EXHIBITION

Past Imperfect/Future Present

FADA Gallery, Gauteng, Johannesburg, 03/24/2015 - 05/01/2015

Department of Visual Art University of Johannesburg Bunting Rd

ABOUT

APT artist Uriel Orlow is participating the exhibition “Past Imperfect // Future Present” at the FADA Gallery.

FADA Gallery is transformed into a black cube (lower ground floor) to host the much anticipated VIAD curated exhibition titled, Past Imperfect // Future Present. The exhibition features the work of visual practitioners engaging with complexities of, and rethinking new possibilities for, contemporary archival practices using lens-based and new-media technologies. In reflecting on the fragments, traces and omissions within archives of the past and present, these practitioners are reimagining and reconstructing new narratives from within their contemporary contexts. 

Past Imperfect // Future Present explores multiple approaches through which the archive may be ‘addressed’. In their work, practitioners engage with archival content (drawing on, intervening, reinterpreting, reframing, re-activating and re-appropriating); refer to, and ‘speak with’, the archive, thereby setting up a conversation that takes place in-between the spaces of interchange.

Works on the exhibition reflect and expand on issues raised in Archival Addresses: Photographies, Practices, Positionalities, a platform that forms part of VIADUCT 2015 - an annual programme convened by the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre, Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Johannesburg.

Some practitioners address archival sources in ways that prompt viewers to re-think how artworks are received. Readings of images are framed by both the practitioners' and viewers' contexts. Those working in the digital realm - at times playfully and mischievously - push the archive into new territories, exploring the ongoing expansion and diversification of archival forms. By unraveling archival modalities and unsettling its norms these practitioners raise questions around consumption, accessibility, ownership, ethics, power and control. Practitioners using social media and digital spaces blur the lines between the intimate and the public through ongoing performances of (self) identities within, and in response to, constantly transforming and emergent digital terrains. In selecting particular works that highlight a diversity of practices, a (thin) slither of archival addresses is brought into view. 

The exhibition includes works by Ayana V. Jackson, Santu Mofokeng, Michelle Monareng, Zanele Muholi, Alexander Opper, Uriel Orlow, Karin Preller, Jo Ractliffe, Tabita Rezaire, Bogosi Sekhukhuni & Minnette Vári.

 

For More Information

APT ARTISTS ON VIEW

Uriel Orlow

Share this Exhibition: