Alternative Kidz has been featured by The Times in an audio photo gallery.
Musa Nxumalo, the recipient of the 2008 Edward Ruiz Mentorship at the Market Photo Workshop, has produced Alternative Kidz over the course of a year, in consultation with his mentors John Fleetwood, Lester Adams, and Michelle Loukidis. Photographer Nontsikelelo Veleko also assisted in the development of the exhibition.
Alternative Kidz runs at The Photo Workshop Gallery from Wednesday 8 July until Sunday 9 August 2009.
About the exhibition
Musa Nxumalo’s exhibition documents urban black youth who choose to identify with alternative culture. In doing so, Nxumalo re-presents and repositions not only mainstream South African youth culture, but also the ability of alternative counter-culture to react against social stereotyping. In this context, alternative culture is both culturally dissonant and individually liberating. It demonstrates how counter-culture can function as a mode of complex self-fashioning.
First popularised in predominately western capitalist societies in the 1970s and 1980s, punk culture was characterised by a rejection of commercialism and political idealism. Today, however, alternative culture has largely been absorbed into mainstream society; it is no longer largely associated with anarchism, radical politics, and a rejection of social values and norms. Nxumalo's exhibition raises questions over the nature of (intentioned) cultural divergence, and the status of contemporary subjectivities, particularly in relation to the emergence of new urban cultures and dynamics. Nxumalo says that he hopes this project will ‘encourage cultural exploration among young South Africans’.
AngloGold Ashanti is the primary funder of the mentorship and exhibition. A supporting grant towards the exhibition has been made available by Business and Arts South Africa, and the National Arts Council of South Africa has also partly funded the exhibition.
The Market Photo Workshop, in association with the Newtown Improvement District, would like to invite you to attend a public screening of select photographic works in celebration of Women’s day on Sunday 9 August 2009.
The screening will take place in the courtyard of No. 1 Central Place, Newtown, from 8 - 10pm.
The works being screened are all drawn from previous group exhibitions, curated by the Market Photo Workshop, which were exhibited as part of previous Newtown Women in Arts Festivals.
Included in the screening are works from celebrated photographers and Photo Workshop alumni such as Nontsikelelo Veleko, Zanele Muholi, Sabelo Mlangeni, Tracy Edser, and Musa Nxumalo among others
Works from exhibitions as varied as In Transit, Is everybody comfortable?, Face her, and Seeing Women are going to be screened. Each exhibition, approached thematically, contains work geared towards a curatorial approach that responds to issues around gender roles, women, and the social environments they occupy.
No. 1 Central Place has convenient underground parking available, and is home to a selection of restaurants, shops and offices such as Sofiatown, Cappello, Kaldi’s Coffee, Xarra Books, and Kaya FM. Adjacent to the centre is the Newtown Park, which borders on venues such as the Bassline, the Dance Factory, and Sci Bono. No. 1 Central Place is situated on the corners of Henry Nxumalo and Jeppe streets, across from Mary Fitzgerald Square and MuseumAfrika.
For more information about Newtown
www.newtown.co.za/
For more information about the Market Photo Workshop www.marketphotoworkshop.co.za/
The screening has been made possible by the Newtown Improvement District.
