Johannes Stegmann Art Gallery have pleasure in inviting you to the opening of an exhibition by


Mikhael Subotzky
Standard Bank Young Artist 2012
Retinal Shift

on Wednesday 27 February 2013 at 7pm.

The exhibition closes on 29 March 2013.

Gallery hours:

Monday to Friday: 8.30am - 4.30pm

Sasol Library Building
University of the Free State

Standard Bank Young Artist 2012: Mikhael Subotzky

Retinal Shift

The Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Art 2012 has been awarded to Mikhael Subotzky.  This exhibition began its year-long tour at the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown in June 2012 and will travel to various major centres around South Africa before ending its run in August 2013.

Mikhael Subotzky’s 2012 Standard Bank Young Artist Exhibition presents an entirely new body of work. Entitled Retinal Shift, the exhibition will centre on a four-channel film installation which has been produced specifically for the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown and the exhibition tour. Further photographic, video and installation works will complete the exhibition.

Retinal Shift investigates the practice and mechanics of looking –in relation to the history of Grahamstown, the history of photographic devices, and Subotzky’s own history as an artist. The works in the show draw on archival portraits from the last century, found surveillance footage, and Subotzky’s own photographs from various series’ that are re-contextualized here. The opening work on the show is a self-portrait that Subotzky made with the assistance of an optometrist. High-resolution images of his left and right retinas are placed side by side. “I was fascinated by this encounter. At the moment that my retinas, my essential organs of seeing, were photographed, I was blinded by the apparatus that made the images.”

Retinal Shift extends this motif of looking while not seeing - exploring it through Grahamstown’s history, our contemporary surveillance society, and the artist’s personal attempts to see.

About the Standard Bank Young Artist Awards

The Young Artist Awards were started in 1981 by the National Arts Festival to acknowledge emerging, relatively young South African artists who have displayed an outstanding talent in their artistic endeavours. These prestigious awards are presented annually to deserving artists in different disciplines, affording them national exposure and acclaim. Standard Bank took over the sponsorship of the awards in 1984 and presented Young Artist Awards in all the major arts disciplines over their 27-year sponsorship, as well as posthumous and special recognition awards. The winners feature on the main programme of the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown and receive financial support for their Festival participation, as well as a cash prize.