David Koloane remembrance artwork mounted at Standard Bank Gallery
JOBURG – Acclaimed artist David Koloane is remembered with a massive exhibition of his artwork at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg.
The Standard Bank Gallery in downtown Johannesburg mounted a huge exhibition of the artwork of the late multi-award winning veteran artist David Koloane to celebrate the life and times of one of the most outstanding South African doyens of art.
The exhibition, Resilient Visionary: Poetic expression of David Koloane, was drawn from one of Koloane’s favourite pastimes – walking the City of Johannesburg, to and from his studios in Fordsburg. Along the way he would pick up waste material to use in his artwork.
Koloane reportedly died at his home in Parktown, Johannesburg, on 30 June this year at the age of 81 and was buried on 6 July. Born in Alexandra, the painter was a much-admired artist, educator, writer, curator and facilitator who was considered a forerunner in the development of the black art community in South Africa and was instrumental in the establishment of The Bag Factory in Fordsburg.
Koloane studied in the UK and has toured many countries the world over, His work has been shown in South Africa, Botswana, France, the United States, the United Kingdom and Zimbabwe.
His long-time friend and fellow-Alex born artist, Pat Mautloa, who is also an artist at The Bag Factory, described Koloane as a humble man who loved Johannesburg – many of his artworks depicted life in the City of Gold such as the Hillbrow Towers which have become a city landmark.
He said he met Koloane when a group of artists in the arts such as poetry, music, painting, theatre etc came together to form the body that sought to fight for the rights of people in the arts industry in the 1970s. “We worked together for a number of years and formed Fuba [the Federated Union of Black Artists Art Centre in 1978] which also ran Fuba School of Dramatic and Visual Arts and a gallery and Thupelo workshops for young and aspiring artists. We both moved here [The Bag Factory] in 1991 in an endeavour to change the artistic terrain and everything else is history,” Mautloa explained.
Standard Bank Gallery curator and manager Dr Same Mdluli said the gallery had seen it ‘befitting to celebrate the life and work of a man who used Joburg as a theatre of his artistic operations both in the apartheid and post-apartheid era and has seen the city and country transform’.
The exhibition is now open to the public and closes on 6 December.
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