ARTSPACE MENTORSHIP PROGRAMME (2 exhibitions)
By Goodness Nhlengethwa and Thabang Lehobye

We are pleased to announce the mentors and mentees for the 2010 Artspace Mentorship Programme. The mentors: Kim Berman, Associate Professor in Visual Art at the University of Johannesburg, and Gordon Froud who is a South African artist with extensive experience of exhibiting and curating shows both locally and internationally. Their mentees are Thabang Lehobye and Goodness Nhlengethwa respectively.

This programme aims to expose new visual artists, who have previously had little or no exposure to the market. The programme allows the mentors and mentees to together, in the pairs, work on a new body of work to exhibit at the Arspace gallery.

"We are excited to have Kim Berman and Gordon Froud who are both very established artists in the art sector participating in our mentorship programme. The high standard of our mentors confirms that we are achieving what we have set out to do." says Teresa Lizamore, Artspace owner and curator.

The Mentorship Programme has proved very successful in promoting new artists. It was established in 2008 and is the only programme of its kind in South Africa. This opportunity pairs new artists i.e. mentee with an established talent as a mentor.

The mentors and the mentees work together on the mentee's conceptual development to produce a new body of work for a professional exhibition. The mentors support the younger artists through their production process and assist them with the curation of their exhibitions.

Mentor Kim Berman is also the founder and Executive Director of Artist Proof Studios (APS), a community-based Printmaking Centre in Newtown. She initiated the Paper Prayers campaign-HIV/AIDS awareness through the visual arts in 1997, and currently it operates out of APS as a successful income generating activity and learning program to support HIV positive women. Her mentee, Thabang Lehobye is an illustrator and designer at The Jupiter Drawing Room (TJDR) Advertising agency based in Rivonia, Johannesburg.
Thabang was a finalist in The Sasol New Signatures awards in 2006 and awarded a certificate of acknowledgement. He did his first solo at the Rainforest Project Room, Gordart Gallery in 2007. He has also been part of various collaborative exhibitions including an outside exhibition in Norway titled "after hours" in 2008.

In this exhibition, Mpumalanga Journey, Thabang will present some of his works and a series of collaborative works that emerged from a previous visit with Kim to photograph the aftermath of the Forest Fires in Lydenburg, Mpumalanga.

During the journey in the car, Kim and Thabang discussed possibilities of collaboration and experimentation. Thabang's primary medium is digital animation, and Kim was exploring possibilities of re-introducing printmaking to Thabang from a different perspective.

"Just as a stop-frame, animation is often created with sequencing charcoal drawings, we speculated about using printmaking techniques as a way to generate an unusual approach to animating a process" says Kim.

Mentor Gordon Froud is a teacher and currently sculpture lecturer at the University of Johannesburg. He was the owner and curator of Gordart Gallery which ran until 2009 as a space for developmental art and gave a platform to many new artists who have since gone on to achieve critical acclaim. Goodness Nhlengethwa is his mentee and she started exhibiting her artworks in group shows since 1998. She has exhibited in Johannesburg, Pietermaritzburg, Cape Town, Pretoria, Potchefstroom, New York, Sweden amongst other countries. She had a solo exhibition in 2007 at the Gordart Gallery.

Girl without a name is an exhibition on women in poverty and domestic violence.
"I felt the need to do this kind of exhibition because I saw people especially women in Kathorus (Katlehong, Thokoza and Vosloorus) struggling with little or no assistance from the authorities and the communities themselves. Most of these women are used, ridiculed, labeled, "otherised" and belittled by some authorities and people in our communities" says Goodness.

"My work focuses on the elimination of unnecessary barriers and pain. I make an effort when creating my work that it is accessible to an African audience as well. I experienced poverty and domestic violence myself and I know how misunderstood these subjects are by some people who are authorised to assist" says Goodness. Goodness uses found objects to create the sculptural works.

The Mentorship Programme is supported by the Business and Art South Africa (BASA) as part of their Barloworld Mentoring Programme.

The mentorship programme was showcased at the 2010 Joburg Art Fair with the support of the Gauteng Provincial Government and we will be showcasing the work of our new mentees at the 2011 Joburg Art Fair. Please join us at the opening for a glass of wine and to meet the artists.

For more information about the exhibition:
Artspace
011 880 8802
Artspace@wol.co.za
www.artspace_jhb.co.za

For media information and images please contact:

Taryn Cohn
Media Liaison for Artspace Gallery
083 6715139
taryncohn@artsourcesouthafrica.co.za