South African sculptor Shepard Mtyshelwa took up residency at the Thami Mnyele Studio in December 1997. Mtyshelwa was born in Queenstown in 1965. Part of his artistic skill he acquired during his studies at Sivuyele College in Guguletu (1994-1995), and earlier with the Visual Arts Group in Nyanga (1987), but his diligent practice and undoubted talent can be said to be the main force behind his imaginative art work.
Shephard works in two dimensions as well as three, but is mostly known for his magnificent wood sculptures. It seems that in the round, and with the simple, natural shape of a wood trunk in front of him, his imagination takes an unexpected flight. An elephant can become a dog, whose tail ends up being a bird, for example. It is hard to see where one animal ends and the next one’s limb starts, so that the effect of the overall work of art is quite mesmerizing.

‘Black and white do not interest me – I prefer grey – I like my darkness to be lit, to investigate darkness, to become it. Like trying to breathe in a vacuum.’

Two years in Amsterdam at the Rijksakademie (1997-98) gave Greg Streak (1971) the distance he needed to stand outside of what he describes as the ‘whirlpool’ of South Africa. In South Africa, the constant questioning and dissection of his identity as a white male had become increasingly restrictive; working in a more global context freed him up, allowing for reassessment and work that became less specific and more ambivalent.
This is reflected in the variety of forms that Streak's work takes. Sometimes lean, with a serious, minimal flavour, at other times engaging in figuration or issues of narrative, Greg Streak’s work plays between abstraction and representation. With a sharply critical and eclectic eye he re-makes, interrogates and claims as his own a diverse range of references ranging from modernism to B-grade movies, as is evidenced his video work which wittily questions the nature of reality, fiction and representation as well as alluding to the violence in the South African context.
Greg Streak was an artist-in-residence in 1997.

Greg Streak Links

www.artthrob.co.za/01feb

www.proyectotrama.org/00

Liza du Plessis (1970) studied art at Natal Technikon. Her figurativeand three-dimensional work concentrates on the value society gives to children, the female body and sexuality. Working with objects of ritual and ceremony, she explores issues of sexuality from a child's perspective, a sensitive subject which has profound implications in adult life. Du Plessis uses the doll as a metaphorical representation to explore these issues. Through her sculptures she expresses her concern and horror over how easily children can be exploited, harmed, manipulated and conditions on a physical as well as emotional level.
Liza du Plessis was selected as an artist in residence from May till August 1997.

Stephen Maqashela’s work is a combination of ceramics, sculpture and painting. South-African artist Maqashela is a participant of the Bag Factory Project in Johannesburg. During Stephen’s stay in the Thami Mnyele Foundation Studio in 1996, Maqashela participated in the Holland South Africa Line, an exchange between seven young artists from both the Netherlands and South-Africa. He also contributed work to an exhibition in Maison Africaine.

Stephen Maqashele Links

www.akka.nl/hsal/docs/exhibition

www.artthrob.co.za/00sept

Allina Ndebele built her weaving mill in a remote settlement near Swart-Mfolozi in KwaZulu-Natal in 1977. Before that she worked many years as a weaver, teacher and supervisor at ELC Art and Crafts Centre in Rorke’s Drift. During this period, she also lived in Sweden for some time where she was educated further in weaving. To South Africa and beyond, Rorke’s Drift is legendary for the role the centre played in the development of art among the black population during apartheid.
Allina Ndebele finds inspiration in local legends and stories told by her mother and grandmother during her youth. With hand-woven wool, painted by herself, she recreates the myths of Zulu into large, intensely coloured textiles. The process of making tapestry is a very long and completative one which requires complete concentration. However, Ndebele uses no supporting drawing except the image in her mind’s eye.
In 1998 Allina Ndebele was awarded the Thami Mnyele Prize, for making an exceptional and positive contribution to both art and society, in the present and the past. According to the Foundation, Allina Ndebele won the award because, ‘under the most difficult circumstances, she has succeeded in building up a meaningful life as an artist and has set up a weaving mill which has increased the employment and opportunities for development in her immediate surroundings. Through the quality of her work, the love for her heritage, sense of social responsibility, entrepreneurial spirit and belief in her own abilities, she is an example for the qualities on which South Africa has built a new future’.

'My whole life I live in Dube, a part of Soweto. These images of the streets, markets, the ordinary people and the shebeens return in my collages.’

Born in 1965, Nkosana Dominic Tshabangu attended the Funda Centre in Johannesburg, where he also qualified as a teacher. Tshabangu went on to win the Bertrams V.O. Art of Africa Award and was subsequently offered a studio in the famous Bag factory in Newtown, Johannesburg. He combines his painting with a job as a layout artist with Pace Magazine. In his work Tshabangu tries to capture daily life and historical events in a journalistic manner. In his collage paintings he uses pictures and pages from magazines and includes found objects like cloth and corrugated card board. His works have a mosaic atmosphere and are quite colourful. Tshabangu tells short stories: scenes from the illegal bars; shebeen queen , how hostel dwellers have to live and how hard work gives little reward. Dutch critics compared his depictions with that of Jan Steen and Vincent van Gogh. Tshabangu has participated in exhibitions all over the world. He was invited to stay in the Thami Mnyele Foundation’s studio in 1997.

Nkosana Dominic Tsabangu Links

www.artshost.org/bagfactory

ww.africaserver.nl/virtualw

‘My paintings are actually small mini drama's. Personal experiences of all kinds form the base. A tragic tone is probably always present, but my work is, I hope, never stripped of a certain humor.’

Embarrassing spots on a chin, swimming trunks that pinch, tired feet in delicate sandals, in her paintings Ina van zyl (1971) portrays the smaller tragedies in life. Her work can be alarmingly familiar, funny and personal. South African artist Ina van zyl has been living and working in the Netherlands since 1995. After having taken up residency at the Thami Mnyele Foundation, she studied at the Ateliers in Amsterdam.

Ina van zyl Links

www.inavanzyl.com

heimat.de/continentalshift/

www.africaserver.nl/kunstcultuur

‘The studio is much bigger that I expected. I was used to a small work space and I felt rather lonely and lost in this space. So during the first weeks I placed my easel in the corner of the studio.’

Born in 1969, Tsietsi Progress Matubako was already a painter before he studied art and sculpture at Technikon Natal in 1990. He took up residency at the Thami Mnyele Foundation Studio in 1995. During his stay in Amsterdam, he painted curtain frills on a fence on the Frederik Hendrikstraat.

South African artist Tito Zungu’s (1939-2000) work is extraordinarily precise. Almost pensive. Starting on a small scale about thirty years ago, Zungu made drawings on envelopes for migrant workers for whom home was so ‘painfully’ far away. Later on, Zungu’s drawings became larger. Zungu’s approach was a method unto itself. Not only was he extremely meticulous, working in a clean space with a felt tip, ball pen or ink and pen, Zungu also needed a ritual to be able to work. He would always have a bath before he started drawing. In sharp contrast with his own rural surroundings, human figures never feature in his drawings.

Tito Zungu Links

www.cas.org.za/projects
The Tito Zungu Trust Fund provides subsidies to gifted South African students in the arts.

www.artthrob.co.za/00jan

‘I had a dream...’

Noria Mbabasa was born in Tsigalo in 1938. Trained in the traditional methods of making pottery, Mbabasa’s first attempts at figuration came in 1974. Predominant themes in her work are dreams and African stories. In the early 70’s she made traditional figures such as the Domba initiation ceremonies. She observed the women with their babies and captured the daily life around her. After meeting the Venda sculptor Nelson Makhuba in 1983 she was inspired to begin wood carving, creating works on more contemporary themes. Mbabasa lives in Venda, a region in South Africa which is densely populated with trees. Like many artists in Venda, Mbabasa uses the trees to sculpt in wood.

Noria Mbabasa Links

www.mukondeni.com/html

www.knightgall.com/mabasa

‘In the garden of God, animals were there first – the animals taught the people in our culture we don’t say a thing straight out. If you are having a hard life you won’t call your life bad. We will go around and we will say, you are fighting with an animal and if you catch his tongue then you will come right.’

Helen Sebidi’s (1943) drawings are mass portraits of the disrupted society created by exploitative legislation which treats Africans as labour units. Sebidi’s work is quite confrontational. Every inch of the pictures’ surfaces is covered with bodies. Crammed like the life in the townships, they push and shove in the struggle to survive. There is no room to breathe here. With an enormous variety of pastels, Sebidi portraits life in daily South Africa.

Helen Sebidi Links

www.hsrc.ac.za/research/np

‘I became involved in community action, an involvement which spilled over into my work in the studio.’

The last years Sue Williamson’s work has mainly concentrated on video art. She has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including ‘The Short Century’ (2001), ‘Liberated Voices’ (1999), Johannesburg Art Biennale (1997, 1995), Havana Biennale (1994) and Venice Biennale (1993). She is the founder of the Artthrob website, the first important website in South Africa about art. Sue lives and works in Cape Town.

Sue Williamson Links

www.onepeople.com/swiltemp.html

www.nmafa.si.edu/exhibits

‘Memory and the emotional archive are where all the stories of abuse and violation are stored with individuals.’

Andries Botha’s (1952) career as a sculpture has been marked by his truly innovative use of traditional African materials and methods to make large-scale pieces which are at once very bewildering, yet strike a deep cultural chord. In 1984, Botha’s exhibition ‘Human Structures’ consisted of a series of works created from thatching, wattle and wax. It was from this point onwards that Botha's work took on its specific characteristics - referencing inherited practices and locally symbolic materials, such as tyres and telephone wire, the works mesh Western and African culture.
‘I have always tried to use my work as a sort of visual testimony to the violation of the state. One of the functions of the intellectual is to create within their work a sort of archive of memory where the social discourses or the nation is plotted.’

Andries Botha Links

www.artthrob.co.za/00apr

www.museums.org.za/sang/SA_art

‘No object stands on itself, it always builds upon other objects.’

Artist/curator David Koloane (1938) has been involved in the visuals arts in South Africa for the last twenty five years.
Koloane studied art at the Bill Ainslie Studios in Johannesburg. He established a reputation both locally and internationally as a pioneer black artist in apartheid South Africa and was a founder member of institutions promoting and supporting black talent in South Africa from the mid Seventies. He is the co-founder and director of the Fordsburg Artists Studios (the Bag Factory).
Koloane’s work is abstract expressionistic, but has recently gained a more figurative character. Koloane’s work and recurrent themes should perhaps be viewed in the social context of what shaped his sense of identity as a man and as an artist. The painter’s preoccupation with the dark side of urban life can be interpreted as a constant reminder that the past still hovers over South Africa. David Koloane wants to make new what has become old.

David Koloane Links

www.artshost.org/bagfactory/

‘I enjoy the finer things in life like meeting new people, travelling, reading, listening to African jazz and working in collaborative projects with artists with similar interests.’

Pat Mautloa (1952) studied art at Rorke’s Drift Art Centre, KwaZulu Natal and at the Mofolo Art Centre in Soweto. He has held many solo-exhibitions and numerous group presentations in South-Africa and Berlin, Houston Texas, Paris, Belgium, Nantes and London. Mautloa was a visiting artist to the Thami Mnyele Foundation Studio in 1993.
As an artist whose work eludes a neat definition, Mautloa is as comfortable in his abstract work as he is in the more figurative imagery. Most of his work is in oils and acrylic, but he has also included found objects and collages in his two-dimensional work: scrap materials attached to a board and painted with such a subtle brush evoke the essence of a glimmering light, or a tryptich of feed bags painted with the emblematic South African flag.
Textures are an important part of Pat’s work, as he works he notices the mundane surfaces around him and will sometimes use these in his work. Unexpected things like the rough surface of a well used cutting board, or a worn out cotton rag, hold a new fascination and beauty for him. Delicate drawing and seemingly random splatter entice the viewer and challenge one to look at the world in a new way.

Pat Mautloa Links

www.artists-press.net

www.vgallery.co.za/cvmau

www.artshost.org/bagfactory/

www.goodman-gallery.com/main

‘The fact that I use a needle and thread in my work was not an intellectual decision. It was a natural process. I embroider because I am good at it and because I love the technique. My technique makes my work approachable.’

Kriel’s work is first and foremost political. She depicts ‘lost histories’ on large one-by-one metre scraps of textile. Photos of resistance heroes and heroines are attached to the material’s surface. Decorative edges made of buttons frame the central image and there are embroidered texts such as: ‘Why did you shoot us’, ‘Workers Unite’ and ‘You won’t get away with it’. Along with beads, buttons, photocopies and typical African elements such as bits of Coca Cola cans, Kriel also employs the decorative bead technique that uses the regular patterns of the South African Ndebele women. Embroidery is a traditional, white, female element in her work.
Sandra Kriel (1952) was a guest of the Foundation in 1992.

Sandra Kriel Links

www.absolutearts.com/artsnews

www.museums.org.za/sang/exhib/

‘Painting is an uninhabited space of not being - yet being. A contradictory and ironical motive: for the action of painting becomes an act of nothingness. Unbundled by the known. Active meditation and contemplation, not to defy or define - just being. Moving to a thoughtless moment of listening (to oneself), till one exhausts words.’

Clifford Charles first set foot in Europe nearly a decade ago, at the invitation of the Thami Mnyele Foundation. Since then he has maintained close ties with the Netherlands. Last summer he exhibited at the 50th Biennale in Venice.
In the 90’s, Clifford Charles made a series of oil paintings depicting human figures as bloody, aggressive beings brandishing whips and sometimes wearing gas masks. The monochrome background, which is usually white or yellow, serves to draw more attention to the figures. The paintings were titled ‘Metamorfoses’.
Presently his artistic practise is focused on expressions of contemplation. Working within the foundation of contemporary paintings and drawings, Charles challenges the notions of reception and the appreciation of art.

Clifford Charles Links

www.cliffordacharles.com

www.labiennale.org

‘I greatly admire Miro and enjoy absurdist theatre.’

Paulse paints in oils on prepared paper, plastic or canvas. As she often paints on the floor, her work doesn’t have a distinct top or bottom. On the surface of it, she makes colourful, abstract work. Sometimes however elements of houses (windows and chimneys) or scenery are clearly visible in the crisscross of coloured squares. For Paulse, it’s all about the painting’s composition. Besides paintings Paulse also makes short 8 millimetre films.
Dianse Paulse and Sarah Tabane were the first guests to stay in the Foundation’s studio, in 1992.

‘African rituals, sangamas, witch doctors are all part of the African tradition, and therefore play an important role in the arts, even if artists don’t always deliberately use them in their work.’

Based in Johannesburg, expressionist painter Sarah Tabane (1968) is especially interested in black and white contrasts. During her stay in the studio, she concentrated on making etchings and drawings in Siberian chalk. In aggressive strokes, the large drawings show hands, heads and other bodily parts jostling one another. Nearly all of the drawings are ‘crowded’ and seem to burst out of the frame.
Sarah Tabane and Diane Paulse together were the first guests to take up residence in the Thami Mnyele Foundation Studio, in 1992.

Sarah Tabane Links

www.museums.org.za/sang

‘I am my main subject. I change so much so fast. I can’t stay on one angle all the time. My perspectives change the more I learn, read, come in touch with people.’

Mustafa Maluka (1976) took up residency at the Thami Mnyele Foundation in 1998.
His current body of work deals with his attempt to develop a theory towards a definition of the aesthetics of trauma. Maluka had started working with the subject of trauma very early in his work. One of his strongest early portrait paintings was of a man in a Nazi war camp.
His current technique, while relying more on colour than painting skill, has evolved to a point where having his computer crash a few times during the making of a work can sometimes be the best thing for a piece. Aesthetically, he has incorporated the anomalistic interference caused by pushing his machine to the max, thereby driving his processor to the limit.

Mustafa Maluka Links

www.mustafamaluka.com/

southafrica.africancolours.net

www.vmcaa.nl/maluka