Monday, June 28

South Africa may be out of the World Cup, but their exit, with a 2-1 win over France, was respectable enough for the country to go right on partying. On Wednesday night last week Mark Coetzee, energetic Program Director of PUMAVision was the benign host at the opening party of an exhibition of portraits of football stars by American artist Kehinde Wiley, who I last encountered giving a talk about his solo show at the Studio Museum of Harlem almost two years ago. Wiley is celebrated for his portraits of young African American men, posed against rich backgrounds of African fabrics.

The media at Kehinde Wiley’s Puma opening

Puma had commissioned Wiley to paint portraits of three stars of African football teams, from Cameroon, Ghana and the Ivory Coast, with one portrait of the three together. Unfortunately the portraits had got stuck in Chinese customs and had not arrived in the country by the opening night, so overnight the Scanshop, working from digital images, had printed the portraits on fabric and stretched them like canvases.

On screen, Wiley discusses his process

Did anyone notice? After all, the labels still read ‘Oil on canvas’ and television cameras and photographers were everywhere. Wiley was there, of course, and fashion mogul Kimora Lee Simmons arrived with an entourage, and head down, made straight for the roped off VIP space at the back.

We went on to the opening of the Andrew Lamprecht curated show, ‘Tretchikoff and Me’, at Salon 91 in Kloof Street. Vintage prints by the artist, long considered the king of kitsch, hung in tandem with responses by local artists, some very witty. The gallery was packed, with people spilling out onto the street. There seemed to be just as many guests here as at the Kehinde Wiley bash, causing my friend Dutch artist Rob Moonen to comment in astonishment that in Holland, one was lucky to get thirty people at an opening.

Fashionista Suzy Bell shows off her Tretchi look

But if we didn’t go to openings, how else would Capetonians keep up with all their friends?

Tuesday, June 22

Thursday June 17.

There are figures of orange footballers in the foyer of my hotel and vuvuzelas (orange) being blown on the streets – I am in Holland at the invitation of
Angelique Spaninks, director of Eindhoven’s Stichting MU.

Ready for action in my hotel

Tomorrow night I will give a lecture as part of the programme around For those who live in it: popculture politics and strong voices, an exhibition of the work of young(er) Southem African artists – Love and Hate, Zanele Muholi, Faith47, Athi Patra Ruga, Kudzanai Chiurai, Musa Nxumalo, Anton Kannemeyer, Chimurenga and Gugulective.

Anton Kannemeyer’s wall drawing at MU

The Stichting MU is located on the first floor of the old Phillips factory, the lightbulb industry which brought Eindhoven into economic prominence, and in its more than ten years of existence, has concentrated on presenting provocative and experimental work.

Ex-UCT Art History student Clare Butcher is now working as a guest curator at the impressive Van Abbemuseum nearby, (seeing the Rebecca Horn show there years ago is one of the highlights of a lifetime of art-viewing) and as it is her birthday, we go out to supper. The seafood platter at Usine – for three – is quite a display.

Supper at Usine with Clare Butcher

Friday June 18

In the courtyard of the Van Abbe, guest artist Antonis Pittas is stenciling in graphite a phrase selected from a newspaper on to a curved white wall – one a week over a period of three and a half months. The earlier phrases have already faded and run slightly.

Antonis Pittas at the Van Abbe

In the workrooms of the museum, as part of a Free Sol Lewitt project, artisans are welding up exact copies of a Sol Lewitt sculptural ‘drawing’ in aluminum – visitors may fill in a form entering a raffle to win one. Lewitt’s Untitled Wall Structure (1972) is part of the museum’s collection, and this offer is in line with Lewitt’s statement:

‘I believe that ideas, once expressed, become the common property of all. They are invalid, if not used, they can only be given away and cannot be stolen. Ideas of art become the vocabulary of art and are used by other artists to form their own ideas (even if unconsciously).

I wish my studio mate Paul Edmunds was with me. He would love this. He returned from a recent sojourn in New York completely into Lewitt.

Sol LeWitt’s Untitled Wall Structure (1972) (the original)

Over a delicious nut risotto at a restaurant called Boom that night, Angelique and I talk about the role of project spaces like MU in the art world, and how important they are, and as for my lecture – I enjoyed giving it, and if you want to read more about that, you can link to http://thedossier.nl/siphoning-identity-sue-williamson/"

Blogger JaneHardjono has my admiration for getting this entry up just an hour after the lecture finished. Wow. That is dedication.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Today, a picture round up of the last ten days in Cape Town.

Odidi glam trashes her way through a cabaret number at the opening of Nicholas Hlobo’s Umtshotsho at the South African National Gallery on May 30.
Inside the gallery, one of the eight sculptures on Umtshotsho (which refers to a traditional party for young people about to enter adulthood) is a figure draped in swathed and beribboned rubber and red lace – off to a mad Halloween party in Sherwood Forest, perhaps.
On the street outside my studio, two giant vuvazelas are loaded on to a truck – off to add to the World Cup festivities, no doubt.
Kendell Geers is in town for the opening of his show at the Goodman, and in a parallel event, planned to repeat his 1993 work Title Withheld (brick) in which he threw a brick through the window of the Market Gallery in Johannesburg.

‘The idea was to make a hole to let the street in and the stuffiness of the gallery out’, says Geers.

This re-enactment was to take place at YOUNGBLACKMAN, the storefront gallery on Roeland Street, but when Geers arrived at the gallery carrying the brick he was going to throw, he found one already at the gallery door, with a hate mail message attached.

In the end, this seemed fortuitous. The level of violence has increased since 1993, so where once a single brick made a strong statement, now the ante had to upped.

So the hate-mail brick was pitched through the window too, and became part of the piece, along with a few extras. Which is why there are three holes rather than just one.