TIME’S ARROW: LIVE READINGS OF THE JAG COLLECTION
CURATED BY ANTHEA BUYS IN COLLABORATION WITH VIAD
JOHANNESBURG ART GALLERY, CORNER OF KLEIN STREET AND KING GEORGE STREET, JOUBERT PARK, JOHANNESBURG
21 February – 18 April 2010
Time’s Arrow was a time-based exhibition project that examined the relationship between the Johannesburg Art Gallery’s (JAG) collection of artworks and what this collection represents for the public today. How this collection is viewed, read, imagined, forgotten, represented, buried, and dug up again over the years forms the core inquiry of the exhibition. A selection of historical and recent artworks representing one narrative strand of the JAG collection’s history served as the starting point. A group of thirteen emerging and established artists and researchers produced new works that responded to this initial selection, exploring its significance as part of the institutional archive.
Time’s Arrow drew its organizational structure from the idea that an art collection (and the archive more broadly) is a temporal phenomenon—even though one may tend to imagine such entities spatially and objectively in terms of the objects they contain. The question of archival temporality was explored through a curatorial structure that used the passage of time as an armature on which to build meaning and coherence. The installed exhibition developed over time, and between 21 February and 18 April 2010, the content of the show changed. Additions and removals of works, both old and new, were made in response to the insertion of new works. In this way, the curator invited new works to reread or recast in relation to older ones such that the newer works implicitly modified those that came before.
The exhibition was supported and funded by VIAD. University of Johannesburg Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture staff members, VIAD Research Fellows, and invited artists all contributed to this exhibition. Artists featured in the exhibition were Alexander Opper, Thenjiwe Nkosi, James Sey, Alex Dodd, Alexandra Makhlouf, Phillip Raiford Johnson, Chaaya Dubashi, Tegan Bristow, Mitch Said, Serge Alain Nitegeka, Nina Barnett, Murray Kruger, and Rodan Kane Hart.
“Time’s Arrow explores the relationship between the history of the JAG, its collection, and the history of the city of Johannesburg. Crucial to the exhibition is the question of how we read archives – what kind of authority is given to recorded and retained data? To what extent can the archive be read according to its omissions? … We need to ask: can new works, or new knowledge more generally, alter the ways in which we understand what came before? In other words, can works from the past be given new voices in the present through juxtaposition and layering in display?”
Anthea Buys 2010
