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Indepth Arts News:
"Stained Paper: South African images in watercolour"
2000-04-18 until 2000-06-10
Standard Bank Gallery
Johannesburg, ,
ZA South Africa
The Standard Bank Gallery celebrates the new millennium with some
significant exhibitions. Stained Paper: South African Images in
Watercolour follows closely on the heels of 'Emergence', an exhibition that
reflected on the past 25 years of art-making in this country. Stained
Paper presents an historical overview of South African water-based works,
curated by Keith Dietrich and Karin Skawran. The exhibition, which includes
works from national galleries, museums, libraries and archives, will be
shown from 18 April to 10 June 2000.
Stained Paper is perhaps the most comprehensive exhibition of its kind in
South Africa in that it includes some of the earliest images made of this
land and its peoples. Such images date back to the first decades of the
18th century and were executed by visitors to the Cape of Good Hope - many
of them amateur artists - amongst them missionaries, botanists, zoologists,
geologists and ethnographers. Images from a variety of genres have been
selected, giving some idea of everyday life during the period of the
colonial conquest, of plant and animal life at the time, the geology of the
land, its inhabitants and their material culture. The work of European
artists such as Bowler, Baines, Bell, Angas, I'Ons, Burchell, Daniell, Le
Vaillant and Hermann will be on exhibition.
Although the majority of works found in local collections were painted by
European artists, the curators made every effort to locate early images by
black artists whose work had for a long time been marginalised. Interesting
works by Simoni Mnguni, Gerard Benghu and George Pemba have been located for
the exhibition. Several of them have as yet never been seen by the public.
Emphasis has also been given to works by contemporary artists. Most artists
have, at one time or another, and with a greater or lesser degree of
success, made use of watercolour or other water-based media such as gouache.
The curators have attempted to obtain works which are representative not
only of different genres, such as still life and landscape painting,
conceptual and figurative art, but also of different techniques and
approaches. Stained Paper is as much an historical overview of
water-based work in this country, as it is an attempt to demonstrate how the
traditional definition of watercolour has been extended over the years and
how works in this medium have now become a significant part of mainstream
art.
Stained Paper is the key exhibition in a series of shows in Gauteng
focusing on the medium of watercolour. The so-called Standard Bank
Watercolour Festival will take place under the auspices of the Watercolour
Society of South Africa, to celebrate the revival of the medium. The
Festival includes lectures, demonstrations, walkabouts and exhibitions at
various other well-known galleries, studios and institutions throughout the
year.
- artslink
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