Thursday, July 8, 2010

The Friday before last, I spent the evening wandering down Greatmore Street in Woodstock. It is here one can find Greatmore Studios, the centre of the latest Thupelo workshop, a two week interaction between local and international artists. That Friday was the culmination of the workshop, the open night.

Julia Raynham prepares for the night.

On the Main Road corner, Julia Raynham had made up a bed for the night. Dressed in a white woollen dress which made her look like a legendary snow queen, Julia was preparing to talk to visitors, sleep a little – a bodyguard was there to stand over her while she slept – perhaps give a performance, and generally see what encounters the night would bring.

Julia with Thupelo artist Lionel Davis

In the grounds of the school where the artists had been staying, there were drinks, bands, entertainers and artists’ videos, and the great thing was to see how many local residents were taking in the scene. High up on the school building, visiting artist Rob Moonen had written his message to himself, the artists and the community: Challenge Yourself.

Rob Moonen’s message

In one of a number of interactions with the locals, Jenny Parsons painted beautifully subtle broekie lace designs on the façade of a house in a deeper tone of the wall colour, so that at first glance, they appeared as a trompe l’oeil shadow of this traditional cast iron trim. Look closely at the right hand house in the photo.

Roscoe Martin renovated not only the shopfront of a corner shop, but also painted an expressive portrait of a resident on the wall of his bedroom.

The Roscoe Martin portrait and his subject.

The Thupelo workshops play a unique role in the art life of this country, and provide one of the few points of access for international artists to work here alongside local artists. Long may they continue.

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.

Sunday, May 30, 2010

For the last three months I have been working on a public art commission for Cape Town airport – an artwork now inscribed on the thirty metre glass wall at the back of the new IRT bus station. This bus service will carry arriving and departing passengers between the Civic Centre and the airport – a long awaited necessity.

Standing inside the station, looking through the glass, one can see Table Mountain just visible above a messy foreground of rent a car companies. My brief was to make a work which engaged with this view of the mountain, and also with the political and social history of Cape Town.

My solution was to work on both sides of the glass. From the road, or bus side, one can see a landscape of the Peninsula as it can be seen from a high point of the airport, stretching from Muizenberg to Signal Hill, and the sea. Clouds float over this landscape.

Sandblasting the landscape into the glass through stencils.

View of the artwork from the road

The piece is called A Random History of Cape Town, 1499-1994, and passengers on the inside of the bus station can read text inscribed on to the clouds. These texts are quotes from the journals of people from Vasco da Gama through Lady Anne Barnard to Ahmed Kathrada and Nelson Mandela, and range from the poetic and informative to the slightly shocking.
Detail of the clouds from the inside.

Actually, the work is not quite finished. A few of the quotes were considered too liable to cause offence and I am looking for some new ones to complete the piece.

But next time you are at the airport, have a look.

Monday, May 17

I’ve had an email from Signe Bergstrom, my editor at HarperCollins New York with some interesting news. There is to be an e-book version of South African Art Now, the large sized hardcover overview of contemporary art in this country which was launched in October last year.

The book is going electronic!

Signe explained that with the launch of the Apple i-Pad, technology has caught up with the reproduction of colour images. The first electronic device designed as a hand held device which would allow e-books to be read page by page was The Kindle, (which became available in South Africa late last year, at a cost of about R3000). The problem with The Kindle was that it could handle black and white text and images only.

Now that the Apple i-Pad is here with its groundbreaking full colour technology, HarperCollins is in the process of converting all their titles to an e-book format. The permissions form HarperCollins required artists signed to allow reproduction of their works in the book anticipated this development, and covered electronic reproduction.

Of course, the i-Pad costs a bit more than The Kindle, and is being advertised online here at R7599. But it would be nice to carry round your entire library in your pocket.

In the meantime, the book (the one with paper pages) continues to sell nicely in the States, garnering reviews in such unlikely publications as Urban Ink ‘the Tattoo magazine for people of color’.

Sunday, May 9

So who is watching ‘A Country Imagined’ at 9 p.m. on Sunday nights? SABC2?
Two years in the making, this 13 part series of one hour programmes is hosted by Johnny Clegg, and produced by Curious Pictures, with writing by the excellent Tracy Murinik. If you are one of those artists (like me) who keeps meaning to get into your car and drive off into the country for an extended trip to see what and who is out there, this series will strengthen that resolve.
Host Johnny Clegg


Tonight was the Karoo segment, and the landscape footage was breathtaking. The relaxed and engaging Clegg, who is an anthropologist as well as a musician, talks about photographers David Goldblatt, and Mikhael Subotzky and the context of their work in places like Die Hell and Beaufort West and visits actress Antoinette Pienaar, who for the past four years has been living with 91 year old herbalist and sheepherder Johannes Willemse to learn his skills. There is footage from the other worldly Afrika Burns music festival in its desolate setting, and in a David Kramer-esque moment, Clegg meets a group of four musicians on string instruments who play for the ‘Sandskoppers’ – a group of dancers, dressed in bright yellow and green who kick up the sand with their fast and fancy footwork.

Perfect viewing for a Sunday evening, and there are ten episodes of this major series to go.
A Mikhael Subotzky photograph from the Beaufort West series