Exhibition For Charity: The Gift of Water: Chapter III
Where: The Melrose Gallery, 10 High Street, Melrose Arch
Date: 22nd February to 4th March 2018
Time: Monday to Friday: 9 am – 6 pm. Saturday & Sunday: 10 am – 5 pm
This coming month, artist and visual activist SaySay.Love will reveal his much-acclaimed body of work, ‘The Gift of Water: Chapter III’ to Johannesburg audiences at a charity event. The body of work seeks to grow awareness of the water crisis facing the Western Cape and highlights the precious resource that connects every aspect of life and cannot be taken for granted.
Building on the success of ‘The Gift of Water: Chapters I & II’ SaySay continues his pledge to make a difference and once again offers to donate all the proceeds of the sale of the work to Lalela, his chosen charity. Lalela (lalela.org) provides educational arts for at-risk youth to spark creative thinking and awaken the entrepreneurial spirit.
The exhibition will feature the work of SaySay, while also showcasing artworks created by the children from the Lalela programme based in the Maboneng Precinct – all of which will be sold in order to raise funds for this worthy initiative.
The Melrose Gallery is situated in the striking, modern Melrose Arch urban precinct – a space renowned for its exclusive boutiques, restaurants and stores – often referred to as the ‘High Street’ of Johannesburg. SaySay joins the likes of Willie Bester and Esther Mahlangu, who have both exhibited at this prestigious gallery.
Works acquired will be recognised as donating to a Not for Profit and as such the purchaser will receive a Public Benefit Organisation certificate.
“Education is a door opener and we need to invest in our kids and enable them to get a good education as it was done to me and to many people. Education leads to a better society, it gives the kids a bucket full of opportunities to better their life,” says SaySay.Love
Header image credit: Foreboding, 2017, Archival Inkjet Print On Hahnemühle Baryta Paper, 61Cm X 108Cm. ©Saysay.Love
ABOUT LALELA
Lalela provides educational arts for at-risk youth to spark creative thinking and awakens the entrepreneurial spirit. Through Lalela’s arts curriculum and critical messaging component, we ignite imagination and teach children how to map and manifest their dreams and goals, launching the possibility of a different future for themselves and their communities.
Everyday after-school, in the hours when children are most vulnerable to abuse of every kind, we work to break the barriers of a challenge. We start early (age six) in developing the art of imagination and we continue through grade 12 to connect the arts to everything important in a child’s life, from core academics to critical life skills.
Our role in arts education is to help blaze the trail in whole brain thinking with a proven path to innovation and new job creation. Our programs create permanent change with positive outlooks, community role models and the mindset for our students to design a more certain future for themselves and their communities.
Lalela commenced in 2010 with 20 students in Hout Bay, we now reach +/- 6000 per week countrywide; Our primary communities of operation are Imizamo Yethu, Hangberg, Masiphumelele, Happy Valley, Nyanga, Bonteheuwel, Fisantekraal and Mfuleni in the Western Cape, Rorke’s Drift and Westville Durban in KwaZulu Natal, Maboneng Precinct in Gauteng and Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.
We predominantly partner with no-fee public schools in communities, where art is not included in the core curriculum; we grow our programme through strategic partnerships with other youth development organizations that do not expose their youth to the arts. Ideas, art and music (IAM) are the signature components of every Lalela curriculum.
At Lalela we engage and empower youth in creative thinking and solutions. Our arts education methodology is not a handout, it’s a paradigm shift.
In December SaySay.Love presented Ryk Neethling with a work from the series ‘The Gift of Water’, at a Christmas Party for the children of Imizamo Yethu, Hangberg and Masiphumelele, hosted by SaySay and Lalela.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
His vibrant, quick and eclectic vision transports his viewers into the intricate and abstract fabric of nature and life itself.
SaySay’s works represents a calm and considered observation of nature and is driven by his solitary search for the perfect moment.
SaySay’s uses the cell phone as his contemporary paintbrush. The platform was created to share with the world his passion for capturing moments in nature and it is being recognised for how it alludes to the severe drought crisis faced by the Western Cape of South Africa and Cape Town, specifically.
Born with an optical disability that hinders his perception of depth, speed and distance, SaySay’s artistic vision becomes even more unique.
