A Walk in the City Sandile Radebe: solo exhibition

‘A Walk in the City’

Opens: Wed 15 October 2014 @ 18h00
Speaker: Prof. Edgar Pieterse, African Centre for Cities, UCT
Venue: National School of the Arts, 17 Hoofd Street, Braamfontein, Johannesburg
Closes: Sat 25 October 2014 @ 16h00
Public hours: Tues - Sat 10h00-16h00 (free)
Guided walkabout: Sat 18 October @ 12h00
Tel: 011 339 6539

‘A Walk in the City’, the inaugural solo exhibition by practising Johannesburg artist Sandile Radebe, is hosted in October at the National School of the Arts in Braamfontein. This secondary school, which specialises in design, visual art and performing art education, is significantly rooted in Johannesburg’s cultural arc. It is perched on a ridge that interfaces the inner city on the one side and looks to Johannesburg’s northern suburbs on the other. Its art gallery encapsulates this feature, a remarkable circular structure that is both inspiring and challenging for exhibitions curated within its rounded walls. It opens out to a distinctive view over the city that offers a unique reflective space for artists interested in engaging the city of Johannesburg as subject matter. Its architectural properties are also a boon for three-dimensional and site-specific practice while offering latent acoustic potential.

The space is therefore a perfect forum for the work of Sandile Radebe, who in this exhibition visualises graffiti in abstract sculptural forms that take the place of alphabetic lettering. In ‘Walking the City’, he transforms the gallery into an imaginative maze for the viewer to navigate that evokes the artist’s own experience of walking through Johannesburg, inspired by the bustling activity of informal traders, taxi ranks and specific architectural features. At the exhibition’s heart is a tower made of reconceptualised graffiti tags, as model for a public sculpture. The viewer is thus encouraged to think about graffiti and indeed language in a new way while also conjuring the city ‘out there’ through an internal creative navigation in both time and space. Sandile will also exhibit two-dimensional works in an annexe, which link to his general thematics.

The exhibition, independently curated by Kim Gurney, is open to the general public and runs from 15 October - 25 October 2014. The artist will give a guided walkabout on Saturday 18th October at 12h00.

Download the Artist’s Statement to read more about the exhibition content.

Visit the artist’s Facebook Event page to watch the gallery installation as it progresses.

*Added January 2015: Download the Exhibition Catalogue produced by Sandile Radebe.