Saturday, December 18

‘If money were no object, which one would you choose?’ Blank project director Jonathan Garnham and I were walking around Dorothee Kreutzveldt’s opening of “The Imminent Inauguration of the Fifth Corner’. Kreutzveldt’s edgy brushwork reflects the fast changing often makeshift street landscape of downtown Johannesburg. ‘Hard to choose’, I respond. ‘And it’s not just a question of money. It’s wall space.’ ‘I sometimes think I should buy an old house in the Karoo with big rooms just to hang work I like’, says Jonathan.

Dorothee Kreutzveldt’s painting Two Men on a Bench photographed in downtown Johannesburg

For such a pleasurable imagined house – and for those who do have real available wall space - there was lots to choose from on the shows opening in the last two weeks. At Joao Ferreira’s, Kate Gottgens’ “merry hell and the dreambody’ presented family photos reworked into haunting paintings of a somewhat fearful childhood world.

Kate Gottgens and Andrew Putter at Joao Ferreira

The end of year graduate show at Michaelis looked better than ever – clearly, the appointment of a full time curator for the Michaelis Gallery, Nadja Daehnke, has added to the highly professional look of the show, which snakes through the entire complex. And the students themselves raised R200 000 to pay for their catalogue. Jared Ginsburg walked away with the Michaelis prize.

On the Michaelis show: Rose Kotze Staying at a Friend (Club Bliss, Claremont) | 2010 (detail)

And finally, ‘Category Error’ opened at the AVA on Monday night, an invigorating group show with artists Josie Grindrod, Joanne Block, Lynne Lomofsky, Mandy Darling, Jane Solomon, Leora Lewis, Jann Cheifitz and Philip Miller, with an exhibition of prints upstairs from Warren Editions. Large scale monoprints included work from Michael Taylor Sanell Aggenbach and Georgina Gratrix.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

You know Christmas is coming in Cape Town when cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro aka Zapiro launches his annual collection of hit-them-where-it-hurts-most cartoons. ‘Them’ being South Africa’s politicians, who continue to supply Zapiro with a never ending source of outrageous material. A New York academic told me recently that no American cartoonist would ever dare to pen a cartoon in which the president was unbuckling his pants to rape a supine Justice, but Zapiro did just that in September 2008. And shrugged off the multi million rand defamation suit Jacob Zuma brought against him.

Zapiro’s controversial Mail & Guardian cartoon

This year’s collected cartoon book, published by Jacana Media, is called Do You Know Who I Am? And if you don’t know who is saying that, you’d better buy the book.

Over the last decade, the cartoon characters have also evolved into puppets, stars of a satirical news programme featuring such well known characters as Julius Malema, Zuma, Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Tutu and Helen Zille, The programme is called zanews. It’s hilarious. But don’t look for it on SABC. They refuse to screen it. You can view it only on the internet at www.zanews.co.za. Or on DVD -– a great idea in a country where the internet is so slow.

Jacob Zuma and Helen Zille on zanews.co.za

In his speech , Shapiro told the story of his nervousness at whether Tutu would like the puppet of himself, with his hooked nose and jutting chin greatly exaggerated. He needn’t have worried. Recently, Tutu phoned Shapiro to ask if the puppet could stand in for him at an event he was invited to, but could not attend.

Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Tutu and Jonathan Shapiro

Monday, November 21, 2010

I am always surprised when traveling to discover how many international art world people are aware of ArtThrob, but I didn’t know we were exhibiting internationally as an entity as well. In a corner of London recently, writer Sean O’Toole came across the work below and emailed me a pic.

Spotted on a London exhibition

Never one to back off from tackling the politically incorrect, Brett Murray opened his most recent show, ‘Hail to the Thief’ at the Goodman Cape on Saturday. Apparently a leading parliamentarian expressed his extreme displeasure early in the day at Murray’s very direct punches to the jugular. Words like ‘right wing’ and ‘conservative’ were bandied about.

Brett Murray Cash is King, 2010 Silkscreen 100 x 70cm

The enormous crests and insignia which are part of the show are gorgeous by any reckoning, and are hand cut from steel, their intricate foliage covered with gold and silver leaf.

Goodman Gallery director Liza Essers.

Many of the works depend upon their titles to deliver the coup de grace, A perspex and silver leaf drawing of two men on a podium, one grasping a dollar sign, and gazing soulfully upwards is entitled Hold my hand, I’m a stranger in paradise. As one of Murray’s text works promises, there is NEVER A DULL MOMENT.

Clare van Zyl, Brett Murray and Warrick Sony at the opening.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Excluded during his lifetime from the walls of the South African National Gallery, Vladimir Tretchikoff’s work (he died in 2006 at the age of 92) will receive a full scale retrospective early next year. Cleverly billing the planned show, ‘Tretchikoff: The People’s Painter’ (to sidestep the nickname the artist hated, ‘the king of kitsch’), curator Andrew Lamprecht and SANG director Riason Naidoo launched a fundraising initiative for the show at an event at the Old Townhouse last Thursday. Would-be donors are asked to pledge R50 000 to bring home from the USA Tretchi’s The Chinese Girl, and so on, in a descending range of donations down to the, dare we call them, poinsettia potboilers.

Tretchikoff’s The Chinese Girl

On Saturday, US, the Simon Njami/Bettina Malcomess curated show finished its run at the SANG with an energetic programme of talks and performances. On a screen next to the panelists, messages sent by Bridget Baker from London instructed the audience to nod its head, three times, and repeat the action four times, and a bit later, to turn round and face the artworks. If the audience hardly reacted to these instructions, it could have been that the discussion from panelists Lamprecht, Njami, Malcomess and Jay Pather was so riveting we couldn’t take our eyes from their faces. Or perhaps audiences just don’t like sing along style instructions. But nice idea, Bridget. Donna Kukama had more success with her audience with her furious referee style performance in the quad.

Donna Kukama referees her art audience at the SANG

Marlene Dumas was in Stellenbosch this week for the opening of ‘Mother Nature’ at the Sasol Art Museum, exuding her usual wonderfully warm and earthy vibe. Dinner afterwards was at Lafayette.

Marlene Dumas and Penny Siopis after the opening of ‘Mother Nature’

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

I had an amazing week last week, finally going somewhere I have wanted to go for ages: up to Mpumulanga to spend a week in the White River studio of The Artist’s Press, under the direction of Mark Attwood. The setting is gorgeous, and totally different from Cape Town: a ridiculously lush subtropical garden filled with birds like lilac breasted rollers and paradise flycatchers.

Tamar Mason, Sheila Flynn, Mark Attwood, Colbert Mashile, Fred Clark and Josie Grindrod round the lunch table at The Artist’s Press

In the spacious studio. there are three Tamarind master printers on hand – Mark himself and Leshoko and Syneth - to facilitate the messy business of printing. Mark runs monoprint workshops from time to time, limited to five or six artists, and this was one of those.

The print studio

I trained as a printmaker, and after years of working in installation, video or photography, it is great to get back to the immediate satisfaction of painting an image on a surface, (in this case, a sheet of polycarbonate) placing it on the bed of the press, with a piece of paper face down, sending it through, then peeling back the paper to see what is there. Polycarbonate is an unsympathetic surface to work on, and the effects can be splashy, but as with all concentrated workshops, one seems to progress much faster than in one’s home studio, where email and the phone are constant interruptions.

An experimental monoprint portrait

I came back to Cape Town dying to make more prints.

Friday, October 22, 2010

I suppose so many shows open towards the end of the month because pay
day is just around the corner and hope springs eternal in the breasts of the
galleries.

On Monday, photographer Tracey Derrick was one of three artists opening atthe AVA. “One in Nine – my Year as a Statistic’ is the documentation of her
experience in fighting breast cancer. Her weapons against the disease were
wigs, hats, and finally a triumphant tattoo on her body where her breast once
was.

Tracey Derrick

Across the street at Worldart, Ayanda Mabulu was showing his barbed
paintings of satirical social commentary on ‘Un-mute my tongue’.

Ayanda Mabulu

On Tuesday, the Michaelis Gallery was packed for the opening of Andrew Putter’s year long project as a Gipco fellow with his ‘Sketch Assembly’. Working with 30 ‘apprentices’ he unpicked and reconstituted the genre of Dutch paintings known as “Merry Company’ in order to revisit history and
impart to the group the nature of constructing a series of artworks. The documentation of the process is exhibited in the minutest detail.

Opening crowd at ‘Sketch Asembly’

"Sketch Assembly" - it’s in the detail

On Thursday, the Goodman Gallery launched an upbeat magazine-style catalogue by Kudzanai Chirui, entitled Black President . Works on paper by Kudzi lined the walls, – and in the darkened gallery space Chimurenga editor Ntone Edjabe was the dj

Andy and Claire Baronowski with Odidi at the Goodman

And down at the Michael Stevenson, it’s aluta continua as Jo Ractliffe exhibits her extraordinary black and white photographs, taken on a series of arduous journeys to the interior of Angola, evoking the war torn landscape in images of beauty and forlorn desolation.

Also in the space, Simon Gush is showing an elegant and eloquent four screen video entitled 4 for Four: A speculative montage for David Oistrakh and Sergei Prokofiev and Claire van Blerk and Kyle Morland surpise by
constructing an elevator in the side gallery.

Emma Bedford and Jo Ractliffe

That was the week that was.

Wednesday, October 13

In 1986, a year in which the end of apartheid was not yet in sight but the impetus of resisting the state was in full swing and somewhat fashionable, a shop called So Modern in Rockey Street, Yeoville, Johannesburg’s vibrant crossover suburb, invited me to design two ‘politically aware’ T-shirts for them.

For the first, I used a photograph which had appeared in a British newspaper of Nelson and Winnie Mandela on their wedding day, with some text. For the second, I made a colourful ‘rainbow-pull’ design incorporating the clauses of the Freedom Charter (unbanned in 1984, but still widely considered subversive). The trendy So Modern reacted with horror to both my designs, saying that to sell either of them would result in jail for all concerned.

So I and my partner at that time, Bruce Gordon, started to print and distribute the T-shirts ourselves, and uncounted hundreds were sold.

Wanted: a Freedom Charter T-shirt

Now the Museum of Modern Art in New York has asked for one of the Freedom Charter T-shirts for their collection of ephemeral material, to be displayed in a vitrine to support an exhibition of South African prints to open next March. But I no longer have one.

Does anyone still have a Freedom Charter T-shirt tucked away somewhere they would be prepared to donate/sell? If so, please email me at suewill@iafrica.com