SHOWCASE

09/11/2013

CNN reports about 'The Black Stars of Ghana - Art District'!

"It is very important that artists who are based and work in Africa determine and define for themselves the narrative about contemporary African art".

A new video project is giving a voice to Ghana's best artists, and hopes to change attitudes to African art.

09/11/2013

"The Black Stars of Ghana, Art District" now also on Africa is A Country

In watching the videos you are left with the impression of a cohort of artists who make work out of passion, who do whatever they have to in order to find the means to focus on their aesthetic practices. And you also get a sense of how true artists try to link their work to broader social concerns and daily practicalities. By Jesse Weaver Shipley / Africa is A Country

Ghana is currently experiencing a surge of contemporary performing and visual arts. Here are some notes on goings on about Accra-town. I. Song of the Pharaoh A new play, Song of the Pharaoh by lead...

31/10/2013

The newest release of Berlin-based curatorial research and production platform SHOWCASE is "WIM BOTHA -- Beauty is a difficult concept", a film interview with South African visual artist Wim Botha. The film interview was premiered on 22 October 2013 at Galerie Jette Rudolph in Berlin in the context of Wim Botha's solo show "PREDICATES" which was shown at Galerie Jette Rudolph in Berlin: http://www.jette-rudolph.de/

WIM BOTHA was born in Pretoria in 1974 and today lives and works in Cape Town. He has received numerous awards for his work and is also included on Imaginary Fact: South African art and the archive, the South African Pavilion at this year's 55th Venice Biennale.

WIM BOTHA creates sculptures and installations from various materials including paper, encyclopaedic books, wood, furniture, styrofoam and fluorescent light tubes. The use of paper and books for the creation of busts, the traditional portrait of a human head and shoulder, not only rejuvenates an established form of sculptural expression, but also intensifies its artistic impact by revealing the bust's complex meaning of memory, mask and metaphor for human life, death and ultimate oblivion.

In a conversation with Safia Dickersbach during the exhibition "PREDICATES" at Galerie Jette Rudolph in Berlin, Wim Botha talks about his recent artistic work, his rediscovery of the visual aspect as the primary access to the conceptual meaning of an artwork and how he got back to "very basic artmaking without the encumbrance of the expectation of significance".

Wim Botha strives in his work to stimulate the mind at the first visual impact and let the effects unfold gradually. The more compelling the visual object and its impact on the viewer is, the more other processes will happen in the back of the viewer's mind.

The visual aspect of Wim Botha's work is not about aesthetics in the traditional sense. Beauty is a difficult concept, because it sits so closely to ugliness, as he puts it. Pleasure and pain are very closely connected and this translates into fascinating visual experiences for the viewer starting at the first glance, but not diminishing after seeing the art works for many times thereafter.

This interview project is part of SHOWCASE's initiative to feature exciting contemporary art from regions of the world located outside of Europe and North America and from art scenes which are often disregarded in the Eurocentric discourse on art. It follows on SHOWCASE's recent project "The Black Stars of Ghana -- Art District", a series of videos featuring leading representatives of the contemporary art scene in Ghana.

Event images by David Picard

Bureau Africa & SHOWCASE // Website: http://www.showcaseint.com

31/10/2013

WIM BOTHA - Beauty is a difficult concept

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS4KsIvFqs0

The newest release of Berlin-based curatorial research and production platform SHOWCASE is "WIM BOTHA -- Beauty is a difficult concept", a film interview wit...

09/10/2013

KOFI SETORDJI - THE BLACK STARS OF GHANA: http://bit.ly/18JWs95

Kofi Setordji was born in Accra in 1957. He learned the craftsmanship, which he later utilized to create internationally renowned sculptures and paintings and reach the minds and conscience of his audience, during an education as a commercial painter and graphic artist. In his younger years he earned his living by working as a billboard painter, painting according to the instructions of his clients, before studying sculpture with famed Ghanaian artist Saka-Acquaye between 1984 and 1988. Nowadays as a fine art painter and sculptor he only works for himself pursuing his own artistic and creative endeavours.

Kofi Setordji’s perhaps best-known work is “Genocide,” a multi-dimensional installation that he created in memory of the countless anonymous victims of the genocide in Rwanda and as a monument reminding us of the ever-repeating circle of similar atrocities around the world.

Kofi Setordji works with different materials like wood, metal, bronze, stone, terracotta and paint to create sculptures and paintings commenting on historical, social and political issues.

A five metres high sculpture of Kofi Setordji which was commissioned by the city of Accra is now standing opposite the national theatre (“Entre Amies”). Other sculptures explore the “Brain Drain” from African countries interpreting it as a grass-roots revolt or they accuse corrupt politicians by showing them without hands, because they never touch the bribe money, but it reaches them by wire transfer.

In a retrospective in 2012 Kofi Setordji was called one of the most outstanding contemporary Ghanaian artists of his generation with an abundance of expressions as varied as his eclectic style, having worked literally in every conceivable medium, genre and style, from photography through painting to his signature work as a sculptor having been exhibited in important museums and institutions in the U.S., South Africa, Germany, Italy, France, Austria, Switzerland and Denmark.

Besides being a sculptor, painter and photographer, Kofi Setordji has become one of the foremost mentors of young artists in Ghana. In his ArtHAUS compound students from all over the world gather around the master. This is where discussions, arguments, work and laughter occur, as Prof. Gert Chesi noted. This dedication for the cultural development of Ghana’s still expanding art scene is complemented by Kofi Setordji’s work on the board of the Nubuke Foundation which promotes Ghanaian art, culture and heritage both at home and abroad.

Safia Dickersbach

See more about the project on “This Is Africa”: http://bit.ly/16ejiHb

02/10/2013

LARRY OTOO - THE BLACK STARS OF GHANA: http://bit.ly/19ikUeC

Larry Otoo was born in 1956. Already his art teacher at secondary school foretold him that his talent would sometime allow him to pursue art up to a very high level. Only his father, an economist, was not enthusiastic about such plans and wanted him to study economics. But Larry Otoo bypassed his father and applied to study art at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. There at the College of Art he was graduated in 1981 as a painter and also with a master’s degree in African Art and Comparative Literature. During his studies he learned about the various ways in which the different ethnic groups in Africa were practising art and he understood better the cultural differences and the cultural diversity between nations and ethnic communities in West Africa and beyond. This understanding helped him later in his work as an artist to implement cultural and social influences from very diverse sources and to create a personal artistic style out of these inspirations.

The daily impressions, the way the people talk and move and work in public settings, the very details of life provide the subject matters of his paintings. Sometimes described as a “contemporary traditionalist”, Larry Otoo paints to recreate his perception of what was happening at a certain moment in time, capturing the “living installation”, as he calls it, that he witnessed and recorded in his surroundings. A "social commentator" rather than a political artist, he uses paintings to document contemporary social life both in the West African environment and beyond and he visualizes the human condition as he sees it in everyday life.

Larry Otoo’s subject matters have changed in the course of time. Whereas he started with depicting traditional market scenes 15 years ago, he currently prefers contemporary themes like jazz music, polo competitions, aspects of the life of the bourgeoisie, people playing cards or chess. But still in the way he alternates in his stylistic tools between realism, expressionism and abstraction, a highly sophisticated ability to make use of the various possibilities of artistic expression is revealed. He creates the particular visual effect of his paintings not only by means of a carefully balanced, yet powerful colouration, but also through their contextual rhythm and surface texture.

Safia Dickersbach

See more about the project on “This Is Africa”: http://bit.ly/16ejiHb

25/09/2013

KWADWO ANI - THE BLACK STARS OF GHANA: http://bit.ly/15OOsUn

Kwadwo Ani was born in 1966 and comes from Mamfe Akuapim in the Eastern region of Ghana. Already as a young boy he was developing his artistic talent with drawings that caught his mother's attention. While his father insisted on him working in his father's bus as a driver's mate, Kwadwo Ani's mother was supporting him in pursuing an education as an artist. Kwadwo Ani later graduated at Ghanatta College of Art with a Diploma in Painting and continued to study at Ankle College of Art where he received a Diploma in Practical Painting.

Kwadwo Ani's painting style borrows from the toys of his childhood. He paints his figures with open mouths and big open eyes like kids observing the world around them with wonder.

Kwadwo Ani illustrates situations of urban and street life or social interaction addressing everyday issues of life in an African society like injustice and greed, violence and strife, but also friendship and charity, social inequalities and political corruption. His unique painting style that is reminiscent of naive art puts problems of contemporary society into a challenging contrast with the childlike protagonists of his artworks.

The morality that Kwadwo Ani expresses in his paintings does not accuse the viewer thanks to the mostly humorous way in which human interaction and behaviour is depicted. This is true even if the audience feels rightfully addressed by the message that the painting epitomizes and illustrates. The serious subtext that Kwadwo Ani wants to bring across, that everybody should think about his own demeanour and potential wrongdoing, is always accompanied by a sly smile on the face of his paintings.

Safia Dickersbach

See more about the project on “This Is Africa”: http://bit.ly/16ejiHb

18/09/2013

MARIGOLD AKUFO-ADDO - THE BLACK STARS OF GHANA: http://bit.ly/1eUiU2T

Marigold Akufo-Addo was born in 1947 in Accra, the capital city of Ghana. She went to school in the United Kingdom and, after an interlude of two years' of extensive travel through Ghana, she returned to the United Kingdom to formalize her art education at the Central School of Art and Design and at the Slade School of Fine Art in London where she was graduated in 1971 after four years of studies. During this time she had her first solo exhibition at the Ambassador Hotel in Accra in 1968 and a subsequent exhibition at the Africa House in London's Covent Garden.

Nowadays Marigold Akufo-Addo is widely known for her specific painting technique of tiny squares, each measuring no more than a tenth of an inch. Those minuscule square boxes form the structural basis of her paintings and provide a twinkling underground of diverse topics which are depicted in evolving forms and changing perspectives. Akkufo-Addo uses this artistic language to deconstruct different art forms, textures and hues from the West African region and reposition and recombine those traditional influences in fluid forms of dialogue with modern styles of artistic expression. Her themes are often based in historic events incorporating multi-cultural influences of West-African, Arabic, Islamic and old-Egyptian origin. Besides the movement of people, often in a metaphorical meaning as historical movements from one point in history to the next, one of her major subjects is the dualism of captivity and freedom which she addresses both in poetic translations like the "Falcon" or in concrete political artworks like "Conflict Diamonds".

Marigold Akufo-Addo utilizes oil, acrylics and mixed media to build up canvasses of various shapes and formats.

Marigold Akufo-Addo served on the board of Ghana’s National Commission of Culture from 2003 to 2007. She has recently exhibited at spaces that include the Omanye House, the new location of Ghana's Artists Alliance, and The Museum Parliament House in Cape Town, South Africa, and is today one of the few widely acclaimed female contemporary artists in Ghana.

Safia Dickersbach

See more about the project on “This Is Africa”: http://bit.ly/16ejiHb

11/09/2013

THE BLACK STARS OF GHANA - Art District

" There are a number of private and public art collections in Ghana. These include private collectors, national museums, the presidential palace, major bank headquarters, luxury hotels and government offices. There you don’t find the work of Ghanaian artists, such as El Anatsui, Philip Kwame Apagya or Lynette Yiadom-Boakye all of whom are well-known in Europe or the U.S. Rather you find the work of artists such as those who are the protagonists in my documentary film series: Professor Glover, Wiz Kudowor, Larry Otoo, Gabriel Eklou, Kofi Setordji, Marigold Akufo-Addo and so forth. So there are different perspectives, whether you look from abroad or whether you look from a local Ghanaian perspective. It was important, for my project, to capture the Ghanaian perspective in Ghana. I did not want to impose any Eurocentric decisions, views or interests on the contemporary art scene in Ghana. All of these issues and questions informed my selection process". Interview with Safia Dickersbach by Yvette Greslé on FAD magazine UK

http://bit.ly/1e25Klu


Artwork image: Ndugu, Triptych, acrylic on wood, 2009
http://www.nduguart.com/