Tuesday July 27 2010

What mortifications of the flesh artists will go through to make art! Belinda Blignaut’s ‘Stealing the Words’ installation on the windows of the YoungBlackman Gallery required the artist to chew 10 000 pieces of bubblegum to make enough bubbles which in their weirdly detumescent state pinkly coat the windows of the gallery. Only by leaching the bubblegum in hot water first to draw out some of the nauseatingly sugary flavour could the artist complete her project.

Belinda Blignaut at the opening of ‘Stealing the Words’.

Anti xenophobia stickers are popping up all over town. The next meeting of the Artists Action Group against Xenophobia takes place on Saturday, August 7 in the Oliver Tambo Centre in Khayelitsha from 11 am to 2 p.m. It’s really easy to get there – just take the Mew Way exit from the N2 and you’re right there. Email organizer Suzy Bell at HYPERLINK "mailto:bellsuzy@gmail.com" bellsuzy@gmail.com for more details of the workshop.


Seen on an ad at the airport

This past weekend, 20 years of figure drawings strewn across the floor of Erdmann Contemporary gave viewers a mini retrospective of Mark Hipper’s graphic work. Many of the vigorous charcoals were done in life drawing sessions, but there were a number of the late great Robert Hodgins, naked but still robust, brought back to life by Hipper’s swift and always assured line.

Mark Hipper takes a closer look at past drawings at Erdmann Contemporary

‘Mounting Queen Victoria’ is the title of Steven Dubin’s book on the transformation of museums in South Africa, and whether museums are still relevant –or not - will be the subject of a Book Fair panel on Sunday afternoon at 2 for 2.30 at Iziko South African National Gallery. I will be part of the panel, together with Riason Naidoo of the SANG, Andrew Lamprecht, Pippa Skotnes and the author himself.

Friday, July 16

In a week when the World Cup final ended a month of celebration, a time in which all South Africans seemed to have discovered – again – how much they really liked each other, Dan Halter’s exhibition ‘Double Entry’ opened at Whatiftheworld …..


Halter’s entry visa

The title of the show refers to the artist’s visa to enter once more the country of his birth, and and focuses on the cruel situation in which Zimbabweans trying to leave the country find themselves.

Performance poet Suzy Bell flashes her Goodbye Mugabe T shirt in front of Halter’s Beitbridge Space Invader video.

And then this week, as if to bring us all down to cold reality now that the World Cup is over, there were fresh outbreaks of xenophobic violence all over the Western Cape, with Somali shop owners being chased from the shops, beaten up, and their shops looted.

So please take note that on this Saturday, July 17, there will be an anti-xenophobia creative workshop from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Oliver Tambo Centre in Khayelitsha. And if anyone needs directions to get there, phone
Suzy at 076 375 5675. For more info, email Suzy at bellsuzy@gmail.com Also, on Sunday, there will be a march from a 12 noon meeting at St George’s Cathedral.

Suzy Bell’s graffiti

We have to do everything we can to creatively bring about a change in consciousness, to make all feel welcome in our midst.

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.