Alexander Opper | Interventions in Practice

Alexander Opper's two new bodies of work - 20 seconds & Figure / Ground - presented on Latitudes, form part of the show Interventions in Practice. The exhibition comprises the work of eight academic staff members from the University of Johannesburg's Faculty of Art Design and Architecture (FADA) and is curated by FADA Gallery director Eugene Hön. The participants are Alexander Opper, Bongani Khoza, Deirdre Pretorius, Khanya Mthethwa, Marc Edwards, Martin Bolton, Thato Radebe, and Eugene Hön. A diverse range of work across disciplines is on display, from photography to jewelry, an artist’s book, industrial design tools, and products, ceramic transferware, and various forms of visual art expressions in mixed media. Each artist and designer has been provided with a dedicated space, across the gallery’s two floors, in which to exhibit their work.

The exhibition serves not only as a platform for staff to showcase their practice-based research to the university community and broader public, but also to facilitate their applications to the Department of Higher Education (DHET) to have this work accredited and recognised as creative research outputs. The DHET’s policy on the evaluation of creative research outputs was published in 2017 and its implementation began in 2019. This milestone followed years of lobbying by academics in the creative disciplines across South Africa for the formal recognition of creative research outputs as research. Creative practitioners working in universities across South Africa have welcomed this opportunity for their creative work to be formally recognised and rewarded as research outputs through a process of peer review.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue that provides information on each contributor and in which participants contextualise and elaborate on their work. Their respective bodies of work have been conceptualised within a scholarly framework as a form of research, and hence contributors, in particular those working in the design fields, were freed from the constraints which operate within commercial working environments. Participants have aimed to create original work which contributes to the production of new knowledge in their given fields. Whilst the work is being physically exhibited in the FADA Gallery, it will also be made more broadly available during and after the exhibition through the use of various digital platforms. Viewers are invited to engage with the exhibition in both the physical and digital spaces and to participate in the series of talks and walkabouts which accompany the exhibition run.
The installations and bodies of work exhibited reaffirm the FADA staff’s commitment to producing work within and across their areas of expertise and research and the value they place on creative research output. In this way faculty members continuously expand their knowledge in and across various fields. This mode invariably enriches the scope and depth of teaching and learning within the broad range of disciplines on offer at FADA while contributing to the ongoing development of creative outputs as research.

Exhibition run:
Tuesday 10 August - Friday 15 October 2021.
Viewing by appointment: Send an email to Eugene Hön - eugeneh@uj.ac.za.
Gallery Hours: Mondays to Friday 09:00 – 16:00, Saturdays 09:00 – 13:00.
(Closed public and university holidays).