Facilitators:
Matthew King
Josh Ginsburg
Participants:
Ashleigh Tasker
Danielle Smith
Kasey-Leigh Davies
Kelly Johnson
Lauren Theunissen
Paris Brummer
Design and layout:
Jared Ginsburg
Kyle Morland
Exhibition curators:
Marilyn Martin
Paul Weinberg
Photography department (UCT):
Svea Josephy
Jean Brundrit
Special thanks:
Ronah Dubow
The workshop explores the practice of the late Neville Dubow (director of the Michaelis School of Fine Art from 1971 to 1988) in the lead-up to the Dubow retrospective at the Irma Stern Museum curated by Marilyn Martin and Paul Weinberg.
The process is driven by two impulses. The first is to mine themes (be it aesthetic, strategic or other) from Dubow's photographic oeuvre. To scratch around for resonances in the practices of other artists working at a similar time elsewhere in the world, and to pursue traces in the work of the participating students. While the emphasis is placed upon Dubow's photographic work, an attempt is made to pursue the process in the spirit of his wider practice, where performance, discussion and teaching hold equitable status.
The second impulse is to perform a book; to treat a book as a space to ‘exhibit’ in which one can share widely and preserve practically. Elements are swiftly collected and combinations assembled stemming from conversations, collisions, accidents and associations, whether direct or oblique. An open-ended and reflexive attitude is the goal. No argument or single claim accounts for the composition of the pages in this book, or for the order in which they appear.
Michaelis becomes an important character throughout the process. The spaces and studios of the school were backdrops for many of Dubow’s performance-orientated experiments. This brings the rooms and hallways into view. The ‘school’ as a legacy of thinking comes into question. To what extent are we products and forms of thinking nurtured by generations past? To what extent are we agents of thinking pertinent to our time? Are we a product of the school or part of its evolution?