The exhibition, Willie Bester: Recent work, featuring recent sculptures and paintings, including a series of 21 portraits of people living in Montagu, will be on show in The Reservoir, Oliewenhuis Art Museum from 10 June to 31 July 2011. This is Willie Bester’s first exhibition in Bloemfontein and is not to be missed. The exhibition will be opened by Estelle Jacobs, former Director of the AVA Gallery, at 19:00 on Thursday, 9 June 2011 in The Reservoir. Willie Bester will also be present at the opening function.
Willie Bester is regarded as one of South Africa’s most important resistance or ‘struggle’ artists. He incorporates recycled material into his paintings, assemblages and sculptures and is best known for his installations made of found objects. His work usually comments on political injustices, human rights and social issues of the day. Even after the struggle, he understands that contemporary South Africa is far from idyllic and he continues commenting on the ills in our communities. He explains “I am sometimes tempted to go to the seaside and to paint beautiful things from nature. But I do not do it; my art has to be taken as a nasty tasting medicine for awakening consciences.”
Bester was born in 1956 in the Montagu section of the Cape flats and after suffering many hardships, including being moved from an area designated under apartheid’s Group Areas Act as appropriate for white people, into the ‘coloured’ area at the age of ten, he started working as a full-time professional artist in 1991. Apart from participating in the Community Arts Project in Cape Town (Cape Town’s primary informal organisation that embraced political art making) in 1986, he has no formal training and is a self-taught artist. He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions locally and internationally and has won some significant awards, including the Johnny Walker Artist Award in 2009. In recognition of his significant contributions, he also received the Order of the Disa: Member from the Western Cape Provincial Government in 2004.
Please contact Ester le Roux at Oliewenhuis Art Museum at 051 4479609 or oliewen@nasmus.co.za for additional information.