January 29, 2010

What happens when an artwork supposed to go on a show can't be found?

On Thursday of last week, Storm, the director of the Goodman Cape, phoned me about the whereabouts of a charcoal drawing I'd made in situ in 1989, in Cradock in the Eastern Cape. This drawing was scheduled to go a show called 'The Marks We Make'. I reminded Storm that the gallery had had the drawing to show to a client.

The drawing was of four graves, simple mounds of stone, marked with little boards with the names of the Cradock Four, activists murdered by the police in 1985. Some of you might recall the photograph of David Goldblatt's that shows the graves as they are today. The mounds of stone have gone and been replaced by what officialdom considers an appropriate memorial - really ugly structures of brick and marble surrounded by a high fence.

I had a photostat of the drawing in the studio, so Storm came over to get it to help the gallery staff track the missing work down.

The show was to open at noon on Saturday, so I phoned Storm that morning to find out if they had traced the work. Apparently not. But the photostat had been taken to Cape Town's master scanner, Tony Meintjes to scan, and Tony had made a print from it.

This meant of course, that all the midtones in the original drawing would have disappeared, as they had not been picked up on the photostat. I went to look at the print, wondering if we should just not take it down altogether. But it didn't look too bad. Very graphic.

And at the opening William Kentridge came up and was complimentary about the work, saying he liked the print both "as a drawing and as a trace of a lost drawing". William is so articulate. And of course, a lot of his own work is about erasures and the incomplete images which remain.

And since the graves themselves are completely different now, perhaps the drawing of the original graves getting lost and having to be reproduced through an old photostat is another of those cases where life imitates art ...

January 23, 2010

Is January 23 too late to wish you all a happy new decade? Maybe, but I’m wishing you anyway. And here’s a suggestion to start the new decade off. For all of you out there who would love to be able to collect contemporary art but never seem to have the necessary cash … this idea was picked up from the last issue of the Weekend Financial Times. Why not begin 2010 by starting an art club which would function somewhat in the way that countless book clubs across the country do?

Apparently this is a growing trend in Britain. A group of friends – anywhere between three households and 25 – pool their resources to buy art. Each puts in an agreed amount each month – say R500, and a buying committee from the group is elected to go to exhibitions, and look at possible purchases – which must be run past the group before the purchase is made. Members get to keep an artwork on a six month rotation basis – which means that new artworks come into your home on a regular basis. The FT suggests drawing up a contract that sets up guidelines for the group and lays out details of ownership.










Robert Hodgins
Miss Priss
 
2009
5 colour lithograph
575 x 765 mm




My own suggestion to any group embarking on this venture would be to start with acquiring works at the bottom end of the price range – a prints from the Editions for ArtThrob series, like Robert Hodgins' Miss Priss, or a work by an emerging artist. Enjoy! You can find the original article, called Buy to Share by Emma Jacobs on www.ft.com