Exhibitionary Feels:
Re-membering the FUBA Archive
Federated Union of Black Artists
Art Centre, Academy, Collection, Gallery, Archives: Phases and Iterations of FUBA
The FUBA Art Centre was initiated on June 28, 1978, by creatives in the field of creative writing, visual art, music, drama and photography.
By October 29 1978, the centre was formally co-founded by Sipho Sydney Sepamla and Benjy Francis, evolving into a full-time art school called the FUBA Academy of Arts and later the FUBA School of Drama and Visual Arts & the FUBA School of Music.
The FUBA Gallery was opened in November 1983 with the late artist and writer David Koloane. Bill Ainslie, in 1980, a board member for FUBA in the early 1980s, with the assistance of British artist Sir Anthony Caro founded the FUBA Collection. The collection, which was later donated to the FUBA Gallery, was constructed by Caro, comprising of 122 sculptures and paintings by artists such as Henry Moore and David Hockney.
The collection would travel in South Africa up until 1983 eventually being trusted to the FUBA Academy. However, due to financial pressure and constraints on the academy, the collection, to much uproar, was sold to an Australian businessman. Between 1992 and 1993 FUBA director Sipho Sepamla enlisted art historian Elza Miles, as researcher-in-residence, to compile an archive.
The archive held at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, currently, is in the process of digitisation. Funding for the digitisation was granted to the Friends of JAG by the US Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation.
Below is an overlapping timeline between JAG and FUBA
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The Archive and JAG
JAG has an intimate and conflicting relationship with Johannesburg’s multiple urban imaginaries that have been constructed and reformed since the city’s beginning in 1886.
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The texts below were written in the early stages of the curators’ engagement with the coursework prescribed for their Curating Exhibitions course at WITS. These essays are on negotiating the place of JAG in present-day debates around museology and display practices.
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Download text by Christa Dee
Download text by Matshelane Xhakaza
Download text by Rabia Abba Omar
Encountering the Archive
The archive is not what you expect.
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The air in the archive feels very heavy.
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It is loud for a space that is meant to be quiet
FUBA Archive Cabinet in the Johannesburg Art Gallery library.
Folders in the FUBA Archive in the Johannesburg Art Gallery library.
Index Card Cabinet at the Johannesburg Art Gallery outside the library
FUBA Archive Cabinet in the Johannesburg Art Gallery library.
The images displayed above were taken during the curators' time in the archive and first exploration of the room where the exhibition was initially meant to take place.
Mapping the Archive // Mapping FUBA
Throughout our time in the FUBA Archive we became intrigued with the social and institutional connections between the names and files. Below is our map, an attempt to visually represent these connections. This map is a growing map, as we uncover more and more about the artists within the FUBA Archive, we will continue to add to the map.
