I get a call from Jonathan Garnham requesting my presence at the Gradex Stellenbosch graduate exhibition. It is often difficult to sift through the plethora of rubbish to find the diamond in the ruff on a beer drunk hangover from the previous evening.

We grab a couple of beers and hop into Jonathan’s fam-mobile and head for the winelands. It is at least it’s a pleasant escape from Kitty Cat’s annoying ongoing performance about how much she hates the new event she is organising and what time I have to play my set. I tell her to shut up and gear up for a smack. She considers it. I squint my eyes. She hesitates. I leave.

We arrive at the Departement van fynere kunste and everyone seems very happy. A lot of effort has been put into hanging the show and organising the event. The students have also been quite paraat about their marketing.

It is a student show. The fine art students make fine art. The design students make stop frame animations about the environment and the jewellery students make things their mothers would wear. But at least it’s a step away from a few years back when Alan Alborough was there and the show looked like an Alan Alborough.

I bump into a teary mother in the corridor who had just realised that this is what they coughed up for for the past four years.

The work that grabbed my short attention span other than some badly edited scratch videos with absolutely zero content and filled with tears of weirdness, is the pink room. It is a white cube made pink with pink neon lighting. There is some bubble wrap on the floor and every now and again some really loud retro pop stuff blasts over the 5.1. I am reminded of Olafur Eliasson’s yellow room where the lighting effect made everyone in the room appear in monochrome black and white. But here everyone is just pink.

There is a black room the size of a broom closet which is also quite cute with velvet walls.

It is pretty much a student show and we all miss the likes of Jeremy Puren a few years ago. The Grolch has run out and we are forced to have a fairly elegant glass of red and listen to speeches.

The talks end and an avant-garde jazz band hits the stage. Christian Nerf nods his head with the rhythm of the non-tempo with arms and legs crossed thinking: “I am the only one who gets this and you are all stupid”. He is right. I don’t get it.

I bump into my grade eight girlfriend.

We leave said exhibition and head for the local – Die Mystic Boer. I am reminded of the Bloemfontein years. Linda Stupart falls in love with the barman because he is very young and has a lot of product in the Durbanville cut and opens beers with the back of a very big knife. Matthew Blackman tells Dan Halter to stop being a whiney baby, as it is clearly passed little Danny’s bed time and the tequilas has is making his head strain. We catch a ride with Garnham after a cheese griller from the 24-hour shop. We struggle to keep Halter’s feet in the car as he insists on a cool breeze on his ankles.

I get home and loose the cheese griller.

SIMON NJAMI

So not much has really happened in the artworld. Except for the fact that Africa Remix superstar curator, Simon Njami came to town.

It all happened on a Tuesday.

Njami arrives at the Kimberley bar. Blackman puts on Corey Heart’s “I wear my sunglasses at Night”. Njami doesn’t bat a lid. But most of us can’t tell as Njami is wearing his sunglasses, at night.

The joke falls flat and we all go home.

But Njami is in town for a special occasion. He has come for the closing of US, a group show co-curated with Bettina Malcomess.

But it is hardly worth travelling out for. The show is basically centred on Gimberg Nerf, as Malcomess is probably more interested in their recent funding experience. And the catalogue falls apart and no one mentioned to the curators the extreme importance in gutter width when producing these highly funded publications.

But the good thing about the show is Donna Kukuma’s “1000 Ways Of Being: I am absolutely ending this”, a closing speech. But, while the performance may have dragged it certainly upstaged the worrisome delivery by Malcomess and Njami.

The playground is over there honey…

For the rest of the week Dan Halter made friends with Tracey Derrick and some Swiss connections.

Njami explained his Ray-Ban look as his look, and we are all very happy. We lost some friends, gained some and pulled a fuck you to most ministries in seat.

We are tired and need weight-loss.

Post Script: The above picture is of a mag where Njami “curated the sports section”.

1.1o Untitled 2010 Oil and graphite on linen 198 x 140cm

It all came as a bit of a shock one morning when we were told that rockstar artist Zander Blom had left the Whatiftheworld stable for the Michael Stevenson international powerhouse. The news also came a few mornings after having breakfast with artist Charles Maggs who cried and said: ”I really don’t understand it. Michael isn’t calling. I wait everyday and he just doesn’t call.”
But Blom got the call and his parents were very happy. The majority of the exhibition had apparently sold out prior to the opening.

The work is very unlike the artist’s previous show, a mere few blocks down Woodstock’s main road. There are paintings, drawings and photographs on the walls and the show is titled PAINTINGS. DRAWINGS. PHOTOS.

Exhibition halls are filled with ginormous paintings on unbleached linen with nothing on them but blotches of really thick oil paint that makes the gallery smell like Pratley’s Putty. They are really big and extremely ugly and resonate the first year painting studio where kids say they want to become painters. Compositionally they are ok, but in actual fact they are merely bits of Francis Bacon without the Bacon. And one is not sure if the cool oil blotches surrounding the paint will eventually rot away at the linen. Or whether this is intentional. The paintings are numbered instead of titled in a bit of a Martin Creed fashion.
Blom explains: “Figuring out your next move, brushstrokes staring back at you from the tussle of the night before. At home in Johannesburg my focus has shifted from making photographic works to working on oil paintings, having naturally gravitated towards a medium that I’ve loved from afar but previously only skirted around, flirted with and examined endlessly. Oil painting, which is not without its fair share of historical baggage, has finally ended up right in the centre of my life. In turn my house has evolved into a ramshackle painter’s studio. Now I find myself in my ever-changing swamp, knee-deep in references, smeared with paint, avoiding email, watching the paintings paint themselves, and seeing all the little degenerates pile up in the garage.”
This is all a bit of romanticised codswallop. But these colourful turds and vommies that occupy the canvas surface leave one with a trace and a sense of happiness. And one is left to ponder why… But maybe it is the sweet realisation that one less artist will go without supper tonight.

There are also some drawings on display but no one seems to remember them because of the sheer dominance of those god-awful paintings.

The Black Hole Universe, Chapter 2. Scene 001, Berlin, 2010, C-print on Kodak Endura metallic gloss paper, 87 x 60cm, Edition of 3 + 1AP.

A definite highlight of the exhibition is that of the development of Blom’s photographs of corners of rooms titled The Black Hole Universe. Blom has been doing these for a while. Although they are not that outstanding as artworks, they definitely stand out in this exhibition because of their sharp qualities combined with good composition and the power of the Black and White photograph. But maybe it’s just cool kid skinny pant formalism and maybe they are quite meaningless. But at least they are pretty.

We don’t buy it. But some do. Why this sudden departure into this kind of decorative Cavendish Square 70’s hangover? This may be an artistic genius breach – or the influence of a new girlfriend/gallery (suppose they are pretty much the same) – or too much AC/DC in the studio. Who knows?

Or maybe it’s just about the cash.

I am at an opening tonight – my own for a change. I stumble around the crowd and snack on some canapés and kissy some people on the cheek as one does. It is at IDASA’s Democracy Centre in the new kinda slick 6 Spin Street space.

The space was developed as a kind of chatty meeting place for MP’s as well as the general public with a nice bookshop as well as a nice restaurant run by Robert Mulders, the chairperson of the Council of the friends of the South African National Gallery. The restaurant probably has one of the best steaks I have ever had.

The work came about when IDASA asked VANSA to help with some public art as one does. Because art makes the space more pretty. But VANSA was more clever and selected artists based on their portfolios rather than proposals. The selected artists were then invited to propose a site-specific piece relating to their views on democracy and Brendhan Dickerson and Petra Keinhorst was the overall winners of the commission. But IDASA wanted more and managed to fund Dan Halter’s curtain as well as my proposal. And I asked Clare van Zyl to step in with a helping hand.

So the work had been completed in April but was kept under the hush, as Archbishop Tutu himself was only available in August as he was travelling.

We all stand milling around and eventually the Arch arrives. But it take a while for him to move though the space as everyone is excited to see him especially as this may be one of the few last public appearances as he had announced his retirement a few weeks prior, but I think not.

We all squash into the tiny Dakar room for the speeches.  I am called up to sit next to the Arch. I climb up the stage nervously as he pulls a fist at me.

He gets up to do the speech and looks at the sculpture. He turns to me and says: ‘I will send you bad dreams’. I get a little scared but at least he is smiling.  Arch also acknowledges that I got the nose right. He gives a great opening address about South Africa and humanity as he always does. We pose for a few pictures together.

The photographers snap away and he whispers: ‘These photographers think we are monkeys. Let’s stand on one leg.’ So we do.

The Arch leaves and we go to the bar.

GIMBERG NERF

So Gimberg Nerf defriended me:

Funny it only came from Gimberg

Subject: Farewell
Dear Ed

Thank you most sincerely for being my friend here on Facebook, unfortunately the time has come, as we both knew it would, for us to part ways. I have advanced valiantly, and now it is time to for me to retreat with indifference: I am moving on.

Please do not take this personally, there is no need for hard feelings, some things just aren’t meant to last. I cannot say that you did not give me what I was looking for: over the past twenty days I have made six hundred and sixty six friends and had the opportunity to share thoughts with many. For a brief period a large group of good people have been connected, however loosely, through me: satanists, churchgoers, artists, scientists, parents, teenagers, porn stars, pimps, writers, actors, musicians, believers, non believers etc. etc. Good people. Lines have been crossed and apologies made, and I have emerged a better man. I suspended my disbelief and have learnt that making friends, like making art, is easy, by which I mean that it is easy to make bad friends and bad art. There are many reasons for my sudden departure, chief amongst which is probably that there are better ways of doing so little. At the end of the day, the few genuine interactions I’ve had here are not worth the countless lifelines that I’ve thrown into the void. I have seen the error in my ways and (now that I am beginning my Walk for Good) I will look for you on new paths.

I might not be able to claim that I was a good friend to you, but I can claim to have been honest and while I won’t promise that I’ll miss you, I might. Please do not worry about me or mourn for this friendship lost: I am something without you. It has been a pleasure to share this wide road with you for a little while and just because I am gone from Facebook does not mean that our friendship needs to end. Feel free to send me an email (gimbergnerf@gmail.com) or you can send me a real letter:

P.O. Box 0045
a/c 7925
Observatory
Cape Town
South Africa

I apologise if you feel somehow cheated, or that you’ve been used, if it is any consolation let me leave you with some words I found while walking this path:

Friend, n. An investigator upon the slide of whose microscope we live, move and have our being.

Friendless, adj. Having no favors to bestow. Destitute of fortune. Addicted to utterances of truth and common sense.

Friendship, n. A ship big enough to carry two in fair weather, but only one in foul.

Ambrose Bierce in the Devil’s Dictionary

I am looking forward.

Yours truly,

Gimberg Nerf

GIMBERG NERF

I wake early on a lovely grey morning and start my trawl through neglected emails and sexy fuckbook messages lost in weeks past. But these days are quite boring as my Facebook pages are filled with rubbish from my new friend Gimberg Nerf.

Designed by super art duo Christian Nerf and Douglas Gimberg, this character befriends and comments on players in the artworld. They first started out with a few photoshopped images of their faces as one. It turned out a bit scary. That is until they realised that the only way to be slightly socially acceptable is to use only Nerf’s forehead and maybe his glasses.

As self-proclaimed art wankers and anti-social networkers they seemed to have succumbed to the obvious. And maybe it is their loneliness and Woodstock isolation that drove them into cyber world purely to be loved, doggedly disguised as another anti-establishment artwork as an entry to world of Web 2.0.

This is evident when one studies social networking behaviour. Theirs for instance, is that of the first time user. Clever remarks to art aficionados and slightly flirtatious moments with female members.  And the obsessive and almost desperate need for attention, staring at the FB page for hours awaiting response.

At present it is a very weak work that will maybe, in the near future, develop into a great one. But maybe not.

And at least its better than their genius boat idea.

Or maybe its not.

L/B's Lounge - Lang Baumann

Well it’s all ok again. Blackman and I jump-start my car. We go shopping for Woolworths microwave meals and antibacterial glass wipes. We then head over to @Home and have an argument about pasta bowls and juicers. We decide that this is ruining our relationship and buy some stationary instead, only after picking up my recently repaired man groomer from Clicks. We are all very happy on a very particular and usual Friday afternoon.

Daniel Baumann / Ed Young - Miami

But today is just Friday. And it is the Friday that Early Friday moves to L/B’s lounge, above Jo’burg Bar. L/B’s was initially conceived as a Pro Helvetia funded art project  – to make Bruce Gordon a special lounge as an artwork in 2003. It was produced by Swiss duo Sabina Lang and Daniel Baumann. Since it’s inauguration it has seen many a party. Often involving Cameron Platter tumbling down the staircase and biting bouncers in their inner thighs and speeding away the wrong way up Long Street.

The furniture also has taken its toll as many babies had been conceived on the puffy furniture lining the lounge. The big round one in the center was once almost the catalyst for little Eddy Rosa-Clark. But those days have long disappeared beneath the smog of Cape Town bohemia and nostalgia and the Love Below.

Blackman and I head out for a late lunch at Royale. The service is terrible. The waitresses are rude. Our orders get mixed up. The food is ok. We consider frequenting Hudson’s Burger in future as at least the waitresses are hot.

We head over to L/B’s and get told please not to come in. We are ushered into Jo’burg’s main bar area. Bruce Gordon then notifies us that the seating is not ready, having employed some back door tik addict to re-upholster as is well needed. But Early Friday carries on and everyone has a good time. Lot’s of young art students are bewildered at the idea that they are now occupying the den that was recently only home to numerous devious characters and lovely ladies who charged them after a night of fornication.

And everyone seems in good spirit. Tequila paves the road and I find a chair that doubles up as a sexy rocking horse. Blackman plays with Robert Sloon’s third nipple as Sloon starts to lactate. International artist and curator Bianca Baldi’s hair blows in the beautiful wind created by the new super fan installed by Gordon. Baldi’s nipples rise with the crisp air and it’s all a bit slow motion. Painter Jake Aikman hates it all and drags Sloon off for a Royale burger and milkshake.

We head for the Kimberley Hotel and Pieter Hugo has a post-exhibition deppie look on his face. I comfort him.

I head home as Blackman goes to Evol.

Pieter Hugo - Abdulai Yahaya, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana 2010

I am very excited about driving myself to an art exhibition. I have just restored my 72 Mercedes and had all the paperwork done. I even have a drivers licence. But I had left the lights on upon returning from the Regenerations show at the Michaelis Galleries which myself and Mr. Taylor had to flee.

It is not only because of the bad port or drawn out speeches, but maybe because of the lack of punch in the photographs. It was all a bit of a cool kid photography vibe. The photographers were all really good but it seemed like a sort of Photoshop fuckfest curated from FFFFOUND!.com. It all a bit middleclassy suburbia.

And I blame this exhibition for my car battery being dead.

But tonight we head out for another photographic exhibition – Pieter Hugo at Michael Stevenson Contemporary. We leave the bar and get into Blackman’s recent investment – his chav two door BMW that matches the chain around his neck and looks particularly good when him and Jake Aikman wear matching black Adidas sweaters.

Linda Stupart sits in the back because she is a lady. She cries because the Beamer seats are too small and she has wounds because she “fell over again”.

But the Hugo show is ok and we gladly support the Friends of the South African National Gallery by purchasing a glass of bubbly from the bar. We smooch and kissy-kissy our way through the dense crowd. Hugo’s portraits of people living in Ghana on top of an electronics graveyard called Agbogbloshie with high concentrations of lead, mercury, thallium, hydrogen cyanide and PVC is, slightly alarming to say the least.  I particularly like the portraits of the Brahman Cattle.

Pieter Hugo - Untitled, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana 2010

I remain unconvinced by the video portraits. I am reminded of when painters started to get hold of a video editing suites and animated their paintings in order to be more hip. But the paintings were bad and the videos were worse. And they never showed in this town again. But maybe that is just because Bell-Roberts closed down.

We kissy-kissy some more.

I walk into an installation by Dineo Bopape. It’s kind of pretty and installationy and I am reminded of when Zen Marie used to make fun installations pre-Spier Contemporary-Perfect-Leader-videos. Bopape’s work demands a lot of attention and I am distracted by some meaningless conversations about meaning. I make a sweet escape and promise to return and am reminded of my favourite work shown in that very room a few moons ago…

I escape into a small darkened room only to find more video -a projection by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster.  The work is beautifully filmed and cut and all a bit eerie and I leave in a panic to escape the crowds and conversations about you know what…

And as I puff on a fag I wonder why local video art always looks so bad.

Across the road I spot a small gallery. I walk over. It is a tiny gallery elegantly titled Blank Projects. Inside are some paintings by Mary Wafer. I meet Wafer for the first time and she is prettier that her paintings.

At the back are prints by Swiss legend Kerim Seiler. They are out of focus, which makes them more special. On the one wall is a nomadic description by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, which makes it even more special. Hanlie gives us some bread sticks with olives in them and some really nice cheese. How I do wish that Seiler would invite me for some fondue.

The Stevenson spillover arrives and we hop into the Blackmobile escaping post-exhibition dinners.

A lot has happened since my return from the land of LA. A lot of exhibitions and that Fifa World Cup™ thingy. Nothing to write home about really. We also had a little exhibition at our gallery.

Kendell Geers remade his 1993 piece titled Title Withheld (Brick), which was once made for the Market Theatre Gallery in Johannesburg and again at De Appel in Amsterdam for a show that Clive van den Berg curated I think. The work consists of a single brick through the gallery window.

But for our show Geers decided to destroy all our windows. Numerous bricks went crashing into the gallery including a hate brick someone had left for us the night before. The show went fine and we were all very happy. Blackman shed a tear and said that he was very happy.

A number of days later our landlord drove past our shop and was seemingly unimpressed. He went on this tirade which seemed to take him over and even the past few days’ worth of storm cannot compete with the spit and rage that came from his face holes.

Mr. M: “Art…? ARRTT…? It’s VANDALISM!!!!…

Manie (our actual landlord): “No it’s art.”

Mr. M. carries on swearing a lot.

We may not have our lease renewed so for some individuals who liked our gallery we take this opportunity to say fuck off and thanks for the tea.
M Blackman sheds another tear.

Whilst trying to ignore it all we head to the Kimberley and have a few pints and Jagermeisters. We watch the football on a small television as Real Artists who paint Real Water with Real Gallerists were all invited to the game post free drinks at La Perla.

Dan Halter, M Blackman and myself consume as much as possible as we realise that we can win stuff from the bar during the match. WhiteCross refuses to join us and retreats to Sexy George’s new restaurant, claiming he prefers a “civilised dining experience”.

We bet against Italy. Halter and I win 700 in bar tabs collectively. We now drink for free. Blackman is in the process of rediscovering his inner chav. Blackman and Halter make friends with real chavs. Halter shouts and spits a lot. The chavs back off and exit said pub.

It all gets pretty boring and Blackman drives me to Woolworths and buys me microwave dinners and cigarettes and tells me about his new chav BMW that we will use to drive up to Grahamstown for the festival and how everything is going to be alright.

I heat up a microwave dinner and fantasise about Real Artists and Real Galleries and Real Football matches.

After a heavy night at a house party and my first beer keg experience, I get up extremely early and messy and get my ass out of bed to attend a university graduation ceremony first thing on a Saturday morning.

I am left with the vague memory of eating puppies at Denny’s Diner the night before.

Kim and I arrive somewhere in Orange County and the graduation takes place in a kind of American Mega-Church. We walk into the auditorium and there is a lot of clapping, singing and love going around. The venue seats over 3 000. There are two massive screens included in the state of the art AV equipment, a stage, a preacher, a band, a choir and always that one fucking soprano soloist that can’t hit that fucking note.

I feel the devil working inside of me and luckily there are no more seats available. We watch most of the ceremony on a smaller monitor in the bookshop while browsing through popular titles such as ‘Put Jesus back into you sex life’, ‘How to turn your man in five days’, as well as ‘Jesus Junkies: Why poor people are bad’.

I should go to an art museum.

After graduation we have some tacos and beer and head for the beach. It’s all very pretty.

We arrive back in LA to meet some friends at La Descarga. I find it peculiar that we have reservations for a bar.

We arrive at a small door. Vladimir, the well-dressed Caribbean doorman is wearing a good scarf and stares straight ahead. He looks at his reservations list and after a minute or so and replies in slow monotone: ‘You are late… You are very, very late.’
He gives me the up and down and points at my David West shirt. He says: ‘No…’ He points at my jacket and says: ‘Let’s see how that looks on you…’ A very concerned Vladimir disappears up a tiny staircase. I should have gone to an art museum.

Vlad arrives back downstairs with an equally puzzled looking concierge wearing a polka dot dress. She administers the up down and utters: ‘You are unaware of the code’. I get ready to be blindfolded and be led upstairs. She makes an exception and zips up my ZAR150 Mr. Price jacket and says it would be ok if I keep it like that.

We are led up the tiny staircase and into a small room. We are given very detailed instructions: ‘You will not exit the same way you have entered’. She opens a double closet door, pushes the clothes away and in the usual Narnia manner we enter said bar. The wooden finishes are absolutely lovely. We have a few drinks with rum in them, including one called ‘Tapping the Admiral’.

We exit in a different way than entering.