Under co-founders:
Brett Seiler
Guy Simpson
Luca Evans
Mitchell Gilbert Messina
Under Projects is an artist-run project space for exhibitions and exercises co-founded by Brett Seiler, Guy Simpson, Luca Evans, and Mitchell Gilbert Messina. For the 2023 Investec Cape Town Art Fair, Under is invited to inhabit A4's booth. Culminating in a public-facing survey, the preparation as well as the days spent in the fair booth offer time and space for Under to process their archive with the support of A4's curatorial studio.
At the Fair, Under continues their ‘Donation Boards’ strategy – these boards, displayed at Under (79 Roeland Street), feature the name of each individual who has donated to the project, however large or small the contribution. The Boards are material artefacts of the crowd-sourcing model that Under employs to cover its running costs: the arts community and public donate to Under, investing in its well-being, thereby becoming patrons of Under’s experimental trajectory.
“To a degree, there’s a pitch happening in this booth. There was an increasing cynicism, I felt, amongst fellow artists (and in the community) about making and sticking to an experimental trajectory.” – Mitchell Gilbert Messina, co-founder of Under, in conversation towards Under x A4 at the Fair, A4 Wayfinder
An aside: While Under prototyped strategies towards the Art Fair booth, they constructed a model booth to work inside of (from cardboard, to scale) at A4. When Under’s booth was constructed in A4’s place on-site at the Fair, this model booth was installed at Under’s premises.
The following is a brief extract from a conversation between Under and A4:
Josh (A4) The story of Under is quite simple and legible – an independent project space that prizes free play instead of commerce. A4 acknowledges the role of the Art Fair in developing interest in the sector at large. We use our booth to share wide-ranging artistic practices that don’t fit squarely into the model of the Fair. This year, we offered our space to Under – if they’d have it – to share their practice and open up a conversation about self-funded spaces and the need for greater patronage in the sector to sustain these non-commercial and experimental spaces. Buying art does not necessarily support the wider community of the arts. In some ways this booth is a call, or a wish; that more project spaces emerge and are sustained.
Mitchell (Under) To a degree, there’s a pitch happening in this booth. There was an increasing cynicism I felt among fellow artists and in the community about making and sticking to an experimental trajectory. Project spaces exist to encourage the experimental trajectory, but project spaces in the city have all but disappeared. Showing work and not selling it, for me, is default as to what a project space should be.
Under Projects hosted DEAD SYMBOLS, a Cape-Town-based, critical sound collective committed to dangerous thinking and sonic vandalism.
“Thinking about sound as theoretical intervention, our occupation will take the form of a durational performance, sonic lecture, improvisation, and study session, as we probe, by way of music-making & reading, the possibilities and implications and stakes of world-endings.”
Hosted by Under, ArtThrob celebrated its 25th anniversary with an exhibition of editions and archives in anticipation of the upcoming publication, ‘ArtThrob: 25 Years of Art Writing in South Africa’.
“The website ArtThrob appeared for the first time in August 1997. The aim was, and still is, to bring news of artists, galleries, events and exhibitions to the attention not only to South Africans but to the wider world…” (Sue Williamson, founding editor of ArtThrob).
Max Law’s An Aberration was one of three shows selected from an open call for proposals that Under held in October.
“Think: failure, mistakes, miscommunication, confusion, incoherence, opacity, monstrosity, anomaly, shame, desire, stasis, slippages, errors, ghosts, fragments, holes, absences. These ideas have a real capaciousness, which is what, I think, makes them interesting. They can be responded to through both form and content, and can be thought through via a range of theoretical and philosophical perspectives.”
This was the second of three shows selected from an open call for proposals.Christian Nerf’s ongoing 3s Objects Library comprises cheap purchases, found objects, and precious originals that form installations, sculptures, and performances – all occurring in sets of threes.
Using Under as a studio space, Nerf went about assembling works – “constantly evolving trinities, tripartites, triptychs that occasionally pause before being disassembled and returned to the library.”
The last of three shows selected from Under’s open call for proposals, Bulumko Mbete’s Does a kite leave a trace? was accompanied by a natural-dye workshop and walkabout hosted by Lemeeze Davids.
“Reconstructing three memories of migration. Tracing love, tracing work, tracing play. Three generations become one. Three intersecting stories. A mother, a daughter, a paternal grandmother.”
