VCUarts Anderson Gallery Fall Exhibition features South African Artist’s Work

This fall the Anderson Gallery features the work of South African artist Siemon Allen, whose lively work explores his native country’s history and identity in unexpected and powerful ways.

The installations in “Imaging South Africa: Collection Projects by Siemon Allen” will fill all three floors at the Anderson Gallery from Aug. 27 to Oct. 31. The Anderson Gallery, which is the exhibition facility of the VCU School of the Arts, is located at 907 ½ W. Franklin St. on VCU’s Monroe Park Campus. The gallery is open Tuesday through Friday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Saturday and Sunday, from noon to 5 p.m.

Allen, who teaches in VCU’s Department of Sculpture + Extended Media, creates installations made with cultural materials collected with sometimes staggering devotion. The pieces inspire simple wonderment at first glance and then invite a closer look that reveals surprising discoveries.

Ashley Kistler, director of the Anderson Gallery, said Allen is a master at managing the architecture of his pieces, creating vivid impressions for viewers both upon first seeing a work and then again as they progressively experience a work. Aesthetics are important to him, and the shapes and colors of the objects he presents can prove mesmerizing.

“The form of each piece has a meaning that reinforces the content of the piece,” Kistler said.

Allen is most interested in South African identity and its many complications. He uses cultural artifacts, such as stamps, records and newspapers, to mine this territory. For instance, “Records,” which is showing on Anderson’s second floor, is a collection of more than 400 international recordings by the South African activist and singer Miriam Makeba. The records highlight how her music and anti-apartheid political message was presented in cultures around the world.

Also on the second floor are large digital prints of old, influential records representing different aspects of South African’s musical history. The reproductions show every scratch, blemish and shading that the original record received through multiple owners and spins. The pieces suggest the people who listened to the records without showing them.

“They’re like ghosts almost,” Kistler said.

On the third floor, the exhibition features an engrossing display of more than 50,000 stamps from South Africa, arranged in chronological order from oldest to newest on a circular black board that nearly connects. The stamps help trace South Africa’s history over a 100-year period, demonstrating the ways the country has branded itself and commemorated its history during the course of a century. Visitors are helpless not to study the small stamps up close and to observe the tumultuous route that the country took, feeling the weight of the journey in a particularly cumulative way.

Allen will give a gallery talk on Sept. 15 on 6 p.m. at the Anderson Gallery. The gallery also will host, “In the Groove: Collecting and Curating African Music,” featuring Allen in conversation with Bill Lupoletti, WRIR world music director, and David Noyes, WRIR host of “Ambiance Congo” and co-host of “The Motherland Influence,” on Sept. 29 at 6 p.m. WRIR 97.3 FM is sponsoring the event.

In addition to Allen’s exhibition, the Anderson Gallery also has opened Sponge HQ on its third floor in a transformed space. The space will host workshops, performances and installations throughout the year. Sponge is an ongoing, participatory project developed by Hope Ginsburg, an assistant professor in VCUarts. Sponge encourages the mixing of disciplines and an unwary approach to the unfamiliar. Visitors are welcome to the space during public hours on Tuesday and Thursday, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Portal windows allow visitors to the Anderson Gallery to check on Sponge HQ during regular gallery hours when the space is closed.