THE AVA in partnership with Spier   invites you to the opening of four exhibitions    THE LONG STREET SHOW David Lurie   To be opened by Andrew Lamprecht   AND EVERYTHING'S DONE UNDER THE SUN Carol-Anne Gainer & BEAUTIFUL WORLD Christiaan Diedericks   TEN MILLION POUNDS OF SLUDGE Hugh Upsher     Opening at 6 pm Tuesday, 22 March 2011 Exhibition closes on Friday 15 April 2011 at 1 pm David Lurie - The Long Street Show             Carol-Anne Gainer - And Everything's Done Under the Sun Christiaan Diedericks - Beautiful World Hugh Upsher - Ten Million Pounds of Sludge Long Street exhibits many of the dichotomies plainly visible in urban South Africa. The Long Street Show  by David Lurie employs the Main and Artstrip galleries of the AVA with a photographic exploration of one of South Africa's most famous streets. Long Street is noted for its Victorian buildings with wrought iron balconies, restaurants, bars, bookshops and second hand stores. Long Street, "as all locals know and visitors are informed, is an essential, not-to-be-missed part of our media-saturated Cape Town multi-culture". Lurie likens himself to "a kind of party-crasher disguised as a photographer", who over a period of months would visit, mingle with the diverse crowd, have a drink, chat and photograph the passing show. In  The Long Street Show, so-called unmediated documentary photographs capturing the social and political character of this iconic street are juxtaposed with images that are collaboratively staged, in which the characters "impersonate themselves being themselves" for the photographer. This series is both an original  look at Long Street as well as an enquiry into different ways of seeing and representing the urban experience. In the Long Gallery, Christiaan Diedericks and Carol-Anne Gainer present new works on paper. Beautiful World by Christiaan Diedericks is an edition of seven, original hand-made artist's books, and a special extension of a larger edition of fine art prints by the same title. Each unique book contains seven original dry point engravings and seven Afrikaans poems (with English translations) by contemporary South African author Johann de Lange, as well as text by Hayden Proud, curator at The Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town, and Dr. Eugene Vorster, a well-known Cape Town psychiatrist. All artworks and text in Beautiful World are hand printed in the etching and silk-screening studios of the Frans Masereel Centrum during a three week residency awarded to Diedericks by the Vlaamse Overhijd, held in January 2011 in Kasterlee, Belgium. In And Everything's Done Under the Sun, Carol-Anne Gainer presents a series of monotypes prompted by her experience traveling, and living in rural France. Gainer's appreciation of the natural world is mediated through a curious combination of 18th century farm implements and the domestic bric-a-brac of the last century, including a heron in a bell-jar, tulip containers and farming implements juxtaposed with images or text about animals. The eclectic mix speaks to a concern with our custodianship/relationship with a nature that is increasingly fragile. Ten Million Pounds of Sludge, a video work by Hugh Upsher, employs the New Media room. Taximonkey.jpg is trying to claim fabulous prizes as it has been declared the 10 000th visitor. It quickly finds this to be no easy task as it attempts to navigate through a maze of obscure and sometimes obscene content. These found images  are collected from a large variety internet sources in an almost random fashion. The animation plays out as a mindless hyper paced consumption of content that demonstrates the impending democracy of images. After pushing through ten  million pounds of sludge taximonkey.jpg finds his efforts fruitless and returns to the digital graveyard he came from.     Association for Visual Arts Gallery 35 Church Street, Cape Town, South Africa Gallery hours: Weekdays 10h00 to 17h00, Saturdays 10h00 to 13h00 Phone: +27-21 424-7436, Fax: +27-21 423-2637, avaart@iafrica.com www.ava.co.za Wine at the opening is kindly sponsored by Spier www.spierwines.co.za                                                                       To , please click on the link at the left of this email or email to avaart@iafrica.com