Thursday, June 21, 2012

  The annual Encounters Documentary Film Festival is one event which seems to have the power to winkle Cape Town artists out of their warm winter cocoons or cozy bars and into the cinemas and master classes.

Film maker Tiffany Shlain, (above) director of Connected: An Autobiography about  Love, Death and Technology, founder of the Webby Awards and named by Newsweek as one of the women shaping the 21^st century was here, sponsored by the US State Department

Shlain’s master class 

Her Cloud Film Making Manifesto Workshop was packed. Shlain has developed a style of filmmaking intricately bound up with the web, and works with the idea of sending out calls for people everywhere to send short video clips on themes on specific subjects.

 Connected: An Autobiography about  Love, Death and Technology

Shlain then combines these clips with animation and stock footage to make films which articulate simple feel-good ideas emphasizing the universality of human experience, and the interdependence of everyone on the planet.  You’ll find more on http://tiffanyshlain.com. Check it out.

Heiko Lange’s The Noise of Cairo

The Noise of Cairo brought news of the art scene in post Mubarak Egypt, with artists talking of the new freedom they feel in making work. Cairo’s top gallery, The Townhouse features prominently, with director William Wells  commenting it was too soon (2011) for artists to reflect  seriously on the situation --- he thought they should wait till about 2016 to make a true assessment through their work.  Wells may have a point in suggesting artists should not rush to make statements … and the latest election news from Egypt is not encouraging … but artists find different ways to respond at different times.

Ben Lewis

Ben Lewis’ The Great  Contemporary Art Bubble is an expose of the art world in New York and London, and the shrewd marketing that goes behind the promotion of such art brand supremos as Damien Hirst.  For instance, at a time when London’s White Cube gallery was claiming it had only a few Hirsts available, which could be sold only to selected very important clients, the true picture was completely different. A weighty leaked document showed they were holding an enormous cache of Hirst works, most fabricated by his army of assistants. Well, that’s the art world.

www.encounters.co.za 

Tuesday May 22, 2012

So now no one can look at the representation of President Zuma’s genitalia on the Brett Murray’s painting in the Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, any more.  This morning, two men walked into the gallery, and after one man painted a red X over the offending area, the other threw a can of black paint over the whole work, obscuring both the face and the body.

No issue has had the country so up in arms - on one side or the other – since, oh yes, since the Zuma rape case. 

My day started with a dash to a recording studio in Sea Point where the BBC had booked a studio for me to do a live interview on their World Service programme, commenting on the Zuma painting affair, and what the painting symbolized. The email from the BBC in London asking me to talk on the matter as Founding Editor of ArtThrob came yesterday, but this morning the hookup never came through. Presumably a bigger story had bumped the Zuma painting off the list.

Not in this country. Early today, Brett told me he had got his fighting spirit back after being thoroughly disorientated by the fury unleashed by his work. But two hours later, the news that a Shembe chief had said he should be subjected to a public stoning left him shaken again.

Who knows where it will all end.

Thursday May 17, 2012

WAM curator Fiona Rankin-Smith

Johannesburg was the place to be last week, with the opening of the gorgeous new Wits Art Museum attracting the entire local art world.  Serendipitously acronyming to WAM, the new multi level space offers unique exhibition opportunities.

Opening night at WAM

For the opening, WAM showcased key pieces from the Standard Bank Collection of African art, and works from its own collection. Although there were a number of extraordinary paintings on show, and it was a pleasure to see them again, there was a slightly dated air about it all: a feeling of work being brought out of storerooms. Nothing much by the new generation of artists.

 Levels are connected by shallow stairs

As one artist commented, the work will have to catch up with the space. 

If WAM is to realize its full potential, corporate and other patrons will have to be found to fund acquisitions, retrospectives and exhibitions of the kind of quality which will regenerate the local art scene and place WAM on the international agenda as an important destination. 

I can’t wait to see this happen.

 A quiet corner on the lowest level of WAM

Golden knuckle dusters on Brett Murray’s ‘Hail to the Thief ll’

Earlier on the very same evening, social satirist Brett Murray had opened his  ‘Hail to the Thief ll’ at the Goodman Gallery, releasing so many sharply barbed arrows aimed at government corruption that perhaps it was not surprising that given the sensitivity of our leaders, the Department of Arts and Culture subsequently phoned gallery owner Liza Essers to request a meeting about the work.

 Brett Murray and Liza Essers

As this goes to press, that meeting has not yet taken place, but work ranged from an exquisite pair of gold plated knuckle dusters with VIVA enameled in red on each, to some distinctly unflattering representations of President Zuma. See it all online at http://www.goodman-gallery.com/exhibitions/265

  Brett Murray’s Monopoly

Wednesday, May 2 2012

Twins, their outward similarities belying their inner differences, are the subject of Candice Breitz’s Factum series, which opened as part of ‘Extra!’ at the National Gallery last week. And right on cue, there were two of her subjects, who had flown in from Toronto especially for the opening. Rather like the pink clad fairies one always sees in Venice, Pauline and Mary Misericordia have flown around the world to be present wherever Factum opens, always dressing identically for the occasion, and in this case, bringing a spangly grey scarf for Candice as well.

Julia Rosa Clark 

The week before, Julia Rosa Clark’s ‘Booty’ opened at Whatiftheworld. Described by the artist as ‘Drawings’ these quirky mixed media works incorporate collage elements of every kind on richly painted backgrounds, evoking a cultural history of nostalgia and half buried memories, like a song one cannot quite remember, except for a single phrase which reverberates through the mind.

 Malibongwe Tyilo 

Meanwhile, fashionista blogger Malibongwe Tyilo (check his delicious site out at skattiewhatareyouwearing.blogspot.com) decided to compete with Julia’s artwork by swanning around in a jacket which could easily have gone up on the wall.

Minnette Vári Relaxing at lunch after her opening at the Goodman 

Minnette Vári looked delighted and relieved that her seven screen installation on her new show ‘Revenant’ was up and running, after last minute technical hitches kept the installation team up all night. Oh, the joys and terrors of technology. For every new media artist, it’s a love/hate relationship. Minnette’s compelling exhibition is themed around ‘an uncanny return’ and can be viewed at  http://www.goodman-gallery.com/exhibitions/262.

Gretchen van der Byl’s show at Commune 1 

In the relatively new space of Commune 1, (new as an art space, that is – the Wale Street building itself is old and beautiful) Gretchen van der Byl is showing ‘Today is the Yesterday of Tomorrow’. Gretchen is the tiny figure in black and white on the right in the photo, seen from above, next to her pristine architectural construction.

A portable horizon 

Her theme is the way we negotiate space in our daily lives, and her poetic Portable Horizon is a coil of dark thread which measures 29.0722 kilometres – the distance the horizon of the sea would measure if one were standing on a beach.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

In many cities around the world - Manhattan, London and Stockholm, to name just three - art commissioned from local artists enlivens the subway stations, making the daily process of getting from one place to another much more fun. So it’s great to see the city of Cape Town applying the same process to the network of MyCiti bus stations spreading virally through the city. In 2010, I did a 19 panel design at the bus station at the airport, involving clouds and mountains and calligraphic quotes. A few weeks ago, curator Roger van Wyk invited me and four other artists to propose a design for the station opposite Thibault Square. The brief was to honour three early architects of Cape Town, including Louis Michel Thibault, designer of the historic Koopmans de Wet house, now a museum in Strand Street.

This week, we heard that the gig went to Julia Anastasapoulos, with one of the best designs for a bus station I’ve yet seen. Thibault used the classic golden mean system of proportions in making his designs, and Julia took the circles which had determined his structure and dropped in areas of transparent colour. A beautiful solution to honouring the architect, fully utilizing the glass panels of the bus station, and at the same time enriching the passengers’ experience of waiting for the bus to come.

It reminds me a bit of an old David Kramer song, where he talks about growing up in Worcester, and how the most exciting part of Sunday was standing at the front door looking at the cars going by outside, first through the green glass panel and then through the red.

Good Friday, April 6 2012

When a sense of loss is unbearable, can an acoustic envelope of music provide a way to alleviate pain? This is one of the questions introduced to her Cape Town  audience by the brilliant international academic, Griselda Pollock this week. Talking luminously about the little known German Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon, who died in Auschwitz in 1943, Pollock showed images of the vibrant small paintings Salomon left behind. These chronicle a fictional account of her tragic life, complete with transparent overlays referencing the music to be listened to, or hummed, while looking at that image.  The artist’s self portrait is on the right above, next to the photo of Griselda, taken during her Michaelis talk.

More about the artist at http://www.jhm.nl/collection/themes/charlotte-salomon. Griselda Pollock can be referenced all over the web.

Chad Rossouw: Cape Town Overnight

Chad Rossouw’s ‘A History of Failure’  is on view at Brundyn & Gonsalves and is a dense imaginary of a scientific and engineering South African past … his elegant poster of a Zeppelin flying over the art deco Old Mutual building promises CAPE TOWN OVERNIGHT.

Stan Douglas: Malabar People: Owner/Bartender 1951

Was the 2^nd Johanneburg Biennale a failure? Only in that it was closed early by the main funders, the City of Johannesburg, and has never happened again. To the overseas critics who came to look and to those of use who were lucky enough to participate or to be there, it was a triumph. Curated by Okwui Enwezor, it was called “Trade Routes and Geography”

Penny Siopis: The Master is Drowning

In what may turn out to be the exhibition of the year, Joost Bosland has recalled those brilliant weeks which brought some of the top artists of the world to this country with an exhibition at the Stevenson entitled ‘Trade Routes Over Time’, The show  features work by a few of the many artists who took part, including Stan Douglas, Yinka Shonibare, Olafur Eliasson, Pierre Huyghe and South African artists Jo Ractliffe and Penny Siopis. 

Wednesday March 21, 2012

Last year, American artist Christian Marclay won the Golden Lion at Venice for his 24 hour video played in real time. ‘The Clock’ was an edit of thousands of cinematic clips which involved clocks or watches, and the magical part was that If, for instance, one was looking at Harold Lloyd hanging perilously from a clock above a New York street, one knew the exact time in real life was, in fact, 6.30.

For those who are interested in the process that lay behind this masterpiece, the latest New Yorker has an extended piece on Marclay and the three year marathon making of the ‘The Clock’

Here is a trailer, one of several available on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp4EUryS6ac

But what really caught my attention was this. Last week, I talked about Mark Dion’s comment that an artist’s particular methodology should be able to be adapted to any context. Marclay started as a DJ, playing scratched and broken records, and then made works using broken records. An artwork involving a collage of cracked vinyl pieces may seem a long way from ‘The Clock’, but the impulse to edit existing material is the same.

Much as we all adore Athi Patra Ruga, one might have wished that a stronger desire for a rigorous edit had arisen in his breast as one sat through a somewhat tortuous performance of his rite of passage piece, ‘Ilulwane’, at the Long Street Baths last week.

The red lighting on the water was gorgeous. The synchronized swimmers looked good for the first fifteen minutes, after which they did not seem to be particularly energized, or in time. They were probably cold by then, poor things.

The video projection stuttered through images of piers off the west side of lower Manhattan (I think), a ceremony of robed figures, and a herd of goats, and eventually against this backdrop, the floating artist was hauled from the water and suspended above the pool, high heels casting a dramatic shadow on the wall. By then, though, the videos had become repetitious and had gone on too long.

The ability of the artist to endure has to be balanced against the desire of the audience to reach closure.

Cape Town has another new art space. For a gallery located inside a hotel, the Upper Eastside in Woodstock, it has an odd name: The Museum Gallery. This week, first time exhibitor Sally Berg opened her introspective painting show ‘In the flesh’ in the lower part of the gallery. Visit on Saturdays until March 31.