Wednesday 16 October 2013

It appears I have taken a sabbatical from writing the diary – the last entry was made mid August. That was before I went to Bern, Switzerland in the last week of August, where I spent an amazing 10 days with 12 young artists from all over the world at the Paul Klee Museum Sommerakademie.

The Sommerakademie is an annual event, and this year, I was honoured to be chosen as guest curator, meaning, that I was able to invite other artists and curators to join in the intense discussions around questions of what the role of art is or isn’t in the contemporary world, and all the artists showed what work they were doing right now, and talked about issues like what everyone thought of the latest Ai Wei Wei video Dumbass, and after the official tour of the ancient city of Bern, we had a second alternative tour, looking into the alternative side of the city, with its well hidden problems of drug abuse and immigration.

Then there was swimming in the river Aare, a great afternoon discussion with Okwui Enwezor, a workshop with Candice Breitz which sent everyone out on to the streets of Bern conducting polls to uncover different aspects of the city, a film viewing with Penny Siopis, some interactions with cows and bells in the Jura Mountains, and lots of good food. For me, the best part was that although there was a closeness in the group right from the start, and a shared commitment to making art which reflects ruptures in the fabric of society, at the same time, points of view were quite divergent and strongly expressed.

It was a really remarkable experience.

August 15, 2013

The rare touch of colour in the dual exhibitions of Simon Gush and Jo Ractliffe (above) at the Stevenson Cape Town is the red glass bauble caught between the halves of a   table top – a metaphor for dissension over a staff Christmas party.  The piece is called Christmas Table, and it is one of Simon Gush’s meditations on the way that our position in the hierarchy of employment determines not only our working days but shapes our attitudes towards life, and towards what we think life owes us. 

Simon Gush Christmas Table

Jo Ractliffe’s  ‘Borderlands’ is an arid series of black and white photographs recording subtle traces on three areas of this country of the aftermath of the border wars of the apartheid years.  It is easy to sweep one’s glance over the whole room full of photos and think the bleakly beautiful images are rather similar, and not terribly dramatic. But that is the point. The lack of military detail, the desultory remains of old latrines, maybe, belie the awful truth of those times. Someone who had been through the experience of that war told Jo that for him, the photos ‘screamed’.

Luiza Cachalia

On the lighter side, young painter Luiza Cachalia tries her hand at catching the nervous energy of female stars of the melodramatic variety in her first solo exhibition at SMAC.  It’s called ‘Don’t Jump Off Bridge’

There’s something I must tell you (installation view)

My own exhibition, ‘All Our Mothers’ opens on August15 at the Goodman at 6 p.m, with a public walkabout on Saturday 17 at 11 a.m.  There’s something I must tell you is a multi screened video installation about the generational gap between the grandmothers of the Mandela generation, and their granddaughters. 

Everyone is welcome. To all the exhibitions, of course. Not just mine.

July 21, 2013

This week was Nelson Mandela’s 95^th birthday, and the nation and the world celebrated. It was heartwarming to learn from the press that his grandchildren said he was sitting up in his hospital bed and smiling.

I thought back to 25 years ago, 1988, Madiba’s 70^th birthday.  He had been in jail for more than 20 years then, and whether he would ever be freed was still a matter of speculation.

In early July that year, Cape Town’s South newspaper, a weekly anti-apartheid tabloid, asked me to design a poster to honour Mandela’s birthday. It was against the law to publish a photograph of a prisoner, but I used a photocopy of one of the old Treason Trial era photos of Mandela,  and made a screenprinted frame in the style of the A Few South Africans series of women portraits.

That Friday, I couldn’t wait to get a copy of South and see the Mandela poster as the centre page spread. An announcement on the front page of South promised the poster within, but when I opened up the paper, the centre pages were a total blank. I couldn’t believe it.

I phoned the editor. It turned out that South was actually printed on The Argus presses each week. The South people knew that it was against the law to publish a picture of Mandela, so they tried that week to get The Argus  to print late at night, hoping no-one on their staff would notice the offending photo. But The Argus did notice, and refused. 

South decided to leave the centre pages blank as a protest. In any case, it was too late to substitute anything else.

I would have liked to have posted a picture of the never published poster on the blog today, a 25 year old tribute, but I hunted through my studio for several hours and I can’t find it. 

Sunday, June 30, 2013

At the recent Volta Art Fair, visitors taking the pink carpeted walkway into the interior could not escape reading this message: MY OTHER RIDE IS YOUR MOM.  Ed Young was at it again.  Volta runs concurrently to Art Basel, and focuses on up and coming artists and galleries, and inside the exhibition spaces, Young offered another profound sentiment: FUCK THE POOR.  A stuffed white bunny wore a MAC-lipsticked smile, and bumper stickers were available. For those who feared that the Volta loos might run out of toilet paper, a roll printed with an allover design of ED YOUNG hung on the wall as an emergency supply. Young did not himself go to Volta, but the SMAC Gallery reported back that some viewers loved the work and others hated it.

   

Talking of art fairs, Cape Town is getting its own, with the emphasis on ‘affordable’ art i.e. no work for sale will be priced over R50 000. The new venture is under the auspices of Fiera Milano Exhibitions Africa, organisers of the Good Food & Wine show, and the project manager is Kamey Butler. Dates are October 25 to 27 2013, and the venue is the Lookout Centre at the V&A Waterfront. The title of the new art fair, ‘Art For Me’, seems to pander a little too obviously to the aspirations of those who take the word ‘lifestyle’ seriously, but hey, there are many entries into the field of contemporary art. 

Bumped into AfrikaBurns organizer Robert Weinek this week. AfrikaBurns is, of course, the South African version of America’s legendary annual Burning Man event, with its extravagant creativity, its burning sculptures and a culture of free exchange. Since its inception in 2007, AfrikaBurns, held in the Tankwa Karoo, has developed its own set of legends, and camp followers, a devoted tribe which sees the limited tickets for the event sold out months in advance. Robert tells me that this year, a group of 40 AfrikaBurns-ites plus a sculpture of a full sized dinosaur have been invited to Burning Man. The South African sculptures go one step further than those seen at up to now at Burning Man – they are kinetic, so they not only burn they move!  

Raised eyebrow department

‘While it may seem like quite an imposing building with its stark white façade, towering Greek pillars and massive doors opening out onto the Company’s Gardens – the interior of the Iziko South African National Gallery is as warm and familiar as a Xhosa mud hut’ – extract from’ i on iziko’ newsletter received by email this week.

Tuesday, June 11

Venice is a city of fast appearances and even faster disappearances. A vaporetto will suddenly materialise out of what seemed an empty piece of lagoon and swoop down on the water ferry stop;  a hurrying person will disappear around a corner, but when one reaches that corner, the street will be empty.

Addresses are hard to locate. Even when one takes the precaution of having a Biennale opening party venue carefully marked on the street map by the hotel receptionist, one arrives at that spot only to find no one in the vicinity knows where that particular street is. There are too many tiny streets! Every inquiry from a passer by is met with a careless shrug.

This happened again one evening when I had in my hand a printed out invite from the Sean Kelly Gallery to a party in a gorgeous looking palazzo.  I texted SCAD curator Laurie Farrell: 'Are you there yet? I can't find this place'. The reply comes back 'I can't find it either. I'm dashing out to a dinner'.  So I give up and arrange to meet friends Lisa Brice and Sean O'Toole on the Accademia bridge, four ferry stops away, but on the way up the Grand Canal, I suddenly spot the palazzo in question from the water. 

So the three of us head for the party, and it is lucky we do have the printed invite to get past the door guys, but it is beginning to rain, and  the event is in the garden,  everyone is speaking French, and no one is paying any attention to the video playing at the end of the garden, by Laurent Grasso, in which a  hawk with a camera attached is flitting around the countryside. But the bellinis are flowing freely, and it is the beginning of another Venice evening.

There is one object it would be impossible for any Biennale goer to miss: Brit artist Marc Quinn's massive and clumsily articulated sculpture of the naked and pregnant Alison Lapper, disabled from birth by thalidomide. (see top of this column). The original was carved in Carrara marble and sat on the art column in Trafalgar Square in London. This one is a marble toned inflatable located outside San Giorgio Maggiore, and judging by the comments, could win with ease the title of least liked work at the 2013 Biennale. 

Sharing a Venice moment with Laurie Farrell

Sunday 24 March 2013

When struggle veteran Amina Cachalia died suddenly on the last day of January this year, South Africa lost one of the most charismatic and glamorous members of the struggle generation. It was all the more sad and upsetting because Amina had been so looking forward to the upcoming launch of her autobiography.

Titled When Hope and History Rhyme the book launch took place in the Wits Great Hall on March 9, and also served as a memorial to her life.  All of the Cachalia children and grandchildren  sat on the stage, and in turn, told stories which spoke of her courage and humour. 

Next weekend, I was up in Johannesburg again – this time, to finish filming of my new work, tentatively called There’s something I must tell you, a multi screen video installation discussion between grandmothers and granddaughters, in which Amina plays a central part. Much of her book tells of the family home in Luttig Street, Forsdburg, scene of constant police surveillance and harassment, but also a place where the family gathered with friends and comrades, key figures in the struggle, to celebrate and to enjoy Amina’s delicious cooking.

On Sunday, Amina’s granddaughter, Luiza, came to be photographed outside the Luttig Street house for the piece, and recalled the many good times from her childhood when she had stayed there with Amina.

Being in Johannesburg again also gave me the chance to pay a second visit to Candice Breitz’ exhibition of her new series, The Woods at the Goodman Gallery.  In order to provide three distinct soundproof spaces for each of Candice’s pieces – shot with child actors, or actors playing children in the three film centres of the world – Bollywood, Nollywood and Hollywood – the Goodman has rebuilt the gallery space to accommodate this, with ceilings over each space to enclose the sound. 

Candice Breitz: The Audition (installation view)

It is certainly the most sophisticated installation in a commercial gallery this country has seen. Lara Koseff of the Goodman told me that visitors react very differently to the darkened spaces.

Some are intimidated and leave the gallery without even entering the exhibition spaces, but many spend hours there, enjoying the beautifully shot and expertly edited pieces to the full. The Woods explore the way that children become part of the film industry, and in their energetic and sometimes desperate efforts to attract notice and win acceptance, mirror the aspirations provided for audiences by general release films. 

Wednesday, March 6 2013

Two weeks ago, I flew from blisteringly hot Johannesburg, where I had been shooting in Soweto for a new video installation piece with a film crew from Monkey Films to snowy Switzerland.

I didn’t have a camera in Switzerland, so I used my old Nokia. But I can’t seem to download the phone photos on to my laptop, so have now had to photograph the phone. How ridiculous is that.  Talk about low tech.

The first photo shows the Hotel Everland in the snow. I know I have written about this unique mobile hotel unit before, the creation of Swiss duo Lang & Baumann, but it is such a wonderful space to be in (pic two).  So enclosing. 

Lying on my bed, I can look out of the window at a very Swiss landscape of a steeply tiled roof, and trees on a snowy bank.  There’s a book on the bed.

The book is about Chinese dissident artist Ai Wei Wei’s project Fairytale for Documenta 2007, when the artist arranged for 1001 Chinese people to attend Documenta, held in the small German town of Kassel, for one week each, as an artwork. The Chinese visitors stayed in special dormitories with linen designed by Ai Wei Wei, and could do exactly as they pleased in Kassel. There was no schedule. It was one of the most talked about works of that year. 

I was in Switzerland as this year’s guest curator for the Paul Klee Zentrum Sommerakademie in Bern, and together with the committee, our February task was to select 12 artists under 35 for the two week workshop in August. With 170 entries from 36 countries, this was a difficult task.  It would be great to involve Ai Wei Wei in the programme in some way. He is currently not able to leave China, and skype is apparently very unreliable in China. We’re thinking about how communication could happen. 

Flying back to Cape Town, on Air France, I scan through the list of film offerings, and find, in the Arts and Culture section, all the best known videos of Belgian artist Francis Alys. What a change from the usual airline blockbuster fare. And wouldn’t be a fine idea if South African Airways showed artists’ videos as part of their programme.