What to expect at the RMB Turbine Art Fair 2019

Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) is placing spectacular focus on public art, and reinforcing its commitment to art affordability.

Earlier this year, RMB commissioned Cape Town-based artist Marieke Prinsloo-Rowe to create the Fearless Girl, an artwork that shows an African teenage girl walking alongside a contemporary concrete lion.

The lion doubles as a functional bench, and invites viewers to sit and contemplate the ideals inherent in “fearless femininity”.

Having been inspired by Wall Street’s Fearless Girl, RMB envisioned a life-sized and Afro-centric version of the artwork that would speak to the values of individuality, courage and strength.

Africa’s Fearless Girl statue. Picture: Supplied

It ties in with one of RMB’s major art undertakings, the Turbine Art Fair. The Fearless girl debuted at the 2018 RMB Turbine Art Fair.

Last week the latest public art project was unveiled.

In 1978, two years after the Soweto uprising, the artist and sculptor Edoardo Villa produced a steel sculpture to engage with and reflect on that confrontational time in South Africa’s history.

Now, more than 40 years later, the piece has been restored and re-sited at Rand Merchant Bank’s (RMB) THINK Precinct. Confrontation was made at a turning point in the country’s socio-political trajectory.

Villa, who was not an overtly political artist, produced Confrontation as a means of responding to the situation of crisis faced by South Africa at the time. It is now considered one of South Africa’s biggest restoration projects of its kind.

The five-ton artwork required individual disassembling of its components in order to be transported to a workshop and coated with a natural, weather-resistant sealant before being reassembled.

Edoardo Villa’s Confrontation sculpture.

The dedication flows over to the 2019 Turbine Art Fair that’s around the corner. Although no longer held at the Turbine Hall in Newtown, the fair this year presents a strong line-up of public participation events.

This includes events like an interactive masterclass, led by the curators and founders of Pool, where participants will collectively deconstruct and complicate the role of curatorial processes in shaping the future of art and society.

Contemplate artist training with Shonisani Netshia, Lawrence Lemaoana, Donna Kukama and Kim Berman.

Friday to Sunday walkabouts will be lead by artists, curators and cultural experts, including Sam Hlengethwa, Fulufhelo Mobadi, Wilhelm van Rensburg, Claudia Braude and Greg Maloka.

Art by Nkhensani Rihlampfu. Picture: Supplied

Audiences will have the opportunity to gain insight into the many interesting projects at the Fair from Strauss’ exhibition Meeting of Minds: Louis Maqhubela and Douglas Portway, RMB Talent Unlocked, The Graduate Show and the Gerard Sekoto Foundation exhibition.

But if there’s one other reason to make your way to 10 Ficker Road, Illovo, from July 12, it has to be Nkhensani Rihlampfu – who introduces us to his universe of woven realities. It is a space in which actuality is entwined with the idealistic and notional ideas birthed by our society, thanks to the fair’s central installation.

By interacting with Rihlampfu’s fantastical figures we are immersed in a reality founded on our perception of the world. The figures coax us to the belief of movement and mass, where there is none.

The work exists in the overlapping margin between truth and ideology; it is in this space that we acknowledge the importance of communication.

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