Friday, July 29, 2011

Open call for the Joburg Fringe 2011

the 2011 Joburg Fringe

runs 22-25 September 2011
opening party 21 September from 6:00pm
behind South Point Head Quarters on Melle Street
500 square meters in a former parking garage
for more information email Claudia:
joburgfringe@gmail.com

Dear gallerists artists exhibitors art collectives curators and other exhibitionists

- art associations, art institutions, art collectors, art collections, museums
THE SHORT VERSION : You are invited to submit work for the fourth Joburg Fringe which opens on wednesday 21 September 2011, a day ahead of the JoburgArtFair. It will run till 25 September.

Venue is Braamfontein This year we are offering stands of 16 square metres including lighting, security, invitations for the opening party, flyers, a floor layout plan, an online catalogue - aiming for hard copy too, and plenty of expertise enthusiasm and energy !


Cost is R2000.
Bigger spaces are also available: speak to us.


To submit work please send us an email to joburgfringe@gmail.com with your contact details, a short cv, a short description of your project and some examples of work you would like to exhibit.

(photos no bigger than 72dpi please)


The venue of the 2011 Joburg Fringe is finalized and will be c/o and thanks to, South Point, one of Braamfontein's major Fixer-Uppers. In an old ship-like turn of the century parking garage: perhaps formally a coach house. One can still identify the old demarkations on the history-patina-d flooring.

500 square meters on ground floor level with access to the cafes, bars and restaurants on and around the Grove in front of the Hotel Lamunu.


What is?

The Joburg Fringe is an independent art fair and organisation.
It is an artists' initiative run on high enthusiasm and a low budget.

The first fringe show was staged in 2008 as a collaboration between Fouad Asfour, Sharlene Khan and Claudia Shneider, who were keen to create a fringe show for the first art fair in Africa: JoburgArtFair. They collaborated with the Dead Revolutionaries Club and the Afrika Cultural

Centre on the first fringe show: Esikhaleni – Spatial Practices. It included a curated show and

four galleries from the vanguard of the South African art scene.


In 2009 the name of the Joburg Fringe was registered. That year Claudia Shneider of the Joburg Fringe staged a pre-exhibition courtesy of Right on the Rim
Project Saloon and Jonathan Liebmann in the raw building site of Arts on Main.

In 2010 the Joburg Fringe assembled a surreptitious show of VIDEOart! by local

and foreign artists. The show subsequently travelled to Leipzig, Munich and Berlin.


Monday, July 18, 2011

THE LONG VERSION:

The Joburg Fringe offers the opportunity for some great artistic extra curricular activities to be viewed – taking chances not risked at the art fair. Galleries pay huge amounts of money to formally participate in art fairs. Galleries being there to make money from sales – ergo they are naturally inclined to show works capable of generating serious commercial incomes. Not so for a fringe – it can pop up and vanish – strut its stuff on floor space that costs a fraction of the fair’s. At the fringe it’s mainly the artists – those not yet discovered by commercial galleries, the up-and-coming artists on fame's threshold– who relish the possibilities for exposure. Established and well-known contributors often join fringe events giving themselves an edgy platform to be shown on and new talent to show with.
Fringes and fringers are by their nature opportunistic – they happen around the buzz that is generated by the staging of an art fair – busking to the audience who came for the fair. The stage is set, the public is in an art-frame-of-mind and the international buyers are in town looking for cool work looking to the fringe for new little-seen-before talent. Globally fringes have gained a special place – like the fringe at the Edinburgh Festival.
And anyway what respectable art fair doesn’t have its fringe? With time art fairs are linked to their fringes; Art Basel (Liste, Volta4 and Scope), Art Cologne (Rheinschau, Tease Art), Art Basel Miami Beach (Nada, Pulse, Scope, to name 3 of 23+ accompanying fairs!) and Art Forum, Berlin (Kunstsalon, Berliner Liste, Preview). Locally - the Grahamstown Arts Festival and her gorgeous fringe draw the crowds with their double bill performance. Irritating as fleas to the body of the great talking dog act, it can’t be denied the scratching stimulates growth.

In 2008, at the time of the first Joburg Art Fair, Fouad Asfour, Sharlene Khan and Claudia Shneider came up with the idea to do a fringe show to take place concurrently with the first time JoburgArtFair. They co-founded the show titled Esikhaleni – Spatial Practices in collaboration with the Dead Revolutionaries Club and the Afrika Cultural Centre. It consisted of a curatored show and four galleries from the vanguard of the South African art scene. Contributors to this first fringe included fearless exhibitionists from the vanguard of the South African art scene – Blank Projects, Spaza Art Gallery, Outlet Gallery, Worldart, Gugulective and The Bag Factory.

Artists performing solos included Johan Thom, Sharlene Khan, Claudia Shneider, Senzo Nhlapo, Bev Price and Jonathan Garnham. Blank Projects commissioned a manic fresh road video piece filmed by Jeremy Puren and Daniel Naude “the movie” - en route to the fringe. It epitomised fringeness.

Reflecting the zeitgeist of 2009 the Joburg Fringe retreated to a one man show in a courtesy of Right on the Rim and Johnathan Liebmann to stage a Pre-Exhibition fringe event in the raw theatre presented by the incomplete building site of Arts on Main. Claudia Shneider built the Living and Dying in Africa instalative dead elephant sculpture from global shoppers. Again little reviewed by the main stream art press its memory lives on in the minds of those lucky enough to see its brief existence next to the first floor deceased lift shaft at Arts on Main.

Last year’s VIDEOart! 2010 got off its backside and went out to find its public. Without the generous, unfailing technical assistance of Rob Mills; who seemlessly sewed all the videos together, and always came up with a solid solution for insurmountable problems, this show would not have been the success that it was. We are indebted, Rob. The videos were shown all around town: on the wall opposite the main entrance, opening night of the JoburgArtFair (thanks to Maraschino's Restaurant), at The Bioscope (then still at Arts on Main), The Bag Factory, The Sports Bar at the Troyeville Hotel and at Anglo Gold Ashanti Headquarters. The spread of venues ensured that the videos were viewed by as many people as possible across Joburg’s huge area. Once out there, it grew legs and off it went:
to Leipzig as PRIVATE VIEWING, South African Video Art

and to Munich as

1 hour of VIDEOart!

http://www.rupertwalser.com/shneiders/screening.html

and recently to Berlin, as

Agter die Berge The Joburg Fringe Video Berlin

http://www.7hours.com/_Actual_Page/html/JoburgFringeBerlin/AgterBerge_JoburgFringeVideoBerlin.htm

snow ball ling as it went.



Monday, July 11, 2011

The Joburg Fringe 2011 Venue

The good thing about being an independent show is that we can situate ourselves anywhere. On the one hand it would be convenient to catch the Art-Interested Public who will be flocking to Sandton on the last weekend of September, and to present them with discoverable new names in the art-scene:
on the other hand it's appealing to place ourselves in the hot spot and let them come find us, and have that wonderful feeling of discovering something re-a-l-l-y special.

This decision will be made this week, so begin to plan where you will be showing your best and newst art work yet.
The concept remains the same:
the rest will follow!

the time is high

with less than 3 months to go 'till the Joburg Art Spring, it's time to ask what you are doing about your profile:
will you be showing, posing, shopping or just looking?