"The African Arts Trust will act as a catalyst for the emergence and growth of locally managed and sustainable contemporary art organisations in Africa"
Organisation: Deveron Arts
Project Funding: A grant to support a three month residency project with emerging artist, Nancy Mteki, from Zimbabwe
Dates: January - March 2013
Amount: £2,500
Nancy Mteki was born in Harare, Zimbabwe in 1989. She started taking photographs in 2008 at a local workshop call IIiso Labantu founded by Alistair Berg and Sue Johnson, in South Africa. She first exhibited with IIiso Labantu at the 4th Cape Town Month of Photography in 2008 and since in Gwanza Month of Photography 2009 and 2011 at The National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare. This year she took part in Dak'Art 2012 - Biennale of Contemporary African Art, presenting a series of images, which explored the objectification of women on public transport. It was during Dak'Art 2012 that Nancy was awarded The Deveron Arts Residency prize.
Nancy's project at Deveron will focus on the issues surrounding feeding and nutrition in maternity, looking particularly at young mothers in Huntly, Aberdeen but also drawing on her experiences as a young mother in Zimbabwe. She often addresses gender issues and the role of women in Zimbabwean society in her work.
Organisation: 32° East/ KLA ART 012
Project Funding: A grant administered through our partners 32° East to support Kampala's first Contemporary Art Festival (KLA ART 012).
The festival took place between 7th - 14th October 2012 and served as a platform to showcase new visual art forms to a diverse public audience. Under the title, '12 BOXES MOVING' the festival placed 12 shipping containers around the city and used to showcase new artistic talent.
Eight art organisations in Kampala joined forces to host the festival: Afriart Gallery, AKA Gallery, Uganda Museum, Nommo Gallery, Makerere Art Gallery, the Goethe Zentrum Kampala, Alliance Française Kampala and 32° East | Ugandan Arts Trust. They collaborated to create an event, which provided a unique platform to showcase Kampala's artistic talent.
Organisation: History In Progress Uganda
Dates: July 2012 - May 2013
Amount: £1,000.00
History In Progress Uganda collects and publishes photographs from (private) collections and archives in Uganda.
Support for artists Andrea Stultiens and Rumanzi Canon (HIP Uganda) to develop a body of work in response to the HIP Uganda archive. The work, which will include drawings, photographic prints and books will be exhibited at Makere University next year. One of the aims of the project is to set an example to artists of how historical material can be used to create contemporary visual art and use this period as a pilot to a program that will work with Ugandan artists and photographers producing work based upon material HIP Uganda is collecting and archiving.
Organisation: 32° East | Ugandan Arts Trust
Core funding: £25,000 to cover one year from June 2012 - June 2013
32° East has been founded by Rocca Gutteridge and Nicola Elphinstone. Based in the capital Kampala, the Trust will provide artists with studio space and exhibition space, local and international workshops, residencies and artist-led outreach projects. 32° East recognises there is remarkable untapped and unfostered potential in the Ugandan arts scene and so through their program aim to nurture, develop and raise the profile of Ugandan visual art to a national and international level. Long term core funding is crucial to the successful start up and sustainability of this new organisation and their work will encourage new concepts, ideas and inspirations to enter the Ugandan arts community as well as develop avenues for promoting Ugandan art abroad.
Organisation: Nafasi Art Space
Core funding: $13,000 to cover five months from June 2012 - October 2012
Nafasi Art Space was initiated by The Danish Centre for Cultural Development in 2009 in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. The art centre is currently home to 15 artists working with a diverse range of mediums within the visual arts including; painting, printmaking, sculpture and film. Funding will allow the young organisation to increase the number of artists they work with and add more activities, with an emphasis on artist training, to their programme this year.
Organisation: Deveron Arts
Project Funding: A grant to support a three month residency for the emerging Ethiopian artist, Mihret Kebede
Dates: January 2012
Amount: £2,500
Deveron Arts is a contemporary arts organisation based in Huntly, North East Scotland. For Deveron Arts the town is the venue: studio, gallery, and stage for a wide range of visual and performing arts. They invite artists from all over the world to live and work in the town to meet with local people and exchange ideas on issues of both local and global concern.
Ethiopian artist Mihret Kebede visited Huntly on a residency in Winter 2012. Mihret would have liked to walk the 5,850 miles from her home in Addis Ababa to Aberdeenshire. However the physical difficulties of navigating through the deserts, let alone the closed borders and visa restrictions make such a feat almost impossible.
In order for her to accumulate the 5,850 miles from Addis to Huntly she needed a total of 225 people to walk a marathon of 26 miles - each way. To achieve this goal she organised a Slow Marathon, which took place on Saturday the 17th of March around Huntly with a parallel walking event in Addis Ababa on the next day to bring her back home.
A shoelace exchange between Huntly and Ethiopian walkers was part of the process.
Organisation: Kuona Trust
Core funding: $40,000 to cover from October 2011 - End of 2012
Kuona's mission is to advance the skills and opportunities of contemporary visual artists to create innovative, world-class art in Kenya. They have supported over 1000 visual artists since 1995, by providing them with a working environment that also offers; exhibition space, research facilities, art training and workshops, mentoring, peer to peer learning in a communal safe setting, access to utilities, equipment, a library, the internet and to networks, opportunities and guidance. Kuona needs adequate core funding in order to sustain itself and maintain it's varied output.
Organisation: Gasworks
Project Funding: Exhibition and related residencies of Baudouin Mouanda (in partnership with Deveron Arts)
Dates: 30 July - 18 September 2011
Amount: £2,500
Established in 1994, Gasworks is a contemporary art organisation based in South London, housing twelve artists' studios and offering a programme of exhibitions and events, artists' residencies, international fellowships and educational projects. Gasworks presents the first solo exhibition in the UK by award-winning photographer Baudouin Mouanda.
Mouanda's photography focuses upon the formation of urban subcultures, addressing notions of style, cultural identity and the codification of forms of expression. The exhibition at Gasworks brings together work from the streets of Libreville and Brazzaville, South London and rural Scotland.
La Sapologie, the main body of work in the exhibition, documents the lives of sapeurs; members of the S.A.P.E. community (Societe des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Elegantes/Society of Tastemakers and Elegant People). Sapeurs have emerged in Africa and diasporic communities over the past 25 years and are often read as a post-colonial, 'globalised' take on the Parisian dandies of the late 18th century and early 19th century. Mostly young men, they parade about in extravagant designer clothes, carving out ostentatious identities through style, gestures and slang. The sapeurs' aspirations and carefully constructed self-image are greatly at odds with the poor conditions in which they live.
Mouanda's practice poses significant questions about the meaning and effects of globalisation in post-colonial societies. Documenting the influence of 'other' conceptions of wealth, his work addresses how international forms of culture and their market-led dissemination impact upon the constitution of a local culture in transition.
The exhibition also includes recent studies of youth culture in the UK, produced during residencies at Gasworks and Deveron Arts in Scotland. These works build upon the artist's existing practice, exploring how these groups represent themselves and what channels they use to voice their concerns and aspirations.
Organisation: Gallery Delta Foundation
Emergency funding: $10,000 to cover from June 2011 - September 2011
Established in 1975, Gallery Delta is an important venue in Harare for changing exhibitions of Zimbabwean paintings, graphics, mixed media sculptures and ceramics. Gallery Delta work with a core of about 25 Zimbabwean, mainly young artists including Lovemore Kambudzi, Virginia Chihota, Cosmos Shiridzinomwa, Admire Kamudzengerere and Misheck Masamvu.
This short term funding is intended to help Gallery Delta sustain their programme in Harare whilst they put on an exhibition in Munich throughout July, called 'Colour Africa 2011'.
Organisation: Kuona Trust
Project Funding: The construction of additional studio and gallery space.
Amount: $10,500
Date: June 2011
Kuona Trust is a not-for-profit organisation founded in 1995 at the National Museum of Kenya to serve visual artists and has since worked with over one thousand five hundred artists giving them skills and opportunities to advance themselves whilst increasing the profile and role of the visual arts in Kenya.
Kuona has an exhibition space devoted to experimental exhibitions to help develop artistic concepts, artist practices and a language around Kenyan art and have steadily built a reputation for thematic and conceptual exhibitions, curated by young experimental artists but is restricted by space. The addition of an 8m by 20m gallery will enable Kuona to Show at least 8 more exhibitions a year. Enclosed workshop and project space is also essential, especially in the rainy season, for artists wanting to work on a larger scale or teach master classes and run outreach projects.
Kuona have chosen to build the additional spaces as movable structures from recyclable transport containers.
Organisation: AfricaLab
Project Funding: 'Sharon Stone In Abuja' Exhibition
Dates: 5th Nov 2010 - 22nd Jan 2011
Amount: £2,500
Zina Saro-Wiwa is a British-Nigerian film-maker, writer, broadcast journalist and the founder of AfricaLab, an organisation dedicated to re-imagining Africa. In AfricaLab's first contemporary art project showing at Location One Gallery NYC from 5th Nov 2010 - 22nd Jan 2011, she brings together work that concerns the Nigerian film industry, aka Nollywood.
Timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of that nation's independence, the show includes new work by Wangechi Mutu, Andrew Esiebo, and Mickalene Thomas. 'Sharon Stone In Abuja' explores and re-imagines the powerful phenomenon that is 'Nollywood', Nigeria's booming video film industry and the world's third largest movie industry after Bollywood and Hollywood.
Organisation: Ed Cross Fine Art
Project Funding: Peterson Kamwathi 'Matter of Record' Exhibition
Dates: October 20th - November 20th 2010
Amount: £2,500
African Contemporary Art Gallery representing Peterson Kamwathi, Soly Cissé, Lovemore Kambudzi, Richard Onyango, George Lilanga, Jems Koko Bi and Dominique Zinkpé.
Peterson Kamwathi, born in Nairobi in 1980, is one of Kenya's best regarded young artists and is now establishing himself as a major name in contemporary African art. His work combines clear conceptual elements and rich content with technical mastery. His main body of work has been in printmaking where he is an acknowledged master of the woodcut process though more recently he has broadened his oeuvre to create several series of charcoal and mixed media works culminating in his 'Sitting Allowance' installation which is almost epic in its scale documenting the grim realities of the bungled Kenyan 2007/8 elections. "In my work I strive to address and document issues that affect and impact my country, my continent and now the planet."
'Matter of Record' which ran from October 20th - November 20th 2010 at Ed Cross Fine Art gallery space in Whitechapel, East London was Kamwathi's first solo show in London.