The opening reception is on Friday, September 3, 2010 from 6 to 9 pm at Quirk Gallery, 311 West Broad Street. The exhibition runs through September 26, 2010.

Qatar Now is an engaging exhibition series focusing on contemporary Qatari art and artists.

In a series of portraits, Al-Obaidly has bar-coded the subjects, some of whom are migrant workers, while others are self portraits.By using a barcode symbol, representing an impersonal number used for identifying and cataloging materials on the face of a person, Al-Obaidly wants to draw attention to a part of world society that is largely unseen, the migrant worker, although omnipresent in all countries, and responsible for producing the goods and services we are all used to in our every day lives. Each of the individuals portrayed could tell us a story of his/her life, points of view and emotions, yet we do not know their names.

The opening reception is on Tuesday, September 8, and the exhibition runs through October 9, 2010.

“Parting on Z” is real-time virtual interactive puppetry that responds to the puppeteer’s voice, walking balance, and fan movements. The puppet master interacts with the virtual puppet that faces her from a distance, speaking back her story in real time mimicry and mirroring her body in swaying motions. Parting on Z explores Korean cultural psyche called “Han”: the paradoxical state of consciousness that combines the extreme emotional state of grief, but with a great hope and strong desire for overcoming the impossible situation. This live performance explores Han in the paradoxical relationship between virtual puppet and puppeteer via the distance between avatar and user—symbolic lovers facing each other, continuously exchanging dialogues of love and farewell. Semi will also present her paper “Exploring Han in Virtual Puppetry”.

The opening performance of the conference will be Stelarc’s ““Rotating Brains/Beating Heart”: a networked collaboration between performer Sterlac, the virtual reality ensemble, Avatar Orchestra Metaverse, with composer Pauline Oliveros, Martin Parker and saxophonist Franziska Schroeder.

The RE-GENERATE project was founded by Christian von Howard, assistant professor in the Department of Dance and Choreography , and Iquail Shaheed in 2008 and premiered in New York City in 2009 at the Alvin Ailey Citigroup Theater. The mission of the project is to bring together artistic directors of African American decent and their dance companies in order to collectively present a dance concert that represents a current yet historic viewpoint on dance as art. These directors and other invited choreographers creatively converge to elevate, enrich and empower enthusiastic audiences. Together these richly distinct dance artists are dedicated to the pursuit of artistic excellence and the accessibility of the performing arts to everyone.

The show is on Friday and Saturday, October 15-16, 2010 at the Grace Street Theater, 934 West Grace Street. You may purchase tickets online or by calling the box office at (804) 828-2020.

The performance will be on Friday and Saturday, September 24-25, 2010 at the Dogtown Dance Theater, 109 W. 15th Street. Tickets are $20 or $10 for students, and can be purchased online, or by calling (804) 828-2020.

Photo credit: E. Cauwel

The exhibition will open on Friday, September 3rd, and run through Sunday, September 26, 2010. The ADA exhibition space is located at 228 West Broad Street, and is open Monday – Friday / 12 to 5, Saturday / 12 to 4, and Sunday / 12-2.

Professionally, I’ve worked fast food, cafeteria food, and gas station food. I’ve worked on a pig farm, a cow farm, and a dog farm. I’ve laid brick and cut stone. I’ve replaced auto glass, cleaned carpets, cared for the mentally ill, and studied for the ministry.

Currently I draw comics, illustrations, and animations for schmackLab.com as well as manage and develop projects of all kinds for Micheal Sparks Design. I keep a dwindling list of freelance clients and just finished developing this site for VCUarts.

Dr. Fletcher will lecture on Thursday, September 2, 2010 at 12:15 p.m. in the Student Commons Theater located at 907 Floyd Ave.

Bilal will lecture on September 16, 2010, from 5:30 to 7:00 p.m. at the Singleton Center, Sonia Vlahcevic Concert Hall on the Monroe Park Campus, 922 Park Ave.

August 23 – October 31, 2010

Artist’s Vast Collections Illuminate South African Identity

On view at VCUarts Anderson Gallery this fall, Imaging South Africa: Collection Projects by Siemon Allen examines the changing image of South Africa through a series of expansive installations. Filling all three floors of the Anderson Gallery, this exhibition offers the most comprehensive presentation to date of Richmond-based, South African artist Siemon Allen’s collection projects.

Imaging South Africa: Collection Projects by Siemon Allen will run concurrently with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’  exhibition,  Darkroom: Photography and New Media in South Africa since 1950—a portion of which will also be on view at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond.  To celebrate these two compelling andcomplementary exhibitions, all three venues will host public receptions on Friday, August 27, from 6-9 pm, with free transportation provided between sites.

Over the last decade, Siemon Allen has created installations of various mass-produced materials—postage stamps, newspapers, audio recordings—that he has methodically acquired and catalogued. He approaches each project like an archivist, researching and assembling artifacts to disclose underlying narratives about their production, dissemination, use, and message.  Through the social critique that arises from his work, Allen investigates what he describes as “the contradictory and complex nature of South African identity.”

In Stamps, a massive inventory of over 50,000 stamps released in his native country from the colonial era to the present, Allen probes the official construction of an idealized national identity often at odds with social realities. In Newspapers, he examines another image of South Africa, but one constructed externally through the filter of the US news media.  With Records, his most recent project consisting of over 2,000 items, Allen has built an extensive ongoing collection of South African music and audio artifacts, with the intention of establishing a web-based archive of this material.  The exhibition will also feature a room-sized installation woven out of videotape that he considers a precursor to his collection-based projects.

Allen began assembling Records three years ago when he purchased a 1965 record by the exiled South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba. Struck by the overtly political nature of the album cover’s liner notes, he began to investigate how these artifacts disseminated an anti-apartheid message.  Allen has now acquired a nearly comprehensive inventory of international recordings by Makeba, numbering over 400 records,  that reveal the global reach of her image and music.

Allen will also show a new series of monumental prints, created from scans of individual records, that uniquely reassert the primacy of music in South African cultural history.  Nearly seven feet square, each image powerfully conveys the distressed, topographic surface of the vinyl record on which it is based.  “The damage on each record was for me a further marking by unknown authors who have unwittingly contributed their history to the object,” explains Allen. “The images capture not only the historical audio visually in the forms of lines and grooves, but also the scratches, damage and repair work done by subsequent owners.”

Artist’s Biography

Siemon Allen studied at the Technikon Natal in Durban, South Africa, where he received his Master’s Degree in 1999.  While in Durban, Allen was a founding member of the FLAT Gallery, an artist’s initiative that operated during the mid-1990s. His work was included in the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale as part of the exhibition Graft, and also in the Vita 93 and Vita 98 exhibitions. Stamps has been presented at the Renaissance Society in Chicago, Artists Space in New York City, and the Corcoran Museum of Art in Washington, DC. Newspapers was included in The American Effect at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, and in A Fiction of Authenticity at the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis. Most recently, Allen’s collection projects, including Records, were shown in solo exhibitions at the Durban Art Gallery and the BANK Gallery, also in Durban. This past spring, selections from Records were featured in the 2010 Johannesburg Art Fair.  Now based in Richmond,  Allen currently teaches in the Department of Sculpture + Extended Media at the VCU School of the Arts.

Free Public Programs

On Wednesday, September 15 at 6 pm, Siemon Allen will give a gallery talk in his exhibition. Two weeks later, on Wednesday, September 29 at 6 pm, the Anderson Gallery will host In the Groove: Collecting and Curating African Music. For this conversation,  Allen will be joined by Bill Lupoletti, WRIR world music director and host of Global A Go-Go, and David Noyes, WRIR host of Ambiance Congo and co-host of The Motherland Influence. This event is co-sponsored by WRIR 97.3 FM Richmond Independent Radio.

Imaging South Africa: Collection Projects by Siemon Allen will remain on view through October 31.  A catalogue with a lead essay by South African curator Clive Kellner and an interview with the artist by Anderson Gallery director Ashley Kistler will be available. Support has been generously provided by the Office of the Dean, VCU School of the Arts and media sponsor WRIR 97.3 FM.

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For more information, please visit the Anderson Gallery’s website:

www.vcu.edu/arts/gallery

The Anderson Gallery is the exhibition facility for VCU’s top-ranked School of the Arts,

located in Richmond, VA at 907½ West Franklin Street.

Gallery hours: Tuesday–Friday, 10-5; Saturday and Sunday, noon-5; closed Monday