Association for Visual Arts

On Exhibition

• 'A line beyond' curated by Olga Speakes + other exhibitions -

  

  'A line beyond' curated by Olga Speakes + other exhibitions

  Join us this Thursday 2 December at 5:30 pm for the opening of our final two ArtReach co-productions of 2021, one curated by Olga Speakes and the other by Phokeng Setai & Steven Sack. We will also be launching a solo exhibition by Isabella Kuijers.
  
  In the Main gallery & New Media room curator Olga Speakes presents A line beyond, a group exhibition that takes its cue from Paul Klee’s quote that ‘a drawing is simply a line going for a walk’. This exhibition explores, using Klee’s expression, on what kind of a walk, or perhaps a flight or even a transformative journey, contemporary artists take drawing or line, as a particular way of mark-making, today. Their engagement may involve any number of moves, surprising, precocious, subversive, and unbounded by drawing’s history but strengthened by its heritage.
  
  In the Long gallery curator Phokeng Setai critically questions the meaning, in our contemporary moment, of an archive held by co-curator Steven Sack since the 1980s. The archive contains photographs, newspaper clippings, correspondence and video footage of Peace Parks; an initiative organised in the late 1970s and 1980s through the National Environmental Awareness Campaign. Peace Parks encouraged communities in townships to convert designated areas into gardens, typically including monuments to instrumental political figures as well as murals carrying political messages. “Peace Parks were an embodiment of the unwaveringly definitive essence of Black life, […] to harness dignity and pride in its being, despite it all.”
  
  In the Mezzanine gallery, Isabella Kuijers presents her solo Acts of Translation, which explores the way we are able to create avatars and impressions of ourselves through the use of different mediums, in particular the use of online resources such as Instagram, Facetime and Pinterest.
  
  All exhibitions run until 13 January 2022.