Pic: Siemon Allen
Record, stamps and newspapers make up Siemon Allen’s two exhibitions.
Imaging South Africa by South African artist Siemon Allen takes the form of concurrent installations which will take place at both BANK Gallery and the Durban Art Gallery and will include three of Allen’s collection projects. Records, his most recent project, will be shown at BANK from March 3 to April 16 while Stamps and Newspapers will be presented at DAG from March 8 to April 26.
For the past eight years Allen, who is currently based in the United States, has been exploring the image of South Africa through a series of collection projects. Operating from what is essentially an external vantage point, Allen systematically accumulates mass-produced printed material, which he ultimately catalogues and displays. His process is not unlike that of an archivist, each collected item bringing with it a narrative particular to the nature of that artifact’s production, dissemination, and use.
As a South African living overseas Allen has been particularly interested in the dynamics of how a country is imaged and how, in turn, it participates in a kind of imaging of itself. In the early 2000s he came across a South African Government website that made a highly published call for a positive “branding” of South Africa internationally and included the recruitment of “non-government South Africans living overseas” to act as “ambassadors” for the country. For Allen, his installations seemed to both debunk this essentialist notion of a South African “brand”, while operating with a kind of complicity in that branding.
In Stamps, Allen explores the political history of South Africa through the cataloguing and display of postal stamps produced in the country from the beginning of the South African Union in 1910 to the present. Like all of Allen’s collection projects Stamps is ongoing. Currently over 10,000 stamps will be on display in the project room of the Durban Art Gallery, configured to operate as historical record as well as referencing grid field painting. The stamp collection is a kind of autobiography of a nation and says much about how that nation seeks to construct an identity for itself. The stamps tell the story of the changing face of South Africa, revealing how a country, over time, has chosen to represent itself both within its borders and internationally. It is a fragmented narration that speaks not only through what is shown but also through what is not.
According to Allen, the stamps present an image of South Africa that was - and is - constructed by the official voice of the government and is therefore an internal construction of image.
Newspapers, on the other hand, presents another image of South Africa, one that is constructed externally through the foreign press. Begun in 2001 as a research project documenting US coverage of the 2001 United Nations Racism Conference in Durban, Newspapers has since evolved through the same comprehensive and methodical processes that are characteristic of all Allens’ collection projects. This particular project also brings to light other questions and concerns regarding the news media, including how coverage defines the importance given to a place, and how the nature of that coverage perpetuates or dispels limited or stereotypical notions of that place.
On show in the circular gallery at DAG, Newspapers will bring together for the first time all of Allen’s newspaper collections including The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The Des Moines register, and The St. Louis Post Dispatch. Furthermore the display will feature a new version of The New York Times, specifically collected for this exhibition, with recent coverage of South Africa beginning with Jacob Zuma’s ascendance to ANC leadership in December of 2007.
Records, the third and most recent work in the Imaging South Africa series, is comprised of several smaller collections. For this, Allen has been building a massive collection of South African audio, with the intention of establishing a searchable, web-based archive of the material. This project is due to go online sometime in 2009.
At BANK, Allen will present a part of the Records project—its original starting point - a comprehensive collection of recordings by Miriam Makeba. This collection consists of over 400 individually-acquired recordings in multiple formats by the late, internationally recognized, South African singer who recently passed away. The roots of the collection began three years ago when Allen purchased a used Makeba LP dating from 1965 in Richmond, Virginia. Reading the liner notes on the back, he was struck by the political nature of the text and began to reflect upon how these mass-produced, commercial items might have operated in the dissemination of an anti-apartheid message.
Allen expanded the Makeba collection with the goal of exploring how these artifacts, through covers and liner notes, presented to an international audience an image of South Africa that differed from that promoted by the Government of the time. Makeba’s widely disseminated iconic visage and message were significant in that she was an icon in the age of mass-media carrying an oppositional ‘image of South Africa’ to the world.
Allen’s collection projects have been exhibited widely in the United States at venues such as the Whitney Museum and Artists Space in New York City; The Renaissance Society in Chicago and the Corcoran Museum in Washington, DC. However, this will be the first time that all the projects dealing with the image of South Africa will be brought together and shown in South Africa.
Imaging South Africa runs at BANK Gallery in Florida Road from March 3 to April 16 and in the Durban Art Gallery from March 8 to April 26.
BANK Gallery is situated at 217 Florida Road in Durban. More information on 031 312 6911, fax 031 312 6912, email: info@bankgallery.co.za or visit www.bankgallery.co.za
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