CURATOR - ARTS EDUCATOR - ARTS WRITER - ARTIST  

  SHORT BIO  

Since 2003: Associate professor in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Pretoria; postgraduate coordinator of Visual Arts degrees and the chair of the departmental research committee

Also since 2005: Co-founder,  director and curator of Fried Contemporary Art Gallery & Studio, Pretoria

1990 to 2003: Lecturing at UNISA; head of Department of Art History and Visual Arts from 1997 - 2002 

Most important curated exhibitions:  

2002: Digital Art exhibition for Unisa

2005: Reconciliation exhibitions for the University of Pretoria’s Arts and Reconciliation festival

2007: Little Deaths, at Fried Contemporary Art Gallery and Bell-Roberts Gallery in 2008: UP Centenary exhibition, Visuality and Commentary

2010: Bodies in transition, Cities in Transition, Collateral and Games people play, Fried Contemporary, Pretoria

2009 - 2011: Dystopia, at the University of South Africa Art Gallery, MuseumAfrica in Johannesburg, Oliewenhuis Art Museum in Mangaung and Jan Colle Galerij in Ghent;

2011: Designs of time, Designs of living, Designs of Nature and Designs of self, Fried Contemporary in Pretoria.

Most important  social engagement projects:

2009: Acquisition of artworks for New National Library of South Africa

2006: Development Bank of Southern Africa, sculpture garden

2010: Prosperity community murals in Attridgeville, Pretoria, and Durban, KwaZulu Natal.

Read: Michael Coulson's profile in the South African Art Times on Elfriede Dreyer

1986-1996: Student work and art competitions, mixed media two-dimensional work

1996-2001: Sabbatical in The Netherlands to study Multimedia at Frank Mohr Institute, Head of Department of Department of Art History and Visual Arts Unisa

2002-2007: Video and photographic work 

2008 to current: Mixed media and multimedia work

   CURATED EXHIBITIONS   

2011

Dimension

Aperture

History

Designs:

Designs of self

Designs of  nature

Designs of  living

Designs of time

UP Visual Arts staff exhibition

2010

Cities in transition

Games people play

Collateral

Bodies in transition

Dystopia

12 to 21 May 2008

UP Centenary: A century in the service of knowledge: Visuality/Commentary

Co-curated, ± 85 artists. Contributed a chapter in catalogue.
University of Pretoria. EXHIBITION CATALOGUE

12 May - 2 June 2007

2 Decades +

Majak Bredell retrospective. Introduction in catalogue
ISBN 978-0-620-38359-2

Fried Contemporary Art Gallery, Pretoria          

13 February – 10 March  and 21 April - 31 July 2007

Little Deaths

Trio exhibition with Wilma Cruise, Elfriede Dreyer and Guy du Toit. Catalogue written and produced: ISBN 978-0-620-38104-8. 2 video productions and manipulated video stills

Fried Contemporary Art Gallery & Studio, Pretoria as well as Bell-Roberts Gallery at Lourensford Wine Estate, Western Cape

15 July  - 5 August 2006

Roles/robes

Group exhibition on identity. 11 invited artists

Catalogue written and produced. ISBN 0-620-36484-X.  View the video catalogue (44 Mb)

Fried Contemporary Art Gallery, Pretoria

30 July  - 20 August 2005

Art from two metropoles

Opening exhibition for Fried Contemporary Art Gallery.
27 invited artists

DVD produced on exhibition.

Fried Contemporary Art Gallery, Pretoria

1 – 23 October 2005

The Maswanganyi Family

Works of Collen, Johannes, Esther and Pastor Maswanganyi. First solo exhibition of the family.
DVD produced on exhibition

Fried Contemporary Art Gallery, Pretoria

15 - 30 March 2005

Reconciliation

Art exhibitions as part of the Art and Reconciliation Festival.
11 artists’ installations + 2 additional exhibitions

Catalogue written and produced: ISBN number 0-620-33947-0 View

Visual Arts Gallery, Architecture Gallery, Conference Centre, Rautenbach Hall, Technical Building of UP

2001

Digital art exhibition  

13 local and international artists

The Spacing, UNISA

September 2002

1995

Works on paper
Traveling exhibition of UNISA students of all the undergraduate years

± 50 works

Universities of Durban-Westville and Orange Free State

Cape Town. Museum Rust Ten Vreugd  

   SELECTED OWN ARTWORKS    
  
The flood (2010) I and II. Mixed media on PVC, 1500mm x 1200mm each

Consciously derived from Michelangelo Buonarroti’s The Flood of 1508 – 1509 (one of the frescoes on the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel in Rome), my two works comment on forms of world making and ways of seeing. The two-part work functions as a diptych but comprises two independent works, which comments on utopia and dystopia as two sides of the same coin. The surface grid refers to the systemic ordering and restriction found in utopian schemes, as was very much the case during the Renaissance .
My process involved painting scenes, destroying these through the ‘analysis’ of the grid and resurrecting them once more. In simulation of pre-twentieth-century naturalism, I deliberately used a ‘realistic’ style in this work. In addition, a colour paradigm simulating the cinquecento use of red (fire), green (water), blue (sky) and ash/brown (earth) has been applied, but some of the parodic imagery has been white-washed, speaking of knowledge that is partial and relative, and erasure and loss through time. 
Though being the result of God’s wrath upon humankind, in Michelangelo’s work the flood is presented not as a threat to human life but as a testament to the utopianistic belief in the human ability to survive. Both such concern with ‘ending’ and the forceful and vigorous form of presentation are lost in my work and I render the main groups of figures as leisuring beachgoers unconcerned with politics, the future or cataclysms such as floods or earthquakes. Paradise lost in the dystopian moment in Michelangelo’s utopian work becomes paradise regained in the dystopia of the carefree pleasurable moment in my The Flood.

From above and beyond, 2009

Trees symmetrically placed in ordered gardens, in chaotic overgrowth in wild forests and the bush form the main inspiration for this body of work, once again as in previous work dealing with the rise and demise of worlds. I use the life cycle of the tree as symbol: the living tree and its death in the form of paper and charcoal. The neatly planted and ordered trees in parks and gardens speak about ordered civilisation, ideologies, worlds and utopias.  The wild bush and overgrowth refer to chaos, wilderness and the stages both before and after such order.
I gaze at trees, which seem very similar to high-rise city buildings; in that sense there’s not much difference between the concrete jungle and the real thing. Both are supposed to provide shelter and protection in different ways. Just as the forest can be synonymous with confusion and the possibility of becoming lost, the contemporary character of many urban environments questions the city’s distinctive of providing shelter.
The works intermingle images of CBD Pretoria with Mpumalanga and Limpopo bush, the ordered parks of Gardini in Venice and computer parts. Enclosed, heterotopic environments comment on the ironies of creating idealised havens such as security estates within other ideological spaces. In contemporary times in the cities we need “walls” of defense erected through technology by way of communication channels, alarm systems and laser beams in order to survive.
I attempted to capture the sense of neurosis that has infiltrated life in the seemingly peaceful and ordered city, a structured location originally designed for happy and safe inhabitation by human beings. Emotions of confusion, waiting and listening are expressed; texturised, sensuous surfaces blend references to embroidery, pixilation and grids.

Elfriede Dreyer, Binnebos I and  II, 2009. Charcoal and digital media on Hahnemühle German etching paper, 297 x 420mm.  

delta (2006), 12 min 32 sec. Multi-channel projection

The raw footage for delta was filmed in Paradise Country in Mpumalanga, an opulent landscape characterised by African bush and filled with wild animals. In the video production this landscape is reinterpreted as the delta phase of sleep that precedes REM. Delta is part of slow-wave sleep, it is very difficult to wake someone in this state and it is the stage in which nightmares, sleepwalking and sleeptalking occur. During delta sleep, the realm of the imaginary is entered when the alienated self encounters primordial images of fear, conflict and survival, depicted by wild animals. The buck represents ordinary human beings and their battle for survival; the leopard internal fears and anxieties; and the giraffe local identity and clumsy indigene. For Salvador Dalí the burning giraffe represented the Spanish civil war of 1936 – 1939. View

 

Delta series

Utopia map, 2009

Like many other countries in the world, South Africa’s history is fraught with utopian construction. My generation is a product of the political unrest before, during and after Nationalism when radical political utopianism drove both anti-apartheid movements and pro-government groups.
Both Regiment and Utopian map comment on institutions as places that participate in the ideologies and utopianism of the governments of the day. During the 1960s European and American vanguard artists began to create art in response to the ideologies of institutions, perceived as places of “cultural confinement”, but since the 1990s it has become fashionable to have critical discussions within the confines of institutions, thereby making the institution not only the problem but also the solution.
As the administrative capital of South Africa, Pretoria probably experienced the onslaught of local politics in much more pronounced way. In Regiment sampling as a methodology has been used in the formof 8 mm film footage of the Republic day celebrations in Pretoria on 31 May 1961, which depicts the regimented marching and gymnastics of Pretoria school children. The footage serves as a kind of ‘found material’ that has been digitally reworked, coloured and edited in order to reinterpret the events and create a new narrative with regard to especially impressionable young girls that are rendered as regimented and subjugated.
Utopia map entails an aerial view of the eastern CBD area in Pretoria encompassing several institutions such as the University of Pretoria and the English and Afrikaans boys’ and girls’ schools; the sport stadium Loftus Versfeld; and the surrounding suburban areas. This geographical map has always been a critically significant cultural hub where ideologies have been playing out and citizens bear the scars of past utopian construction as well as of the impact of the new ideologies of the current ruling party.
The colour green has been used in both works in reminiscence of a paradisiacal ‘green’ zone.

Hanging gardens, 2009

In nineteenth century literature and art, escapism manifested in utopian visions of green worlds, arcadias and fantastic gardens created in response to the fear and horrors of urban crowding and industrialisation. Utopians such as Carlyle and Ruskin invoked the world of flowers and cultivation as an antidote to the city. Even the hanging gardens of Babylon were built by Nebuchadnezzar II around 600 BCE in order to please his sick wife, Amytis of Media, who longed for the trees and fragrant plants of her homeland Persia. Gardens, including green sports fields, also refer to Eden, cultivation, civilisation, leisure and power games.
In Hanging gardens, the idea of the synthetic “garden” is articulated; the utopian hope that maybe we will have “immaculate lawns” if we use special fertilizer. Framing a polluted view of the CBD of Pretoria, the lush African shrubbery speak of colonial, Nationalist, struggle and other dreams of the good life, freedom and prosperity, often leading to devastating consequences. The binaries of above/below, distant/near, real/virtual, nature/culture and utopia/dystopia are articulated in images of the eastern CBD area in Pretoria encompassing several institutions such as the University of Pretoria and the English and Afrikaans boys’ and girls’ schools; the sport stadium Loftus Versfeld; and the surrounding suburban areas.
As the administrative capital of South Africa, Pretoria probably experienced the onslaught of local politics and utopianism in much more pronounced way than other cities. This geographical map has always been a critically significant cultural hub where ideologies have been playing out, envisioned in the work’s pictorial texture of embroidery, pixelisation and Lego blocks.
Read more ...

           Click here for the catalogue of the exhibition

Verneem (Learned), 2008. Paper, acrylic, oils and neon on board. 1900 x 1200 x 100mm. Collection: Development Bank of Southern Africa

EXHIBITION CATALOGUE

Artist’s statement:
My work Learned is part of a series of works dealing with trees where the living tree as well as its demise in the form of paper and charcoal form part of the concept. I use the life cycle of the tree as symbol to set up narratives on time, human lifetime, technology and the making of worlds.
This work specifically comments on our engagement with the tree and the book as its recycled form as sources of knowledge. The books – donations from friends and family – refer to acquired knowledge and its residues in memory, which entail processes of gain, storage and empowerment. Yet, the shredded character of the books evokes associations with assimilation and absorption, as well as loss of knowledge. Information on South African colonial history, religions, botany and education can be found in the books, but it is inaccessible. The use of green refers to knowledge as utopian construction in terms of visions of accomplishment, the ‘good’ ending, progress and advancement, whereas brown refers to loss, decay and dystopian ruin.

 zoo city (2007), 4 min 55 sec. Multi-channel projection

Zoo city was inspired by the fiction of the acclaimed British author, J G Ballard, who in works such as Super Cannes and High-rise depicts the collapse of artificial city culture into an urban jungle of chaos. The work presents dystopian postmodernity, bleak cityscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social and environmental developments, especially relevant to South African violence- and crime-ridden cities. In this ‘Ballardian’ video production it is suggested that, in the end, the city as the initial outcome of utopian construct has become a dystopian nightmare of machine, artifice and the murder of the natural. The buck represents ordinary human beings vulnerable and exposed to various threats such as political, socio-economic and industrial forces, represented by the lion. View

real crime (2004). Video installation, 13 min 44 sec. Multi-channel projection

The title for the video production has been derived from Jean Baudrillard’s The Perfect Crime (1996) and plays with his idea that the world as we experience it reveals itself through appearances. If not for appearances, the world would represent the perfect crime (in other words, disappeared without a trace).
The computer-generated video production was manipulated from imagery of twigs, dry bushes and bare trees that was filmed in the Lowveld, Mpumalanga. The Renaissance cosmic colour idiom range of blue, green, red and brown-grey were utilised; these colours were digitally shifted to a more artificial colour idiom so that the red for instance became a neon pink and the blue an intense neon blue. This was a deliberate conceptual choice in order to play with the idea of artificially constructed worlds.
The work is in three parts and refers to the four cosmic elements as encountered in Greek thought: Part 1 signifies fire and connecting cyberworlds; Part 2 refers to water and the fluidity of constructed worlds; and Part 3 refers to earth, materiality and artifice. There is reference to the fourth element, air, via the suggestion of hyperspace and virtuality as the connecting aspect. View

I remember green (2003). Video installation, 5 min 48 sec. Multi-channel projection

This work was the first that dealt with notions of utopia and dystopia and the idealisation imminent in worlds construction. The scenery of white sheep and green pastures from Psalm 23 in the Christian Bible has been appropriated to metaphorically depict an ‘ideal’ worlds of peace, order and harmony. Yet throughout there are undercurrents of dystopian threat by way of imagery of chaos and destruction.

exit enter (2002). Video installation, 2 min 9 sec. Multi-channel projection

This work deals with the notion of navigation evident in virtual space browsing and navigation, but also as metaphor for human beings’ drive and curiosity to explore the new.
Theorist Michael Heim has written about human beings’ interaction with virtual space as an erotic activity, but it can also be interpreted as a desire for a Romantic sublime.

1986 – 1996            

Student work and art competitions, mixed media two-dimensional work

Spider-Man visits God's window, 1996