Written by: Tiisetso Tlelima
Mzansi’s creative community have until 30 October to submit their artworks to the Spier Contemporary 2010 competition. The competition is a perfect opportunity for artists to create work that they’ve always wanted to make and is open to both budding and established artists living in South Africa over 21 years of age. “We are looking for work that reflects what it is to be in South Africa now - [work] that pushes the boundaries of contemporary art practice and challenges our perceptions of what it means to be a South African and to be making art in the South African context today,” says Spier Contemporary project manager, Farzanah Badsha.
Spier Contemporary provides artists with a platform and support to showcase their art. “We do this by acknowledging them financially: every artist chosen for the exhibition gets a R 4000 artists fee to acknowledge the work they put in and the remainder of the R 1.2 million prize money will be awarded to the 5 -7 winning artists to further their careers,” explains Badsha. Participating artists will be given the technical support to show their work with as few limitations as possible and they will also benefit from the exposure that comes with the infrastructure of a major show such as marketing support and a comprehensive catalogue. Artists from across all contemporary mediums such as visual art, animation, performance art, product design, media installation, sculpture, film and graphic design are welcome to submit their works.
Spier Contemporary was launched by the Africa Centre last year not only to give artists an opportunity to showcase their work, but also to give art enthusiasts a place to see a broad range of the best contemporary art South Africa has to offer. The Spier Contemporary is the biggest art project of its type in the country but has the fewest barriers to entry. “It challenges the notion of what art is. Including a myriad of media such as video, product design and performance as well as those media traditionally regarded as ‘fine art’, it hopes to reflect on contemporary South African art,” says Badsha. “Overtime, the show will record and track changes and trends in the art landscape.”
A major part of Spier Contemporary 2010 is a national development programme that seeks to address some of the imbalances and gaps in the art landscape. “We have already run performance workshops facilitated by Jay Pather in Cape Town and Johannesburg with a third scheduled for Durban, a curatorial internship has been launched, in which, five people will be spending the year honing their skills as curators - something which is not offered by any academic institution in South Africa,” says Badsha. A residency programme is also currently running at the Fort Hare University where the artists in residence have full board, meals and a per diem so that they can use this time to work on their art exclusively and get career support by working with mentors, learning about new mediums and further understanding the business side of art.
Furthermore, there are visual arts workshops being run over the next six months in various peri-urban and rural regions in South Africa. These workshops aim to assist artists outside the major metropolitan regions to access the mainstream art networks and create art that can compete in the tough art market whilst also assisting in broadening their knowledge of the business side of art.
According to Badsha, extensive work has been done to ensure that artists across the country have been called to enter through a network of regional co-ordinators and through Q & A sessions.
Entry for the competition is free.
For more info about the competition please visit www.spiercontemporary2010.co.za
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