Mine Trip (review)

is worth more as scrap metal than high art. This disregard is not unique to the Johannesburg Art Gallery, but rather permeates through the entire South African art world. It is a desire to turn back the clock to a mythical "Golden Colonial Age" where good art was appreciated according to its embodiment of good, old-fashioned Calvinist values like laborious , pain-staking technical virtuosity . The current exhibitions by Stephen Conroy at the Everard Read Gallery and Keith Alexander are both good examples of artist and galleries who through their art attempt to evoke the past by turning their backs on the contemporary . In our current age of saturated mass media spectacle and proliferation of mechanical reproduction, the traditional technique of realism will by virtue of its nostalgic qualities appeal to a more conservative sensibility, to those people who find it difficult to live in the present . It is ironic that the Johannesburg Art Gallery has looked across time and geography in order to solve the problems that originated in their own backyard, problems that historically are directly connected to the artworks they have introduced as an antidote. The curator missed a rare opportunity to submit art to a "Truth and Reconciliation" type trial, exposing the relationships between art and power, economy and history, demonstrating how art can be used to mask social prejudices and political injustices. The Colonial "Golden Ages" have long since ended and all attempts to mask their demise will only serve to cripple our futures. If we are to create our own South African renaissance, our own "Golden Age", we are going to need the support of every gallery, museum and collector in the country, to live in the present with courage, that our artists may grow from that support, writing and creating their own histories, according to their own needs and not that which has been fed to us for too long by our former colonial masters. - Kendell Geers MINE TRIP SAM NHLENGETHWA TH E GOODMAN GALLERY JOHANNESBURG Even more than failure, success can be the biggest test for a young artist. Where previously an artist produced work for themselves alone, influenced only by their personal convictions and belief in art, a sudden growth in the market demand for their works adds an unexpected pressure dictated by that market's usually conservative whims and expectations. Recently the fashionable demand for work by black South African artists from the museums who had previously ignored their work, together with that of numerous diplomats and foreigners, has resulted in countless artists forfeiting quality in favor of quantity. In 1994, Sam Nhlengethwa won the Standard Bank Young Artist Award, the greatest accolade for a young artist in South Africa. The exhibition that resulted from this failed to live up to its importance and turned out to be a rehash of works exhibited the year before at the Market Theater. This was followed by "Senegalese Images", another watered down simulacrum of the extremely strong and provocative works that had originally established Nhlengethwa as the important artist as he is widely considered to be, the reason he won the Standard Bank Award in the first place. For "Mine Trip" Nhlengethwa has literally returned to the drawing board. The exhibition is the result of real time spent living on a mine, personally interacting with the frequently forgotten miners whose lives are spent unearthing the country's wealth. This research period was documented in the artist's sketchbook which was later translated into the lithographs, collages , and paintings that make up this exhibition. Strongly influenced by the African American artist Romare Bearden, Nhlengethwa's earlier work frequently resorted to generic portraits , partly as a result of their having been collaged from mass media cuttings . In contrast, "Mine Trip" is the product of the artist's private experiences with his subjects, which are as a result rich in both pathos and sensitivity . The anonymous faces of sweating laborers in Safety, Fatigue, and Routine are contrasted with the warm, smiling, friendly faces of the same people enjoying themselves socially in Posing for a Photograph and The Proud Miner. With "Mine Trip" Nhlengethwa has, more than anything else, revealed an incredible ability to work with line...