The fifth MTN New Contemporaries Arts Awards will be celebrated with a contemporary exhibition/competition at Durban's KZNSA Gallery in Glenwood next Tuesday, with great food and wine lending to the festive mood.
Held every two years, this competition identifies four emerging South African artists as likely future stars of the South African art world and elects a winner among them.
On opening night the ultimate winner will be announced.
The nominated artists are Donna Kukama, Kemang Wa Luhelere, Mohau Modisakeng and Stuart Bird. For the first time, this event will take place in Durban.
The competition is designed to find visual creativity and promote talented, cutting-edge artists who have not yet received critical acclaim, but who are positioned |to be the next leaders in the contemporary art field.
The head of MTN SA Foundation, Eunice Maluleke, hopes the award will encourage creative thinking outside the business arena and give young South African artists a chance |of a lifetime.
The awards are aimed at promoting artists who have not yet had the opportunity for appropriate exposure.
This year's nominated artists, whose works will compete against one another, represent an exciting line-up, and a diverse exhibition is promised, one that mixes traditional and new media within a contemporary context.
Performance art is included and opening night will be a celebration with food and wine, presented by MTN. You can be assured of a unique experience.
Identifying the four artists for the MTN New Contemporaries Award has been quite a curatorial mission.
Heading the team is Durban's Nontobeko Ntombela, previously the curator of Durban's DUT gallery. She was nominated as the person most likely to make the |most substantial contribution to capacity-building in the field.
It is her vision, from months of researching emerging artists in all nine provinces of South Africa, |that will give the exhibition its special flavour
"We can look forward to an exciting, fresh exhibition of cutting-edge ideas. The artists |in the show complement, yet contradict, each other's works through their use of medium |and concepts. This show will |surely be a good reflection of the current contemporary practice in South Africa," says Ntombela.
The MTN award is distinctly different from conventional art competitions in South Africa because it is entirely unsolicited by the artists it honours. It also discards old stereotypes about art and introduces new artists as a source of new ideas and media.
Some information about the four artists:
- Donna Kukama was born in Mafikeng and completed her B-Tech in Fine Arts at the Tshwane University of Technology in 2005.
She was awarded a scholarship to pursue her post-graduate studies in Switzerland in 2005, where she received her Master of Art in the Public Sphere.
Kukama has participated in international group exhibitions and art fairs, including Arco Madrid, Joburg Art Fair, and |Art Miami. She now lives and works in Gauteng.
- Kemang Wa Luhelere's work is an excavation of a real and imagined past.
He delves deep into forgotten private and public memories that interrogate fixed notions of identity and masculinity.
A student at Wits Fine Art, he has already appeared in various TV productions as a guest actor and a presenter.
- Mohau Modisakeng completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town.
His work experience includes |a stint at the American School in London, where he worked as a workshop facilitator.
He was responsible for organising various art programmes in Soweto that would later be presented as workshops in the UK.
- Stuart Bird grew up in Durban and completed a Masters' degree in Fine Art at UCT. Before studying he apprenticed as a church interior decorator and restorer in the UK. He works in various media, with an emphasis on craft.
Bird has been involved in various community-based initiatives
- Nontobeko Ntombela is a curator at the Durban University of Technology art gallery, studying towards a Masters' degree in Fine Arts at the Wits School of Arts.
In recent years Ntombela has focused more on curatorial and administrative work, participating actively as a member of two cultural boards - Arts for Human Rights Trust and Vansa (the Visual Arts Network).