Press Articles
Views and (Re)Views
The dialectic of dialogue
Colleen Alborough’s video installation, Fear and Trembling, continues the discourse. It mixes the traditional with the cutting edge. Amongst caverns of cotton, cardboard figures pop up seemingly at random. Above, a film of this depicts a stylised man, frantically trying on different heads in a desperate attempt to find the right one, like a mechanised golem frantically seeking meaning in its conversation with a world it does not understand. Download pdf:The dialectic of dialogue: De Arte No.85 2012: 59 - 62
Gauteng reviews: Balance by Colleen Alborough at Standard Bank Gallery
A strange proclivity at the Standard Bank Gallery, something about which I have indulged in a gripe before, is the repeated outstripping of headline exhibitions upstairs by the humble but diligent efforts of artists staging small solo exhibitions downstairs. David Andrew did it to Johannes Phokela in the beginning of 2009; Natasha Christopher did it to Ephraim Ngatane early this year; and now, Colleen Alborough has done it to Louis Maqhubela, with her exhibition of monotypes and video installation, 'Balance'. Download pdf:Gauteng reviews: Balance by Colleen Alborough at Standard Bank Gallery: Artthrob August 2010
Printmaking and Video: Colleen Alborough at Standard Bank Gallery, Downstairs
Fear. Tipping the scales of mental equilibrium. Looming terror in the dead of night, erased with a modicum of self-loathing come daylight. These are the themes of Colleen Alborough's exhibition Balance . Alborough takes as her starting point an absurd dialogue from the 1966 play, A Delicate Balance by Edward Albee, in which the characters Harry and Edna arrive unexpectantly at their friends' house with a request to stay, hoping to escape an unnamed terror. Download pdf:Printmaking and Video: Colleen Alborough at Standard Bank Gallery
South African short films hit the big time
Three South African short films have been selected for the prestigious Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, or Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, to be held in May in the river city of that name in the Ruhr region of Germany.The films are Atrophy by Palesa Shongwe, Balance by Colleen Alborough and Steglitz House by Bridget Baker. The Kurzfilmtage is among the oldest film festivals in the world, active since 1954. Short films and video works across all genres are accepted but there is a notable emphasis on creative innovation and artistry. Hundreds of awards are given annually to the amount of €40 500 (almost R400 000). Download pdf:South African short films hit the big time: SA Art Times April 2011
Retro holiday in history
Decades spent in Johannesburg couldn't immunise a resident of this former mining camp to its surprises, its aptitude for turning the whole world upside down now and again. At least this is what those of us who stay here, in spite of the lure of mountains and oceans elsewhere, like to think. A new hotel in a refurbished sports-supplies building in downtown Jo'burg tells the story of just how surprising this city can be. 12 Decades, named to reflect the approximate age of the city, is Johannesburg's first boutique art hotel. Unlike many other art hotels, which are designed with a view to creating a novel environment, 12 Decades has been conceptualised to reflect the dramatic changes that have taken place from one decade to the next since Johannesburg sprung up out of the Highveld dust in 1886. Download pdf:Retro holiday in history: Mail & Guardian June 2010
Tremors of Insecurity
The creative impulse is often associated with gestural, animate movements in front of a canvas, the stereotype in mind of the artist as a mad genius, ravished by uncontrollable urges to create, paint, express, mould. The practice of Colleen Alborough, whilst conceptually driven, emanates from such as place, and through the physical process of making, constructing, programming, and installing, the artist makes sense of an inner tumultous world. In the process she embeds within the work strands of these emotive connections, taking the viewer on an intimate journey of discovery and pathos. Download pdf:Tremors of Insecurity: Look away No.8, Quarter 1, 2008: 26-27
Haunted Territory
Colleen Alborough balances subjective artistic expression while still engaging the viewer in an emotional and physical manner. Download pdf:Haunted Territory: Art South Africa v6.1, August 2007
First Life
Since communication and the circulation of goods were organized into a structure, the “knot” and the “net” ceased to be tools (for hunting or weaving) and instead, became an ergonomical system focused on the connection between the parts. The development of highways, ports and railways, that is to say the development of networks and accumulation points, has progressively altered geographical space and the proximity between places through the creation of a deterritorialized space of flow and circulation. Colleen Alborough creates a brain hollow, an antrum in which consciousness can travel and ask itself how neural nets can produce sounds, images and feelings without receiving any input from the outside. Download pdf:First Life: Denis Viva
KZNSA Young Artist Project 2005/6: Colleen Alborough
Performed through text, video, installation and sound, Colleen Alborough’s work is an invitation into the perilous depths of emotional thought. It asks us to play out the tensions between fear and loss, being and space. Night Journey, her YAP installation, is a tearing at the seams of a labyrinthine mind, and an interrogation of the complexities of our fragility. The work begs us to stumble through walking and waking and wanting and winding, finally, wielding a fleshly comfort in that dark, but beautiful, place we call home: our selves. Download pdf:Young Artist Project: Colleen Alborough, May 2006
From Here to There
Five senior South African artists were recently asked by an Italian curator to each propose a list of young artists for a show in Siena, Italy. Amy Halliday attended the resulting show and reports on some of the discussions it elicited.
Download pdf:From Here to There: Art South Africa v6.4, Winter 2008: 16-18.
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