Subotzky’s Retinal Shift for final showing at Standard Bank Gallery

Mikhael Subotzky: Retinal Shift
Standard Bank Gallery
17 April – 15 June 2013

Retinal Shift, the exhibition by Mikhael Subotzky, Standard Bank Young Artist Award winner for the Visual Arts in 2012, will be on display at Standard Bank Gallery from 17 April to 15 June 2013. This is the final stage in the country-wide tour of the exhibition which was first shown at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in mid-2012.

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 on exhibition draw from a diversity of sources: archival portraits from the last century, found surveillance footage, and Subotzky’s own photographs from various series that have been re-contextualised.

The opening work on the exhibition, Self-Portrait (With Assistance of Optometrist) (2012) shows high-resolution images of Subotzky’s left and right retinas placed side by side. Speaking of this work the artist says, “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. So it is a self-portrait of myself, the photographer, at a moment that I could not see.” 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.

Subotzky’s photographic work combines the directness of the social documentary mode with a questioning of the nature of the photographic medium itself. This is evidenced in the five series of works that make up Retinal Shift: Moses and Griffiths (2012), Who’s Who (2012), Don’t Even Think of It (2012), CCTV (2011) and I Was Looking Back (2012) – a compilation of images from Subotzky’s archive. Individually and collectively these demonstrate his concern with the structures of narrative and representation, and the relationship between social storytelling and the formal poetics of image making.

Moses and Griffiths, a four-channel projection, is a filmic portrait of Grahamstown seen through the eyes of two men: Moses Lamani, who presents tours of Grahamstown through the Observatory Museum’s 19th-century camera, and Griffiths Sokuyeka, who conducts similar tours of the 1820 Settlers Monument. Moses and Griffiths juxtaposes institutional and individual histories: the ‘official’ tours and the personal tours in which each guide speaks about his own history and experience of the town. The four narratives play simultaneously on separate screens, but voices pause at intervals, appearing to create a conversation between the individual stories.

Who’s Who (2012) consists of 11 slideshows. To make this powerful work, Subotzky scanned every passport-sized image from 11 selected volumes of the serial publication, Who’s Who of Southern Africa, beginning in 1911 and moving at 10-year intervals to 2011, when the series was replaced with an online version. Viewers are confronted with a seemingly endless parade of portraits of those judged by the publishers of this venerable series to be of importance. Unsurprisingly, most of the portraits show middle-aged white men. Decontextualised from any background information: name, title, achievements, etc, the work is a compelling reflection of the social divides that characterised South African society for much of the period.

Don’t Even Think of It (2012), is a single-channel film shot from the window of Subotzky’s apartment in 2004, reflecting the sleazy pathos of downtown Cape Town. Somewhat voyeuristic, this work includes images of a masturbating man, a group of homeless men devouring scavenged food, and an irate householder, amongst a slew of other images.

CCTV (2011), is a single-channel film that draws on CCTV footage of central Johannesburg acquired from the police. Anthea Buys, writing in Retinal Shift, the catalogue, captures the compelling horror of this installation eloquently: “These glimpses of the night-time city range from the mundane to the horrific: besides two blithe tyre thieves and a pair trying to remove a manhole from the road, two men are badly battered and then robbed and left lying on the street.” As these incidents unfold, the control-room operators change the view, zooming in and out of the action, focusing closely on individuals at will. “CCTV ends unexpectedly,” Buys adds, “with a piece of choreography that is partly Subotzky’s and partly the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department’s. After being arrested, the perpetrators of the various crimes we have just witnessed are forced to look directly at the hidden surveillance cameras. The cameras zoom in and, for a few seconds, it is as if the actors in all these dramas leave their fictional worlds and peer out at the audience.

I Was Looking Back (2012) is an installation of 100 photographs mined from Subotzky’s archive. It includes, amongst others, images from his final year student project, Die Vier Hoeke (2004) and Beaufort West (2008), and photographs that chart his personal life, an interesting juxtaposition of images!

Retinal Shift deals not just with looking and seeing, but with being watched; it’s the moments when the subject meets the eye of the camera, and looks back consciously, that give this exhibition its particular potency.

This exhibition runs until 15 June 2013, at the Standard Bank Gallery, corner of Simmonds and Frederick Streets, Johannesburg.The Gallery (Tel: 011 631 4467) is open Mondays to Fridays, 08:00-16:30; on Saturdays, 09:00-13:00; and is closed on Sundays and public holidays. Admission is free. For further details about the Standard Bank Young Artist Awards see the Standard Bank Arts website www.standardbankarts.co.za. For further information about Standard Bank Gallery see www.standardbanks.co.za. For further information about Mikhael Subotzky see http://www.subotzkystudio.com/.

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Author: Fiona Gordon from The Famous Idea Trading Co.. Originally distributed by MyPR.co.za.

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Images:

Mikhael Subotzky, Self-Portrait (With Assistance of Optometrist) R, 2012. Two colour prints mounted to dibond and diasec. 80 x 100cm each. Photographer: courtesy Goodman Gallery
Mikhael Subotzky, Walter, Beaufort West, 2008. From I Was Looking Back, 2012, wall installation. Photographer: courtesy Goodman Gallery