September 1, 2012

  

I am chugging through the German countryside south of Munich, white and brown cows in green fields to my left, an ancient red roofed village to my right. The train is headed for Rome, and up to now, my grand European tour by train has been nothing but a pleasure, relaxing in first class seats with little snacks brought to me while I tap away on the computer.

Breakfast on the Deutschebahn train

A Eurail ticket for six days first class unlimited travel through four countries costs less than two economy return flights between Joburg and Cape Town, and I can highly recommend it. Up to now, that is. This train is uncomfortably full, and on top of that, instead of proceeding to Bologna where I would have changed for Rome, there has just been an announcement that passengers to Italy will have to get off the train at Innsbruck and catch a bus to Brenner and get another train to Bologna from there. Damn.

To go back to the beginning of this trip, my first stop was Bern in Switzerland, for the annual Nominators Day of the Sommerkademie of the Paul Klee Centre. For this event, 12 under 35 artists are nominated from around the world, and come together for 12 days of intense workshops and art experiences. This year, the event kicked off with presentations by each of the fellows, a display of highly accomplished and diverse practices.  (Outside the train window the landscape is getting rapidly more mountainous, forested slopes crowned with clouds). One South African nominee had been awarded a fellowship - Mohau Modisakeng – but he was not amongst the other fellows. The story was that he had not applied for a visa until the last minute and would arrive the following Tuesday. He never did show up. 

From Bern, which also included such cooling activities as blowing bubbles at sunset next to the river, (top pic), I went to the Basque coast of France, Biarritz, to spend a few days with my brother, and then up to Paris. My hotel here was the La Louisiane, perfectly located off the Boulevard St Germain, and really reasonable. Gus van Sant is said to make this his Paris stop.

Surfboarding class on the Biarritz beach

I only have 24 hours in Paris, so I have to make some quick decisions. Gerhard Richter is showing at the Pompidou. A good place to start. Outside the Pompidou an old man with a trolley is feeding a vast flock of pigeons with purloined cake. 

 Let them eat cake

Inside, Richter’s retrospective takes us through the whole career of the master German painter, from his early monochromatic paintings based on black and white photographs with seductively smudged edges through to his gorgeous colour portraits and abstractions. The lucid artist’s statements which accompany the changes in direction give a clear insight into Richter’s thoughts.

One of Gerhard Richter’s portraits of his daughter Betty

From here, it’s on to La Maison Rouge, an art gallery constructed around an old red house, which will host an exhibition of South African art as part of the South Africa/France cultural season next year. Foamy suds are sliding down the roof and into the courtyard as I leave for my last stop of the day, the Palais de Tokyo, where the Paris Triennale is in its final days.

La Maison Rouge

I have a dinner date, so cannot linger, and do not see Nicholas Hlobo’s piece or Guy Tillim’s photos, but I am again struck by Chris Ofili’s’ gorgeous paintings, two executed in the style which filled the British Pavilion in Venice in 2006 -  a  palette of red, green and black dots, made brilliant by the addition of tiny mirrors, and a later work, in the lush ochres, inky greens, wines and purples of a Gauguin.

Chris Ofili on the Paris Triennale

Reaching the Gare de l’Est at an early hour at which tout Paris seems still asleep – or perhaps it’s just because it’s Saturday – I board the train for Kassel, home of the most important contemporary art event in the world, so carefully planned it happens only once every five years. I’m talking of course about Documenta (13), curated this time around by Carolyn Christov Bakargiev.

From tomorrow I will be viewing the delights – or otherwise - of Documenta with writer Sean O’ Toole and artist Lisa Brice, but on this first afternoon I will go to one of the most highly recommended works – a performance experience by Tino Seghal. The line to enter the door of what looks like a garden shed is long. And when you get to the door, one steps into a room which is totally pitch black.  Nothing visible. But ones ears become ones eyes … chanting, humming, rhythmic explosive sounds are happening all around. Someone pats me lightly on the chest in passing.  It’s like being thrown blindfolded onto a stage where something really interesting is going on.  A visceral body experience in which one feels even more included in this charismatic group as one’s eyes gradually become accustomed to the dim light and can ascertain the performers, who on one occasion drop to the ground and wriggle between the legs of the disconcerted audience.

Gerard Byrne’s A man and a woman make love

An hour passes, and I leave, moving next door to the fifties style ballroom on an old hotel, where Gerard Byrne’s piece A man and a woman make love is projected onto a number of screens set at angles around the floor. It’s an acted out conversation between members of the surrealist group on the mechanics and conventions of lovemaking.

I have four more days of Documenta, and I can’t wait.

August 22, 2012

A minor but nonetheless not-to-be-neglected decision comes up for every artist before the opening of his or her exhibition: What shall I wear? Some take the easy route by wearing the same kind of I’m-the-artist torn jeans and grubby T-shirt  worn every day to the studio. Others choose the occasion to make a strong fashion statement, making clear to the world, I-maybe-an-artist-but–I-do-know-how-to-dress.

And then there’s the solution chosen by Husain and Hasan Essop at the opening of their recent show ‘Remembrance’ at the Goodman Gallery, Cape Town. The theme of their exhibition was a lucid and beautiful photographic exploration of religious spaces, both Muslim and Christian, in various parts of the world.

It was totally appropriate, then, that the twins clad themselves in the fabric of their photogoraphic imagery, as it were … and wore jackets fabricated from prayers mats, Husain in green and Hasan in blue.

For those interested in learning more about the Essops’ work, and what led them to undertake their journeys to some of the great religious centres of the world, there will be a panel discussion at the Goodman at 11 a.m. on Saturday, September 1 at 11 a.m.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

As every artist knows, raising funding for the production of a new art piece, an exhibition, or a catalogue is one of the most difficult tasks around. There is not a lot of money available for art projects, and everyone wants a piece of the pie, so when a visiting American filmmaker raved about  www.kickstarter.com, a creative funding platform, I couldn’t wait to look at the site. (One of the current projects seeking funding is pictured above – Vincent Ward wants to mount an installation at the Shanghai Biennale).

The Kickstarter premise is that many people would like to financially support creative projects that appeal to them, but they don’t have much money to give. So donors can pledge as little as $5 – and the money will only go to the project if the target figure set by the artist is met by a certain date. Artists offer thank you gifts for donors – which might range from a special postcard to, if it is a really big donation, a listing as a producer in the credits of a film.

This week, the New Yorker carries a joke in which some prisoners are standing around in a prison yard, and one is saying: ‘Thanks to Kickstarter we’re building a tunnel’. Which shows the extent to which Kickstarter  has entered popular culture.

Most regrettably, Kickstarter is only available in the United States, because of the payment system. Damn. Won’t someone start it here?

Durant Basi Sihlali (SA 1935 - 2005)

 Lithograph, 

"Loading Coal" 

40 x 57 cm

Talking about artists and money … it has been sad to read recent stories in the Mail & Guardian about the lawyer who apparently has in his possession millions of rands worth of artworks left behind by Durant Sihlali after he died of a heart attack in 2004. The lawyer, Mafika Sihlali, who may or may not be related to the artist, is currently out on bail on a charge of defrauding the SABC, and nobody (except, presumably, the lawyer) knows quite where the paintings are. Durant Sihlali’s widow Anna has laid a charge of theft against the lawyer.

Sihlali was one of the country’s leading artists, and apart from the loss of income to his widow, the disapearance of his work is an enormous blow to the country’s cultural heritage. One can only hope that his paintings are safely in storage somewhere, and one day will reappear.

Sue Williamson    

Cheryl Carolus, 1990

59 x 39 cm 

Pigment inks on archival paper.

I have committed to a show on the Cape Town Month of Photography in September. The theme this year is Autobiography: Chronicles of Our Times. 

Although I have used photography in my work many times, it’s always been as part of a larger project: this is the first time I will show photographs by themselves. 

I decided to go back through all my old negatives, and print up portraits of women I have taken over the years. Some of the images I have seen up to now only as  postage stamp sized on a contact sheet … like this one, of Cheryl Carolus.

I took this in 1990, when Cheryl  was still very much the activist, before the years when she became South African High Commissioner in London and more recently, chairperson of SAA. 

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Earlier this year, in March, I made good an undertaking to do a project for Lalela, an organization headed up by Andrea Kerzner. Lalela has done educational art projects all over Africa, designed to give kids access to the creative process not available at their under resourced schools. There is much more at www.lalelaproject.org

In Cape Town, weekly classes are held in various venues in Hout Bay and Fish Hoek, and other artists who have worked with the kids include the Essop twins and Peter Clarke. So now it was up to me to think of a project to do with the 15 – 18 year olds in a regular classroom with no real space to spread out or make a mess. I decided to do a Hout Bay version of my ‘Other Voices Other Cities’ project, in which I ask residents of a place what it is that distinguishes the place they live in from any other.

The kids at the school have tough lives – many are the children of immigrant families, coming up against local xenophobia. In the workshop session where we talked about what they felt about living in Hout Bay, one girl’s statement was that she did not get mugged – very often. The statement which received the most votes in the end was: NICE VIEW BUT MOST PEOPLE ARE JEALOUS AND GREEDY. So that was the text we made up in cardboard letters.

Right outside Hout Bay High is a perfect spot for the shoot – a vacant lot with the beautiful Hout Bay harbour spread out below. I did a test shoot in March, but 10 days ago, it was time to do the real thing.

Hasan Essop took the pix, I directed the shoot, (it’s amazing how hard it is to get a group of people to hold letters straight for more than a few seconds) and the rain held off just long enough for us to get it all done.

The soft greyness of the day made the bold colours of the letters the kids had painted even more of a contrast than in the bright summer sunlight of the test shoot.

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