BIG

Large works from our Permanent Collection
Main Gallery
From Friday 7 December to Sunday 17 February 2019

A new exhibition, selected from the largest works in the Gallery’s permanent collection, will be on display in the Main Gallery from Friday 7 December. There will be no official opening. 

Some of these works are too large for our store rooms and spend their days stacked in passages. It is time to give them air and let them speak their powerful messages. 

As we were looking at size in the first place, we did not consciously choose a theme or country of origin. During the process of selection we came across surprizing juxtapositions, and the exhibition gathered a momentum of its own. Visitors are challenged to find their own meaning and context in this display. The exhibition will run over the Christmas period, and end on 17 February 2019.

Migrations: 
Time - Place - Culture

This eclectic display of British, French and South African art works spans more than three centuries. Each art work has its own story to tell.

Still Life with Omega Flowers (1919), by the English artist Roger Fry, was purchased in London for the Gallery’s collection in 1985. This painting extends the Gallery’s collection of British Post-Impressionist art works.

Between 1908 and 1912 the British artist, William Orpen, and his family spent their summers at Howth, a village just north of Dublin in Ireland. Howth Head offers spectacular views over the Irish Sea. A bell tent would be erected for shelter and it was here that Orpen started painting in the open air. He developed a distinctive plein-air style that featured figures composed of touches of colour with no drawn outline, influenced by the French Impressionists. In the Tent, Howth of 1912 is one of a series of paintings from this period.

The oldest and largest painting in this exhibition was painted by the Dutch artist, Jan Wijnants,  in about 1670 ((above) Jan Wijnants, Wooded Landscape (c.1670), oil on canvas). The painting migrated back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean a number of times.

In the early twentieth century a Mr Berlein from Johannesburg bought the painting at an auction in Paris for his wife. In about 1970 the painting was sold to Mrs Joice Nicholson. She sent the painting overseas for the December 1978 auction at Christies in London.  It did not realize the expected price, and was sent back to the Nicholsons at St Michaels-on-Sea, Natal. In 1983 Mr Nicholson donated the painting to the Tatham Art Gallery in memory of his deceased wife.

Judith Mason Attwood’s powerful mixed media triptych, From the Tombs of the Pharaohs of Jo’burg (1986), is a recent addition to this exhibition. According to the artist, the subject matter is meant to be neither an anti- capitalist nor pro-industrial monument. The assemblage symbolises a variety of men from Zulu to San who sought work on the Reef, with the gilded Tiger-fish of progress devouring the pastoral buck.

• Perimeter Gallery

The South African Landscape

This display, selected from the Gallery’s permanent collection, features landscape paintings by South African artists.  Any two or more paintings in this display invite comparison and discussion.

The paintings are as varied as the South African Landscape, and show many different ways in which artists engage with their environment.  To a greater or lesser degree, all of them deal with abstraction. Some images are easily readable as particular places while others merely suggest space.  All retain an abiding respect for the two-dimensionality of the painted surface.

Landscape is used as a springboard for diverse personal exploration.  There are challenges of suggesting spaces with marks and colour; engaging the viewer in experiencing particular weather conditions and landscape formations; and inviting consideration of environmental issues.  Many of the paintings depict people, sometimes starkly visible and at other times almost dissolved in the landscape.

Human figures are often completely absent from landscape paintings. When they do appear, they are often dominated by their surroundings. Figures can play various roles to enforce the artist’s view of the rural or urban environment. Images can range from detailed observation to simplification or even distortion, often to enhance a mood or express feelings. You are invited to ponder the depiction of figures in the paintings in the display.

 Jacob Hendrik Pierneef (1886-1957) is considered the iconic painter of the South African Landscape. Of Dutch parentage, he was born in South Africa but also spent time living in Europe, where he came into contact with broader contemporary ideas about art making. The work of Dutch artist and theorist Willem van Konijnenburg inspired Pierneef to greater abstraction of nature.

Pierneef spent most of his life in the Transvaal, but travelled widely around South Africa and Namibia. In 1951 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Natal.

• Lorna Ferguson Room

Vessels and Containers

Part of the current display is a historic overview of 20th century South African commercial potteries. These potteries, of which few still operate, played an important part in South African society between the two World Wars. Viewers interested in the history of design will find a fascinating fusion of European and African influences. 

On the right hand side as you enter, ceramics from a number of historical South African commercial studios are displayed in chronological order. Information about these studios is posted on the inner walls of the cabinets. Look out for indigenous imagery that contextualizes these South African ceramics.

On the left hand side of the room you will see hand-made ceramic vessels by well-known individual South African artists. Note that some male potters were influenced by traditional female Zulu potters.

• Ceramics Room

Containers for Liquid

Ceramics Room
Opens Thursday 01 March 2018

This new display is a juxtaposition of liquid-holding containers from the Gallery’s permanent collection. They represent different cultures, purposes, designs and materials.

Porcelain originated in the East and has been widely used to hold hot liquids. René Lalique (1860-1945) was a famous French designer of glass containers, often used as vases. The Nala and Magwaza families are renowned for their exquisitely decorated burnished earthenware forms, based on traditional Zulu beer vessels.

• Ceramics Room

Standard Bank Young Artist for Visual Art 2017:
Beth Diane Armstrong
in perpetuum

Main Exhibition Room
Opens Sunday 8 April 2018 at 11h00
Closes Sunday 20 May 2018 at 17h00

Beth Diane Armstrong highlights the use of sculpture to explore different expressions of density and looseness in relation to scale, structure, materiality, space, representation, and process. 

The title, in perpetuum, suggests something which is ongoing and everlasting. Armstrong applies the term  to negotiating an unremitting pull between the desire to be entirely overwhelmed and subsumed by a sculpture and the drive to resolve and contain the idiosyncratic challenges posed by it. Armstrong’s process is the translation of fleeting, abstract experiences into the permanence of a physically demanding material such as steel.

Armstrong’s mastery of the medium is captured in this body of work. It accentuates her meticulous processes, her attention to detail and her astounding ability to effortlessly switch between intricate smaller works and imposing large-scale masses.  Themes and motifs are drawn from her entire career as a sculptor and mark a full-circle return to where it began, having received her Masters in Fine Art from Rhodes University in 2010.

As a whole, in perpetuum presents  Armstrong’s work as a continuously self-generating system driven by the interplay between density and looseness.