The University Art Gallery will open the 2014–15 exhibition season with “David Southwood: N1 and Beach Boys,” an exhibition that brings together two connected bodies of work by Southwood, an internationally recognized South African artist: the N1 (National Road One) project and Beach Boys. Both projects combine photography with social commitment, and both explore transitional, marginal places and the question of what it takes to make a “place.”
Southwood will talk about his work at 4:30 p.m., Friday, Sept. 5, in Convocation Hall, with a brief introduction by art historian and photographer Meghan Kirkwood of North Dakota State University. The public is invited for the talk and reception!
The N1 series profiles the longest freeway in South Africa, the road that connects the country’s two largest cities, Cape Town and Johannesburg. It depicts, in Southwood’s words, “The highway as an awkward place, the stage for unchoreographed events, the migrating protagonists of which were never intended to use the highway.” Beach Boys also asks questions about place and its inhabitants. The series documents the lives of a group of Tanzanian stowaways who live amongst the N1 infrastructure in Cape Town. Responsibility for this group of men, living without passports or travel documentation, is not claimed by South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs, nor by shipping agents, nor by the government of Tanzania. The group resists the help of non-governmental organizations. The place they inhabit is similarly, in the words of Nic Coetzer this place “is an accident, the consequence of other intentions.”
Southwood combines photography, social commitment, and a deep interest in urban landscapes. In 2000, together with some township photographers, he set up the first nonprofit organization for “street photographers” in the Western Cape. The organization, Umlilo <www.ilisolabantu.org>, remains active today. In 2004 Southwood was awarded the International Bauhaus Award for his collaborative project (with Matthew Barac and Simone le Fevre) on the theme of the contemporary city’s “transit spaces,” and in 2008 he co-curated and participated in the exhibition “Cities in Crisis” at the University of Johannesburg’s FADA Gallery. Southwood has a diverse and accomplished exhibition record. Among other venues, he has shown at the South African National Gallery, the Venice Biennale of Architecture and the Goethe Institute in Johannesburg. Southwood lives with his dog, Cressida, in Cape Town.
The gallery, located on Georgia Avenue in Sewanee, is free, accessible and open to the public. Hours are 10 a.m.– 5 p.m., Tuesdays–Fridays, and 12–4 p.m., Saturdays and Sundays.
For more information call 598-1223 or go to <www.sewanee.edu/gallery>.
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