Michaelis Galleries is proud to present The Tierney Fellowship Group Exhibition, for the 6th edition of the international biennial festival, The Cape Town Month of Photography Film & New Media.

Michaelis Galleries is proud to present The Tierney Fellowship Group Exhibition, for the 6th edition of the international biennial festival, The Cape Town Month of Photography Film & New Media. The exhibition showcases the new work of three young Tierney fellows of 2013/2014 – Ashley Walters (Michaelis School of Fine Art, mentored by Svea Josephy and Jean Brundrit), Shogan Naidoo (WITS, mentored by Jo Ractcliffe) and Sipho Gongxeka (Market Photo Workshops, mentored by Pieter Hugo).

The Tierney Fellowship was created in 2003 by The Tierney Family Foundation to support emerging artists in the field of photography. The primary goal of the Fellowship is to find tomorrow’s distinguished artists and leaders in the world of photography and assist them in overcoming the challenges that a photographer faces at the beginning of his or her career.

These three young photographers have produced particularly interesting work around identity, masculinity and space.

Ashley Walters examines life close to home, considering the landscapes, spaces, structures and lives lived in the suburb of Uitsig, Cape Town. In addition to questions of photographic representation, Walters It urges the viewer to consider a writing of a different narrative about the Cape Flats, one which is not rooted in apartheid-­â€era documentary photography, but which engages with the here and now.

Sipho Gongxeka‘s portraits of young men from Soweto focus on ideas of fashion, representation and masculinity. His work aims to draw from the cinematography of South African gangster films, focusing on the stereotype and the representation of gangsters. Fiction and reality feed each other, and it is this circular relationship that he is interested in.

Shogan Naidoo’s fascination with air travel became amplified on a photography trip to Vryburg, a small agricultural town with a disbanded airport. Naidoo’s work explores airports, their association with the beginning and end of journeys and ways of comprehending surrounding landscapes. In particular, he is concerned with the presence and absence of the traveler in his images, focusing on how desire and separation is constructed.

With significant similarities and differences between the works of the artists, each is engaged in a photography that compels us to think about our pasts and our futures in different ways.

Sipho Gongxeka (b. 1989) – Sipho Gongxeka was born in Soweto, Johannesburg. Upon completion of his matric Gongxeka developed a passion for photography and fashion. In 2011, Gongxeka successfully completed the Foundation and Intermediate courses at Market Photo Workshop. In 2012 he continued with his photography studies at the Market Photo Workshop enrolling for the yearlong Advanced Programme in Photography. He has published locally and been exhibited in group exhibitions that include Identikit and Show Us Our Land.
Shogan Naidoo (b. 1986) – Shogan Ganas Naidoo completed his Fine Art bachelors at the University of Witwatersrand in 2007. In 2010 he was a participant in the play/urban exchange at the ESAD School of Design in France. In 2011 he completed a filmmaking course at the New York Film Academy. He joined the Market Photo Workshop in 2012 where he designed several photography publications. He is currently reading towards his Master of Fine Art at the same university.

Ashley Walters (b. 1983) – Working primarily in photography and video, Walters received both his Bachelor of Fine Art with distinction (2010) and Master of Fine Art with distinction (2013) from the University of Cape Town. Walters has been included in local and international group exhibitions such as Terminal, a Gordon Institute for Performing and Creative Arts project and SUPER SALE, des Kunstverein Wolfsburg, Germany.