Blessing Ngobeni: Standard Bank Young Artist award winner

Blessing Ngobeni: Standard Bank Young Artist award winnerStandard Bank not only prides itself as a leading financial institution in Africa, but also has a long legacy of supporting the visual arts.

by Portia Chamapiwa

23-08-2023 13:06

in Art and Artists

Blessing Ngobeni 2020 Standard Bank Young Artist: Image: Supplied

Ntsumi Ya Vutomi Standard Bank Gallery | 4 August - 15 September

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Standard Bank not only prides itself as a leading financial institution in Africa, but also has a long legacy of supporting the visual arts through its gallery.

Boasting a history of over three decades of displaying visual arts, an exhibition at the Standard Bank Gallery forms part of the prestigious prize for the annual Standard Bank Young Artist Award Winner for Visual Arts.

Following his award in 2020, Ntsumi Ya Vutomi is Blessing Ngobeni's first exhibition at the Standard Bank Gallery.

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As a young boy, growing up in an unstable environment, the course of Blessing Ngobeni's life seemed bleak and likely to be struck by the misfortune of a lack of guidance at a critical time in his life.

One could argue that his trajectory into art was therefore not accidental, but rather indicative of the kind of transformative power art would have in his life.

Yet also in making him an interlocutor - a witness if you like - who shows the effects of a troubled, chaotic world that is often unkind to its most vulnerable.

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Art is therefore not only a means of making sense of the world for Ngobeni but also an instrument for depicting his place in an anxious and agitated society still dealing with the traumas of the past.

Blessing Ngobeni's venture into installation art Recently, Ngobeni has ventured into installation art and expanded his repertoire with the use of found objects and material, video, and animation work.

While the work remains large scale in terms of size and figuration, the intricacy of adding new material, such as fabric and small found objects, has created a new layer of processing and understanding the work, making palpable the complexity of a mix of ideas and thoughts he presents to make sense of the world.

Central to Ngobeni's imagery is the dominance of a figure on the picture plane, a characteristic that gives the work its caricature and confrontational quality.

This further accentuates its uniformity and consistent standard.

The figures in Ngobeni's work however, are by no means neutral.

They consist of other images that come from historical references, newspapers, magazine cuttings and other forms of print.

They are caricatures of the characters they represent and appear compromised by the truths of the tragedies carried by the history they depict.

Therefore, Ntsumi Ya Vutomi is an exhibition that not only extends the different facets of Ngobeni's practice but also brings them together as elements of artistic expression and a language that is bold and distinctive.

It includes an acknowledgement of the participants of the Blessing Ngobeni Art Award (BNAP), a prize, which he started in 2016.

The award, is not only a testament to his generosity in his pursuit to give back but also provides financial support, mentorship and a platform for a young up-and-coming artist to exhibit their work.

Establishing such an award is not only visionary but also beneficial for the broader sustainability of the visual arts landscape in widening the network for younger artists to enter the market.

It gives Standard Bank Gallery great pleasure to host this exhibition as part of its Young Artist Award programme for the year.

This forms part of an extensive line of exhibitions that have not only shaped the space through exerting a positive creative impulse, but also becoming part of its prestigious heritage of exhibitions for future generations.

Dr Same Mdluli

Curator and Manager, Standard Bank Gallery

ALSO READ: National Arts Festival: Q&A with award winner Blessing Ngobeni

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