Co-ExistenceJan Smith (Mexico/Photography)

Bronwen Vaughan-Evans (Australia/Painting) Nomusa Makhubu (South Africa/Photography)

Jan Smith

Nouadhibou – Where Ships go to Die

This exhibition includes Smith’s full series entitled Nouadhibou – Where ships go to Die (2008).

Place of the Jackal - This is the translation of the name of the town of Nouadhibou, Mauritania. Once a fishing village, Nouadhibou is now a large industrial port and the world’s largest ship cemetery, with more than 500 abandoned wrecks floating in its waters.

The irony of the name, and the image of scavenging predators that it invokes, is not lost on Smith, who had to endure many adventures to eventually capture these images of destruction. Smith focuses his lens on a variety of floating vessels, rusted and covered in barnacle. Abandoned, floating with no purpose other than to finally sink, these vessels have outlived their usefulness. Like lovers, these wrecks cling to each another in a hope of staying afloat. Smith uses the dichotomy of hope in the face of despair as the basis for his compositions. Whilst his photographs portray these vessels as still majestic and powerful, heroically denying their fate, there is no doubt in the viewers mind that the ominous rising swell of the black sea will be the final victor.

Vessel 1—21, Nouadhibou Pigment ink print on archival cotton paper

36 x 53cm Edition /5

2008

Bronwen Vaughn-Evans

We Are All Connected

Vaughan-Evans references her own photography in her uniquely constructed and layered gesso on board paintings. Her monochromatic palette alludes to a met-aphorical weight beneath the surface of things. Vaughan-Evans is South African born; now living and working in Melbourne, Australia. Her minimalist paintings poi-

gnantly comments on issues of alienation and migration.

Shadow Swinging, Gesso and oil on board, 60 x 90 cm, 2013

Anticipation , Gesso and oil on board, 60 x 90 cm, 2013

Migration Stories, Gesso and oil on board, 60 x 90 cm, 2013

First Sighting of Spring, Gesso and oil on board, 60 x 90 cm , 2013

Pause, Gesso and oil on board, 90 x 150 cm , 2013

Lift, Gesso and oil on board, 60 x 90 cm , 2013

Nomusa Makhubu

This exhibition includes three series of work by artist and art historian, Nomusa Makhu-bu, including the acclaimed, and now expanded series, Self-Portrait Project, Inqui-etude and her latest series, photographed in Lagos, Nigeria, The Flood. Makhubu is a recent PhD graduate and full-time lecturer at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at

the University of Cape Town.

Her mode of address in Self-Portrait Project (2007/2013) involves projecting images of the self onto found colonial photographs. In her 2009 series, Inquietude, Makhubu continued her focus on identity and self-representation within the broader context

of migration.

In her latest series, The Flood (2013) Makhubu opted for a departure; from the pri-vate to the public sphere. Trapped in a taxi during a flash flood in Lagos, Makhubu

documented those around her.

Self-Portrait Project

Imvunulo (Traditional Dress) , Digital print, 55 x 80 cm, Edition /7, 2007/2013

Asasibambe Ngani? (Still Binding?), Digital print, 55 x 80 cm, Edition /7, 2007/2013

Imfundo, Impahla neBhayibheli (Education, Apparel, and the Bible), Digital print, 60 x 80 cm, Edition /7, 2007/2013

Inquietude

Inquietude I, Digital print on archival paper, 60 x 100 cm, Edition / 5, 2009

Inquietude III, Digital print on archival paper, 60 x 100 cm, Edition / 5, 2009

Inquietude II, Digital print on archival paper, 60 x 100 cm, Edition / 5, 2009

The Flood

Nyembezi, Colour photograph, 60 x 79cm, Edition / 10, 2013

Nyembezi IV, Colour photograph, 60 x 79cm, Edition / 10, 2013

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