siemon allen

RECORDS (South African Edition)
Johannesburg Art Fair, South Africa, 2010

March 26 - 28, 2010
Presented by the gordonshachatcollection.

For the past eight years Siemon Allen has been exploring the image of South Africa through a series of collection projects. The most current collection, an archive of South African audio, is made up of over 2000 items including 500 rare 78 rpm shellac discs. Records (2009) is a series of 12 large format print on velvet archival paper selected and scanned from the larger audio collection. The scans of the records produce remarkable detail capturing not only the grooves but also the accumulated historic traces of scratches and damage that speak to the memory of the object. It is significant that though these prints are considered by Allen to be part of his audio collection and speak to the primacy of music in South African cultural history, they are silent.

IMAGING SOUTH AFRICA: RECORDS|NEWSPAPERS|STAMPS
BANK Gallery, Durban, South Africa, 2009

Durban Art Gallery, Durban, South Africa, 2009

BANK, March 3 - April 16, 2009
DAG, March 8 - April 26, 2009

Imaging South Africa: Records|Newspapers|Stamps features three concurrent installations at BANK Gallery and the Durban Art Gallery

For the past eight years Siemon Allen, who is currently based in the United States, has been exploring the image of South Africa through a series of collection projects. Operating from what is essentially an external vantage point, Allen systematically accumulates mass-produced printed material, which he ultimately catalogues and displays. His process is not unlike that of an archivist, each collected item bringing with it a narrative particular to the nature of that artifact’s production, dissemination, and use.
                                                           
In Stamps, Allen explores the political history of South Africa through the cataloging and display of postal stamps produced in the country from the beginning of the South African Union in 1910 to the present. Over 23,000 stamps will be on display in the project room of the Durban Art Gallery, configured to both operate as historical record and to reference grid field painting. The stamp collection is a kind of autobiography of a nation and says much about how that nation seeks to construct an identity for itself.  The stamps tell the story of the changing face of South Africa, revealing how a country, over time, has chosen to represent itself both within its borders and internationally. It is a fragmented narration that speaks not only through what is shown but also through what is not.

Newspapers, presents another image of South Africa, one that is constructed externally through the foreign press. Begun in 2001 as a research project documenting U.S. coverage of the 2001 United Nations Racism Conference in Durban, Newspapers has since evolved through the same comprehensive and methodical processes that are characteristic of all Allen's collection projects. This particular project also brings to light other questions and concerns regarding the news media, including how coverage defines the importance given to a place, and how the nature of that coverage perpetuates or dispels limited or stereotypical notions of that place.

Newspapers on show in the circular gallery at DAG will bring together for the first time all of Allen’s newspaper collections including The Washington Post, The Washington Times, The Des Moines register, and The St. Louis Post Dispatch. Furthermore the display will feature a new version of The New York Times, specifically collected for this exhibition, with recent coverage of South Africa beginning with Jacob Zuma’s ascendance to the ANC leadership in December of 2007.

Records, the third and most recent work in the Imaging South Africa series, is comprised of several smaller collections. For Records, Allen has been building a massive collection of South African audio artifacts, with the intention of establishing a searchable, web-based archive of the material. This project is due to go online sometime in 2009.

At BANK Allen will present a part of the Records project—its original starting point - a comprehensive collection of recordings by Miriam Makeba. This collection consists of over 400 individually acquired recordings in multiple formats by the late, internationally recognized, South African singer who recently passed away. The roots of the collection began three years ago when Allen purchased a used Makeba LP dating from 1965 in Richmond, Virginia. Reading the liner notes on the back, he was struck by the political nature of the text and began to reflect upon how these mass-produced, commercial items might have operated in the dissemination of an anti-apartheid message.

Allen expanded the Makeba collection with the goal of exploring how these artifacts, through covers and liner notes, presented to an international audience an image of South Africa that differed from that promoted by the Government of the time. Makeba’s widely disseminated iconic visage and message were significant in that she was an icon in the age of mass-media carrying an oppositional ‘image of South Africa’ to the world.

In addition to the Makeba! installation, Allen will also show a series of large prints, a new body of work derived from the larger record archive, at BANK Gallery.

[Text from the press release]

DISTURBANCE

CONTEMPORARY ART FROM SCANDINAVIA AND SOUTH AFRICA

Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2008

curated by Clive Kellner & Maria Fidel Regueros
October 26, 2008 - March 1, 2009
with Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Siemon Allen, Bodil Furu, Veli Grano, Marja Helander, Nicholas Hloba, Astrid Kruse Jensen, Alastair McLachlan, Nandipha Mntambo, Anthea Moys, Mika Ronkainen, Athi Patra-Ruga, Maia Urstad, James Webb

The selected artists and their works examine the relationship Nordic and South African artists have to notions of identity and place, by focussing on elements as psychosis, consumption, beauty and hope. The exhibition has used the contemporary mediums of sound, performance, photography and video installations as a way of mediating on the above.

[Text from the invitation ]

t.error—your fear is an external object
Kunsthalle, Budapest, Hungary, 2008
Hungarian Cultural Center, New York, NY, 2009

curated by Attila Hetesi, Aniko Erdosi
September 10 - October 15, 2008
February 20 - May 2, 2009
with Siemon Allen, Francois Bucher, Rainer Ganahl, Alia Hassan-Khan, Ayoung Kim, Pia Lindman, Andrea Schneemeier, Jari Silomaki, Xaviera Simmons, Zsolt Vasarhelyi, Bryan Zanisnik

Through works by artist from diverse social contexts, the exhibition t.error focuses on the psychological effects of the violence and terror that comes to dominate more and more the media and our daily life. Testing the boundaries between the clichéd image of human violence as mediated by the camera, on the one hand, and its contemporary forms and mental impacts on the other, the exhibition explores the “gray zone” between the constructed and imaginary notions of terror, its mediated image and our real fears.

Since 9/11 it has been discussed in several contexts how violence represented by the media influences our real and fictitious sense of fear, in societies whose outlook today is global. Examining the power and flexibility of the camera mediated image, the exhibition concentrates on the perception and interpretation of violence and terror filtered through media, and explores to what extent we identify with, or remain resistant to, it. The featured artworks highlight those characteristics of the human condition today that are generated by mediated images of cruelty: fear, paranoia and frustration. They point out that our senses of mental security and social identity are more affected by the image of terror than by any other kind of images in the global media environment. The refined and complex modes of artistic representation echo the characteristics of a more and more intricate and vulnerable society.

The seventeen international artistic positions provide a view of how contemporary artists are dealing with, and relate to, the image of violence in the world of spectacle. Through their works, the exhibition reveals the current correlations between violence, fear and spectacle and challenges our awareness of these by investigating the definition of terror appropriated and alienated by current politics.

[Text from the press release for the New York show]

MONOMANIA
Goodman Gallery Cape, Cape Town, South Africa, 2008

curated by Storm Janse van Rensburg
August 7 - September 6, 2008
Siemon Allen, Ryan Arenson, Joanne Bloch, David Koloane and Arie Kuijers

The exhibition Monomania brings together works by five artists, Siemon Allen, Ryan Arenson, Joanne Bloch, David Koloane and Arie Kuijers, who work particularly intently with their chosen subject matter and/or materials. The act of collecting, ordering, archiving and repetition is an integral consideration in their practice. The term monomania originated in the early nineteenth century, and is also referred to as idée fixe, originally used to describe obsessive compulsive behaviour.

More recently art historian and philosopher Marina van Zuylen revived the term 'Monomania' to explore the curative and therapeutic attributes of single-minded, repetitive behaviours and practices of artists. These indefinitely repetitive actions also subvert expectations – instead of ‘numbing down’, a deepening and intensity of meaning occurs.

Siemon Allen, a South African artist based in the USA, presents The Birds, a large woven panel consisting of found 16mm film. Allen’s practice is largely based on selective collecting of published material, which often accumulates for many years before being realized in large-scale installation. These archives are compiled by the artist through online auction sites, trawling second hand shops and specialist dealers.

[Text from the press release]