We are delighted to announce the first U.S.A. exhibition of the Kenyan artist and TED Fellow Cyrus Kabiru at Frank Pictures Gallery in association with Ed Cross Fine Art,
Bergamot Station, A-5 2525 Michigan Avenue, Santa Monica, CA 90404 from March 1st - 9th 2013 with a Private View on Saturday 2nd March 5.30 - 8.30pm.

Kabiru will be in Los Angeles for the show - where he is receiving his TED 2013 Fellowship and speaking at the TED The Young, the Wise, the Undiscovered Conference at Long Beach.

C-Stunners are wearable eyewear sculpture created from found materials from Nairobi each piece has its own story forming an on-going social commentary about our relationships with urban spaces and perceptions of Africa.

The Institute of International Visual Arts (INIVA) in East London opens a major retrospective and the first substantial exhibition in the UK of the internationally acclaimed South African artist Peter Clarke on 16th January - 9th March 2013.

Introduction to the Exhibition

One of the most accomplished and versatile visual South African artists, Peter Clarke was born in 1929. In his early twenties he declared that he would make his living as an artist, which was a highly unusual ambition for a young black South African at the time. Over the last sixty years, Clarke has reflected on his country\'s social and political history and is often referred to as the ‘quiet chronicler\'. His work constitutes a subtle critique of apartheid and its social consequences as well as more recently, aspects of the ‘new\' South Africa.

About the artist

Peter Clarke\'s art is about people, and in his reflection of humanity and in the contribution he has made to his country\'s cultural development, he has become an inspiration to many other artists. Although largely self-taught, Clarke was encouraged by taking informal art classes and studying European masters that he saw reproduced in books - including Picasso, and the South African modernist Gerard Sekoto (the first black artist to be represented in a South African public collection). Witty, sharp, poignant, aesthetically memorable, Clarke\'s work provides an extraordinary context for discussion of his country as it prepares to celebrate 20 years since the momentous elections that brought Nelson Mandela to President.

About Wind Blowing on the Cape Flats

Wind Blowing on the Cape Flats honours Clarke\'s life, work and contribution to art over sixty years and tells the story of an artist who is part of a lost generation, a voice that has been largely unheard in Europe. The exhibition is presented by Iniva in partnership with the South African National Gallery (Iziko Museums of South Africa).

Talks and Events programme

A series of events exploring art\'s relationship to history and contemporary politics accompanies the exhibition - details to follow soon.

Information in this news item is from http://www.iniva.org/exhibitions_projects/2013/peter_clarke/peter_clarke_exhibition<br>
Selected works from this show are available through Ed Cross Fine Art please contact us for more details Ed@edcrossfineart.com

The latest issue of Clash Magazine features the soul legend Bobby Womack wearing C-STUNNER art work by Cyrus Kabiru. Womack wears four pairs of Kabiru's fantastical eyewear sculpture and is shown on the front cover in C-STUNNERs.

Magazine available to purchase online or in newsagents.

http://www.clashmusic.com/features/double-issue-bobby-womack-king-krule

Under the Influence Magazine launched their 11th issue this month, The Africa Issue. The magazine features articles and interviews by some of the most influential designers, curators, photographers and writers including a piece on Nathalie Mba Bikoro and Cyrus Kabiru by Emma Cavendish of Ed Cross Fine Art.

The magazine is a beautiful collection of words and images which has been well considered and researched by the authors and editor, Susan Connie Marsh.

Opening with the statement by Okwui Enwezor: "Africa is a location that is unbounded by the cartographic specificity of this placed called a continent" the magazine is a must have at this important turning point in global perception towards Africa.

http://www.undertheinfluencemagazine.com/

9th November – 15th December 2012

Private View: Thursday 8th November 2012, 6:30-8:30pm

Tiwani Contemporary in association with Ed Cross Fine Art is delighted to present The Middle Passage: Alice in Wonderland, the first solo exhibition in London by the interdisciplinary artist Nathalie Mba Bikoro. Bikoro’s series of photo etchings depicting a new Alice travelling through Wonderland is an evolving body of work which explores concepts of identity in relation to gender, matriarchal and patriarchal relationships, anthropology and the mythologizing of the African continent through time using a visual narrative of appropriation. The exhibition will feature live performance by the artist at the private view as well as showing video of Bikoro’s performance art both of which are part of the series.

In this work Bikoro appropriates images from the archives, from popular culture and from her own photography to construct an altered reality which gives the audience signs which they recognise but denies and resists the desire to categorise as Bikoro’s narrative plays with time and location. Bikoro’s work is very much related to the artist’s own encounters and experiences and in the first in a series of larger scale photo etchings figures and experiences from the artist’s recent visits to Gabon, Senegal and South Africa are represented in the Wonderland.

For this exhibition Bikoro will install elements from the photo etchings into the gallery space, this will include the suspension of a carousel horse (seen repeated in Bikoro's large scale triptych 'Carousel/Blanc ou Noir Toutes Les Larmes sont Salées) from the ceiling as well as the display of a series of flags created by the artist using African fabrics. The inclusion of such elements not only mirrors objects within the photo etchings but also speaks directly to the artist's performance which is an inextricable part of this series of works. A flag can also be seen in the work, Les Statues Meurent aussi/we are martians, which shows Alice's encounter with astronauts in the wonderland. Alice is seen to interact with these seemingly alien figures from in front and above simultaneously as Bikoro represents an historical encounter between man and the unknown to the backdrop images of her village in Gabon.

Nathalie Mba Bikoro is a French-Gabonese interdisciplinary artist working with visual arts and live performance art. Bikoro uses her work and her writing to explore and make comment on identity, inspired by her personal experience as part of an African diaspora community. Creating site specific live performance art, Bikoro’s most recent performances speak directly to and are part of her first major series of photo etchings.

With an education in Politics, Philosophy and Media Arts (University of Greenwich), Art History and Fine Arts (Kingston University) and Curation (St. Martin’s School of Art) Bikoro is very much the intellectual artist her work drawing heavily on literature and academic debate.

Bikoro examines questions of identity and community through her work in relation to the relationship between Europe and Africa, specifically Gabon. Bikoro’s ten year battle with Leukaemia was fought out across Gabon, the Netherlands and France and has influenced the narrative and methods in which Bikoro chooses to create her work often using her own body as a site of performance. Bikoro’s personal struggle for recovery played out across geographical boundaries has helped Bikoro to forge a visual language which challenges the conceptual boundaries in the representation and appropriation of African bodies in literature, narrative and visual arts.

She has worked on many educational interdisciplinary arts projects and collaborations and has taught across Europe and Africa. Her exhibitions have travelled across Africa, South Latin America, South Korea & Europe including African Heritage London UK 2010; New Currencies Museum Johannesburg SA 2010; Contemporary African Art Art|Basel Switzerland 2010-11; DMZ Festival South Korea 2010; Perpendicular Casa i Rua Belo Horizonte Brazil 2011; Arts Biennale Sachnin Israel 2012; Dak'art Biennale Senegal 2012. Bikoro was most recently awarded a residency at the Fondation Blanchère and the Soleil D’Afrique Prize Mali.

The talent multi-disciplinary artist Cyrus Kabiru recently travelled from his home in Nairobi to show his work at the 2012 Istanbul Design Biennale. Kabiru showcased his series of wearable eye-wear sculpture 'C-STUNNERS' which have started to capture the world's attention.

Kabiru's involvement in the biennale was picked up by the New York Times journalist Alice Rawthron who writes about the impact of new technologies on product and design in the article below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/10/arts/design/in-the-shifting-world-of-product-design-the-user-now-has-a-voice.html?pagewanted=all />