Take a walk with me
20 August – 3 September 2011
Opening Saturday August 20 at 14:00
Sandile Goje’s has chosen the title, Take a walk with me for his latest exhibition of new linoleum cuts at GALLERY AOP, and says: “ I am inviting you to imagine that you are taking a walk with me and that I am sharing with you my ideas and thoughts through my pictures”. Since the mid-1990s Goje has produced and editioned close on a hundred black and white linocuts in his inimitable style. Most people are familiar with his eponymous work Meeting of Two Cultures (1993), reproduced in the seminal book by Philippa Hobbs and Elizabeth Rankin, Printmaking in a transforming South Africa (1997), and recently included in an exhibition of South African prints at the Museum of Modern Art in New York: Impressions from South Africa: 1965 to Now (23 March – 14 August 2011).
Meeting of Two Cultures depicts two embodied houses greeting each other (the one, of a spindly-legged figure with the body of a typical round, African mud hut, and the other, a podgy-legged figure with the body of a geometric, Westernised brick house). Despite their differences, the two houses shake hands, bearing witness to Goje’s commitment and personal insight into the socio-political changes in South Africa.
This image has set the tone for many of Goje’s work, and for the spirit of reconciliation that characterised an early democratic South Africa that is so pervasive in his work. Goje says his images are often born out of a desire to reveal the subtleties of his home culture to those unfamiliar with it. “I think most of my works are African, but influenced by both Eastern and Western cultures, and rural and urban life. Just looking at the landform or at landscapes, I get ideas. I always imagine myself or see myself being part of creation. I love the way landscapes are. They are permanent, not changing. You can’t find them anywhere else. When you look at them and see their beauty, thoughts are endless and so are ideas.” His intricately patterned black and white linocut prints are built up with small marks (by his own admission he favours the V-shaped carving tool), always sharp and clear in the extreme tonality they create.
Goje’s prints are conversation pieces. “Due to the time and other commitments that you and I have” he says “I am unable to sit and chat with you, or anybody else for that matter, about my work. While you take a walk with me, I will ‘talk’ about my pictures in and through my work. We can have a conversation about them while we are looking at them. You will notice that I start with a focus on one topic but because I treasure the time I have with you, I am introducing various other topics at the same time so that we have much to talk about. I may not be able to answer all the questions that you may have about my work, but I will resolve or answer them in the work I am doing for a next show.” The viewer can engage in many conversations with Goje: there are 27 new linocut prints on his current show at GALLERY AOP.
Sandile Goje was one of the first students at Dakawa Art and Craft Community Centre, founded by Artists Against Apartheid in Grahamstown in 1992 (Dakawa refers to an African National Congress camp in Tanzania before the unbanning of the organisation). He was taught by Eric Mbatha from Rorke’s Drift (etching and ceramics) and Joel Sibisi, as well as by Swedish printmakers Malin Selman and Kristina Anshelm. As a teacher, Anselm has played an important role in Goje’s development as an artist. Goje was awarded a bursary to study at the Grafik Skolan in Stockholm, Sweden (1994), and had a solo exhibition in the town of Norkeping in 1995. He has exhibited in South Africa and abroad, and his work is well represented in public and corporate collections in South Africa. Over the years he has taught printmaking at Dakawa and acted as studio manager, apart from volunteering in various capacities, running printmaking and skills-development workshops for children and young adults and co-organizing exhibitions and organizing skill-development workshops for children and young adults and co-organizing exhibitions and workshops on South African artists in Sweden.
