ARTIST William Kentridge has explored the intellectual, political and social history of modern China, in a work that goes on display at Johannesburg’s Goodman Gallery this week.
China has become increasingly important, politically, to SA in the last decade.
Kentridge had his first solo exhibition in China last year, a retrospective titled Notes Towards a Model Opera. The exhibition ended with Kentridge’s own exploration of China, showing links between SA’s failed apartheid "utopia" and that of Maoist China.
Just as this film was the centrepiece of the Chinese exhibition at the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing, so that work is the main feature of the Goodman Gallery exhibition.
The Kentridge exhibition is the first new exhibition this year for the Goodman Gallery, which this year celebrates its 50th year. "In celebration of half a century of advancing artistic achievement, we will host major exhibitions between our Johannesburg and Cape Town galleries in early June," the gallery said in a statement. "Our 50th anniversary programme throughout the year has been designed to present a series of exhibitions representing our overall approach."
Artist Gerhard Marx’s A Geometry of Echoes opened at the Goodman Gallery’s Cape Town branch on December 18 and runs to January 30, followed by artists Sue Williamson in February and Jabulani Dhlamini in March. In Johannesburg, Kentridge’s exhibition will be followed by that of Alfredo Jaar.
The gallery said that Kentridge’s three-channel projection (Notes Towards a Model Opera) "explores the dynamics of cultural diffusion and metamorphosis through the formal prism of the eight model operas of (China’s) Cultural Revolution".
Eight "model operas" were staged during China’s 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, which sought to inculcate pure Communist ideology in the country by purging from society remnants of capitalist and traditional ideologies. The operas were organised by Jiang Qing, wife of Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong. The operas jettisoned the Peking opera’s usual heroes and heroines for the common people. The Peking opera was banned as "feudalistic and bourgeois".
In addition to the film (choreography by Dada Masilo, composition and design by Philip Miller), a number of other works will be on display.
* Notes Towards a Model Opera runs at the Goodman Gallery, 163 Jan Smuts Ave, Johannesburg from January 21 to February 12.
Still from William Kentridge's Notes Towards a Model Opera. Picture: GOODMAN GALLERY JOHANNESBURG
ARTIST William Kentridge has explored the intellectual, political and social history of modern China, in a work that goes on display at Johannesburg’s Goodman Gallery this week.
China has become increasingly important, politically, to SA in the last decade.
Kentridge had his first solo exhibition in China last year, a retrospective titled Notes Towards a Model Opera. The exhibition ended with Kentridge’s own exploration of China, showing links between SA’s failed apartheid "utopia" and that of Maoist China.
Just as this film was the centrepiece of the Chinese exhibition at the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing, so that work is the main feature of the Goodman Gallery exhibition.
The Kentridge exhibition is the first new exhibition this year for the Goodman Gallery, which this year celebrates its 50th year. "In celebration of half a century of advancing artistic achievement, we will host major exhibitions between our Johannesburg and Cape Town galleries in early June," the gallery said in a statement. "Our 50th anniversary programme throughout the year has been designed to present a series of exhibitions representing our overall approach."
Artist Gerhard Marx’s A Geometry of Echoes opened at the Goodman Gallery’s Cape Town branch on December 18 and runs to January 30, followed by artists Sue Williamson in February and Jabulani Dhlamini in March. In Johannesburg, Kentridge’s exhibition will be followed by that of Alfredo Jaar.
The gallery said that Kentridge’s three-channel projection (Notes Towards a Model Opera) "explores the dynamics of cultural diffusion and metamorphosis through the formal prism of the eight model operas of (China’s) Cultural Revolution".
Eight "model operas" were staged during China’s 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution, which sought to inculcate pure Communist ideology in the country by purging from society remnants of capitalist and traditional ideologies. The operas were organised by Jiang Qing, wife of Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong. The operas jettisoned the Peking opera’s usual heroes and heroines for the common people. The Peking opera was banned as "feudalistic and bourgeois".
In addition to the film (choreography by Dada Masilo, composition and design by Philip Miller), a number of other works will be on display.
* Notes Towards a Model Opera runs at the Goodman Gallery, 163 Jan Smuts Ave, Johannesburg from January 21 to February 12.
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