Exhibitions at Oliewenhuis Art Museum during the Vrystaat Arts Festival
Museum times: Mon – Fri: 09:00 – 17:00; Sa – So: 09:00 – 16:00 (depending on lockdown level)
Main Building
New Breed Art Competition 2021
Opening: Tuesday, 5 October, 18:00
Date: 5 October – 14 November 2021
Location: Main Building, Oliewenhuis Art Museum
Museum times: Mon – Fri: 09:00 – 17:00; Sat – Sun: 09:00 – 16:00 (depending on lockdown level)
Phatshoane Henney Attorneys, in association with Oliewenhuis Art Museum, the Art Bank of South Africa and Free State Art Collective, annually invites emerging Free State artists to enter the New Breed Art Competition to encourage these artists to take a step towards being discovered as a “new breed” of artist. The exhibition of selected artworks will be on show from Tuesday, 5 October 2021.
You are also invited to cast your vote for your favourite artists to win this year’s Public Choice Award via the official competition website, www.newbreedart.co.za.
Reservoir
Āvāhana – Invocation
a solo-exhibition by Amita Makan
Curated by Dr. Bongani Mkhonza
Opening: Tuesday, 5 October 2021, 19:00
Āvāhana-Invocation, is a travelling solo exhibition by South African-born artist Amita Makan. Celebrated internationally for fabric constructions with embroidery and collage, Makan infuses her work with identity, memory, and history by using vintage saris, and intuits the contemporary by integrating found materials – the detritus of plastic that litters our surroundings and pollutes our expressions of care.
Makan begins with a self-portrait from which radiating avenues explore the flailing survival of the very nature upon which we depend. In this way, Makan underlines her role within an increasingly urgent cultural response to capitalist-driven environmental mayhem that, here, takes form as a prayer to restore the balance and harmony of a fractured earth. In an essay accompanying the exhibition, art historian Hélène Tissières writes: “The rendering of nature into art aims to question the … domination of nature which gradually leads to the disappearance of thousands of species, breaking the food chain, disrupting the regulation of the ecosystem.”
