PAST IMPERFECT // FUTURE PRESENT

Past Perfect Future Present_cover.jpg

Past Imperfect // Future Present
2018
Published by The Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre (VIAD), Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture, University of Johannesburg

Including Essay by Brenton Mart

"Past Imperfect // Future Present features the work of visual practitioners engaging with complexities of, and rethinking possibilities for, contemporary archival practices. Of specific interest are artists who use lens and digital media to wrangle with the thorny filigree of fragments and traces, and who negotiate pathways through camouflaged breaches in these convoluted registers of memory. Reflecting on the fragments, traces and omissions within archives of the past and present, these artists re-imagine and reconstruct new narratives from within their contemporary contexts. In drawing on, re- interpreting, reframing, re-activating, re-appropriating and, as I term these processes in the inconclusive conclusion of this essay, ‘fiddling with’ archival content, they ‘speak with’ existing archives, thereby setting up a conversation that takes place in-between the spaces of interchange.”

The exhibition included works by Ayana V. Jackson, Santu Mofokeng, Michelle Monareng, Zanele Muholi, Alexander Opper, Uriel Orlow, Karin Preller, Jo Ractliffe, Tabita Rezaire, Bogosi Sekhukhuni & Minnette Vári.

This publication is a catalogue of the Past Imperfect // Future Present exhibition, held at FADA Gallery in 2015.