Francisco Goya and Diane Victor prints from the JAG Collection at Turbine Art Fair 2016
This time of the year, Jozi art lovers can look forward to one of the highlights of the city’s arts calendar – the Turbine Art Fair (TAF) returns to the iconic Turbine Hall in Newtown from 14th – 17th July 2016.
Following on from the enormous success of the JAG’s (Johannesburg Art Gallery) collection of Multiples exhibition at TAF’15, we are delighted to announce that this year’s exhibition will showcase a juxtaposition of the works of Francisco Goya and Diane Victor, one of South Africa’s most respected contemporary artists.
In anticipation of Diane Victor’s retrospective at the JAG in November 2016, the Gallery decided to pay tribute to Victor’s Disasters of Peace series (2001 – present) in an exhibition that situates them with a selection of works from Francisco Goya’s Los Caprichos (1797-1798). Victor’s Disasters of Peace can be said to draw inspiration from Goya’s Disasters of War series (1810 – 1820), but there are also many correlations between this body of work and Los Caprichos.
Los Caprichos explores the socio-political landscape of Spain at the time, and Goya takes a satirical – albeit – dark look at the grim everyday reality of Spain and the lives of its people. In the same way, Victor explores the everyday, painfully documented, often traumatic, events of post-Apartheid South Africa. The ongoing Disasters of Peace series seeks to explore various legacies left by Apartheid as well as the current social and political climate in South Africa.
Although created centuries (and continents) apart, these bodies of work speak to each other on a level that shows while times may have changed, societies today are still shaped by the same trials and indeed, artists are still grappling with these issues.
There will also be a discussion between former JAG Director Christopher Till and current JAG Curator of Contemporary Collections Musha Neluheni from 11:00 – 12:00 on Saturday 16 July 2016. During the session, two generations of JAG contributors will share history on the collection and the institution and reflect on the production of both artists whose works will be exhibited “in conversation” as a special project for TAF’16.
The exhibition is presented in association with Strauss & Co and Artinsure.