The Main Gallery of the AVA hosts a group exhibition, titled 3 AND A HALF METERS: COMMITTEE’S CHOICE . The ten current AVA committee members, Stacey Adriaans, Matthew Blackman, Caroline Coates, Chantal Louw, Marilyn Martin, Richard Mudariki, James Nilsen, Chad Rossouw, Elgin Rust, Cobus van Bosch, have each selected a work or works by contemporary artists to be exhibited in their allocated three and a half meters.

REPLICA OF MEMORY   by Aidon Westcott

Aidon Westcott’s mixed media artworks fill the Long Gallery , filled with symbolic imagery aimed at awaking forgotten memories in the subconscious mind of the viewer. The imagery is build up in layers of antique packaging and selected ephemera through the medium of collage which is combined with hand stitching, thread and oil paint.

WEIRD MARRIAGE   by Ilené Bothma

Bothma explores the strangeness of the domestic space, the relationships that play out within that space, the repetitive activity of human labour and the poetics of the everyday. She explores this through sculpture, video and installations installed in the Artstrip.

In the Long Gallery, James Macdonald’s sound installation, The Apostles, functions as a site of reflection,a chapel of sorts. Twelve listening stations present the stories, life experience and personal philosophies of twelve individuals – all homeless and living on the streets of Cape Town. Shifting the manner in which these men and women are generally heard, or not heard, the monologues were transcribed and presented as though texts of scripture or liturgy by Bishop Garth Counsell and Reverend Margaret Haynes of the Cape Town Anglican Diocese. Thus, engendered with a sense of spiritual and moral significance.

Lucky by Danielle Bischoff Is a photographic series presented in the Artsstrip gallery. An exhibition that visually investigates dogs and their human counterparts, shared lives, special connections and intertwined histories. Dr. Sandra Swart from the University of Stellenbosch writes: “Dogs provide a lens into understanding human society and culture in Southern Africa. Behind every dog breed we find ethnography and a social history as well as a genealogy – its cultural, as well as its genetic heritage”

Rodger Bosch presents Wading in the Long Gallery. Photographing in the confines of Kalk Bay, a small seaside village, Bosch uses a rangefinder camera and black and white film to explore an internal world dimly recalled, filled with feeling and navigated through instinct. Using the sea as a conduit for his investigation Bosch strives to find, read and understand what there is beyond the familiar, his images articulating the moment when lands, seasons and people become ideas, recollections and feelings.

In Between the Blue Swimming Pools Katrine Claassens exhibits a new body of oil paintings that looks at the environmental costs of the one of the world’s most desired living spaces: suburbs. Suburbia is often explored in negative terms relating to banality and subversive things happening behind the clichéd picket fences however there are other, more pressing, troubles in these tamed landscapes where lakes are fishponds, fields are coaxed into lawns and walking is driving. Claassens paintings explore the suburbs as both, emotional landscapes and problematic centres of consumption.

Perceptual Vigilance, Curated by Kirsty Cockerill

Participating artists:

Mncedi Bodlo
Zemba Luzamba
Ayanda Mabulu
Richie Madyira
Fikile Mqhayi
Richard Mudariki
Taurai Muzambi
Cinga Samson
Khaya Sineyile
Zolani Siphungela
Adolf Tega
Shakes Tembani
Anathi Tyawa

Opening on Monday, 11 February 2013 at 18:00.
Exhibition closes on Thursday, 7 March 2013.

Perceptual Vigilance is the act of noticing something somewhere only to subsequently notice it everywhere.  A situation, a gesture, a colour, an object, anything that holds particular importance to the individual is easier for them to perceive. Perceptual Vigilance is the process by which individuals activate a form of selective perception based on their particular frame of reference. It is a tool that assists us all; artists, curators and the public at large to sort through our sensory data. Perceptual Defence, its binary opposite is likewise a tool, and to commonly a blindness that allows an individual to not perceive reality in order to protect themselves from internal dissonance and psychologically unpleasantness. Thirteen painters negotiate their individual concerns in an exhibition distilled to reflect as much their own, as the curator’s Perceptual Vigilance. Political surrealism, the binding of stories, an investigation of truth and blindness, the awake and the sleeping, reality and dreams.

Richard Mudariki – Symbols of African Art

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Greatest Hits 2012: If The Halls Could Talk, is a curated exhibition with artworks selected from the Michaelis school of Fine Art UCT, Ruth Prowse School of Art and Stellenbosch University Graduate exhibitions. Greatest Hits 2012 offers an overview of the local and broader discourses that run through the three schools and reflects the quality of work produced by the graduate students in 2012.

Participating artists:

Elinor Auerbach
Leigh Bassingthwaighte
Ruann Coleman
Mia Couvaras
Christopher de Wet
Carla Espost
Nicole Fraser
Jeanne Gaigher
Quanta Gauld
Lyndall Gente
Haroon Gunn-Salie
Soma Holloway
Gabrielle Holmes
Sulaiman Jacobs
Siobhan Keam
Megan Mc Namara
Sethembile Msezane
Nobukho Nqaba
Liona Nyariri
Roche Pienaar
Liesl Potgieter
Helen Teede

Opening on Monday, 14 January at 18:00
Exhibition closes on Friday, 8 February 2013 at 13:00

Mia Couvaras – Untitled (Wynberg)

“Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward pathway had been lost.” The Inferno: Dante Alighieri.

Many of the images were shot in passing and are personal daily reflections – while others involve more deliberate excursions. In Life under Democracy, Yudelman returns to the areas he photographed in the eighties, for the series, Suburbs in Paradise, which cross-examines white suburbia under the influence of legislated segregation.

To gain perspective, he also visits some of the people and areas Cole photographed. A sense of how much has changed begins to develop; and in some cases how much has stayed the same. As if in conversation, Yudelman uses his iPhone camera as a means of discourse. The senses are unified through a device, historically utilised for discussion, in turn, mirroring the merging of a nation whose past is omnipresent.

Yudelman’s work is a consequence of a studied eye, brokered over 30 years of ceaseless image making. Enthralled with the many-layered dimensions of reality, his images are a spectacle of how modern photography is able to escape the bounds of the ‘record’, creating an authentic and evocative account of recent times.  – Simone Tredoux

Dale Yudelman’s career in photography has led him through two eras of South African history as well as across several continents. Born in Johannesburg, he began photographing at a young age under the tutelage of his father and was barely out of his teens in 1979 when he landed a job as staff photographer at South Africa’s largest daily newspaper The Star. In 1986 Yudelman left South Africa – working as a freelance photographer first in London and later in Los Angeles, he returned to South Africa in 1996 and currently lives and works in Cape Town.

The Ernest Cole Photographic Award has been established to stimulate creative work in photography in southern Africa. The award, initiated by the UCT Libraries with support from the Kirsh, Peter Brown, Gavin Relly Trusts and Orms, has been named after the documentary photographer, Ernest Cole. The emphasis of the award is on creative responses to South African society. The winner of the inaugural award is Dale Yudelman and his book, Life under Democracy, is the first in a series of annual publications to be published under the auspices of this award.

Dale Yudelman – Nelson Mandela Square – Day of Reconciliation – Sandton City, Johannesburg