Ernestine White announced as the Cape Town Art Fair's guest curator
The Cape Town Art Fair 2014 has announced the appointment of independent curator Ernestine White as guest curator. With more than 15 years' experience in the visual arts arena, White's professional accomplishments include working as the exhibitions and senior projects co-ordinator on the Parliamentary Millennium Programme (PMP), and in the role of collections manager for Iziko's South African National Gallery.
Ernestine White
White is also a skilled artist in her own right whose work features in a number of major local and international collections. A recent career highlight was to have her work incorporated into the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection. This dual identity as both a curator and practitioner affords White a unique perspective on the place of contemporary fine art in a South African market, and makes her an ideal candidate for straddling the commercial and creative sectors in the context of a fair environment.
For her participation in this year's CTAF, White is using the opportunity to curate the work of Lyndi Sales, whose intricate, ephemeral pieces have garnered widespread critical acclaim. Sales' contribution is an extract from a larger body of work that uses the artist's experiences of astigmatism as a point of departure to interrogate ideas around vision, perception and the imagination. Explaining her choice, White said: "My selection of Lyndi Sales' works is based upon a deep admiration for her innovative use of traditional and non-traditional techniques that result in complex paper constructions and installations, echoing known and imagined celestial bodies. The work's visual beauty skilfully draws the viewer in and is then used as a medium to contemplate the complex makings of the universe and humanity's role within it."
A series of micro exhibitions
As part of the special projects programme at the Cape Town Art Fair, Josh Ginsburg will be assembling a series of micro exhibitions. Presenting a diverse range of works loaned from galleries, private collections, friends, colleagues and the booths at the fair itself, the project aims to engage visitors in conversation catalysed by the shifting combinations presented.
"In certain cases, I plan to relate works thematically, formally, or by some other recognisable organising principle," Ginsburg explained. "However, I'm mostly interested in seeking out combinations that resonate or that seem to make sense to me but for reasons I can't identify or articulate."
Marc Stanes at Ebony is exhibiting a group of select works from Senegal, Benin and Sierra Leone. "At a time when international collectors are increasingly attentive to the emerging talent from across the continent, Ebony will be showing original and unique works from West Africa at the Cape Town Art Fair."
Book signings
Visitors to the Cape Town Art Fair (28 February to 2 March, 2014, at The Pavilion, V&A Waterfront) will also have the chance to have books signed by prominent artists. Brett Murray, the SA artist mostly known for his steel and mixed media wall sculptures as well as the controversial "Spear" painting of Zuma along with Buttermix comic artists and co-founders, Conrad Botes and Anton Kannemayer (who sometimes goes by the pseudonym Joe Dog), will be available for book signings on the Jacana stand .
This year's line-up includes 34 of South Africa's leading galleries and marks the inaugural participation of institutional heavyweights Stevenson, Goodman and Everard Read who join the elite ranks of new and returning exhibitors. Other highlights of CTAF's programme are a children's art project sponsored by the Sovereign Arts Foundation, film screenings at the IMAX cinema and a series of lectures by critics, cultural commentators, artists and industry professionals exploring various facets of the visual arts sector.
Keep up to date with the fair's programming at www.artfaircapetown.co.za.
