Thursday, January 27, 2011

A few weeks ago, I put out a call on this blog for a Freedom Charter T-shirt, circa 1986. MoMA New York had requested one as backup ephemera for an upcoming exhibition of South African prints. And now, thanks to Andrew Lamprecht, an FC T-shirt has turned up! Andrew discovered that ex-SA Museum director Patricia Davison had bought two T-shirts years ago – one for the museum, and an extra. Patricia has kindly agreed to donate the extra one to MoMA and as Andrew was about to depart for New York on an Ampersand residency, he is hand couriering it to curator Judy Hecker.

I usually try to let my birthday slip past without much fanfare … it comes too soon after the Christmas/New Year round of parties for me to really feel like celebrating … but this year, under direct questioning from friends, I had to admit it was coming up. And a small supper party at the Grand Beach and Café followed. The biggest present came from Candice Breitz and her partner Alex, who came into the restaurant bearing an outsized golden S. Looked great on the table, and now it’s on the wall of my apartment.

My actual birthday I spent working on monotypes at Warren Editions. Which didn’t go too badly. And for artists, making work that doesn’t go badly is the best present of all.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Is it too late to wish everyone a very happy New Year? I have been so busy working for my solo show ‘VOICES’ which opens at the Goodman Cape on February 19, that the New Year slid by as a blip which interrupted studio days.

But the New Year is always a time to stop and look back and assess the year that has gone by. And plan for the year ahead.

Very exciting news came my way in December. I had an email from the Rockefeller Foundation telling me that I had been awarded a Creative Arts Fellowship at the Bellagio Center on the banks of Lake Como under a new programme started in 2009. Mona Hatoum was one of last year’s fellows. In August, I had had a notification that I was one of 24 nominees for a fellowship. Three would eventually be selected, and I was asked to submit 10 images of recent work, a cv and a proposal. To learn that I was one of the final three was amazing.

A room at Bellagio

The Bellagio Center is a beautiful villa, where conferences and residencies of many kinds take place. The fellowship provides an apartment and a studio, full board and a stipend. I am not sure yet which months I will go, but I know it will be a wonderful experience.

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.