Cape Town based artistic team of Unathi
Sigenu and Khanyisile Mbongwa are the winners of the MTN New Contemporaries
Award 2012. The artists jointly received R80,000 and other prizes, such as a
Samsung Galaxy S3 each.
Included in the three equally-ranked
runner-up groups were the trio of former Durban visual artist Vaughn Sadie,
Brian Mtembu and Humphrey Maleka along with MADEYOULOOK (Nare Mokgotho and
Molemo Moiloa), and Mocke J Van Veuren and Farieda Nazier. They received R15,000.00
per collaboration as well as a Samsung Galaxy S3 each and other rewards.
This year the MTN New Contemporaries Award
competition focused for the first time on artist collaborations rather than
individual artists, acknowledging the current art trend towards relational and
interdisciplinary working styles.
This unusual decision on the part of the
MTN SA Foundation was inspired by the MTN New Contemporaries Award 2012 guest
curator, Portia Malatjie, whose research results indentified numerous young
artists of excellence who had worked, or were working, together and wished to
continue. Malatjie observes that: “It was inspiring to come across artists who
acknowledged the benefits of working collaboratively towards a final creative
product. I felt it essential to highlight the fact that these modes of artistic
expressions exist, and have existed for a very long time”.
Says Robert Madzonga, Chief Corporate
Services Officer at MTN: “As a competition designed to identify and promote
young artists who are positioned to be the next leaders in the contemporary art
sector it is imperative that this project, like its artists continues to be
dynamic and able to accommodate contemporary modes and new technologies”.
The exhibition is open to the public at The
Castle of Good Hope in Cape Town until January 25, 2013. Interns will host
tours of the exhibition.
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