Download the e-Catalogue for the exhibition "Common Room"

Put this together to share my recent exhibition in Johannesburg with you.

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Common Room - Opening Night

These images are from the opening night of 'Common Room' at Nirox Projects at Arts on Main on Tuesday. The exhibition is part of my Commonwealth Connections residency programme and also follows my residency exchange at the 12 Decades Hotel at Main Street Life.

The intention of the show is to use these projects to make a kind of snapshot of public-public communication at this moment in Johannesburg. All of the pieces on show - JHB Closer, JHB Cc: Everybody, Tr. 2.0 using JHB dialects, and the Risk zine and performance - all deal with how we're talking to each other in public right now, whether non-verbally on the street, in personal advertisements, in what informmation is shared for free publicly, or in common legal signage and policy, which holds a lot of information on how we see and do ourselves and each other here.

Putting this exhibition together would have been impossible without the help of so many friends and colleagues who were generous with their time, skills and resources, and particularly Molemo Moiloa and Murray Kruger who I can't thank enough for their support and involvement.

For now I'll share pictures from the event and installation views of the work, and detail the individual projects later in subsequent posts.

Photos of opening night by Michael 'Mack' Magagane.


disclaimer at entrance



murray kruger trading risk zine



























movement installation for Tr. 2.0

From 'Introduction'

These are some images from the presentation I made last Thursday @ Market Photo Workshop, in Newtown, Johannesburg. The intention was really to say hello and to show and talk about the process of making some of my recent zines and photo projects. The audience was made up mainly of photograpers and photography students and educators, and with some discussion, some questioning and some answering, I think it became a really valuable exchange for all of us.

Sincerest thanks to Photo Workshop for hosting this and also to Biko for the pics.

-Rodell

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photos courtesy Tefo Biko Onkgopotse
click to enlarge.

Tr.

In Port of Spain and in the towns going east, and around, the only information we share publicly and is given for free and is made part of our visual environment is advertising and religious material.

Messages are personally, individually given to people occasionally during advertising 'activations' by private companies and daily by people of various faiths through the use of 'tracts' - small, pamphlet-type informational things intended to share ideas - handed out around town in places with a lot of pedestrian Tr.affic.

To introduce and share another kind of information with the people walking around town I made some tracts and with the help of some friends, distributed them in Woodford Square yesterday afternoon.

This first set of Tr.acts - three different ones, each printed on its own colour fluorescent paper - shares ideas from thinkers and writers from all over the world and from different periods over the last few centuries, basically about what it means to be human and about living. The information is 'quotes' from these thinkers and writers but carefully translated from their original forms, which feel foreign to me or like they require Tr.anslation before I can relate the ideas in them to my life in Tr.inindad, into trini dialect.

I did this with Kwasi Shade and Brianna McCarthy volunteering their time and attention to help share, and, to keep it short, we got into all kinds of discussions with people from all walks, everybody passionately sharing their own Tr.uths and talking about these fellas' ideas, which was really valuable. Together we shared about three hundred pieces.

I'm posting some related images below and also making the Tr.acts available as downloadable pdf's for you - laid out, ready to print and photocopy, 3-up on a letter size page with crop marks so you can easily produce and share them too.

I will do this again with new Tr.acts in the future, probably around February. This weekend I'm leaving for a three month residency in South Africa. This action was a really beautiful note to leave on.

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Download: TR.ACT 1 (Tzu, Kaufman, Dostoyevsky) || TR.ACT 2 (Boyd, Eco, Rochefoucauld) || TR.ACT 3 (Fromm, Levi, Frankl)

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Photobooth III at Erotic Art Week 2011

Eyy. Here are some images from this year's 'Photobooth' installation at the third annual Erotic Art Week. These are all self-portraits, shot using a wireless remote control, of visitors to Erotic Art Week's main gallery @ Bohemia. Participants are given the privacy of the booth to make their portraits and the images are shared with their signed consent.

For the third year in a row, I really have to thank Brianna, Victor, and Dave for their invaluable help with setting up and managing the photobooth.

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Earlier this year, images from Photobooth 2010 were shown in Joy Wai Gallery's inaugural exhibition "Whose Self Portrait: The Subject Behind The Camera" in New York City.

See images from photobooth 2010 and 2009.

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