Richmond Center for Visual Arts hosts exhibition by South African artist Naomi van Niekerk

Contact: Katie Mumby

March 17, 2023

Green concentric circles, radiating out like the surface of water when hit with rain drops. — A print from Naomi van Niekerk's exhibition “Interval,” which will on display at ɫɫ��'s Richmond Center for Visual Arts.

KALAMAZOO, Mich.—ɫɫ�� Michigan University's Richmond Center for Visual Arts will feature the exhibition "Interval” by Naomi van Niekerk, open to the public on Tuesday, March 28.

The 2023 Annual Student Exhibition, juried by Niekerk, will be presented in concert with Niekerk’s own exhibition. Both will continue to be on view through Friday, April 21.

Postponed from the spring of 2020, Naomi van Niekerk’s solo exhibition in the Kerr Gallery features prints and a series of short films. The exhibition originates from the idea of archiving and making a residue of ephemeral performances and films created across the past five years.

For Niekerk, this reworking of images as etchings or linocuts is an attempt to prolong or evoke the experience of a film or theatre piece.

“My interest in slowing down and decomposing movement dates back to my training as a puppeteer. I recall a specific exercise: two participants hold on to a broom with the tip of their index fingers, taking turns in moving and allowing the other to nudge them in a certain direction,” Niekerk says. “It is an intense exercise in practicing stillness while responding to micro-impulses. The animation of the inanimate other through touch is what drew me to animation years later, hence my impulse to create a series of animated short films. To move material and allow oneself to be moved over distance is at the core of stop-motion animation and my artistic practice.”

In tandem with her exhibition at the Richmond Center, Niekerk is teaching a spring course at the Frostic School of Art in the recently founded Kinetic Imaging area, in addition to serving as a juror for the 2023 Annual Student Exhibition.

The Richmond Center for Visual Arts is free and open to the public Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays from noon to 6 p.m.; Thursdays from noon to 8 p.m. and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. It is closed Sundays and Mondays. Metered parking is available on the first level of the Miller Auditorium ramp.

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