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Work from the Lyon Biennale. Image credit: Blaise Adelon -
Work from "We Need The Memories Of All Our Members" solo show at HKS, Bergen in 2015 -
Work from "We Need The Memories Of All Our Members" solo show at HKS, Bergen in 2015 -
Work from "We Need The Memories Of All Our Members" solo show at HKS, Bergen in 2015 -
Dineo Bopape -
Hennessy 250 Tour -
Curator of Hennessy 250 Tour, Hervé Mikaeloff
INTERVIEWED BY Malibongwe Tyilo
Hennessy, the world’s largest cognac producer, is celebrating its 250th anniversary in 2015. To mark this occasion, they have launched the Hennessy 250 Tour, a major travelling exhibition curated by Hervé Mikaeloff, art advisor to the LVMH group, which owns Hennessy, Moët and Louis Vuitton.
The line-up features internationally renowned artists, photographers, filmmakers and designers. The exhibition will be shown in four cities around the world: Guangzhou, Moscow, New York and Joburg. The Joburg leg of the tour will also include work by South African artist Dineo Bopape, whose work has shown in major national and international exhibitions. She is a 2007 graduate of De Ateliers in Amsterdam and in 2010 she completed a MFA at Columbia University in New York. She was also the winner of the 2008 MTN New Contemporaries Award and the recipient of a 2010 Columbia University Toby Fund Award.
We caught up with Dineo to chat about her practice and what we can expect to see from her during the Hennessy 250 Tour.
What is the driving philosophy behind your work?
My work is primarily concerned with the subject of memory. I think that in the times that we live in, it’s a particularly important subject. We have to understand the past and how we relate to it.
How do you express that in your work?
Mainly through video installations, where I work with objects in relation to each other, and also through the relationship between sound and visuals.
What are you working on at the moment?
I’m working towards an exhibition which will be shown at the Hayward Gallery Project Space in London. It’s made up of three existing works, to which I’ll be adding a mechanical video sculpture.
What can we expect from you during the Hennessy 250 Tour?
They’ve commissioned a video work, which we shot in The Cradle of Humankind. It continues my work in dealing with memory.
It’s often easy to miss out on a lot of detail when it comes to video art. Anything attendees should be on the lookout for?
There’s quite a lot, but I can highlight a couple of things. Structurally, the beginning of the video incorporates the end, so if one looks closely, there are bubbles within the video playing the entire video in reverse. Hennessy asked that the video not have sound, so I’ve added text from liberation songs scrolling across the screen. If one knows the songs, they function as a silent soundtrack to the video. Also expect to see Robert Sobukwe’s eyes featuring prominently.
The Hennessy 250 Tour will be hosted at Circa Gallery in Joburg from 20 – 25 August 2015. For more info, visit hennessy.com. To view more of Dineo’s work, visit seshee.blogspot.com.
