OLIEWENHUIS ART MUSEUM
Home: Legae, Lehae, Ekhaya, Home, Tuiste
Oliewenhuis Art Museum is excited to present a new exhibition titled, Home, conceived by the collective thoughts and concepts from a cohort of curators: the Interns of the Presidential Employment Stimulus Programme (PESP). This programme was made possible by the Department of Sport, Arts and Culture in partnership with VANSA, Oliewenhuis Art Museum and ArtBankSA. The compelling energy of this curation was birthed from a synergetic vibrancy amongst the curators, who form part of different histories, but have a common thread that is a home. The commonality of “home” and the fact that Oliewenhuis Art Museum was once a home (for the General Governor and family), really pays homage to the history of this space.
The home is a living space where different interactions occur such as eating, dreaming and receiving guests. This influenced the idea of Art Salons. Traditionally the word “salon” meant living room in French and the idea is that Home displays the thought processes and actions of a home as an Art Salon. The word “salon” is understood in the context of a gallery space, as an aesthetic style of decorations. It is a gallery arrangement that displays all mediums, sizes and textures of artwork on one wall and aims to excite and over-stimulate a viewer. This movement derives its title from French Salons that arose in the late seventeenth century. These French Salons became the first public displays for art.
As a group of curators, the Interns made a selection of artworks that offered them the opportunity to contextualise the aesthetic quality of their homes. With the exhibition it appears in various ways, not just by how homes are curated to look a particular way, but also to explain the various habits formulated and how we as humans collect things of sentimental value. It becomes an obsessively personal observation of the unconscious acts of collecting things that holds meaning to the collector, ultimately evolving into an organic collection of clutter that can be likened to the Art Salon.
The theory for Home is an ideal characterisation of the globe reality depicting sites for everyday life that expose the complexities of social relations in homes. The exhibition creates, but also questions the synergy for a deeper meaning of a home within contemporary society and briefly entertains how a homogenised society would construct a home.
The artworks on display were selected from Oliewenhuis Art Museum’s Permanent Collection. Home features more than 70 artworks which showcase a diverse range of styles and media, including various photographic works and sculptures. Some of South Africa’s most prominent artists feature in this exhibition such as: Norman Catherine, Alexander Podlashuc, Marianne Podlashuc, Pauline Gutter,Walter Battis and Lucas Sithole, to name a few.
Oliewenhuis Art Museum is located at 16 Harry Smith Street, Bloemfontein. Entrance is free and secure parking is available for visitors. A ramp at the entrance of the main entrance provides access for wheel chairs, while a lift provides access to the Permanent Collection display areas on the first floor.
For more information please contact Oliewenhuis Art Museum on 051 011 0525 (ext 200) or oliewen@nasmus.co.za