Geez, is it just me or did the Cape Town art contingent come charging out of the 2010 gates en masse with uncharacteristic zeal? Openings, openings everywhere. Whatever happened to being the lazy laid back part of the country? I’d better get scribing, starting with that which is conveniently located in rolling-down-the-hill proximity to my flat. Which in this case is the Kunst House with Uwe Pfaff’s ‘Sculptures’.

Not exactly rocking the concept-heavy end of the art spectrum, Pfaff is a pretty easy target for all manner of ripping-off because he’s one of those guys that’s “just doing his thing”. And pulling in greenies whilst at it. Curse him. So human/fishy silhouettes filled with all manner of humans/fish doing human/fishy things abound. And a portrait- silhouette tribute to Magritte, which doesn’t really have much to do with the other works but earns him Tim-points because Magritte is totally l33t. My Black Mind on a White Base may raise a few alarm bells. Last time I checked, he was a honky from Germany. Taping into the Colonial escapism that makes the story* in Avatar so uninspired?

On that note:

It’s Not a Tumor presents
Onomatopoeic usages of “Uwe Pfaff”











Ever so slightly further down Kloof is Salon 91 with a show titled ‘Spookasem’. With a title like ‘Spookasem’ at least you know that they’re embracing the sugariness of it all and avoiding the pretense trap somewhat. Playing heavily into that aesthetic utilized by Motel7 last year, I’m situating my relationship to the show within the realm of “indifference”. I certainly have yet to develop a palette for the stuff and so it kind of all looks like aStore to me. Coming from a completely different place (and, at least aesthetically, separated at birth from Daniella Mooney’s To Maclear’s Beacon) are Ceri Mueller’s miniplasticpeople communing on spinning rocks. These hobbling old folk and exploring kiddies all look so content with their modest rotary existence; you almost wish that some of Wayne Barker’s decidedly raunchier miniplasticpeople would rock up and shake things up a bit.



Venturing a tad further out of my Kloof Street comfort zone is the latest installment in the globe-trotting adventures of James Webb (or the World-Wide Webb as some newspaper cheesily dubbed him), ‘Some Day This Will All Be Yours’. It’s a fitting title for the exhibition because of the discrepancy of what exactly constitutes “all this”. As all of the works were executed within the realm of site-specificity, the exhibition consists of documentation rather than the pieces themselves (which have long since fleeted). The result of this is that the exhibition’s offerings may appear abstract or inaccessible without consultation of the explanatory texts, which are as much a part of the documentation as the photographic/sound or video aspect. Which means that people have to read stuff (*Shock* *Gasp* *Horror*).

In essence, it’s a bit like a series of “Wish You Were Here” post cards, especially with regards to Le Marché Oriental, where the subsequent demolishing of Oriental Plaza renders the possibility of “were-ing here” moot. I seem to recall that Mr Webb is offering guided tours of the exhibition, which is something well worth considering. There is really no substitute for the enthusiasm with which the man talks about his production. And let’s face it, the James Webb™ personality has always been the cohesion agent underlying the work. Sound/noise/aural stuff is secondary.

* Note: STORY. Obviously the visual side of things is Cameronly spectacular (albeit a bit Smurfy) but come on! For something old James spent a million years writing, this observation rings pretty damn true.