Good Friday, April 6 2012

When a sense of loss is unbearable, can an acoustic envelope of music provide a way to alleviate pain? This is one of the questions introduced to her Cape Town  audience by the brilliant international academic, Griselda Pollock this week. Talking luminously about the little known German Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon, who died in Auschwitz in 1943, Pollock showed images of the vibrant small paintings Salomon left behind. These chronicle a fictional account of her tragic life, complete with transparent overlays referencing the music to be listened to, or hummed, while looking at that image.  The artist’s self portrait is on the right above, next to the photo of Griselda, taken during her Michaelis talk.

More about the artist at http://www.jhm.nl/collection/themes/charlotte-salomon. Griselda Pollock can be referenced all over the web.

Chad Rossouw: Cape Town Overnight

Chad Rossouw’s ‘A History of Failure’  is on view at Brundyn & Gonsalves and is a dense imaginary of a scientific and engineering South African past … his elegant poster of a Zeppelin flying over the art deco Old Mutual building promises CAPE TOWN OVERNIGHT.

Stan Douglas: Malabar People: Owner/Bartender 1951

Was the 2^nd Johanneburg Biennale a failure? Only in that it was closed early by the main funders, the City of Johannesburg, and has never happened again. To the overseas critics who came to look and to those of use who were lucky enough to participate or to be there, it was a triumph. Curated by Okwui Enwezor, it was called “Trade Routes and Geography”

Penny Siopis: The Master is Drowning

In what may turn out to be the exhibition of the year, Joost Bosland has recalled those brilliant weeks which brought some of the top artists of the world to this country with an exhibition at the Stevenson entitled ‘Trade Routes Over Time’, The show  features work by a few of the many artists who took part, including Stan Douglas, Yinka Shonibare, Olafur Eliasson, Pierre Huyghe and South African artists Jo Ractliffe and Penny Siopis.