Latest News Archive

Please select Category, Year, and then Month to display items
Previous Archive
24 February 2023 | Story Leonie Bolleurs | Photo Supplied
The Annual Final-Year Student Exhibition of the Department of Fine Arts will be open for viewing at the Johannes Stegmann Gallery until 24 March 2023.

The Annual Final-Year Student Exhibition of the Department of Fine Arts at the University of the Free State is underway.

The exhibition, which is on display in the Johannes Stegmann Gallery on the ground floor of the UFS Sasol Library on the UFS Bloemfontein Campus, will be open for viewing until 24 March 2023. The exhibition event is scheduled for 1 March 2023 at 18:00.

Angela de Jesus, Curator of the UFS Art Gallery, says the exhibition comprises artworks made by the final-year Fine Arts students in the Department of Fine Arts. “Each student works with a particular research topic or theme of their choosing.”

This year’s exhibition features the work of Courtney Micaela Parsons, Megan Johns, PK Mohanoe, and Natley Bernardo. 

Craft as art

Parsons, who is interested in the notion of craft as art, in particular transgenerational and traditional female crafts, has transformed a found bed into an art object with her work Stitching generational divides. 

“The artwork was inspired by a copper bed that belonged to three generations of women in my family. In the artwork, I explore the relationships between these generations and the bonds formed, or the lack thereof, through traditional female teachings,” she says.

The artist feels that her artwork speaks to a wish she has to forge closer ties with her maternal line and nostalgia for moments not had. “The skill of crochet is symbolic of the skills that would have been taught by older generations, which are longed for in my own life.”


Constructing art

About his works on display, named Shoot our shot, Heavy labour, Artist on site, and Artistic labour, Mohanoe says that one of the main aims of his art is to address issues regarding contentious everyday working environments and the challenges that many workers have to face in South Africa today. These include inadequate resources, a lack of occupational health and safety measures, and being poorly paid.

“I am interested in this because I personally had to overcome many challenges in having to work part time while studying full time.”

“I explore this theme and compare it to the labour involved in artmaking and the creation process,” he adds. 

Mohanoe explains that his art consists of materials that can be both building and art materials, such as wooden doors, stones, and metal. “I layer, construct, deconstruct, paint, carve, and destroy these materials and document my creative process to emphasise the intense labour that is often hidden behind a final work of art,” he says, adding that he hopes to evoke empathy and encourage appreciation towards this labour by the artist, the worker, and the labouring artist.

Visiting the exhibition, visitors can also look forward to Mohanoe’s Mosebetsi o Phethahetse (image below).

Content 1

Mohanoe’s Mosebetsi o Phethahetse

Mixed media on three deconstructed doors,

 metal chain, artists conti suit, wheelbarrow,

boots, stones, bricks & drop sheet

Dimensions vary

Water and the subconscious

Barnardo, who grew up in the Western Cape, was surrounded by water in her early years and longed for it after moving to the Free State. 

“I experienced a sense of loss, which initiated my need to return to and surround myself with water. The water is a place of nostalgia for me, where I can experience an overflow of memories and thoughts, because I relate to its fluidity and plurality,” explains Barnardo, who has on display works named Changing mid-stream, Submerged subconscious I, II, and III, Translucent memory, and Fragmentary waters I, II

She says that the transparent quality of water becomes the vehicle that purifies and clarifies her understanding of her own subconscious mind – a place of reminiscence that allows her to cross the threshold into the subconscious and brings hidden things to the surface. 

Also on display is a video installation, named Liminal Spaces between water and the subconscious. Barnardo says she blindly takes video footage underwater, which allows her to discover and rediscover things that were hidden from view. “In doing so, I allude to the latency of images within the subconscious mind,” she says. 

 

Natley Barnardo, 

Submerged

subconscious I,

digital photography, 46 x 69.5cm

Art and the self

In her art, Johns is interested in investigating how childhood trauma and abandonment can affect adult life and how it can be the source of obsessive melancholia.

Melancholia, Johns believes, is compared to the constant reopening of an old wound. “In my artwork, the artistic practice of drawing, scribbling, or scratching represents the ‘scratching open of old wounds’. The process of scratching or marring a surface is similar to how scratching a wound mars the skin. These scratches also speak of the long-lasting damage that trauma can bring to memory. I use drawings which are reminiscent of childhood mark-making and scribbling, combining them with old family photographs and objects associated with childhood play,” describes Johns.

She has on display digital drawings and collages on perspex, including Harmonious union, Mother and daughter, and Self-portrait

There are also two collections of this artist on display, named Puzzle, and Abandoned objects series.

The exhibition can also be viewed online here


News Archive

Postgraduate School opens at UFS
2011-05-19

 
Prof. Maresi Nerad, from Washington university in Seattle, USA
Photo: Stephen Collett

We are celebrating the launch of our new Postgraduate School (PGS) on our Main Campus in Bloemfontein from 16 - 20 May 2011.

In line with national priorities for research-based postgraduate education and the focus of the UFS Academic Turnaround Strategy, the aims of the Postgraduate School are to:

  • improve the quality of postgraduate student research;
  • produce graduates who are global citizens, research literate and able to reflect ethically on the purpose, process and product of research;
  • improve throughput rates of postgraduate students; and
  • make the experience of being a postgraduate at the UFS one which is stimulating, enjoyable and which contributes to the development of the person beyond the limits of her or his discipline(s).

“We hope that the school will be a pleasant place to pursue research scholarship, discuss ideas and relax, and we look forward to welcoming postgraduates and other scholars to the school,” Prof. Neil Roos, Director of the UFS Postgraduate School said.

This significant event in the academic transformation of the university goes hand in hand with the inaugural lecture of Prof. Maresi Nerad. Prof. Nerad’s impressive CV reads amongst others that she has a M.A. (Political Science) at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany and a Ph.D. (Higher Education) at the University of California, Berkeley. She is also the founding director of the national Center for Innovation and Research Graduate Education (CIRGE).

As Professor Extraordinary in the UFS’s Postgraduate School, she is bringing more to the table than a world of wisdom and her passion for the postgraduate education. “I can contribute lessons learned from four distinct professional experiences, including 17 years of administrative and scholarly leadership in undertaking the conceptual and practical transformational work of organisational change at two US postgraduate schools, where I worked amongst others to improve the quality of mentoring, shorten the time to doctoral degree, and improve doctoral completion rates.”

She also brings to the UFS her experience as founding and current director of the first research center for studies on graduate education in the world. “It is our mission to discover how best to prepare Ph.D. students to be effective leaders in research and society,” she said.

Prof. Nerad says that she is committed to support and consult with the UFS Postgraduate School. She would particularly encourage the use of research to understand postgraduate education in all its dimensions at the UFS better and to use the evidence-based findings as a base for policy-making and resource allocation.

In reflecting on her vision for the UFS Postgraduate School, Prof. Nerad says that five years from now she hopes to see the UFS having strengthened its position as a major driving force in the national South African postgraduate-education community for internationalising postgraduate education. She is also confident that the UFS will supply increased numbers of skilled postgraduates who are “intellectual entrepreneurs and risk takers with a social consciousness, who have sustainability of the systems of the planet as a core value”.

“Five years from now the PSG will have taken the lead in preparing graduate students who are world citizens,” Prof. Nerad concluded.

 

Presentation on PhD students reveals more than meets the eye

British professor presents a discussion at UFS

Journey from student to scholar

Society will take care of interests

Female academics talk about joys and lessons

Research plus the internet equals the cyber scholar
 


 

We use cookies to make interactions with our websites and services easy and meaningful. To better understand how they are used, read more about the UFS cookie policy. By continuing to use this site you are giving us your consent to do this.

Accept