The Main Complaint
Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa [Nov 2018 - Feb 2019]
Russell Brun’s alter Ego Shane Malone. Shane presents himself as a successful art agent, gallerist or salesman and uses the accessibility gained through whiteness to show the world the work of his only client – Bruns. Shane’s entitlement, self-confidence and self-obsession distort his reality making him ignorant to modes of operating within the art-world. Thematically Shane’s performance at Zeitz MOCAA for The Main Complaint was informed by the politics of selling, marketing and commerce within the arts and the ways in which performance can work as a device to defamiliarize the hierarchies present.
In this intervention, Bull performed a series of drawing actions attempting to record the most recent Instagram posts from selected hashtags that highlights the museum’s engagement with other art spaces.
Bull occupied a lab space in the Centre for Photography (level 2) over three days where she translated digital Instagram posts into a physical drawn archive. Thea action was broadcast live to the Scheryn Collection Arena on level 0, visible to visitors entering the museum. The archive remained in the lab, as a growing collection until the end of the exhibition.
Visitors respond to Bonolo Kavula’s Black Mona Lisa video and installation.
Bert hanging out in his Quarter Square Cube with video of a pink fan he installed in the Zeitz MOCAA climate control facility.
This page offers a small insight to some of the programs that took place as part of The Main Complaint but is not a comprehensive or full view of the project’s scope..
By creating a crude translation of an ever-updated digital archive, the artist brings attention to the uncomfortable closeness of the commercial and museum art worlds. Bull questions the role of the museum to preserve contemporary art and seeks to acknowledge the periphery.
Artist and gallery owner Nkosinathi Thomas Ngulube’s take
Emmanuel De Montbron interviewed by Ellen Agnew, with Heinrich Minnie’s artwork listening in.
Greenscreen workshop with high school art students at Cedar High in Mitchells Plain. Led and facilitated by exhibiting artist Francois Knoetze and Joseph Coetzee with other artists also supporting the creative process. The students’ videos were exhibition for two weeks inThe Main Complaint core exhibition space.
The "Screen take-over" was an interactive video installation that was part of The Main Complaint exhibition at the Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town, South Africa. It functioned much like an Instagram takeover, using monitors to display a rolling feed of contemporary video artworks and digital media curated by various publicly nominated, guest curators.
‘One Straight Hour’ Intervention by Brett Seiler and Luvuyo Equiano Nyawose (2018) inside the ‘Five Bohb’ exhibition space (a survey of contemporary painting from Zimbabwe). Background artwork by Richard Mudariki, which is accompanied by the Zimbabwean National Anthem. Same-sex marriage is banned by the Zimbabwe Constitution
For three weeks, artist Bert Pauw worked from from his my mobile studio, which consisted of a trolley that houses all the necessary tools and materials he used in his practice. These materials included; small cutting mat, empty cereal boxes, Prestik, a camera and a laptop. With each day, he added jumbo prints to the wall, which emulated sticky notes – with new thoughts (artwork) on each jumbo photograph.
The aim of the pintervention was to engage with the museum and make work using the the minimum amount of space and materials, exploring new ways of presenting images and objects without physically changing the occupied space. The aim was to tread lightly and make works that are lightweight, easily removable, unimposing and humorous. The qualities of the work (and his studio process) contrast the weight, solidity and permanence of the Zeitz MOCAA building itself.
Museum visitors turning the exhibition iPad into their personal selfie corner:
Sepideh Mehraban, Kathy Robins and Olivie Keck discuss their collaborative VR work Between Homes, Between Forms, Between Languages (2018). The artists were joined by game developers from Free Lives gaming studio, Evan Greenwood and Jason Sutherland, who collaborated to create the work.
Collaboration and technology are key themes in The Main Complaint exhibition. This conversation looks at the combined creative processes behind the work; how the language of painting was explored and translated in the virtual space.
(How) do the perspectives of programmers differ from the artists in this process?
