 2021 – 02 October 2021
Abangani bami – Izithombe zami (My friends – Images of me), 2021, is a self-portrait by Luyanda Zindela that celebrates the shared intimacies, fragilities and sacredness embedded in close friendship. Through a series of carefully detailed portraits, the artist compels us to consider the act of friendship as a process of collaborative witnessing. This is an open-ended, transformative engagement that involves seeing the other and seeing the self through the other person’s perspective. Friendship is an embodied act of being in the world with others, and in those relationships, one is often receptive to being drawn (directed and interpreted) by the other. Responsiveness to the other is addressed in this body of work as the artist posits the idea of close friendships as metaphorical mark-making processes. The notion of friendship as dialogical mark-making elicits the affective qualities of drawing achieved by variation in the application of line and pressure that result in a range of marks that could be deep, shallow, bold, and faint in character. In doing so, the artist exemplifies a particular type of friendship – those characterized by a shared sense of intimacy, closeness and care in this series, driven by an uncertain but profound attempt to become more himself.
Art gallery: Goethe institut, Johannesburg, South Africa
Artists: Isaac Zavale x Huston Wilson
Title: Nkosi Sikelel
Dates: 04 September 2021;
Nkosi Sikelel is a project initiated by Isaac Zavale and Huston Wilson. The visual intervention focuses quite literally on the famous phrase, its various translations, as well as the style of mural text that has come to be associated with township commerce and spaces of consumption.
Art gallery: For You Gallery
Artists: Lesego Seoketsa, Muofhe Manavhela, Damilola Onosowbo & Claire Idera
Title: Phenomenology of A Black Woman
Dates: September 2021
In the early 20th century, the field of phenomenology – the study of phenomena or the way people experience things was founded as a philosophical movement. This exhibition emerges as a study of the phenomenology of black women, which considers the lived experiences of four black female artists by describing the structures of experience, in particular, consciousness, imagination, interaction, relationships, and the situatedness of the human subject in society and history. In phenomenology, the ultimate source of all meaning and value is the experience of human beings.
Art gallery: ADA Contemporary Art Gallery
Artist: Emma Prempeh
Title: In and Out of Time
Dates: 04 September 2021 – 17 October 2021
Emma Prempeh’s latest paintings, titled In and Out of Time, deals with similar themes of the late American activist and poet, Maya Angelou’s poem: a meditation on love, conflict, relationships, connections, and experiences forever bonded through time. The large scale canvas works are a reflection of Prempeh’s brief encounters with her Ghanaian heritage, her family, its people, architecture and landscapes created during her residency at ADA in Accra, Ghana.
Art gallery: Gallery1957, London.
Artist: Serge Attukwei Clottey
Title: Distinctive Gestures
Dates: 05 August 2021 – 30 September 2021
Described as his immediate translation of the body observed on social media, this selection of work by Clottey explores themes of identity and the politics behind body language. Examining both subjects he knows personally and those parasocial relationships he has cultivated via social media Clottey compares the expression and gesture of subjects from the 1950’s and 60’s to those of today.
Art gallery: 131 A Gallery
Artist: Anton Karstel
Title: Works on Paper and Cardboard
Dates: 04 September 2021 – 30 September 2021
131 A Gallery is pleased to present ‘Works On Paper And Cardboard’ a solo exhibition of figurative oil paintings on paper and cardboard by acclaimed South African artist Anton Karstel. These works are all based on collected images sourced from vintage books and magazines by the artist. Each work is framed in museum glass and Walnut.
Art gallery: Gallery1957, Accra, Ghana
Artist: Arthur Timothy
Title: Grandma’s Hands
Dates: 28 August 2021 – 01 October 2021
Born to Sierra Leonean and Ghanaian parents in Accra in 1957 – the year Ghana gained independence from colonial rule – Arthur Timothy is an artist and architect, whose artworks depict close family members and autobiographical events, specifically in Accra, where the artist was born, and Freetown, where he lived until the age of 9. His large-scale oil paintings are inspired by an archive of black and white photographs found amongst his father’s papers, which he brings to life with vibrant colours, from both memory and imagination.
Art Gallery: Stevenson Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa
Artist: Moshekwa Langa
Title: Sanctuary
Dates: 04 September 2021 – 08 October 2021
Titled after places such as The homestead and The orchard, and moments in time including Midnight and Past Midnight, these paintings mark a new chapter for Langa of grappling with familiarity and estrangement.
Art Gallery: 99 Loop, Cape Town, South Africa
Artist: Oda Tungodden
Title: Feeling Blue
Dates: 28 September 2021 – 18 September 2021
Encompassing a series of delicate yet experimental paintings, the show delves into the artist’s state of mind and being through the events of the past eighteen months. Using blue as a starting point, Tungodden explores the colour in all its visual, conceptual and emotional hues as they pertain to her experience(s) of them. In this new body of work, Tungodden draws inspiration from Abstract Expressionism, playing with the materiality of both paint and surface.
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