A new art gallery, The Standard Bank Art Lab, was opened on 5 June at Nelson Mandela Square. Positioned at the crossroads of experimentation, collaboration, and creative exploration, The Art Lab reimagines how audiences engage with art through encouraging interaction that is up close, in motion, and in dialogue with the present.
It’s current exhibition, “Follow the Blue Thread: It’s Woven Into Who We Are”, celebrates the transformative power of African art through the medium of tapestry. The pieces are woven from mohair and created via collaborations between artists and master weavers.
About the artist
Allina Ndebele started her career as a weaver at Rorke’s Drift Centre in 1963, even travelling to Sweden for further training. On her return she branched out on her own to establish herself as an independent artist setting up Khumalo’s Kraal Weaving Workshop in 1980. Here she pursued the representations of the oral narratives told by senior women in isi-Zulu families. Traditional themes of folklore called ‘iZinganekwane’ give her work meaning and impetus to her earlier experiences at Rorke’s Drift.
Founded in 1862 to support the booming wool trade of the Eastern Cape, Standard Bank Group’s early operations were closely tied to the textures, economies, and movements of textiles. What began as financial infrastructure for agricultural exchange evolved into a broader commitment to the networks of production and expression that define culture today.
The theme of the exhibition is “Follow the Blue Thread: It’s Woven Into Who We Are”, and celebrates the transformative power of African art through the medium of tapestry. Woven from mohair and realised through collaborations between artists and master weavers, the works reflect a longstanding connection between the textile and visual arts and as an extension, between commerce, craft, and culture.
Right: William Kentridge (1955 -). Office Love, 2001. Hand-woven mohair tapestry, 3410 x 4516. Courtesy of William Kentridge & Stephen Tapestry Studio.
About the artists
Willie Bester is cited globally as one of South Africa’s most important resistance artists. He incorporates recycled material into his paintings, assemblages and sculpture, creating powerful artworks that speak against political, social and economic injustice. His art is a vehicle to express the inequalities that he has witnessed and been subjected to. He works predominantly in mixed media, combining oil and watercolour paints with photographs, newspaper clippings and scrap materials acquired from local dumps and scrap yards.
William Kentridge’s interest in the visual arts is rooted in its connection with the theatrical arts. The narrative structure and character development in his films reflect this connection. While Kentridge pursued several avenues as an artist, at the centre of his work was a sequence of short animated films. In the last two decades Kentridge has produced a collection of tapestries in collaboration with the Marguerite Stephens Tapestry Studio in Johannesburg and Swaziland. Kentridge starts with a cartoon which is then interpreted by Stephens and her team, yarn by yarn, each thread a part of the whole design.
Dr Same Mdluli, Standard Bank Curator and Gallery Manager, says, “Featuring works by Penny Siopis, Judith Mason, Sam Nhlengethwa, William Kentridge, and Miriam Ndebele, the exhibition reimagines the corporate collection not as static archive but as a living resource. In doing so, it asks vital questions: What cultural memory do collections preserve? Whose stories do they tell? And how might they contribute to the creative economies of tomorrow?”
Right: Miriam Ndebele (c.1930/40 -), Ancestors, 1976. Hand-woven mohair tapestry, 920 x 2150.5 mm. Acquired: 1 March 1976. Standard Bank Corporate Art Collection
About the artists
The Katlehong Art Society, which included artists such as Lucas Sithole, Morningstar Motaung, Napo Mokoena and Stanley Nkosi, started in 1969. The artists, motivated by the lack of space to create artworks in their township, approached the government’s East Rand Administration Board (ERAB) with the hope of getting support to form an art centre. Katlehong Art Centre (KAC) was developed as a project under ERAB and established in 1977 by the Katlehong Art Society.
There is not much information available on the biography of Miriam Ndebele except that she was part of the first group of weavers initially trained in 1963 by the Swedish couple Ulla and Peder Gowenius. The Gowenius set up the Rorke’s Drift Art Centre and transferred their wealth of experience in print, weaving and ceramics to the local populace through their workshop the Evangelical Lutheran Church Art and Craft Centre.
Caption of featured image (at top of article): Penelope (Penny) Siopis (1953 -); Shame, 2004/5. Hand-woven mohair tapestry, 2000 x 2530 mm. Acquired: 18 September 2006. Standard Bank Corporate Art Collection.
About the artist: Penny Siopis (1953 –) is foremost a painter although she frequently works with video, installations and mixed media in her work. Her practice is marked by three interests, the physicality of paint, the accumulation of found objects (including video footage), material memory, and the politics of the body. She has also continually engaged with the shifting social and political situations in South Africa. All of her explorations, whether with body politics, memory, migration, or the relations between the human and non-human, are characterised by her interest in what she calls the ‘poetics of vulnerability’ – embodied in the dynamic play between materiality and reference, chance and contingency, form and formlessness, personal and collective history.
Location & hours
The Standard Bank Art Lab is at shop 33-34, Nelson Mandela Square, 2 Maude St, Sandton. Undercover parking is available at Mandela Square, entrance on West St North Tower (next to Michelangelo Hotel).
Monday-Saturday: from 9am to 4.00pm
Sunday and public holidays: from 9am to 1pm.
Entrance is free.
