Asking pressing questions through art

Maboneng’s art community has come together to ask some important questions and provide assistance to another organisation in the community.

The Gavin Project Gallery and Funky Mad Hatter Art have teamed up to present an important exhibition, Deck Society, in support of Skateistan, a skateboarding school currently under construction in Maboneng.

Skateistan aims to educate the vulnerable youth and girls in the city through the sport of skateboarding.

A number of prominent local artists were invited to be a part of the exhibition, where they were asked to create Afrocentric pop artworks using skateboards as a medium through which to communicate and interrogate the colonialist identities given to us, in order to raise questions about our society – both of the past and what the generations before us fought for, as well as where we see the future of South Africa heading.

The exhibition opened to a large and excited crowd on Youth Day, 16 June, at the Gavin Project Gallery in Maboneng.

“On the opening day of the exhibition, we had the biggest crowd that the gallery has ever seen and this past weekend all the people who were at Market on Main came to see it too,” said Nolan Stevens of Funky Mad Hatter Art, a collective which aims to showcase art in Johannesburg.

Stevens explained that the artists expressed perspectives which related mainly to politics and communicated issues of rape and corruption – two problems prevalent in South Africa today.

As a part of the exhibition, organisers set up two ramps in honour of and donated by Skateistan, on which two questions were spray-painted: What are the challenges facing today’s kids and what advice would you give to your younger self?

Visitors responded to the questions by writing on the ramps and a successful dialogue was created between the artists, gallery and the public.

On the weekend of 25/26 June, Stevens explained that they would hold a drawing day as part of the exhibition where they’ll ask the children in attendance to draw what they want to be when they’re older, and their parents to draw the experiences they’ve been through with their children, in hopes of creating a dialogue between different age groups.

This thought-provoking exhibition is open only until 3 July and it’s not to be missed because a portion of the proceeds will be donated to Skateistan.

It’s art with a conscience – where’s yours?

Details: Deck Society – a Funky Mad Hatter Joint on Facebook