In line with Kizo Gallery’s new strategic vision of hosting socially and educationally inclined exhibitions, Kizo curator Nathi Gumede has invited Cape Town based writer and curator Bettina Malcomess to present works in Kizo’s Upstairs Gallery.

Bettina brings to Kizo an exhibition which she has curated titled Ready Made, including some works and artists from her recent show Upstairs/Downstairs at AVA in Cape Town.

Exhibiting artists include Ed Young, Andrew Lamprecht, Nontobeko Ntombela, Bianca Baldi, Unathi Sigenu, Lizza Littlewort, Peter Jenks, Niklas Wittenburg, Dale Washkansky, Christian Nerf and Douglas Gimberg, Stuart Bird, The Gugulective, Justin Brett, Margaret Stone, Charles Maggs and others.

Marcel Duchamp famously said, ‘the artist of the future will merely have to point his finger and say this is art.’

Ready Made is a group exhibition using the idea of the art object itself as ‘readymade’. The show is interested in how the art work’s de-contextualisation and displacement in the gallery shifts its meaning, in much the same way Duchamp’s found objects change meaning when taken out of ‘the everyday’ and placed in the gallery.

The curating process would take work already made out of the context of the artist’s production, oeuvre and style so that the work cannot be interpreted in relationship to identity, cultural or social context and precedent. Much of the work has been chosen for the way that identity politics over-determines its interpretation, and the selection questions this 'identity’ in contemporary South African art, whether it refers to sexuality, race and class or the idea of the artist. The show sets itself the challenge of creating its own identity while playing with identity itself as a ‘ready made’.

Ready Made opens at Kizo Art Gallery on May 29 at 18h30 and runs until June 15.

For more information contact the gallery curator Nathi Gumede on 031 566 4324, fax 031 566 2494 or email: nathig@kizo.co.za or visit www.kizo.co.za