Berni Searle

Berni Searle
Born (1964-07-07) 7 July 1964
Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
Nationality South African
Education Michaelis School of Fine Art
Known for Photography
Multimedia
Video
Website http://bernisearle.com/

Berni Searle (born 7 July 1964[1] in Cape Town, South Africa) is an artist who works with photography, video, and film to produce lens-based installations that stage narratives connected to history, memory, and place. Often politically and socially engaged, her work also draws on the universal emotions associated with vulnerability, loss and beauty.[2]

Searle lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa and is currently Associate Professor at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town.

Education

Searle received her BA in Fine Art in 1987 and a postgraduate diploma in Education in 1988 from the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town.[3]

After graduating with a BA in fine art in 1987 and a postgraduate diploma in education in 1988, Searle taught art in a Cape Town high school for two years and then re-entered Michaelis, registering for the masters' degree in sculpture in 1992. While this was clearly a valuable time for accumulating technical expertise and consolidating an affinity for the three-dimensional form-something that is still visible in her photographic works today-the search for both form and content continued. Her body of work presented for the masters' degree in fine art in 1995 shows abstract, voluminous structures in cement, ciment fondu, steel, wire, bronze, and glass that seem somehow incongruous with the much more intimate and lyrical works by which Searle is recognized today. Created a year after the first democratic elections, these works were meant to question euphoric ideals of nationhood and nation building in a lexicon strongly mediated, even regulated, by context and instruction.[3]

Work

Berni Searle utilizes large scale digital photographic prints, found materials, and time-based media such as film to capture her work. Searle’s work encompasses performative narratives and the self as a figure to embody history, land-memory and place. Searle is known for utilizing her own body in her pieces such as "Girl" from the "Colour Me" series. Searle’s work has a consistent theme and use of her own body. Her work deals with South African History, the awareness of one’s own skin color, and the consumption of a woman’s body as a commodity; the confrontational power of that same body in which so many myths, desires, and necessities reside.[4]

Awards

Nominations and shortlists

  • FNB VITA Art Award (2000)[1]
  • Daimler-Chrysler Award for South African Contemporary Art (2000)
  • Artes Mundi award (2004)

Selected exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

  • 2011: Interlaced, De Hallen, the Belfry Tower, Bruges; Museum voor Moderne Kunst Arnhem (MMKA), Arnhem, Netherlands; Frac Lorraine, Metz, France (with new commissioned work)
  • 2011: Shimmer, Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town
  • 2012: Black Smoke Rising Trilogy, Ron Mandos gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands
  • 2013: Refuge, La Galerie Particuliere, Paris

Group exhibitions

References

  1. 1 2 3 Williamson, Sue. "Artbio - Berni Searle". artthrob - Issue No. 33, May 2000. artthrob. Retrieved 14 August 2010.
  2. ↑ Leander (2016-08-10). "Berni Searle". www.sahistory.org.za. Retrieved 2017-07-21.
  3. 1 2 Van Der Watt, Liese. "Tracing Berni Searle." African Arts 37:4 (Winter 2004): 74-79.
  4. ↑ Leander (2016-08-10). "Berni Searle". South African History Online. Retrieved 2017-12-17.
  5. ↑ Gevisser, Mark (23 April 2011). "Figures & Fictions at the V&A". London: The Guardian. Retrieved 28 February 2017.

Bibliography

Perryer, Sophie (2004). 10 Years 100 Artists: Art In A Democratic South Africa. Cape Town: Struik. ISBN 1868729877.

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