Exihibition opens new art space

The creation of art will be examined in the exhibition Muse Room, a collaboration between Wayne Barker and Don Searll, held at Room in Braamfontein.
QUESTIONS about and emotions connected to the creation of art will be examined in full three-dimensional glory at an exhibition opening at a new space at 70 Juta in Braamfontein on 29 October.

One chanel video by Wayne BarkerOne channel video by Wayne BarkerMuse Room is an inter-disciplinary collaboration between artists Wayne Barker and Don Searll. “Muse Room is an exhibition about juxtapositions, subversion and playfulness in all its contexts,” explains Christabel Zulu from the publicity company responsible for the exhibition, BUZ Publicity.

It is an exhibition of sculptural, video-based and 3D works that look at factors such as the role of the muse or model and performance in making art, she says. Questions about the interaction of artist and model, and artist and easel are also posed.

“Muse Room makes reference to the artist’s studio as an allegory of the most intimate, yet presented in the most public of frameworks,” Zulu adds. “The exhibition will feature new and unseen sculptural and video-based works by Wayne Barker and recent stereoscopic compositions by internationally recognised 3D filmmaker and video artist Don Searll.”

Artist
Barker’s career as an artist spans 25 years. He completed his bachelor degree in fine arts at the Michaelis School of Art at the University of Cape Town and received a postgraduate degree in fine art at the Ecole des Beaux Art in Marseille, France.

His work has been known to interrogate the role of popular culture, South African identity, gender, race, reconciliation, ubuntu and the plight of the poor. Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Miriam Makeba, Enoch Sontonga and JM Coetzee and the roles they have played in shaping our country have also been acknowledged in his work.

For Searll, technology is a natural evolution of the art medium; he has been credited with introducing five technologies of art to South Africa, these being laser graphics, holographics, computer graphics, virtual reality and stereoscopic movies.

Wayne BarkerA video based still by Wayne BarkerBy the time he was 12, Searll was already shooting 3D stills and he had shot his first short film by the time he was 16. Over the course of his career, he has collaborated with some of South Africa’s top artists, including Willem Boshoff, Norman Catherine and Dylan Lewis.

He has won numerous awards over the years, including BMI Best Video of the Year and BMI Best for Technical Excellence in 1992 for the song Killer, by the British musician, Seal.

Gallery
Muse Room was the brain child of Maria Fidel Regueros, a project manager, curator and director at UrbanArt Project. The project’s focus is on providing an independent space for exhibitions and projects.

Room, the venue, as well as the exhibition itself, Muse Room, will be officially opened on 29 October at 6pm. It is located at 70 Juta, Juta Street, Braamfontein.

“Room is a platform for young, emerging and established artists, collaborative projects, inter-disciplinary dialogue and exchange,” Zulu says. “[It] will function as an independent visual arts exhibitions and projects-based space, with monthly artistic programming.”

For more information, visit UrbanArt Project.