Memory and Magic - new art exhibition at Iziko SA National Gallery

The exhibition "Memory and Magic - Contemporary Art of the !Kun and Khwe" will run at Iziko SA National Gallery from 23 September 2006 until January 2007.

The 82 artworks, loaned from the private collection of Hella Rabbethge-Schiller, represent the best works produced by seven artists from the !Xun and Khwe Cultural Project and span the period from the project's inception in 1994 to the present.

Hella Rabbethge-Schiller inherited a farm near Kimberley in the 1970's, where she encountered the newly arrived San refugee community settled nearby at Schmidtsdrift. These former South African Defence Force trackers and soldiers had fled their homes in Angola and the northern Namibian border due to the hostilities there.

The meeting with the San emigrants was deeply moving for Hella. She was impressed by the art they were producing as part of a NGO development programme. Well-positioned in both Europe and Africa, Hella resolved, "...to purchase the artworks that were produced. I studied the available literature on the culture of the San to try and find an understanding of the people and their art, and visited the community at least once a year." She selected what would best reflect the extraordinary aesthetic sensibility of the artists and therefore justify the project. Gradually, she built up a visual archive of over 400 works from the !Xun and Khwe artists, resulting in the largest and most comprehensive collection of !Xun and Khwe contemporary art in existence. Acclaimed in Europe, this valuable visual archive has remained outside of South Africa for over a decade.

The Gallery is open daily, except Mondays, from 10:00-17:00. Enq: 021 467 4660.

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