In a somewhat questionable marketing endeavour, the Eastern Cape Region has been sign posted, ‘Frontier Country’ and indeed this is what it is. Historically it is the site of the 9 Frontier Wars and much brutal conflict and living here presently can still seem the edge of nowhere by comparison to many major South African metropols. With Grahamstown at the heart of it, it is also a cosmopolitan space not without vestiges of past pain but - like many colonial outposts in a post-colonial time - it is no longer a satellite to an absent motherland, a mere microcosm of elsewhere, but also a world unto itself.

A potential space of intellectual, debate rather than military conflict – geographically isolated from metropolitan trends – a melting pot of many places, a crucible. In more recent history, this frontier space has been a site of culture, of experiment. Home to an annual arts festival, how is it that Grahamstown with a population of just under 140 000 can command so much creative imagination in novels, plays, poetry and art? Frontier, Border, at the end of the world but not about to fall off – merely at a vantage point to observe a view to come.
- Rat Western


DISCHARGE 2012             COLOUR COLLOQUIUM 2010             SYNTHETIC DIRT 2011

Thursday, April 14, 2011

SYNTHETIC DIRT Programme
Rhodes Fine Art Colloquium
St Peter’s Building, Room 34 &35, St Peter’s Campus, Rhodes University, Somerset Street
Saturday & Sunday, April 16 & 17

Saturday
8:45 – 9:00 Welcome, Rat Western
9:00 – 10:00: Bettina Malcolmess & Alette Schoon
10:00 – 11:00: Rael Salley & Maureen de Jager

11:00 – 11:15: TEA

11:15 – 12:15: Francis Burger & James Webb
12:15 – 1:15: Anton Krueger &Josh Ginsburg

1:15 – 2:00: LUNCH

2:00 – 3:00: Paulette Coetzee & Cheryl Stobie
3:00 – 4:00: Gavin Krastin & Athina Vahla

6:00 Exhibition Opening, Albany History Museum, Somerset Street

Sunday
9:00 – 10:00: Ashraf Jamal & James Sey
10:00 – 11:00: Matthew Partridge & Mary Corrigall

11:00 – 11:15: TEA

11:15 – 12:15: Alex Opper & Dominic Thorburn
12:15 – 1:15: Chad Rossouw & Charles Maggs

1:15 – 2:00: LUNCH

2:00 – 3:00: Imraan Coovadia & Sean O’Toole
3:00 – 3:30: Wrap-Up Rat Western

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