Rudiment

Rudiment. Think Crawl (1978), and Pope.L in a pin-striped suit grazing his chest along the unforgiving asphalt of Forty-second Street, Manhattan. Think Swear Piece (2005-11), and Dineo Seshee Bopape undoing the sacrality and propriety of white cube spaces with inflammatory vinyl texts. Think Performa Obscura (2010), and Athi-Patra Ruga in high heels and weighted balloons glimpsing utopia as a form of resistance and cleansing.

The conditions of lockdown, brought about through the extraordinary circumstances of a global pandemic, have pushed many artists to think differently about their practice, about how they work, where they work, with whom they work, with what they work, and why they make work at all. This marks an important shift, from production value to questioning the value of production itself. Why do we make? What makes making important? Can working with what we have, under conditions of severe limitation, become a transformative act of language? Here, not only words but sticks and stones, and of course the body, become means for sounding, imaging, performing the present; for invoking what is past; and for thinking the world differently.

In a social context troubled by the politics of access, applicants are encouraged to think through (and with) the rudiments of art practice, and the ways in which form, material, concept and environment become the resources at hand for raw, reduced and often profound gestures.

shortlisted artists

Griffen Alexander

Jordan Cassidy Anthony, Tzung Hui Lauren Lee & Shayna Rosendorff

Vick Bester

Yakira Gischen

Ndabenhle Mthiyane