Ocula Report 58th Venice Biennale: May You Live In Interesting Times 24 May 2019 : Mohammad Salemy for Ocula The 58th Venice Biennale, May You Live In Interesting Times (11 May–24 November 2019), certainly benefitted from low expectations, given the lacklustre curatorial of the previous edition, when different segments of the show were conceptually framed with titles like 'Pavilion of Joys and Fears' and 'Pavilion of Colours'. Add to this the...
Ocula Conversation Zheng Bo Hong Kong-based artist Zheng Bo's social, ecological, and community-engaged art practice has, in recent years, focused on moving beyond a human-centred perspective to an all-inclusive, multi-species approach. He takes up marginalised plants and communities of people as subjects in his large-scale interventions, which reintroduce wildness into...
Ocula Report Auckland Art Fair 2019: Conversations Extended 24 May 2019 : Sherry Paik for Ocula The weather was clement for the annual Auckland Art Fair (2–5 May 2019), which was again at The Cloud on Queens Wharf. This year's edition was a get-together of 41 galleries, mostly from around Auckland and across New Zealand, with 5 spaces hailing from Sydney and the rest from Cook Islands (Bergman Gallery), Hobart (Michael Bugelli Gallery),...
Goodman Gallery is a contemporary art gallery with spaces in Johannesburg and Cape Town. Since opening in 1966, Goodman Gallery has helped shape contemporary South African art, and in the decade since Liza Essers took over as owner and director that tradition has extended beyond local borders. Today, the gallery plays a vital role in supporting international collaborations in South Africa and presenting art that enriches international dialogue around colonial legacies and contemporary geopolitics. This ethos is embodied in the gallery’s 2019 programme, which features solo exhibitions by Nolan Oswald Dennis, Samson Kambalu, Carla Busuttil, Misheck Masamvu, Sue Williamson and Carrie Mae Weems.
Alongside exhibiting represented artists, the gallery's curatorial programme has grown to include an ongoing series of research-oriented group exhibitions. These initiatives include In Context, which looks at the dynamics and tensions of place in reference to the African continent; South-South, which traces cross-cultural influence and divergence between countries from the ‘Global South’; and Working Title, a platform for emerging, independent production and thinking.
During South Africa’s apartheid years, Goodman Gallery established itself as a space committed to furthering a socially progressive agenda. In recent years, Goodman Gallery has made an effort to continue that tradition by dedicating a part of its programme to non-commercial projects that broaden accessibility to contemporary art through the realisation of ambitious projects in collaboration with public institutions. Recent examples of these collaborative efforts include exhibiting William Kentridge’s The Refusal of Time, and El Anatsui’s first solo exhibition in South Africa, Meyina, at the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town, as well as a helping realise the major installation The Sound of Silence, by Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar at the Wits Art Museum.
Mikhael SubotzkyEast Coker (or Black Bile), 2019 Photogravure, direct gravure, a la poupée, chine collé, inkjet
Mikhael SubotzkyThe Occult Significance of Blood (or Abattoir at the Voorberg Prison), 2019 Ink on book cover
Mikhael SubotzkyEducation and the Poor
White (or Boy suffering from
Malaria. His whole diet consists of mealiemeal and coffee - all without sugar or milk), 2019 Ink, oil pastel, and Micropore tape on paper Ocula Report 58th Venice Biennale: May You Live In Interesting Times 24 May 2019 : Mohammad Salemy for Ocula The 58th Venice Biennale, May You Live In Interesting Times (11 May–24 November 2019), certainly benefitted from low expectations, given the lacklustre curatorial of the previous edition, when different segments of the show were conceptually framed with titles like 'Pavilion of Joys and Fears' and 'Pavilion of Colours'. Add to this the...
Ocula Photolog Frieze New York 2019 6 May 2019 'Building on Frieze's history as a platform for discovery and challenging the traditional art fair format, the eighth edition introduces new curators and collaborations with leading museum directors; including two exhibitions exploring virtual reality and the significance of self-taught artists, and two new sections celebrating Latin American art...
Ocula Photolog Art Basel in Hong Kong 2019 31 March 2019 'Art Basel reinforces its ongoing commitment to showcasing exceptional art from Asia and the Asia Pacific, with over half of the participating galleries having exhibition spaces in the region. The main sector of the show features 196 of the world's leading galleries presenting the highest quality of painting, sculpture, drawings, installation,...
Ocula Conversation William Kentridge Artist For over 20 years, the legacies of colonialism have been recurring themes in William Kentridge's work. In 2018, he was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Pretoria in South Africa in recognition of a practice that has consistently charted 'a universal history of war and revolution, evoking the complexities and tensions of...
Related Press The Art Newspaper's pick of the 2019 Venice Biennale The Art Newspaper : 30 April 2019 There are hundreds of exhibitions in Venice during the Biennale. Alongside the main exhibition in the Giardini and Arsenale, there are 90 national presentations, many in nearby pavilions in the Giardini and in spaces around the Arsenale, but also dotted throughout Venice. Then there are the official collateral exhibitions in museums and galleries,...
Related Press Yinka Shonibare Restages the Trauma of the Gilded Age Hyperallergic : 26 April 2019 CHICAGO — In one story arc of The West Wing, the political drama created by Aaron Sorkin that ran on NBC television in the early 2000s, Josh Lyman, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, is shot and critically wounded by white supremacists. Lyman recovers in the hospital and eventually returns to work where he begins to behave in increasingly...
Related Press Alfredo Jaar on the Capacity of Culture Hyperallergic : 19 February 2019 CAPE TOWN — Late last year, the artist Alfredo Jaar displayed a series of photographs and piercing neon works addressing the shared trauma and healing of Robben Island's political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela, after Apartheid. It was in the midst of this exhibition, titled Men Who Cannot Cry, at Goodman Gallery in Cape Town, that I sat...
Related Press ‘We Are Family’: Aperture Fetes Agnes and Catherine Gund, Deborah Willis and Hank Willis Thomas, Catherine Opie at Fall Gala ARTnews : 5 November 2018 Last week, during the Aperture Foundation's fall gala at a cavernous space in New York's Chelsea neighborhood, Marilyn Minter turned to Catherine Opie while the two artists stood onstage together, and said, "I wish you would adopt me." Opie, not missing a beat, deadpanned back, "Can I swaddle you, then?"
Related Video & Audio Shirin Neshat: the power behind the veil Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art : 11 May 2016 In many middle eastern cultures men are totally restrained from any expression of emotion, says Iranian artist Shirin Neshat (b. 1957) in this interview: "All my photographs are about controlled emotions. They are always a juxtaposition of the dark side of life and the good side of life. Of light and darkness. Pain and joy. Violence and...
