BRUNDYN+ presents a series of exhibitions by KUTLWANO MOAGI & MACK MAGAGANE, CARLA LIESCHING, GABRIELLE ALBERTS and EMEKA OGBOH.

Room 1 – Kutlwano Moagi and Mack Magagane ‘Living just enough’

The exhibition brings together the work of South African photographers Kutlwano Moagi and Mack Magagane. The title is a refrain from Stevie Wonder’s hit song “Living For The City”. The recording plots the migration of a young African-American man from rural Mississippi to the skyscrapers of New York and the struggles he encounters in its inner city. In distinct ways Magagane and Moagi’s work speak to similar themes in responding to the politics of inner city Johannesburg. Living just enough comments on the excesses of Johannesburg’s gold rush past and apartheid industrial might in sharp contrast to the often desperate economic realities of its present day inner city.

Mack Magagane’s photographic series …in this city is a conceptual portrait of real and imagined narratives that are constructed about the city. There is a clear contrast between how the inner city is occupied during the day, and the supposed silences and empty space of the streets at night. Magagane explores the traces of this daily migration in and out of the city by photographing the inner city at night.

Moagi’s series Split Facades explores the experience and physicality of the continuously changing landscape of the Johannesburg inner city. The artist aims to deconstruct and question the overly stylised and marketable image of the city landscape, a project that became prominent during the 2010 FIFA world cup.

Room 2 – Carla Liesching ‘Nihiliphobia [Expeditions into the Unknown #1-15]’

Carla Liesching’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Taking a fear of nothingness as its conceptual starting point, Nihiliphobia documents an imagined landscape through which Liesching explores the play between geography, identity and the construction of meaning.

As the artist asserts, “My work investigates the ever-more complex ways that humans and their geography collide. I respond to the impacts of globalization and the erosion of our faith in dominant systems of knowledge, searching for new ways of realizing the self within this unstable terrain. Nihiliphobia considers a new geography in which the lines of our maps are erased into the white of a blank page. If there was a total annihilation of all familiar structures – what possibilities could arise from the rubble?”

Room 3 – Gabrielle Alberts ‘This is Where I leave You’

Gabrielle Alberts’ first solo exhibition since completing her Masters in Fine Art at Michaelis School of Fine Art.
The miniature installations in the exhibition investigate the spectacle of and fascination with crime scenes through its representation in media, literature and television series. The ability to visualise or imagine a crime narrative from an inanimate object is central to Alberts’ work. The work focuses on creating perceptions (of crime) by not portraying crime in action but rather the insinuation thereof. The miniatures create an immersive reality for the viewer. Through a method of suggestion, the viewer questions their tendency to assume that a crime of sorts has been committed.

Video Room – Emeka Ogboh ‘Loco-Metta’

The work by Emeka Ogboh is on view in the Video Room. Loco-Metta is a ‘time-based’ abstract painting of transforming landscapes
inspired by the multiplexed nature of Lagos; a city navigable only via multiple points of entry and departure. The video reinvents the city’s topography, by using an audiovisual narrative
that is elemental but yet abstract, to create this Locomotive dreamscape.

About the artists:

Kutlwano Moagi was born in 1983 Soweto, Johannesburg. He completed a photography learnership programme at the Market Photo Workshop, Johannesburg, in 2006. Moagi has participated in numerous group exhibitions and festivals locally and internationally. These include Stay and In Thokoza at Ithuba Arts Gallery in 2013 as well as participation in the Reportage Atri Festival in Italy 2010 and the Gwanza Month of Photography in Harare, Zimbabwe in 2007. His first solo exhibition, Split Facades, was exhibited in 2012 at GoetheonMain, Johannesburg.

Mack Magagane was born in Soweto, Johannesburg, in 1990. He completed his photography course at the Market Photo Workshop in 2010. He has been exhibited both locally and internationally. His series, in this city, which was produced during his 2011/12 Tierney Fellowship at the Market Photo Workshop, was first exhibited at the Photo Workshop Gallery in 2012 and has since travelled to Portugal and France. Many of his projects have been shown in numerous Biennales and galleries across the country and in Europe. Magagane was the 2011 ACT ImpACT Award for Visual Art recipient. At the end of 2013, Magagane completed a residency at Centre Photographique d’Île-de-France, Paris, France as part of the French – South Africa season. Magagane currently lives and works in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Carla Liesching is a photographer and visual artist from Johannesburg, South Africa. She obtained a degree in Fine Art from Rhodes University, specialising in photography and video, with undergraduate credits in theatre. She has been involved in various exhibitions and performances and her photographic work has been shown both locally and internationally. She currently lives and works in New York.

Gabrielle Alberts was born in 1983 Malmesbury, Western Cape. She completed her BAFA at Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2005, and her Masters in Fine Art at the same institution in 2013. Following her BAFA, Alberts worked professionally in the film industry for 6 years as a stylist and storyboard artist. Her artworks have been exhibited in a number of group shows in Cape Town and Johannesburg, including Modern Miniatures in Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown as part of the National Arts Festival (2013), and Fine Art at Black Projects in Cape Town (2008).

Emeka Ogboh is a Nigerian artist, whose works contemplates broad notions of listening and hearing as its main focus. He works primarily with sound and video to explore ways of understanding cities as cosmopolitan spaces with their unique characters. His sound recordings also consider the history and aural infrastructure of cities, Lagos, Nigeria in particular, where he currently resides. These Lagos recordings have produced a corpus of work entitled “Lagos Soundscapes,” which he has variously installed in different foreign locales. A graduate of the Fine and Applied Arts Department, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Ogboh has exhibited in several venues in Nigeria and Internationally. Ogboh is co-founder of the Video Art Network Lagos, and was part of the Media Lab in Africa delegation to the 16th International Symposium on Electronic Art, ISEARHUR 2010 (Dortmund, 2010).
e lives and works in Lagos, Nigeria.

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