![\"penny_siopis\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Penny_Siopis.jpg?resize=400%2C277\")
<\/p>\nVisual artist Penny Siopis was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award for her contribution to the arts at the 19th annual Arts & Culture Trust (ACT) Awards, held at Sun International\u2019s The Maslow Hotel in Johannesburg on Friday, 21 October.<\/p>\n
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Lifetime Achievement Award winners, who are nominated and selected by the current and previous ACT Trustees, are individuals that the Awards\u2019 sponsors are proud to acknowledge for the impact they have had on the South African creative industry.<\/p>\n
Since 1975, Siopis has been exhibiting both locally and internationally. She says she is thrilled to have received this Award; \u201cIt is a wonderful recognition of my creative work, as an artist, but also a teacher.\u201d<\/p>\n
Throughout her career Siopis has won a variety of awards including the Volkskas Atelier Award and the Vita Art Now award. She says she has had a \u201cwonderfully varied career\u201d and that singling out a single pinnacle is an arduous task. \u201cMy solo show at the Freud Museum in London in 2005\u00a0was a unique and deep\u00a0experience of working with\u00a0ideas about the\u00a0relationship between the psychological and the social,\u00a0public and private, individual and collective, memory\u00a0and history, in many different media.\u201d<\/p>\n
Well represented in collections both locally and abroad, Siopis became well known for her baroque banquet and history paintings. She used random objects in her work, which commented on colonialism, gender, and discriminatory practices of all kinds.<\/p>\n
She is particularly interested in the intersection of biography and autobiography in narrating aspects of South African history through film, and the questions raised by the changes in local history. These concerns, centered on history and memory, have led her to become an important analyst of race and gender issues in the country.<\/p>\n
She believes arts and culture are central to South African society on a primal level. \u201cThey offer a way to\u00a0imagine in concrete form, to\u00a0express what it\u00a0feels like to be an\u00a0individual and a\u00a0community, to show what it is\u00a0to be human.\u201d<\/p>\n
And to her, being an artist is not a vocation but rather a standard of living. \u201cWhen you become an artist it is not a job, it is a way of life, a way of seeing the world always in new and surprising ways, even when the world seems old.\u201d<\/p>\n Currently an Associate Professor in Fine Arts at UCT\u2019s Michaelis School of Fine Art and the chairperson of the department’s governing committee, Siopis\u2019 advice to young artists is to be committed to their beliefs but also be open to the world around them. \u201cTake risks. Be resilient. Don’t be afraid to show your vulnerabilities,\u201d she concludes.<\/p>\n Tobie Badenhorst, the Head of Group Sponsorships and Cause Marketing at Nedbank says this Award, as well as the other Lifetime Achievement Awards presented on the night, are important nods to deserving figures in the South African arts world. \u201cThrough the Lifetime Achievement Awards we are reminded of the passion and dedication of South Africa\u2019s renowned artists, who through their talent and works of wonder continue to shift the socioeconomic narrative in our country. As a bank that is committed to the development of South African arts and culture, we are humbled by their commitment and continue to celebrate their work.\u201d<\/p>\n The 19th annual ACT Awards was hosted by Sun International in association with the National Lotteries Commission (NLC) and is supported by the Southern African Music Rights Organisation (SAMRO), the Dramatic, Artistic and Literary Rights Organisation (DALRO), Media24 Books, the Nedbank Arts Affinity, JTI, Creative Feel, Business and Arts South Africa (BASA) and the Distell Foundation.<\/p>\n For more information about the Arts & Culture Trust (ACT) please visit www.act.org.za<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Visual artist Penny Siopis was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award for her contribution to the arts at the 19th annual Arts & Culture Trust (ACT) Awards, held at Sun International\u2019s The Maslow Hotel in Johannesburg on Friday, 21 October. Lifetime Achievement Award winners, who are nominated and selected by the current and previous ACT Trustees,… Continue reading Penny Siopis Named ACT Lifetime Achievement Winner<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2657\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Arts](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.samdb.co.za\/blogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/Penny_Siopis_web.__Pic_John_Hogg.jpg?resize=300%2C435\")
Issued by The Famous Idea on behalf of The Arts & Culture Trust (ACT)<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"