Fred [London] Limited is delighted to announce a new and exciting direction from 2010!

During a long period of research we have been looking at work by African artists, African-American artists, and artists of African descent based in Europe. In particular, we have examined the socio-political issues facing these artists in post-colonial and western immigrant sub-cultures - including those of race, gender and sexuality. It is our belief that some of the most interesting work being made today comes from such artists; many of who have not previously exhibited in the UK. Working within a framework of race-based dynamics and differences, these artists explore notions of categorisation in their work - be it the idea of identity, nationhood, ethnicity, sexuality, religion and belonging.

At PULSE ART FAIR in Miami this December we will preview our 2010 programme with a group of significant work by artists of and from the African Diaspora. On this occasion, and ahead of a series of major monograph shows we are delighted to announce representation of:

NINA CHANEL ABNEY (USA)
ZANELE MUHOLI (South Africa)
CONRAD BOTES (South Africa)
GODFRIED DONKOR (Ghana/UK)

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Nina Chanel Abney’s bold paintings are characteristically intense, overt, and ‘in your face’. Her large scale canvases of cartoon-like figures contain narratives which reveal reoccurring themes and elements. Domesticity, for example, is hinted at through reoccurring motifs such as yellow gloves. These gloves symbolise both domestic and slave housework and are a metaphor for the cleaning-up of a recently made or found mess. Historical and events such as assassinations, slave uprisings, inaugurations and birthdays also figure prominently in her work.

Abneys paintings often express her interest in the notion of mixing up concepts of race and gender. She interchanges male and female body parts and often reverses the colour of her subjects- painting white figures black and black figures white. This loose play of reversals serves to highlight the similarities rather than the differences between us. In her latest series of paintings Abney has taken inspiration from Lewis Caroll’s Alice in Wonderland- finding the altered reality imposed on Alice mirrors her own idea of altered reality. Abney is a powerful storyteller and her work is full of mystery. “I have a definite story in my head,” she says, “but I like to leave it to the viewer to figure it out.”

Nina Chanel Abney was born in New York in 1982. Since graduating in 2007 with a MFA from the Parsons School of Design she has had two solo exhibitions in New York and has been included in numerous group shows such as the Rubell Collection exhibiton “30 Americans”. In 2010 will hold her first international show at Fred [London].

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Zanele Muholi’s conceptually provocative and confrontational photographs are an ongoing exploration into the lives and politics of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, and specifically, black lesbian women in South Africa. By capturing her subjects alone or together in a particularly frank and intimate way, she challenges the
historical objectification of the black female body and questions commonly held prejudices. As a gender and sexual rights activist her primary interest is the political and social issues of her work. Her obsessive and honest visual diary challenges social tolerance and her photographs have both excited and disturbed audiences in her native South Africa. Sometimes playful, sometimes provocative, her photogrpahs are always beautifully tender and sensitive.

Zanele Muholi was born in Durban, South Africa in 1972 and currently lives in South Africa. Since her first solo exhibition in Johannesburg in 2004, she has exhibited internationally. She was the 2009 Ida Ely Rubin Artist-in Residence at MIT in Cambridge, Mass. and recieved this year’s Casa Africa Prize at the Bamako Biennale.

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Conrad Botes originally rose to fame with Bittercomix, his extraordinary series of comic books and publications. Rude and almost abusive, Bittercomix enjoys a cult following in South Africa. This comic book aesthetic is carried over into Botes’s work and he has been called the “torchbearer of the Post-Pop movement in South Africa”.

His work contains a powerful existential vision. Much as an archaeologist would, Botes has unearthed a debased Christian iconography, albeit one neither sacred nor redemptive. The symbolic references and meanings of the icons left by Christianity after God had died – its devils, sacraments, and the narrative of good versus evil are no longer recognised and become tokens void of context. These icons and elements teem with anger, disillusion and Botes’s cynicism. The dark humour found in Botes’ work serves as a coping strategy somewhere between suffering and ease and is built on the psychic and pathological chaos and disorder endemic in South Africa’s past and
present.


Conrad Botes was born in Cape Town in 1969. He has exhibited in the UK, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain, and New York. His work is represented in international collections including the The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), the Michaelis Collection and the Art Omi Collection (NYC). In 2004, he was awarded the Vita-Art award and in 2006 he participated in the Havanna Biennale. In 2008, he was one of three South African artists to exhibit at the Third Guangzhou Triennial in China.

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Godfried Donkor explores contradictions, victimization, ideals and the presumption of innoncence. He examines the presentation of the black body as a commodity in Western culture first seen in the slave trade, then in the worlds of sport, fashion and sex. His images of scantily dressed black women or iconic athletes, for example, are often lifted from fashion advertisements or pornographic magazines, and are placed against a backdrop of financial newspaper pages, or slave ship prints. In this manner Donkor examines such issues as capitalism, globalisation and liberation by fusing and juxtaposing the incongruous symbols of the eighteenth century with the contemporary; the slave trade with Trinidadian glamour girls.


Godfried Donkor was born in Ghana in 1964 and lives in London. He has exhibited internationally including: Authentic/Eccentric, Venice Biennale, 2001, Pin Up, Tate Modern, 2003-4, Around the World in 80 Days, ICA, London, 2006. He will exhibit at FRED in 2010.