New Paintings by Olivia Scholnick

Artist, Olivia Scholnick will be exhibiting her sixth solo exhibition of work at the Irma Stern Museum.

The new works are characterised by a luscious fluidity and movement which is coupled with a simplification of form and this is in turn infused with a clear and resonant colour palette.

The sensuality of leaf, vegetable and plant forms, as well as the spontaneous still life compositions resulting from the intense jumble of a painter's table are the key subjects.

Immediacy and concentration is evident in these highly charged works. Her admirers will see many elements of her previous work, masterly conveyed with a new and visceral response to her physical and material surroundings.

Swimming to the roses
Video and new works by Helen Carmel Benigson

The UCT Irma Stern Museum will host an exhibition of new works by emerging artist Helen Carmel Benigson. Benigson graduated with a First Class Degree from The Slade School of Fine Art in London in 2009 and is currently enrolled in the MA program there.

Video, photographic prints and small objects will be dispersed in the entrance gallery, creating a dialogue but also interrupting the permanent objects and paintings within the space.

Helen Carmel Benigson's practice is energetic, hyper-hysterical, colourful and sexy, with a focus on video, print, sculpture and performance. "I am interested in visual and sensual stimulation generated through print, colour, sound and products such as lollipops, blood oranges and floral fabric. I am inspired by the colours and pace of music television as well as the trauma and political implications of a body moving between two or more specific spaces or locations."

Using multi-screen video works and installations, Benigson attempts to invent new possibilities for text and poetry, feminine identity and the traditional genre of portraiture. Female images, bodily and overtly visceral language and bright, sexy colour all inform her work.

"My work is about roses and rap music, deep intimacy and the glossy world of MTV, femininity and food, the body, swimming and dreaming — and where all of these collide. I am really excited about exhibiting my work in the context of the Irma Stern — such a personal and intimate space. I want to bring something cool and global — and both disrupt but also engage with a part of it. I have always loved Irma Stern and so I am very excited about this opportunity."

Helen Carmel Benigson was born in 1985 in London. She lives and works in London and Israel.

Notions of being/Moments of being
Artist: Jill Trappler

The work on this exhibition is a culmination of my exploration into cloth and clothing. I have explored this theme from my experience as a weaver and seamstress and enjoyed it from a social and cultural perspective. My primary interest is in paint and mixed media; finding and making surfaces to hang and hold color. So although the narrative in most of this work contains pattern, shape and association, my primary concern is about the way the light moves and how color embraces time.

Website: www.jilltrappler.co.za

A selection of artworks by Charles Davidson Bell (1813-1882) and Solomon Caesar Malan (1812-1894) are exhibited together as part of a collaborative initiative between the University of Cape Town and Stellenbosch University and offer a comparative visual perspective on Cape Town and its environs circa 1830-1870.

Charles Davidson Bell arrived at the Cape in 1830 aged sixteen and over a period of forty years made a significant contribution to many aspects of local life before retiring to his native homeland Scotland. In 1848 he became the Surveyor General of the Cape Colony. He is remembered mainly for designing the famous Cape Triangular stamps and for having the suburb Bellville named after him in recognition of his work as engineer in the construction of the railway line. His artistic talent resulted in his selection as second artist in Dr Andrew Smith's scientific expedition to the Tropic of Capricorn, where Bell was responsible for recording the landscape and various people encountered. His illustrations provide a fascinating contribution to the records of social life at the Cape in the 19th century.

Solomon Caesar Malan as a young Swiss student went to study at Oxford. After becoming a British citizen he accepted a professorship in Classics in Calcutta, India in 1837. He visited the Cape in 1839 and remained for four months before returning to India. During this short period he produced approximately 90 watercolours and pencil sketches of Cape Town and its environs as well as of his journey through Stellenbosch and Franschhoek to Genadendal and from there through the Helderberg back to Cape Town. These works of art were produced from a time before the invention of photography and it was the only way a tourist/traveller could make a record of his surroundings and experiences.

Both Bell and Malan did not see themselves primarily as artists - Bell was to become Surveyor-General in the Cape and Malan a professor in Classics in Calcutta, India. Their watercolours and drawings from this period offer two interesting and startlingly different views of the Cape both from a personal and aesthetic point of view.

The John and Charles Bell Heritage Trust along with the Stellenbosch University Museum are to be acknowledged for making this exhibition possible.

TSHUNGULO WUYISIWA E MAHLWENI
(THE HEALING PROCESS)

an exhibition of new works by
Phillemon Hlungwani
Curator: Trent Read

Phillemon Hlungwani has virtuoso drawing skills and these, combined with his phenomenal technical ability, make him an artist who is surely destined for great things. Hlungwani grew up in rural Limpopo province and he is deeply proud of his people?s traditional customs and cultural practices. He depicts these however not as translator or anthropologist but as an artist with a vision that is aesthetically firmly based in the twenty first century.

As a young herdboy he spent many months tending the family goats and his intimate knowledge of the Bushveld landscape is evident in these enormous etchings which are astounding to anyone versed in the technical skills required to pull them with such crispness and lucidity.

In the brief time we have worked together which was interrupted by a sojourn in New York courtesy of the Ampersand Foundation, Hlungwani?s works have been bought by serious collectors in Europe, Britain and the USA but this is his first major exhibition and the first showing of his works in Cape Town.

Phillemon Hlungwani and I join in thanking Gideon de Plessis for effecting the introduction which has resulted in our business relationship and, of course, this exhibition.

As always Christopher Peter and his professional team make curating an exhibition at this wonderful venue a real and almost effortless pleasure.

Trent Read