Exhibitions at the Tatham
Currently on show at the Tatham Art Gallery in Chief Albert Luthuli Street, Pietermaritzburg is the exhibition Material is Metaphor, featuring the work of Rohini Amratlal, Bhekazi Ernest Ngcobo, Jessica Bothma and Nindya Bucktowar.
Running until March 20, the exhibition, curated by Jess Bothma and Jenny Stretton, focuses on how artists consider their materials, the ‘stuff’ they craft and experiment with, to give a voice to a personal vision.
Visual metaphors are ‘primary’ images that the viewer understands as ideas, ideas which form connections to ‘secondary’ images that, depending on syntax, intensity, and frequency, act in concert to become a narrative.
There will be a workshop for the Material is Metaphor exhibition in the Lorna Ferguson Room
from 10am to 3pm on February 23, 24 and 25. It will be hosted by Bothma and Ngcobo. For more information and to book email reena.bhoodram@msunduzi.gov. za
Later this month the gallery will be hosting Gerard Bhengu: tradition and modernity in its main gallery space.
The exhibition, which runs from February 27 to May 1, focuses on one of the country’s best known artists, Gerard Bhengu, who is recognised for his role in establishing a thematically African but European-derived stylistic representational pictorial idiom.
This idiom, sustained throughout his long artistic career (c19251985), comprised known and nostalgically recalled themes - an ethnically specific portrait genre, landscapes and culturally sourced historical and narrative scenes.