Monday, August 23

Last week, I visited the unique Hotel Everland for the last time.
The creation of Swiss artist friends Sabina Lang and Daniel Baumann, this moveable hotel for two will leave its position on the roof of their studio in Burgdorf and cross the Atlantic to become part of the collection of a Kentucky art museum.

The Hotel Everland

Staying in Everland with its retro curves and its calm aqueous toned interior in which one’s thoughts seem free to float undisturbed will be just a memory.

Inside Everland

The occasion was the annual Paul Klee Sommerakademie in Bern, which offers 12 emerging artists the opportunity to participate in a 10 day workshop with a leading curator – this year, the international critic and writer, Jan Verwoert. The theme of his workshop was ‘When your lips are my ears, our bodies become radios’, and for the period of the workshop the fellows, including Cape Town Gugulective member Kemang Wa Lehulere, had to produce a daily radio programme and a poster. But that is only one aspect of the workshop – other lectures, debates, intense discussions, immerse the fellows in considerations of what art is, or could be. Or should be.

Jan Verwoert

At the conclusion of the workshop, the nominators, from all over the world, are invited to review the procedures, and this year, attend the launch of a book produced by last year’s fellows, including Bettina Malcomess. Meeting up again with one’s fellow nominators like the American writer Steven Madoff and the director of the Bern Kunsthalle, Phillipe Pirotte, becomes a pleasant summer ritual. Phillipe tells me Moshekwa Langa is scheduled for a major show at the Kunsthalle in the coming months.

The River Aare

A highlight last year was very physical – a plunge into the swiftly flowing Aare River which runs through Bern, its opaque icy green reflecting its glacial source, but this year, it’s just too cold to contemplate a swim.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Yesterday was a day of sad and shocking news. Artist Mark Hipper has died. at the too young age of 50. His body was found in his home in Grahamstown by a friend who had gone round to see why he had missed a meeting. Apparently a few days before he had told his new gallerist Heidi Erdmann that he was not feeling well. It is believed his death resulted from diabetic complications.

Only three weeks ago I stood with Mark and Heidi and Manfred Zilla in Erdmann Contemporary in Cape Town, looking at the work of the past 20 years, sheets and sheets of paper covered in charcoal drawings of figures, most clearly executed at high speed, a technique which can be disastrous if the hand holding the charcoal is not that of a master.

In a review of his work at the Joao Ferreira Gallery in 2003, I wrote:

‘'Disquieting' is a word that could be used to describe almost all of Mark Hipper's work. Or liminal. Nothing in his work is quite what it seems, and there is much which resists an exact interpretation. A viewing audience is constantly being engaged in a disturbing dialogue, one which is heightened by the way the artist suddenly switches from one medium to another, from an apparently straightforward charcoal drawing to a suggestive watercolour to a carved body mask to this new installation. It is a dialogue in which it is worth engaging.’

Mark Hipper, The Inquisitors (2002) Painted jacaranda, Installation view João Ferreira Gallery

The retrospective of his work planned to take place in September when the Erdmann Gallery reopens will still go forward, though now with an elegiac undertone.

Mark Hipper, rest in peace.

Wednesday, August 4

Dineo Seshee Bopape is back from a two year stint in New York where she completed her MFA in new media at Columbia and has set up her installation ‘The eclipse will not be visible to the naked eye’ at the Michael Stevenson. It opened last Thursday.

What IS visible to the naked eye is a dense assemblage of rotating mirrors, lino-like wallpaper, lace curtains and flowers, flowers in vases, videos and photographs … nature has been subjected to the Bopape sense of exuberance and colour and brought inside. At the same time, there is also a disquieting sense, as In the red roses in the first scene of the classic David Lynch movie, Blue Velvet, that all is not as it seems ….

Dineo Seshee Bopape

Across the street at Blank Projects, Swiss artist Kerim Seiler has done what might seem to be the opposite, though working from a very different point of view. Carrying with them brightly coloured neon tubes and wooden stakes, Seiler and his collaborator Gregor Metzger moved out of the gallery, making their ‘Nomadic Structures’ sculptures in places from urban to deep in the wilds, introducing the fluorescent colours of the city into nature.

Kerim Seiler

The week finished with an invitation to high tea at the Mount Nelson. Could anything be more colonial sounding than that? Finger sized cucumber and egg mayonnaise sandwiches, little choux pastry tubes filled with smoked salmon, warm scones with apricot jam and clotted cream, and a rich Black Forest cake. Yum. My host was Steven Dubin, in town to promote his book, ‘Mounting Queen Vicforia: Museum transformation in a democratic South Africa, and after tea we listened to Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka.

Wole Soyinka

Said Soyinka, in a response to a question about how young writers should be addressing social issues like poverty: ‘Please don’t freeze out the age-old existential concerns of literature in favour of immediate concerns like AIDS and child soldiers’.

A response which applies equally to the visual arts.

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?