Four Grahamstown artists have been selected as finalists at the prestigious Spier Contemporary Art Competition held in Cape Town.
Lindi Arbi, Roxandra (Cindy) Dardagan Britz, Nicola Elliot and Sonia Smit were chosen out of 2 700 entries nationwide and were four of 101 finalists.
Four Grahamstown artists have been selected as finalists at the prestigious Spier Contemporary Art Competition held in Cape Town.
Lindi Arbi, Roxandra (Cindy) Dardagan Britz, Nicola Elliot and Sonia Smit were chosen out of 2 700 entries nationwide and were four of 101 finalists.
The selection was made in November and December last year by a curatorial team of five local and international industry professionals and their artwork was displayed at the Spier Contemporary exhibition on 14 March.
Arbi, who created a sculpture titled Unearthed, won a residency award at the competition which will take her to South Korea.
She moved to Grahamstown in 2002 to complete a Fine Arts degree at Rhodes University. Her sculpture is a cast of her body which has been shaped over the partially exposed ‘skeleton’ of a 60s shop mannequin.
The body appears trapped in a process of emerging and retreating into a block of fleshlike matter. Arbi, who was widowed in February 2000, created the sculpture to represent the loss of her husband and the role she inhabited as his wife.
“I aimed to trace, through the re-representation of extinct and endangered plant species, how human mortality is physically and psychically connected to the endemic environment,” she said.
Arbi plans to produce a comprehensive body of work while in South Korea which will be juxtaposed with an investigative series done in South Africa.
“The installation of work from across two continents will bring intertextuality of a larger world beyond the local landscapes at play,” she said.
“I am hoping that the critical distance, difference and inversion of spaces and materiality will be interfaced by the similarities, repetitions and imitations found in either country.”
Britz, who is a printmaker and an art teacher at DSG, ventured into a new medium and produced a performance piece for the competition.
Her piece, titled My Life as a Suitcase, represents the way in which we all tend to take our lives with us everywhere in the form of emotional or physical baggage.
“Often you have to jump on the suitcase to close it because it is too full,” she said. “In my piece, I left out a towel, which represents shedding and renewal, as we shed our skin on to it.
It can be read on different levels,” she said. The Spier Contemporary exhibition was conceived to provide an open platform for all artists to show their work, uncompromised by the limitations of technology, space and access.
The exhibition provides a space for artists to show their diversity, giving audiences insights into the complexity of art. Dr Ashraf Jamal, a senior art lecturer at Rhodes University, also attended the competition.
“Great emphasis was placed on sourcing artists who did not stem from accredited art schools. This was done in the spirit of democracy and to break the stranglehold of art cartels of various kinds,” he said.
“The competition is the fruitage of a nationwide search for innovative artists.” The competition offered a range of awards designed specifically to support the professional development of the winning artists.
The awards included five judge awards, made by a team of three international judges, and the audience award, determined by popular vote by visitors at the Cape Town exhibition.
Prize money of R600 000 is shared between the six winners who then develop a proposal and budget for how they wish to use the award to advance their careers.
In addition, seven residency awards, valued at R1 800 000, are offered, with international destinations including South Korea, Brazil, China, and the US.
The winners of the national competition were announced on 13 March at the launch of the biennale in the City Hall. The location was fitting, as this was where former president Nelson Mandela delivered his inaugural speech after his liberation from prison 20 years ago.
The national competition was open to all artists using all forms including painting, printmaking, photography and sculpture. Submissions where held at 13 centres across the country in October last year.
After the exhibition finishes, it will travel to Museum Africa in Johannesburg, and then to the Durban Art Gallery.
