Spier Contemporary
South Africa's Largest Biennale Contemporary Art Exhibition.
The Spier Contemporary exhibition has been conceived to provide an open platform for artists to show their work, uncompromised by the limitations of technology, space and access. Artists in South Africa work under extremely varied conditions and see from radically different perspectives.These differences are what define a collective identity and unique social and cultural landscape. The Spier Contemporary provides a space for exploring that diversity, giving audiences insights into that complexity and thus contributing to our understanding of difference.
The project has historically been designed as a competition, exhibition and series of development projects. It has to-date had two iterations – Spier Contemporary 2008 and Spier Contemporary 2010. After a very successful Spier Contemporary 2010 Exhibition at Cape Town’s City Hall, a tour of the winning artists traveled to various cities in South Africa.
Spier Contemporary Gallery
(Click images to enlarge)
Spier Contemporary Video
The core objectives of the Spier Contemporary are to:
- Create a large-scale national exhibition, which genuinely reflects the diversity of the arts community living in South Africa;
- Develop new audiences and markets for artists, who do not normally have access to such a large pool of potential buyers;
- Access new audiences and develop their appreciation of a broad spectrum of artistic forms; and
- Provide training and development for artists and curators.
Competition and Exhibition
The Spier Contemporary has functioned as both a national competition and exhibition. The competition has been open to all artists and art forms including, but not exclusive to the traditional mediums (e.g. painting, printmaking, photography and sculpture) and newer languages (e.g. installation, new media, film or performance).
For the 2010 exhibition, submissions took place at thirteen selection centres across South Africa. Whilst the majority of entries came in to the major city centres, there was a noticeable increase in outlying areas from the Spier Contemporary 2008. This was the result of a significant amount of developmental work that the Spier Contemporary project rolled out in these areas.
There were just over 2,700 entries in total; from which 101 artists were selected to exhibit their art. This translated into 132 art pieces in the Exhibition that launched in Cape Town on 14th March 2010 at the City Hall in Darling Street. At the launch, five cash prizes worth R500 000 in total were selected by the judging team and seven international artist-in-residency prizes were made by the individual residency programmes. At the end of the Cape Town leg, the ‘People’s Choice’ Award (based on votes by those visiting the Exhibition) were given to two of the exhibiting artists. 20,000 people saw the full Spier Contemporary 2010 Exhibition during its two-month tenure at the Cape Town City Hall.
The Spier Contemporary 2010 Winners’ Tour opened in Port Elizabeth for the World Cup. Thereafter, the Exhibition moved to Durban, Polokwane, Potchefstroom and Pretoria.
Take a video tour of the 2010 Exhibition, see archive footage of the 2010 exhibition and view recent updates on www.spiercontemporary.co.za
