Gavin Jantjes (born 1948 in

District Six District Six (Afrikaans ''Distrik Ses'') is a former inner-city residential area in Cape Town, South Africa. Over 60,000 of its inhabitants were History of South Africa in the Apartheid era#Forced removal, forcibly removed during the 1970s ...

Cape Town Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...

) is a South African painter, curator, writer and lecturer.

Life

Jantjes attended the

Michaelis School of Fine Art The Michaelis School of Fine Art was founded in 1925, and is the Fine Arts department of the University of Cape Town. The school's current director is Associate Professor Kurt Campbell. There are three research institutions associated with the sch ...

at the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university statu ...

from 1966 to 1969. He left apartheid South Africa in 1970 on a DAAD scholarship to study at the

Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg The ''Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg (HFBK Hamburg)'' is the University of Fine Arts of Hamburg. It dates to 1767, when it was called the ''Hamburger Gewerbeschule''; later it became known as ''Landeskunstschule Hamburg''. The main build ...

between 1970 and 1972. He was a founding member of the

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

anti-

apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

movement. He was granted political asylum in Germany in 1973. He worked as a consultant visual campaign director for the

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integrati ...

from 1978 to 1982. In 1979 he published the ''South African Colouring Book'', which consisted of eleven collaged serigraphs exploring apartheid in the format of a child's coloring book. He moved his studio to Wiltshire, England in 1982. In 1986 he was appointed a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at

Chelsea College of Arts Chelsea College of Arts is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London based in London, United Kingdom, and is a leading British art and design institution with an international reputation. It offers further and higher educati ...

, The London Institute. From 1986 to 1990 he was on the council of the

Arts Council of Great Britain The Arts Council of Great Britain was a non-departmental public body dedicated to the promotion of the fine arts in Great Britain. It was divided in 1994 to form the Arts Council of England (now Arts Council England), the Scottish Arts Council (l ...

and was its consultant for the formation of the Institute of New International Visual Art ( InIVA). He also served on the advisory board of the

Tate Liverpool Tate Liverpool is an art gallery and museum in Liverpool, Merseyside, England, and part of Tate, along with Tate St Ives, Cornwall, Tate Britain, London, and Tate Modern, London. The museum was an initiative of the Merseyside Development Corpo ...

from 1992 until 1995, and was a trustee of London's

Serpentine Gallery The Serpentine Galleries are two contemporary art galleries in Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, Central London. Recently rebranded to just Serpentine, the organisation is split across Serpentine South, previously known as the Serpentine Gallery, ...

from 1995 until 1998. He became artistic director of the

Henie Onstad Kunstsenter The Henie Onstad Kunstsenter is an art museum located at Høvikodden in Bærum municipality in Viken county, Norway. It is situated on a headland jutting into the Oslofjord, approximately southwest of Oslo. History The artcentre was founded ...

, Hovikodden, near Oslo in 1998 and curated one person exhibitions there of Gordon Bennett,

Yinka Shonibare Yinka Shonibare (born 9 August 1962), is a British-Nigerian artist living in the United Kingdom. His work explores cultural identity, colonialism and post-colonialism within the contemporary context of globalisation. A hallmark of his art is t ...

Susan Hiller Susan Hiller (March 7, 1940 – January 28, 2019) was an American-born artist who lived in London, United Kingdom. Her art practice included installation, video, photography, performance and writing. Early life and education Born in Tallah ...

, Marie-Jo Lafontaine,

Shirin Neshat Shirin Neshat ( fa, شیرین نشاط; born March 26, 1957 in Qazvin) is an Iranian visual artist who lives in New York City, known primarily for her work in film, video and photography. Her artwork centers on the contrasts between Islam and th ...

Marlene Dumas Marlene Dumas (born 3 August 1953) is a South African artist and painter currently based in the Netherlands. Life and work Dumas was born in 1953 in Cape Town, South Africa and grew up in Kuils River in the Western Cape, where her father had ...

and Carlos Capelan. In 2004 he joined the

National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, ce ...

, Oslo, as its Senior Consultant for International Contemporary Exhibitions: he curated exhibitions there on

Amar Kanwar Amar Kanwar was born in New Delhi in 1964 where he continues to live and work as a filmmaker. Kanwar studied at the Department of History, Ramjas College, University of Delhi, Delhi University (1982-1985), and at the Mass Communication Research ...

Harun Farocki Harun Farocki (9 January 1944 – 30 July 2014) was a German filmmaker, author, and lecturer in film. Early life and education Farocki was born as Harun El Usman FaroqhiMargalit Fox (3 August 2014)''New York Times''. in Neutitschein, which is n ...

and Nicholas Hlobo. He was also the Project Director of the Visual Century Project on 20th Century and contemporary South African resulting in the publication, Visual Century: South African Art in Context (2011). He left the National Museum in 2014 and reopened his studio in Oslo in 2015. He continues to paint, moving between Cape Town, England and Oslo.

Exhibitions

One man shows of work by Gavin Jantjes include: * 1970 The Artists Gallery, Cape Town * 1976 Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London and Henie Onstad Art Centre, Hovikodden * 1977 Provinciehuis, Groningen * 1978 Kulturhuset, Stockholm * 1979 Kunsterhaus Bethanien, Berlin * 1980–3, 1986, 1990 Edward Totah Gallery, London * 1984 Midland Group, Nottingham * 1985 Black Art Gallery, London * 1987 Blue Coat Gallery, Liverpool * 1988 Herbert Museum and Art Gallery, Coventry * 1989 City Museums and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent

Collections

Jantjes’ work in is the collections of

Tate Britain Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...

, London;

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

, London;

Arts Council Collection The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both hi ...

;

Wolverhampton Art Gallery Wolverhampton Art Gallery is located in the City of Wolverhampton, in the West Midlands, United Kingdom. The building was funded and constructed by local contractor Philip Horsman (1825–1890), and built on land provided by the municipal auth ...

; Coventry City Museum;

National Museum of African Art The National Museum of African Art is the Smithsonian Institution's African art museum, located on the National Mall of the United States capital. Its collections include 9,000 works of traditional and contemporary African art from both Sub-S ...

, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Publications

A Fruitful Incoherence: Dialogues with Artists on Internationalism / dited by Gavin Jantjes in association with Rohini Malik, Steve Bury and Gilane TawadrosLondon: INIVA, 1998. WorldCat no. 39931382

References

* Christine Eyene, "Gavin Jantjes, Freedom Hunters (1976): Subtexts and Intertwined Narratives" in Outi Remes and Pam Skelton (eds.), Conspiracy Dwellings: Surveillance in Contemporary Art. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010. WorldCat no. 551122637. * Info at: https://web.archive.org/web/20110609232602/http://www.c-s-p.org/flyers/Conspiracy-Dwellings--Surveillance-in-Contemporary-Art1-4438-1905-0.htm * Amna Malik, “Conceptualizing ‘Black’ British art through the lens of exile”, in Kobena Mercer, Exiles, Diasporas & Strangers. INIVA, 2008. WorldCat no. 602216574 * “Gavin Jantjes”, South African History Online, http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/gavin-jantjes-0 * "Korabra" Gavin Jantjes short film made by Pogus Caesar for Central Television, UK 1986

External links

Black Artists & Modernism: http://www.blackartistsnodernism.co.uk/dossier/gavin-jantjes/ {{DEFAULTSORT:Jantjes, Gavin 1948 births Living people South African painters South African male painters Michaelis School of Fine Art alumni Academics of Camberwell College of Arts