POOL launches new space in Johannesburg with Abri de Swardt
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Ridder Thirst, an exhibition by Abri de Swardt
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Info
Exhibition opening: 25 April, 6.30pm Exhibition open to the public: 26 April - 17 June 2018 Operating hours: Wed - Sat, 11am - 3pm Or by appointment: hello[at]pool.org.za
POOL invites you to the opening of its new Johannesburg project space for curatorial and artistic research and production with Abri de Swardt's Ridder Thirst exhibition.
Ridder Thirst marks Abri de Swardt's first solo exhibition in Johannesburg, deploying queer historiography and collective voice to 'un-write' place. By exploring the mechanisms of the lens De Swardt simultaneously occupies and inverts the 'straight' canons of documentary photography and essay film, facing the continued effects of white denialism with the restorative agency and limits of queer youth.
The exhibition comprises work realised between 2015 and 2018, including a video installation, a photographic series, a performance in four parts and the launch of the Ridder Thirst 12'' LP - a double vinyl record with commissions by Stephané E. Conradie, Metode en Tegniek, Athi Mongezeleli Joja, Pierre Fouché, Khanyisile Mbongwa, Rachel Collet, Abri de Swardt and Alida Eloff.
Ridder Thirst includes a programme of public events realised in collaboration with De Swardt: The performance Words Beneath Bridges invokes graffiti scrawled beneath overpasses and along rivers as bardic writings at, and of, the margins. De Swardt choreographs the piece (first realised at The Centre for the Less Good Idea and performed by Quinton Manning and Danie Putter), in four sequences as 'sunstrokes of voice' in which techniques of collage - the cut, the inlay and occlusion - are transposed to performance.
Abri de Swardt (b. 1988, lives and works in Johannesburg) is an artist and writer who works across video, photography, costume, sound, sculpture, and performance. He is concerned with the difficult visibility and audibility of queer and Southern subjects as proxies of what Michael Taussig terms 'effervescent', 'no sooner emerged than' disappearing, the 'exact opposite…of monuments'. De Swardt holds a MFA in Fine Art with distinction from Goldsmiths, University of London (2014), and a BA in Fine Art from Stellenbosch University (2010). De Swardt has realised solo exhibitions at White Cubicle, London (SPF Matthew Barney, 2015); MOTInternational Projects, London (Catapult Screensaver, 2013); and blank projects, Cape Town (To Walk on Water, 2011). Recent exhibitions and screenings include writing for the eye, writing for the ear, The Centre for the Less Good Idea, Johannesburg (2018), These Rotten Words at Chapter, Cardiff (2017), Blend the Acclaim of Your Chant with the Timbrels, Jerwood Staging Series, Jerwood Space, London (2016), Bloomberg New Contemporaries, One Thoresby Street, Nottingham, and Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; Sightings, KZNSA, Durban; Poetics of Relation, Point of Order, Johannesburg and LiveInYourHead, Geneva; and Men Gather, in Speech…, Cooper Gallery, Dundee (all 2015). Forthcoming exhibitions include Coded Encounters, Gallery Graça Brandāo, Lisbon, and a residency at Rupert, Vilnius.
POOL is a not for profit platform for curatorial and artistic production, experimentation and research, founded in 2015 by Mika Conradie and Amy Watson. POOL is organised through the frames of self-organising and self-instituting and emerges out of an identified need to nurture experimentation within, support the professionalisation of, and broaden public engagement with, curatorial and visual art practice in South Africa. These aims are achieved through the medium and production of exhibitions, commissioned artworks, summer schools, discussions and symposia, residencies and exchanges, public talks and educational programming and print and radio publications.
POOL
Ellis House,
23 Voorhout Street,
New Doornfontein,
Johannesburg
2094
This project is supported by the National Arts Council South Africa.
