Tuesday, February 22

‘The best moment in making a film’ said an actor, intercepted on his way up the red carpet to the 2011 BAFTA award show, ‘is the two weeks before filming actually starts. One believes then that it’s all going to be brilliant. Two days after the start of filming, you’ve already made some mistakes, and you know that it isn’t.”

The parallel is not quite the same, but for me, the best part of an exhibition is the hours before the opening, when the work is at last all up on the freshly painted walls, straight, lit to its best advantage, and one is able to see for the first time how each piece works with the next. And also, whether each piece is strong enough to stand up for itself, as well as being part of a larger body of work.

In the empty gallery, no critic has yet weighed in with comments pointing out flaws, and one has not had to wonder if the compliments of friends are sincere or just well meaning and tactful.

Last Saturday, my show ‘Voices’ opened at the Goodman Cape, to my mind, the most beautiful commercial gallery space in the country. This Saturday, the 26th, I will be giving a walkabout at 11 a.m.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

It’s not often one can buy an artwork for R5.20. And get all the news about what is happening in Cairo at the same time.

On Wednesday, I received an email from Christian Nerf which read ‘Howzit Sue. I placed an ad in the Argus death announcements (today and tomorrow)... Thought you may want to acquire one’. In that sentence, ‘acquire’ is the key word.

An image of the ad was attached … a composite photo of the artistic duo Christian Nerf (balding, black rimmed glasses) and Doug Gimberg (deprecating closed eye smile, copious fiery locks).

21/04/1977 – 24/01/2011 Our friend, you have fallen silent in the prime of your life ……. ni dieu ni maitre.

The death announcement

So on Thursday I did buy The Argus and there on the front page of the Classified was Nerf Gimberg, pinkly smiling up from an announcement placed between the death notices of Martine Ward and Brenda Okun (born Kasimov).

So does this mean the two have given up their collaborative work? Are we to take this seriously ? Or is it one of those announcements, like the one Barend de Wet made years ago when he said he had given up being an artist once he produced a son?

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.