Creatives examine the City of Gold

Last edited: September 20, 2012

Posted by Business and Arts South Africa

Gold aka City of Gold-Diggers is a collaborative exhibition by the creatives Jana+Koos and Adele Prins at Room from 14 June until 13 July 2012.

The exhibition takes shape as a sartorial expression of migration, bling, greed, adventurers, street culture, pollution, pioneers, church and capped teeth. These themes are explored with playfulness. The works examine the energy and the spirit of a place that is both loved and hated for various, often overlapping reasons.

The body of work presented in this exhibition ranges from silkscreen prints and projections to three dimensional objects, created, collected and developed by the artists.

For Jana+Koos & Prins, Gold, in the context of a collaborative exhibition, serves as a platform to express some of the work and ideas that they have been accumulating and experimenting with over the past year. We have a deep-rooted love and fascination for Johannesburg and all its quirks, and this project is inspired by our interaction with this city as the place we stay, work and play in. It is a combination of design, art and illustration, silkscreen and digital prints, video and three dimensional objects. The only prerequisite we kept to, was to retain the colour palette used by each to black, white and gold and thus allow for the different styles, interpretations and techniques we use in our work, to inform the final outcome. The end result is a vastly different take and execution, with something for everyone to appreciate about the city of gold (and its gold diggers).

Jana+Koos prints use conceptual vantage points interpreted through a range of different mediums and techniques including photographic digital manipulation, street inspired typography, graphic design, sourcing and styling. The silkscreens presented by Adele Prins in this exhibition developed out of a digital manipulation of ink sketches in combination with letterpress printing blocks which are influenced by her interest in book design and historic printing methods, with which she now creates new Joburg memoirs.

ABOUT ROOM

ROOM is a new and independent initiative initiated by Urbanart Project, showcasing visual arts-led, multidisciplinary programme of exhibitions, events, workshops, on-line and off-site projects providing mainly emerging artists with agency and opportunities to present their work. A space dedicated to collaboration, inter-disciplinary dialogue and exchange.

ROOM aims to be a part of an interrogative and constructive urban culture, which draws its references from its surrounding environment and by doing so, informs its visual sensibility, creative programming and values.

ROOM hopes to be a context, which increases awareness of the multitude of creative production, through the projects it engages with (be they poetry, music, performance or visual art based) and to take full advantage of the ever-increasing number of platforms in the public domain.

ROOM will function as an independent visual arts exhibitions and project based space, with monthly artistic programming.

For more information: Contact: Maria Fidel Regueros > room@urbanartprojects.org

ROOM Opening Hours:
Mon Fri 10h00 17h00
Saturday 10h00 - 15h00

BASA's Supporting Grant Scheme

Business and Arts South Africa's Supporting Grant programme is designed to assist in activating sponsorship for a cross-section of arts projects in different regions of the country. This is done by providing financial support to a project that is in an already existing relationship between a business and arts organisation.??To apply for a BASA Supporting Grant, both the arts applicant and the sponsor must complete the application forms, which are designed to encourage the two partners to work together and identify areas of potential benefit. BASA allocates funds to the project once it has assessed how the partnership benefits both the sponsor and the recipient.

For more information on Business and Arts South Africa, and the Supporting Grant Scheme visit www.basa.co.za e-mail info@basa.co.za, or call 011 447 2295.