Exhibition : opening of Lawrence Lemoana’s exhibition (“Players of colours”) on Thursday 4 October @ Alliance Française de Pretoria (99, River Street, Cnr De Kock St, Sunnyside), 7 pm for 7:30 pm (from October 4th to 31st)

We are all looking forward to the exhibition of last year’s winner of ABSA Gerard Sekoto 2005 award, Lawrence Lemoana, entitled “Players of colours”. Being a rugby player as well as an artist makes for amazing creative expression, as one world feeds on the other… Lawrence’s amazing work undoubtedly deserves his selection by ABSA and the French cultural network in South Africa to be the winner of the Gerard Sekoto Award in 2005, allowing him to stay for three months at the cité internationale des arts in Paris and exhibit his work, after his return to South Africa, in the Alliance Française network in South Africa.

“My background of playing the game of rugby influences my work, looking closely at the stereotypical masculine figure. For various reasons such as the history of our country, our social and economical positions in an ever-changing world, I was forced to question my own identity as a young black individual. I had to then realise that all things are not seen with the innocence of a child, that the past always has a strong bearing on our future and that in the deconstruction of my one kind of masculinity another and different one is constructed. I carefully select fabrics that create a sense of irony. My use of material attempts to subvert popular associations with my subject matter. In so doing I attempt to amend a very passionate experience … a death of a dream. I also use humour as a tool and weapon, thus challenging preconceived norms about social positions of individuals in society.”