STEPHEN HOBBS - DAZZLE

Based in Johannesburg, Hobbs has exhibited extensively across South Africa and abroad, contributing immensely to the complex relations between art and society. He is noted for his prolific collaborations with Marcus Neustetter. Together these two artists have been the driving force behind The Premises Gallery and the Trinity Session, which was for a time housed within the Civic theatre in Braamfontein, Johannesburg. Hobbs has always been involved with social and community-based work, most notably connected to his partnership with Neustetter, and their varied public art initiatives. Hobbs’ most recent work can be described as highly conceptual, multimedia-based, multidisciplinary, formalized and interactive executions that focus on human ergonomics, structural proximities, and environmental experiences.

Hobbs’ approach deconstructs notions of architecture and space, charged with social, political, and economic undertones. His work can be regarded as iconic and monumental. Architecture, specifically, is used as a catalyst for spatial perceptions, constructed initiatives, and edifices of representation, stitched with influences from Modernist avant-garde trends that existed during the early 20th century. Hobbs situates his influences within the transitional context of contemporary South Africa, often emphasizing the struggle to reform and reconstruct communities and buildings, and as a result improve upon the lived-lives of individuals in the aftermath of urban decay and post-industrial, post apartheid entropy.

Hobbs’ last two exhibitions, held at the Substation in Johannesburg, and the Kwa Zulu Natal Society of Arts (KZNSA) in Durban, are certainly a testament to the historical nature of his spatial interventions and community initiatives, often bringing together the talents of various architects, artists, designers, writers, photographers, filmmakers, musicians, and the like. At the Substation (a project room housed at the University of the Witwatersrand faculty of Arts) Hobbs responded to the space in three parts, producing a body of small-scale assemblage sculptures, incorporating a number of found objects suggesting the early experiments of Kurt Schwitters, Piet Mondrian, and Vladmir Tatlin. When pieced together, these small assemblages become a large-scale installation, accompanied by a site-specific external sculptural intervention outside the building. The exterior treatment could be seen by an appreciative audience at all times. This approach was in part a reaction to the space itself, which has no windows and modest entrances. Thus, the culmination of the installation/intervention came a month after the opening of the show with the unraveling of the interior to the public.

In Durban, at the Kwa-Zulu Natal Arts Association (KZNSA), Hobbs changed his approach to suit the new demands of the open-plan building, with its many windows, high ceilings, free-flowing interior and exterior arenas, not limiting viewers to the exterior of the building as was the case at WITS, but still turning to the influence of Tatlin, notab;y his Monument to the Third International. It is from this foundation, and after numerous other successful projects and interventions that Hobbs has moved his attention to the Outlet Project Room.

Using similar sentiments and approaches executed in the above-mentioned interventions, Hobbs proposes to paint the exterior of Outlet and the surrounding buildings in the tradition of WW1 battleship camouflage, spurred on by the canonical mythology surrounding the magical realism masterpiece by Jorge Luis Borges titled “The Aleph”. Once again, Hobbs wishes to interact with the space, and to some extent have the space interact with the public. The social impact of this project is immense, specifically to the institution itself, instilling a sense of rejuvenation on a deteriorating campus. In this context, Hobbs' public statment, labelled "Dazzle", can be seen as a monument on site. Dazzle replaces the existing decay surrounding the area presently with a conceptual mantra that can educate and inspire, rather than depress and encourage disdain.

“Dazzle” is the most recent event to be hosted by Outlet; a project space that has always been focused on the development of ideas, stimulating discourse and well-grounded experimentation.The official opening will be held on Saturday the 8th of August 2009 at 14:00.

JAMES WEBB - UNTITLED

Anonymously, almost unnoticeable, yet completely addictive and totally distracting, a flickering beacon sends off a cryptic message to the neon lights of the city. For James Webb’s first show at Outlet he has arranged for the space’s electrical lights to be rewired so as to communicate a secret communication in Morse code. This work is best viewed from the outside, and preferably during the late evening or nighttime. The show runs from the 1st of October to the 1st of November 2008.

JOBURG ART FAIR - FRINGE EVENT

For “Esikhaleni – Spatial Practices”, a fringe exhibition held as part of the Johannesburg Art Fair, Thom created two separate works. The first, a collaboration with young artist Lawrence Lemoaona and presented as part of Outlet, was entitled “Thom vs Lemoaona”, on surface a send up of both race and gender issues that mark the contemporary South African mindset. Two boxers, Thom and Lemoaona respectively, square up against each other: noses almost touching as they stare into each others eyes, then raising their gloves with fighting poses solemnly declaring their intentions to beat each other to a pulp. However, once the actual battle starts we see them riding each other like horses when one scores a knockdown, at other times simulating oral sex and scatological fetishes with raw meat: Lemoaona squats and ‘defecates’ on Thom’s face. One can only cringe when Thom, in turn, feeds a sausage to Lemoaona. Near the end of the video loop they fight a single piece of meat, tugging at it with their teeth like hungry animals until it tears in two. What begins as an olds school ‘match up’ soon turns into a twisted psycho-sexual rumination on the relationship between violence, submission, politics and sex that would please even Pasolini. The work was presented a two-channel video projection, splitting the projected image up on two hanging curtains with projections coming from opposite sides. In effect, this meant that one had to continuously circle the installation in order to clearly understand the piece, coming as it were, from ‘opposing sides’.

For the second work, entitled ‘Traffic’, Thom conceptualised a hard-hitting group performance, appropriating what is possibly one of the most infamous practices of community justice and punishment from the mid 1980s-1990s in South African history, namely ‘necklacing’. For a while now Thom has been appropriating iconographic images and objects associated with so called revolutionary practices and war – Molotov Cocktails, Ak47’s and even the shards of broken glass so often associated with violent public protests and riots. Now the tyre makes its appearance and once again, it becomes a physical burden that the artist ritually engages with. At first one is drawn closer by the iconic simplicity of both image and action: four figures dressed in red workers uniforms, each with a tyre around their neck rolling around on the gallery floor. It is as if they are all battling personal demons, heading of into their own direction and struggling with the physical weight and form of the tyre around their neck. But then the beautiful simplicity of the work is revealed: as the performers encounter obstacles along the way, including other performers, they simply change direction and continue rolling. Thus, in a movement that seems more aptly described as ‘the dance of death’ than an artwork, the performers continuously expand and retract into a single, chaotic whole. This is ballet of sorts, one that begins at home, in the history of our country, extending outward into the vast expanse of human experience, thought and physical movement. Whether it concerns philosophy, art, (im)migration, politics or even the forcible removal of people from their homes, the work touches a raw nerve exactly because it suggests the constant conflict between dialogue and monologue, the individual and the community, stasis and movement, that mark human history. As the Cameroonian artist Joel Mpah Dooh exclaimed on seeing the work: “Everyone keeps just keeps rolling, struggling with the tyre. And when they are tired they rest for a short while, only to begin again. This is mad!” Indeed.

Text by Mika le Roux.
Photography by Shane de Lange and Abrie Fourie.