Rebecca Kotane

For the first time in my life, a few Sundays ago, I was in the presence of a person who was a hundred years old. it was the 100th birthday of the redoubtable Rebecca Kotane, widow of struggle hero Moses Kotane, and the celebration lunch was being held in the Walter Sisulu Hall in Soweto. Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe was there, and Frank Chikane, and I was accompanying Amina Cachalia, who had also been invited to speak.

The centenarian looked fully composed and sensible of her remarkable achievement in reaching such an advanced age. When her husband went into exile in the apartheid years, she remained at home, becoming a symbol of all the women who had to hold their lives together with little support from their absent husbands.

Rebecca Kotane cuts the cake, flanked by DP Kgalema Motlanthe

Her primrose yellow silk dress with a matching hat ensured that she stood out amongst all the other darker hued finery worn in her honour, and a silk flower on her dress in deepest violet was matched by a pair of satin gloves.

My new work involves an inter-generational investigation, in listening to the stories and values of the powerful women of the Mandela era, and listening also to the challenges thrown up by the new generation, the born frees, their granddaughters. I’m not yet sure quite where it’s all going, but that is the interesting thing about starting new work.

You make a start somewhere, and flounder along for a while until gradually the murk clears and a structure begins to emerge. You just have to have faith that with time and energy, the process will impose its own sense.

Mark Dion

Back in Cape Town, I went to a lecture given at Michaelis by Documenta artist Mark Dion. I was struck particularly by the truth of one thing he said. When students show him work insisting that the methodology and the context are indivisible, he tells them to forget about the context next time, and take the methodology and apply it elsewhere.

Hans Ulrich Obrist

Design Indaba finished last week, bringing with it one of the most highly regarded curators in the world, Hans Ulrich Obrist, as a guest speaker. As a day ticket to hear him speak would have cost R2 600, I did not hear his presentation, but later that day, Obrist came round to the Goodman Gallery to meet artists in a series of short speed dates. ‘Hello … nice to meet you again …yes, I am enjoying Cape Town … now tell me about your work’.

Obrist is on record as saying he loves talking to artists and exchanging ideas, so it was a pleasure to renew an acquaintance first made over breakfast in Dakar a few years ago. A slightly nerve racking pleasure.

Lisa Brice at the Goodman Gallery

In town this week is Lisa Brice, here from London for the opening of her show at the Goodman. It’s on Saturday, and the paintings that have gone up are her strongest yet. Brice was included in one of the latest Phaidon books, Vitamin P2; New perspectives in painting. A real achievement.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Artists, friends, and the glamorous stars of Generations mingled at the after party following the opening of Candice Breitz’s ‘Extra!’ at the Standard Bank Galleries in Johannesburg this week. Breitz, in a polka dotted Gianni Versace top, was clearly delighted to be back in her home country for this most brilliant of occasions.

‘Extra!’ was commissioned by the Standard Bank especially for this exhibition. In trying to decide what to make for the show, Breitz came up with the idea of asking Mfundi Vundla, who conceived the idea of Generations, now Africa’s biggest soap opera, if she could act as a white extra in scenes, totally ignored by the actors. Vundla agreed.

The resulting 35 minute video is a treat to watch. Sometimes wonderfully absurd, as at moments such as the one where Breitz’s white feet are centre camera and the caption reads: ‘There’s no bigger blessing than watching your child grow up’. Often provocative. What is that white woman doing there, hovering around?

It’s been a busy week in Johannesburg, with a great opening at the Goodman Gallery of their show ADVANCE last Thursday week. My piece is in the window facing Jan Smuts Avenue., and other artists include Mikhael Subotzky, Marina Abramovic, Moshekwa Langa, Alfredo Jaar and Candice Breitz.

I am also trying to start a new series of work, but more about that another time ...

I left Cape Town at noon on the day of the Goodman opening last week, but not before a quick dash into town at the invitation of artist/jewellery maker Gordon Radowsky to view the annual collection of beads brought to town by the bead man, Mr Sillah. The extraordinary beads, from all over Africa, covered an entire floor of a rented office space.

OMG. So beautiful. Just as well I had a plane to catch and couldn’t spend more than 45 minutes …

Thursday, January 26, 2012

As January hits the third week of the month, the city’s art galleries take down the group shows directed at the summer visitors, and get serious again. Or, relatively serious.

At blank projects last week, Avant Car Guard and friends were staging a finissage. The text on one of their banner pieces read, IF YOU DIE, CAN I HAVE YOUR CELL PHONE ? Perhaps only in South Africa could this statement seem like a reasonable request.

Across the road from blank, at the Stevenson, Viviane Sassen’s seductive, off kilter images are a complete antidote to the perfectly lit, carefully placed subjects one has grown accustomed to encountering on gallery walls.

Viviane Sassen’s Kapijmpange

In this portrait of a young girl, the focus of Sassen’s attention is the fragile, rose printed voile of her dress. In order to concentrate on this gentle texture, the girl’s features have been lost in a soft dark pool. Conversely, this makes her more magnetic than if we had been able to discern every eyelash.

Stuart Bird’s Blood Knot

Round the corner at the Goodman, Stuart Bird has mounted his first solo show, and displays a dazzling virtuosity in his handling of materials. Blood Knot is the title of a searing Athol Fugard play about two half brothers, one black, one half white. it is also the title of Bird’s intertwined knotted sculpture, made not of rope, but carved, meticulously and sinuously, from wood.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

A performance detail from Athi-Patra Ruga’s Ilulwane

It’s really too hot to work today. Come on, it’s a baking 34°C, or 93.2° F. Of course, there’s no air con in the studio. And if you open the windows more than a crack or turn up the fan, papers blow everywhere.

So I’m trying to keep cool by writing about Athi Patra Ruga’s watery Ilulwane at the RoseLee Goldberg-directed Performa Biennial of performance in New York last November.

Ruga drew part of his inspiration from the 1970s and 80s photographs of Alvin Baltrop, a photographer who struggled for recognition for his photos of queer life on the West side piers of Manhattan. Baltrop died in 2004, and it is only now that his work is beginning to be exhibited in mainstream galleries. Working with Baltrop’s evocative visual references, Ruga added elements from his own Xhosa culture, on initiation ceremonies, and also reflected on the AIDS crisis to build up his 45 minute synchronized swimming performance.

A performance detail from Athi-Patra Ruga’s Ilulwane

Synchronized swimming? This is a sport I have always associated with ruched floral bathing suits and colour coordinated rubber caps. I believe Ilulwane will be performed in South Africa later this year. I can’t wait to see how Ruga pulled all these diverse elements together.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Storm Janse van Rensburg and Claire van Blerck


One of the best things about the New Year is the opportunity given to wipe last year’s messy slate clean again. Emails one should have – but did not – respond to ages ago can now be sent out with Happy New Year wishes and the recipient will probably forgive you.

This period of armistice doesn’t last long, however – after January 15 the truce is toast.

It’s also the time of year to make a list of all the half formed projects in your mind, and see which ones have strong enough legs to warrant further work. And which ones can be dumped right now.

Over at the Goodman Cape last week, the artists gathered for end of year drinks and to say goodbye to Storm Janse van Rensburg, who is off to Berlin. The incoming director is Federico Freschi, currently associate professor in the history of art department at Wits. Let’s raise a glass to his success.

Stuart Bird’s carved wooden text piece overcame at least some of the artist’s difficulties when it sold on opening night at the Goodman Cape Summer Show.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Last time I saw Okwui Enwezor was in Venice in June, at one of the Goodman Gallery Biennale bashes. It was great to meet up. Okwui was, of course, the director of the legendary 2nd Johannesburg Biennale in 1997, and is now the director of the Munich Haus des Kunst.
This week I heard news of him from two different sources: curator Rory Bester told me he was due in Johannesburg at the end of this past week, to make final choices for the show he will be curating some 18 months hence at the International Center for Photography in New York, The Rise and Fall of Apartheid.

And from an unrelated email from NYU student Allison Young, who was part of my Other Voices: New York shoot earlier this year (I MEAN, WHERE ELSE ARE YOU GONNA GO?) I learned that Okwui will go to New York in the new year as visiting professor to teach a course on contemporary African at NYU.

Allison Young, in a detail from the Voices New York shoot.

No curator has done more than Okwui to bring news of art from this continent to an international audience.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

As a child of 7, I stood at our living room window in Florida, just outside Johannesburg, and watched two curved dark tunnel shapes spiraling powerfully across the horizon. The tornado hit Roodepoort, five miles away, and next day I learned that four people had died. My father packed us into the Pontiac and drove us out to view the streets littered with crumpled corrugated iron roofs.

Today, in those parts of the US where tornados occur, tracking them has become a popular pastime with those who crave being drawn into the elemental. But experiencing being drawn into the force field of a tornado is now as possible as dammit at the Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town. On the exhibition ‘What we talk about when we talk about love’ the brilliant Mexican based Belgian artist Francis Alÿs is presenting Tornado.

Running with his camera directly into the swirling dark forms of the tornados in what seems an act of total madness, Alÿs, allows himself to be battered by flying debris and huge volumes of sound. One cannot but be awed by this unstoppable natural force.

The beam of light emanating from Penny Siopis

Last weekend at the lagoon at Churchaven, walking with Penny Siopis and Emma Bedford as the sun sank in the sky, we witnessed an intriguing natural phenomenon of a much quieter kind. Each of us could perceive a beam of light above the shadow of our own heads, but not of the other two. Interestingly, the beam could be seen even as we each photographed our own shadow.