The Sunday News
Ntombiyolwandle Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
FOR about five years the huge part of the exhibition space at the National Art Gallery in Bulawayo was literally kept away not only from the public view but to artistes as well.
This was in 2010, after visual artist Owen Maseko held a controversial exhibition. Maseko’s works were kept on the ground floor of the gallery space known as the Anglo-American gallery for about five years until it was removed last year.
When Maseko’s works were removed, the gallery space was re-opened.
This came as good news to artists who since the re-opening of the space have fully utilised it, according to Gallery assistant curator Clifford Zulu.
“Artists have embraced the re-opening of the space as we have seen more applications for this year’s exhibitions.
Also from the curatorial perspective we have embraced it as we have more space now than before,” said Zulu.
Zulu said that the re-opening of the space has given the Gallery a rebound as they are now using more space than before.
“The Anglo-American gallery is our prime space. We have decided to use the space for curatorial projects showing exhibitions that started as projects, group shows, collaborative shows running for three or more months. At the moment we have an exhibition running called Kwatsha with artists coming from as far as South Africa and Harare,” Zulu said.
Zulu added that the re-opening has also improved the galley and created more opportunities for artists to interact with the audience through window display. Zulu revealed that the gallery was witnessing an appreciation of the arts from members of the public.
“We have seen a good engagement of the audience with the gallery. This is evidenced by the number of people who have visited the gallery since 2016. The VAAB exhibition that started in January got a great response even in sales though we acknowledge the economic situation in the country,” he said.
Zulu however, said that they were working on pricing their work so as to cater for the local audience.
“Right now the gallery is working with artists to re-look at the pricing methods so that our art work can also be consumed by local audience because foreign audience is slowly declining and foreigners are no longer visiting Bulawayo as they used to due to different reasons.
Most of the art work is bought by foreigners and now we want to cater for our local audience as well,” he said.
