(Pic: a swarm of 2000 handmade fishing flies by Bronwyn Lace)
A project by Bronwyn Lace and Vaughn Sadie on show at the Durban Art Gallery.
Unit of Measure is a collaborative project by artists Bronwyn Lace and Vaughn Sadie running at The Durban Art Gallery. It has three key components, a large-scale installation, a curated exhibition and an education programme.
The Installation Unit for Measure is the result of an ongoing conversation between artists Lace and Sadie which have focused around the creation of platforms in South Africa for experimental and experiential work. It is comprised of three elements: units of material en masse, the relationship between the artists’ work and a specific site. The two spaces chosen for the installation are the antithesis of one another.
For the Johannesburg leg, the artists chose a newly built basement within the Sci-Bono maths and science learning centre. This is a dark space, revealing its infrastructure and without much history, as opposed to Durban’s Municipal Gallery, housed in the grand City Hall and speaking very heavily of a colonial past. The installation is a direct result of the process that is evoked through the use of materials en masse in a site-specific context.
For the Sci-Bono installation, Sadie created a suspension of 1km of 4mm Galvanized Steel Wire cable (6 x 19), while Lace has created two structures with 6000m fishing line - one suspending a swarm of 2000 handmade fishing flies and the other pinning down a dried African Monarch Butterfly.
The curated exhibition of South African artists is drawn from the permanent collection at DAG/SABC and the curation of this exhibition is a collaborative process between Jenny Stretton (Acting Director) Lace and Sadie. The selection is determined by those artists from which Lace and Sadie have drawn. Artists included in the exhibition are Johnny Friedlander, Cyprian Shilakoe, Jeremy Wafer, Paul Edmunds, Tito Zungu, Neville Dubow and Neels Coetzee.
The education programme answers a need to stimulate dialogue between and across disciplines particularly in the field of education. Lace and Sadie both know that art is a potential vehicle for creative and meaningful transformation. The education programme was a one-week workshop conducted with 12 participants, some were education officers drawn from museums and intuitions across KwaZulu Natal, some were practicing artists with a specific interesting education. The workshop looked at the process of installation creation in relation to the discipline of exhibition curation. The focus of the education programme was to investigate how installation may be a mode of representation for experiential and educative purposes.
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