Friday, October 21, 2011

OTHER EVENTS: Collecting and Curating African Music

Imaging South Africa: Collection Projects by Siemon Allen

August 27 – October 31, 2010
Virginia Commonwealth University | School of the Arts | Anderson Gallery
907 1/2 West Franklin Street, Richmond, VA 23284-2514



This exhibition offered the most comprehensive presentation to date of South African artist Siemon Allen’s “collection projects.” Over the last decade, Allen has created expansive installations of various mass-produced ephemera—postal stamps, newspapers, audio recordings—that he has methodically acquired and catalogued. In terms of process, he approaches each project like an archivist, researching and assembling artifacts to disclose underlying narratives about their production, dissemination, use, and message. Allen employs the social critique that inevitably arises from his work as a means of interrogating what he describes as “the contradictory and complex nature of South African identity.”



SOURCES:
- Fan Works Design
- Anderson Gallery
- siemonallen.org

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