ArtHeat

THIS IS NOT A JOKE: Highlight of My Day

hughupsher@gmail.com (Hugh Upsher) — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 17:31:00 +0000

Hugh Upsher is a Michaelis Graduate/ DTP Student/ Bartender/ Practicing Artist

I watched about half an hour of the movie ‘Annie Leibovitz: Life Through A Lens’ today. Photography has always interested me and frustrated me simultaneously, not brought on by photographs themselves but mainly by the people behind the lens. In the movie though, Anna Leibovitz spoke about how photographs are not intended to capture the essence of a person or reveal some form of truth. The photograph is a construction, a pose, a drawing, a choice etc. I did already know this even though I never quite finished Roland Barthes’ Camera Obscura. I have the majority of it photocopied in a box of notes I’m planning on throwing away soon.

Photo: Rose Kotze

Facebook is one big collective pose made up of images, interactions and text. A breathing shrine to oneself. A highly detailed self-portrait. It is a second life. An advertisement. Every choice one makes from status updates to the photos one uploads, to which groups one joins, they start to paint a picture. Photos are selected for albums in a similar way a curator would select work for a themed show. The idea is to tell a story more than anything else. The option of tagging, de-tagging and even reporting images reinforce this idea of moulding a particular character. In reality though, if someone wanted to write a thesis on a certain person, the Facebook profile of this certain person would not be a great reference. It doesn’t exactly translate into a textbook of the subject, more accurately it would be closer to a fantasy novel that romanticizes selected elements that may seem enticing.

This dangerously new digital arena is often misunderstood by it’s users and has been the reason for people not getting jobs, losing their jobs and losing the respect of friends and family. We are given the power to control our own image whether we know how to or not. Curating your own image has become an important must-know skill previously only practiced by celebrities in the public eye (Andy Warhol would have a very interesting Facebook profile). Although we are not famous to everyone in the world, we are famous to everyone we know. People’s moms, bosses, dogs and ex-girlfriends from prep school are all online now…watching.

LOVE EARLY FRIDAY (ft. Wedding Dj's)

hughupsher@gmail.com (Hugh Upsher) — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 08:04:00 +0000

ET GOES HOMO

noreply@blogger.com (Ed Young) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:04:00 +0000

BY YOUNGBLACKMAN

Laundry

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Sloon) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 07:15:00 +0000

New posts on Its Not a Tumor AND Mixtape:

Its Not a Tumor features a view from the Joburg Art Fair...

Mixtape hangs out at with colonial nostalgia and runs into someone interesting...

THIS IS NOT A JOKE: AWB vs. JR

hughupsher@gmail.com (Hugh Upsher) — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 19:58:00 +0000

Hugh Upsher is a Michaelis Graduate/ Barman/ Practicing Artist/ Desktop Publishing Student

" 'the DJ and the programmer are the twin figures of popular culture' - Bourriaud" - Linda Stupart

Most contemporary art enthusiasts are well aware of the idea of the remix in art production. Artists do this by taking a pre-existing image or concept and reworking it to bring out something new and relevant. The term remix is originally a DJ term but now it can be applied to almost any cultural production involving the reworking of existing content. The Internet is a breeding ground for all forms of remixes due to the rapid accessibility to unthinkable amounts of content. Although this theme could be taken in many directions, I would like to investigate a rather obvious use of the term remix in the form of the Youtube remix. A practice involving heavily reedited online content with the addition of a high-energy dance track. This process is almost as old as Youtube itself and can be applied to literally anything posted on the site.

In an attempt to make my content relevant and local I will use an AWB interview conducted yesterday on E News as my example. The footage was posted on Youtube and has received 59 100 views last time I checked. It was almost immediately downloaded, diced up and shoved into the painfully popular local track ‘Show Dem (Make The Circle Bigger)’ by South African musician JR. The online video ‘(Don't) Touch Me On My Studio [Mo's Circle Mix]’ utilizes a crude yet typical process of sampling inappropriate content to an upbeat dance track. On one side you have the disillusioned General Secretary of the AWB storming out of a televised interview blurting out schoolboy threats. The other side being the local party song themed around inclusiveness (Make the Circle Bigger) sung by black and coloured musicians.

Both videos are ridiculous enough by themselves but clashing these two separate worlds into one video work is genius on every level. All those South African video artists out there might want to take notes on how to make work that isn’t boring, self indulgent and/or meaningless. It’s nice to know there is a sense of humour out there in this time of little faith.

PRINTMAKERS EARLY FRIDAY

hughupsher@gmail.com (Hugh Upsher) — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 14:47:00 +0000

Valuing the Art Fair (From the Daily ArtHeat at the Joburg Art Fair)

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Sloon) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 11:10:00 +0000

By Matthew Blackman

Plato wished to banish the artist’s from his ideal republic. His argument was that art is merely a representation of a representation and that in the search for truth art was of no use. Some have suggested that art has value in that it expresses the inexpressible and that this allows at least some kind of balance between the rational and the irrational. This is what Plato denied - that there was a place for irrational expression and that the rational side of our minds would always be able to explain it.
If this notion that art is the expression of the inexpressible how then are art fairs, which largely focused on money making, of any use to man or artist. If this is true then perhaps it should be argued that art fairs be should be banished from our not so ideal republic. This argument has, to a certain extent, been the elephant in the Joburg Fair that has but spoken its name only once. Simon Njami made a rather weak attempt to say that art fairs are by their nature inclusive. He suggested that they allowed the general public the time and space to contemplate art without gallerists breathing down their necks demanding and expressing faux ‘insightful’ ‘interpretative’ discourse. The question is how do art fairs allow this time and space considering that the gallerists are even more on the prowl at them than they are in their galleries.
The simple fact is that art fairs are about making money, there is really no getting around this. Inclusivity at a R100 a pop seems slightly ridiculous. If art is, in Plato’s words, two stages away from the throne of truth then art fairs seem at least several stages away form throne of inclusivity (if thrones can in fact be inclusive). So what can the value of art fairs be? Well, there value is that they do produce money not only for the gallerists but also for the people two stages from the throne of art fairs, the artists themselves. Not all artists shown at art fairs are the Kentridges of the world. There is some filter down effect for the poorer artists by showing them with the Kentridges. There is even filter down for the artists who are not even shown. As Justin Rhodes of Whatiftheworld was saying to me, he needs to sell Andrzej Nowicki’s work in order to fund some the more conceptual artists in their stable.
So art fairs are about making money. Is this a great capitalist evil? The fact that art fairs are directed at collectors and that collectors can be as uninsightful as to buy Brett Murray’s Gorilla because ‘no human can could really be as pure’ (Miranda Friedman M&G 24 March) is of really little concern, at least to my mind. The reality is that artists need collectors and art fairs. If it is worth keeping artists going who sell to people whose poverty in interpretive skills is well below the poverty of people who earn R100 a day are in pecuniary terms is another question entirely. However, if gallerists like Rhodes sustain other, less saleable, artists through the money they earn at art fairs then one can in fact find some value in art fairs.

If the Shoe Fits (From the Daily ArtHeat at the Joburg Art Fair)

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Sloon) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 07:38:00 +0000

By Kat Pichulik and David Brits

One can tell many things about visitors to the Joburg Art Fair by indulinging in a little shoegazing.Unless you are a camping/camp enthusiast, struggling single dad or confused tween, to rock up at an art fair (or any place within the sight of critical eye, for that matter) in these puppies is to commit social suicide. Think twice.
These little hot red pleather boots on the other hand, are a total must if you are three foot, puke green Krocodil in a red bowler hat and matching thong.

Only a man who would wear these leather thongs would ever consider buying something like this:

To accompany his paint technique Tuscan Villa fountain, of course.

The dual functions of heels at art fairs:

Either as cheap ploy to create controversy on delightful dancing Jesus’
Or
On hot gallerina’s as expensive ploys to sell art to middle aged male buyers

Black Stallion: The Horse in Mary Sibande's The Reign (From the Daily ArtHeat at the Joburg Art Fair)

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Sloon) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 07:36:00 +0000

By Linda Stupart

It strikes me as wonderfully appropriate that the anemically pale and moneyed crowd oozing through the Joburg Art Fair is being watched over by a monument of epic proportions; with Sophie, a woman cast off of Mary Sibande’s body, balancing majestically on a rearing bronze horse, her maid’s uniform billowing behind her as she performs a daring equestrienne feat; at once absolutely free and completely in control.
Mary Sibande’s The Reign is the latest in a series of works featuring Sophie, a domestic worker who is an amalgamation of South African history (and present) and Victorian stylings, a character who carries the weight of hundreds years of colonial history while still living firmly in the present. And though many of Sibande’s sculptures cast Sophie still within the role of the subjugated on the edge of emancipation, demurely knitting a Superman outfit in They don’t make them like they used to, this year Sibande’s character has escaped into a space of daydream and power, and a place where she claims her position in South African history – a narrative marked by monuments of dead white men riding well-endowed steeds.
And it is important to note that this horse is indeed a stallion, no tame asexualized Gelding who would kowtow to its rider’s wishes without a fight. The stallion is possibly the most widely recognised symbol of virility and sexual power, with Sophie, like many horsewomen and girls before her relishing the thrill and control that comes with holding such a beast between their thighs. Freud, of course, thought that little girls liked horses because of penis envy, that they longed to claim ownership of the cock they lack. Freud, however (as I like to say), can suck my dick.
While women and girls may gain autoerotic pleasure (note auto, as they pleasure themselves), from riding horses, it is power and control that girls and women, denied this right in everyday life, claim through horses. Equestrian sports are the only sports in which men and women compete equally, and the horse Sophie rides provides her with the right to enter the art fair, to claim agency as a woman on equal footing (or hoofing) with men. More than anything, horses relationship to women is one that reverses the traditional colonial gaze, where women are passive receptacles of desire. When with horses (in real life and literature) it is women who have the strength and the power, who project their desire on to the horse they master (or mistress as the case may be). As Enid Bagnold wrote of Velvet Brown’s virulent horse in he 1935 classic National Velvet: “He handed her the glory of command”.
While riding horses is a fantasy often made real for women, the equestrian world is still almost entirely the premise of the privileged, white classes. Certainly in South Africa, which exactly mirrors the British model of equestrianism, horse riding is almost entirely white, and completely privileged, with well-groomed men and women on well-groomed (by someone else) steeds drinking sherry and gallivanting around the countryside, only to leap off and throw their reins to a black helper while they go off to lunch. Thus, a domestic worker riding a horse is an almost ridiculous image, throwing immediately to light the colonial histories that keep race and class so intricately tied in South Africa, and giving Sophie a way to heroically break free of these ties herself.
Cast in bronze and rearing from the Art Fair floor, The Reign not only signifies horse-ness, but also the specificity of the equestrian monument; a well trodden trope with a history that spans centuries and a prevalence all over the world. Almost every great leader ends up immortalised on horseback, Louis Botha, for example, still stands proudly on horseback outside of parliament in Cape Town. Statues of horses, as well as all the images of virility, power and control discussed above, signify leadership in their rider – revolutionaries, heroes, kings are all cast on horseback, the medium through which they bring their people to victory, to power.
And the rearing horse represents even more: a daring, a fight, a war hero; the kind of frontier heroism St George exemplified when he slayed the dragon for his countrymen. The rearing horse suggests that Sophie is at war, and that she’s going to win. Is Sophie leading a revolution then, a takeover? Perhaps, here, like in her secret Superman costume, she is about to lead domestic workers to freedom. Perhaps she is about to take over her own history…
There is, however, another element to the rearing horse monument. For the rules of equestrian statuary state that a horse with two hooves off the ground signifies that the rider has died in service to their country. Does this mean the end for Sophie, or is this just one of the possibilities she must face, and one of the legacies of her history as woman, domestic worker and African?
The Reign is at once a monument and a memorial to the South African domestic worker. Here, Sophie once again claims a voice that she is traditionally denied, with her faithful, though turbulent, steed helping her to shout all the louder.

Fringe Binge (From the Daily ArtHeat at the Joburg Art Fair)

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Sloon) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 07:35:00 +0000

By James King

I was excited for the fringe festival. I am (perhaps unrealistically) optimistic about the potential of unconventional work. The logic is sound I suppose: no obligation, no motivation other than the impulse to fulfil whatever desire it is that producers have to produce.
I have romantic notions of an underground. I wanted a contemporary salon des refuse, full of work which wouldn’t or couldn’t be bought at the fair. I wanted either an alt-fair, anti-fair or un-fair. I suppose I would have liked to have seen something with a more meaningful reason not to be on the fair. The fringe is “an independent art fair...to coexist with the first art fair in Africa...in happy reciprocity. It is an artist’s initiative run on high enthusiasm and a low budget.” (Claudia Schneider 2010). Perhaps it is a step in the right direction, but I feel that it had less impact, and provided less contrast than it should have.
However, of the 22 works there are a handful worth seeing, which proportionately, is probably better than the fair itself. In Kemang Wa Lehulere’s work, Ukuguqula ibatyi the artist inserts pencil after pencil into his hair, an absurdist extrapolation of the infamously absurd pencil test. Kemang does not engage directly with the camera, he is shirtless – the vulnerability is powerful, but not overt or cutesy. Its a moving work.
The two documentary fragments were both nice: the first a delicately narrated history of the Chief Architect of Gansta Rap (Dr. Dre) and his influence on the artist Ilya Karilampi from Gothenberg, and the second a harrowing account of the violence of the Sierra Leone civil war, manifest on a particular bridge. The somewhat nostalgic (sometimes Swedish, sometimes Sweded English ), narration of the first piece was at odds with the brash hip-hop aesthetic content is touching - if one were in the right frame of mind, probably quite an interesting hybrid-post-modern-adaptation-whatever, if not, its a lo-fi, uncommon and subtle inversion. The second work is called ‘The Memory of the Bridge, Fanon – Class Struggles vs Evil Spirits’. Its an extract of a larger feature length documentary by Steve Mokwena called ‘Driving with Fanon’, which was aired last week at the same venue as the Fringe. In the fragment, an ex-combatant, Victor Cole describes a series of atrocities from the bridge on which they occurred. He’s understandably not wholly able to contain his emotion, and his purportedly matter of fact recollections are often interrupted where language doesn’t suffice.
There will be screenings until the 28 March, at variously: the Gold of Africa Museum Gallery, AnglogoldAshanti, J.A.G., Mofolo Art Centre (Soweto), Arts on Main, the Bag Factory, and the Troyeville Hotel. And its free, which (I think) is as it should be.

Turning Mauve

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Sloon) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 07:33:00 +0000

By George Chapman

There is a definite improvement on not only the amount of paintings on display this year but also the quality and variety of the work. Perhaps last year's recession-struck fair left the impression that fair-attending galleries should stick to the discarded conservative idea of painting: that object which can be bought, shipped and hung neatly on the living room wall. I don't agree with this notion but regardless I was pleased to find more (new) paintings to love and hate in 2010.
On beginning my rounds of gallery-hopping I was disappointed by some of the rubbish offered by newcomer galleries (won't be named, rather see if you can spot them yourself) displaying works of their stable in the vein of lame expressionist and pseudo-analytical cubist portraits. Some unknowns were even selling for R60 000, satisfying Africa-fetishists who wouldn't look twice at the same work produced by a refugee on the street corner, but nonetheless feel validated in splashing out thousands of Rands because of the work's presence at an art fair.
Ugh.
I also felt a bit nauseated by some of the opinions I overheard while scoping out the general offering of paintings. Looking at Matthew Hindley's work at iArt, someone whose work I really admire because it requires an autodidactic ability to resolve something that can’t be gleaned from a photograph, I was unsurprised by the kinds of comments at photo-realistic portraits by the likes of Paul Emsley and John Walters. Work that is resolved via photographic impression does require genuine skill, but in my opinion leaves the work looking stale and flat. It's another one of those misconceptions that painfully rigorous work bordering on obsessive-compulsive disorder automatically makes a work 'good' or 'important'.
SMAC's offerings of Wayne Barker paintings are an excellent artistic response to the modernist booth hosted by Graham's Fine Art, the only actively-retro gallery at the fair. Barker's new series of paintings from his current Super Boring show offers an amazing tongue-in-cheek response to the banality of South African modernism still overshadowing the minds of collectors. Pop art meets trashily-reproduced Maggie Laubser signed off with a 'super boring' declaration in glaring neon makes me smile.
Rooke gallery's acquisition of Mark (brother of Joe Dog) Kannermeyer's once-off series of large-scale expressionist pieces were also really nice to see. Other galleries like Artco seem to be taking the theme of art and industry quite literally, displaying a series of commissioned paintings by Francois du Plessis and George 'Afdezi' Hughes all based on the notion of ‘art and football’ (sic). The fact that they are also the only gallery to make this shameless exploit leaves one wondering whether they officially endorsed by FIFA.
It is nevertheless great to see the popularity of paintings on the rise at the fair, leaving us with the amazing experience of these weird, gross and awesome works.

Ed Young's Diary (from the Daily ArtHeat at the Joburg Art Fair)

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Sloon) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 07:28:00 +0000

I spent the most beautiful night after my murder under the Grolsch Fluid. But as the Spiritus Mundi slips into my soul and I slowly begin to realize that I had complete access to all of the art world’s thoughts. Blackman: “I realize that an art work’s value is directly relational to the looks of the gallery’s gallerina and that all things considered that made Art South Africa the most valuable work at the fair’. Linda Stupart: ‘I am exactly like Ed Young’. Sloon: ‘ART HEAT, ART HEAT, ART HEAT, EDIT ART HEAT or if I suck my third left molar all week I will have better thoughts’. Justin Rhodes: ‘I hate Art Heat’. Art Heat: ‘We love Justin Rhodes’. Baylon Sandri: ‘I am the gallerist with the hottest wife because Jonathan Garnham is not here.’ Joao: ‘Why, why, why, god oh why’. Wayne Barker: ‘If I got a chin strap for my hat I could actually sleep in it without it falling off.’ It is all super boring and my soul begins to die and my body comes alive.

EASTER EARLY THURSDAY

hughupsher@gmail.com (Hugh Upsher) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 12:07:00 +0000

The Grolsch Family

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Sloon) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 10:44:00 +0000

For those of you not at the fair, click here...

Working is a Bad Job, or the myth of the artist’s work ethic

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Sloon) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 10:38:00 +0000

By Linda Stupart

Listening to Ross Douglas’s press conference address, the phrase that was repeated with disarming regularity was “hard work”. The artists on show have WORKED HARD to craft this tirelessly constructed output with evidence everywhere in the intricate, well-made work at the art-fair. This was reiterated by the deadly-serious artists who feature on the Fair posters posing with tools of their apparent trades – leaning over sewing machines, working marble - generally being Artists, something that apparently means tiring over a hot mallet/paintbrush/block of something or other hour upon hour in a dark, lonely studio until a masterpiece emerges, imbued magically with these hours of toil.

Personally, though, I prefer to spend my time otherwise engaged. It’s not that I have anything against artists who have the luxury (be it through trust funds or fame) to spend all their time working on their art, and I know there are a lot of hardworking artists who do in fact toil tirelessly over things; I personally just have other things to do (earn money, run projects, have ideas, go for long walks on the beach etc) and I really don’t think that one has to spend time MAKING things to produce good art.

In fact, this particularly Protestant ideal of a great work ethic getting you into Heaven (or the Art Canon as it happens) really doesn’t sit well with me. I mean, other than the fact that many Great Works are no doubt produced quickly and easily, probably in some kind of inebriated state, surely we understand now that production does not only equal labour, particularly in the art world?

Thinking (god forbid), for example can create excellent works, recontextualising (remember Duchamp’s Fountain), collaging, consuming and, even, getting assistants to labour over your practical output (do you really think one man painted the Sistine Chapel? Ok, you probably do, but you’re e wrong). The thing is people like the idea that artists are hard-workers. And that they are very serious. And that they sit in their studios all day, taking breaks perhaps for the occasional coffee/whiskey/good cry before they go back to their work. But art really doesn’t work like that, especially in South Africa, where almost everyone has to work multitudes of jobs to have the luxury of being an Artist. And even beyond this reality, there needs to be an understanding that art is not the solo endeavor of a singular artistic genius, but a complex web of contributions and processes.

Consider Fluid, the apparently hugely laboured-over Grolsch work by Martli Jansen van Rensburg – a shiny green glass thing that seems to lack the very aboutness that should define what art is. I’m also, to be honest not particularly convinced by Boshoff’s Fair work (which lacks the conceptual and phenomelogical prowess of his usual offerings), and certainly not the utterly vacuous replication of a Madiba portrait by Paul Emsley (but it’s so realistic, it must have taken him AGES etc.)

In essence,

Hard work ≠ Good Art.

‘Working is a Bad Job’s a 1993 work by Maurizio Cattelan in which he rented his substantial space at the Venice Biennale to the advertiser willing to pay the highest price for the prime spot.

Sales and Travails

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Sloon) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 10:29:00 +0000

By George Chapman and James King

Thursday, opening night. Sandton Convention Centre is awash with potential investors, collectors, buyers and loiterers dressed in expensive suits. The centre is a veritable JSE floor: trading art as stock to the first buyer. Trading commenced on the floor at 6pm and ended four hours later, with Everard Read finishing dangerously in the red. Investors are warned that if they do not act decisively there may soon be nothing left. Other companies reported similar trends, such as Gallery AOP’s editioned prints earning them many red points.
The news comes as a welcome change from the pessimistic figures that clouded last year’s fair, causing some galleries to adopt more conservative strategies to ensure sales this time round. Michael Stevenson’s considerably safe choice of solely exhibiting works by Penny Siopis has earned them three red stickers at roughly R300 000 apiece. Retrospectively, many gallerists feel optimistic about their clientele’s contribution to this year’s show. Those who seem more reluctant to make trend predictions use vague phrases like “it went well” to mask (non-existent?) sales figures.
Galleries representing East and West African artists (Gallery Watatu and CCA Lagos respectively) remain on the sales periphery so far, with their stable of African artists lesser-known within our borders attracting lookers but no takers. Peter Herrmann’s gallery however has successfully used this strategy of displaying prominent artists of the continent not necessarily known to our buying public, and has struck gold in his third year, trading at prices between R6 000 – R12 000.
International investors have expressed much interest in works on display, but the locals still dominate as the primary buyers. Investors hailing from an altogether different periphery – the young nouveau-riche art collectors – have been drawn to Whatiftheworld’s younger talent, selling works by Stuart Bird, Dan Halter, Athi Patra-Ruga and the newly-signed Daniella Mooney.
The trade report indicated a trend of galleries holding smaller works, such as Gallery AOP, Galerie Béatrice Binoche, and Bailery Sieppel all reporting a positive sales response. Rooke Gallery also reported a positively not only to the smaller and more affordable stock but also to those works that were deemed more alternative by a generally conservative public.
The report summarized these trends as indicative of younger artists being sidelined for older, more conventional names (it would surprise us all greatly if the Modernist Booth does not make a similar killing in the market to Everard Read by the close of Sunday). These safer strategies appear to be the result of a market crash in the previous financial year, with effects still looming. Conditions now appear sunny.

Know Thine Gallerists (From the Daily ArtHeat at the Joburg Art Fair)

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Sloon) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 10:20:00 +0000

By Kat Pichulik and David Brits

Monna Mokoena - Gallery Momo (Johannesburg)

The suave and very charming Mona Mokena is Joburg Gallery MOMO’s frontman. A very warm and personable fellow, Monna is always up for an artsy chat. With a big old Yinka Shonibare, and a rearing horse-riding domestic worker by Mary Sibande to welcome you at the entrance of his booth, Mokena seems to be couching himself very comfortably as an international portal to some of South Africa’s quality emerging and established artists.

João Ferreira (Cape Town)

Artheat’s official most eligible bachelor for the 2009 Art Fair, we are glad to report Joao has still got it. After rediscovering his love for power-vinyasa yoga, portraiture and “sharpening his axe” as a collector, his Cape Town gallery’s booth focuses predominantly on painting this year. Hi booth showcases work by well-knowns Sanell Aggenbach and Michael Taylor, and a rather stomach-knotting photographic portrait of artist/musician of Die Antwoord fame, Leon Botha.

Bisi Silva - CCA Lagos (Lagos, Nigeria)

Possibly the warmest and approachable of all the gallerists on this year’s fair, Bisi bursts with the spirit of owambe – Nigeria’s ‘fondness and reputation for fun’. Having just facilitated a busy month-long multi-faceted artist and curating residency program, we are glad to see CCA Lagos back again this year. Running into a multitude of logistical challenges involved in bringing art from around the continent, Bisi’s booth includes both established and emerging artists from around the continent, with works ranging from heavy weight Yinka Shonibare to photographs by Lucy Azubuike.

Ashleigh McClean – Whatiftheworld/Gallery (Cape Town)

At the curatorial helm of Cape Town’s uber-cool contemporary space, Whatiftheworld, is Ashley McClean. Ashleigh embodies the slick, utilitarian and quasi-Scandinavian aesthetic of the WITW brand. Showing cool-kid nostalgia art, the booth features work by Art South Africa’s latest Bright Young Thing, Daniella Mooney, Peter Eastman, Dan Halter and Rowan Smith.

IZIKO SANG REHANG (From the Daily ArtHeat at the Joburg Art Fair)

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Sloon) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 10:19:00 +0000

RS: I am interested in the rehang and what sort of things you are putting up.

RN: We had to do some major negotiations, because we already had a schedule for this year. We had quite a few football related exhibitions that were planned. Normally, we plan eighteen months ahead. Then I just kind of started asking some questions about if this appropriate. What are our particularities and strengths? What is it that we have that is unique to this country? Who are our visitors going to be? What should we be focusing on? Out of those questions arose the idea to use this opportunity through art to give people an insight of who we are as a nation. And that's our business here. I think that South African art has so much to offer. And so I bounced the idea, and we scrapped those exhibitions we had planned and programmed the three big exhibitions we had, the Strengths and Convictions, the Dada South? and the Preller exhibition, to all end in February and we started working on this show. With the short time available we have also managed to visit some of the other collections around the country. Joburg, Pretoria, Durban and Pietermaritzburg, those are the big four outside of Cape Town.

RS: So this rehang isn't only of the permanent collection? I noticed the Abe Bailey Collection and those things that were on permanent display...

RN: For about 60 years...

RS: …Have been taken down. Is there going to be a new permanent display?

RN: This show will be on for 6 months. I think 50-60% will be from our permanent collection. It is also costly to insure works that come from the outside. Although the national gallery collection represents artists from around the country there is definitely a Cape Town bias. So to fill those gaps we have loaned works from outside of Cape Town. It won’t be permanent. Nothing in life is permanent. Not even the Abe Bailey Collection. But it will be on for a substantial period of time. Using the whole gallery for 6 months for one major show is quite a long time.
For the new show we are looking at the last hundred years or so. The title is 1910 to 2010: From Pierneef to Gugulective. The exhibition starts when South African art started to articulate a modern identity, specific to here as opposed to the same colonial stuff that was going on everywhere. It is about looking at the particular nature of South African from when it started to differentiate itself to other colonial situations and up to the very contemporary.

RS: It’s a long time, a hundred years. I know there is a whole gallery, but there still must be a tough selection process.

RN: We are looking at the transition from the colonial to articulating an own identity in the early Modernists as the beginning. Looking at how white artists represented life here and simultaneously how black artists saw the situation – Rorkes Drift, Polly Street, etc. And of course the art of resistance, from the 60s to the 80s, but we are looking to have a little bit of fun working on that. And coming more into the contemporary, the change-over, art from the so-called townships and where we are now. We hope to give a broad overview.

RS: It’s quite a broad history of SA art but it’s not an alternative history by any means?

RN: I think what’s important is that a person walking through the show would get quite a good understanding of what South African art is about. What the country is about. Not just Cape Town. Geographically and culturally, they should get the sense of what the country is about. I think with the kind of loans coming in one can expect to see a number of works unfamiliar to Cape Town audiences. You will have to judge that for yourself when the show opens.

RS: So for a foreign visitor?

RN: Foreign visitors, yes. But also in terms of local visitors. We are trying not to show works by artists in our collection that have been seen a lot. We are borrowing quite special works form other collections by those artists. Even our local audiences will see something new, something fresh, including work by known artists. I think that was what was particularly interesting about going to JAG, there is a very strong collection of black artists early on, 40s, 60s. Durban and Pietermaritzburg were just amazing. Some of the artists there are just not reflected in the collections here. And these art strong artists who were working for 30, 40 years, but just never appeared on the national scene. So there will definitely be lots of stuff for South African audiences. I think it will be an education for many people.
When we put themes for this show together, someone suggested we compare this to what schools are doing. There were lots of overlaps. I think its an unprecedented opportunity for people studying art at school level and at university to really grapple with South African art historically. So it is also relevant to our younger audiences.

RS: Has this inspired you to rectify your collection, of ISANG, to reflect more of the country?

RN: I identified that quite early on, and traveling around the country seeing other collections has been proof of that. I traveled with Joe Dolby who has been at the National Gallery fro 30 years and has a wealth of experience. He was totally in awe of some the stuff we saw. It shows up our collection, that we have to borrow. We are looking at addressing that, also importantly in the now. It’s a two-fold agenda: Historically, there are imbalances, geographically. And in the now we need to be looking nationally so that in 20 years time, our collection for this period is reflective of what was happening in the country.

RS: There was a bit of a scandal about removing the Abe Bailey Collection…

RN: An Art Times scandal…

RS: Was there some resistance to removing the Collection?

RN: It’s the first time this has happened for 60 years. I think the condition is that at least some of the Abe Bailey is on show. And it has always been a feature. I think the Abe Bailey has received more exposure than any artist, than any work over this period. This has really had unprecedented benefit for the Abe Bailey collection.

RS: Some of this rehang has got to do with the World Cup. But do people come to look at art during that period.

RN: I think it can only add to the potential visitor we might have. There have been some reports of people who went to Germany that there was a lot of preparation but not as many people visited the museums as was expected. I think Cape Town lends itself to this, the location, some of the social history museums. If I was a visitor I would venture out and check what else is happening. If they do, they will not be disappointed.

RS: I wanted to ask you about the Lulu Xingwana scandal. What do you feel about the Department of Arts and Culture and the tack they are taking, especially towards visual art which, I feel often falls off their wagon?

RN:I think what happened is very unfortunate. It is completely out of sync of where we see ourselves as a country. In terms of gay marriages, we are setting the path and leading the way. There are only five or six countries in the world that have done that. Then when you hear of something like this then it is like a flashback to a really conservative past. I think the art gallery and the art space and the artists have a role (and have always played that role), of pushing the boundaries, of reflecting society and of questioning things. That’s not going to change. If the way the media reported the story is true, I think that is a unfortunate and very conservative stance and totally out of sync with the progressive constitution we have and where we should be heading.

Ed Young's Diary (from the Daily ArtHeat at the Joburg Art Fair)

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Sloon) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 10:17:00 +0000

Killing Eddy...
I nap on the couch at my hotel and dream that Willem Bashoff is playing fly-half for Western Province. My dream journey ends with Willem kicking and uneven looking playing field into a giant game of Tricky Fingers. I wake up, drink some sparkling water and eat a bowl of freshly ripened homegrown tomatoes I specially brought up from Cape Town. Blackman takes me, Sloon, Leibbrandt, King, Chapman, Kentridge, Stupart and Jacques the Happy Wizard back to the Fair for some canapés. We meet Jan Henry and Sloon informs him that he is the third member of Beatles. Jan becomes sad. The fringe arrives with his plus one Michael Mcgarry. The Fringe offends me and Michael McGarry insults Blackman twice. Blackman becomes sad.
I go outside for a fag and hear what might be two of the car guards arguing. They laugh, perhaps they are being ironic. It all gets super boring. We go to the after party. It is super boring. We go to the Hyatt. It is SP and the beers are R40. And we are all very super sad. We head to the Kitchen and are served drinks at a reasonable price. The Car gaurds are out in force and the Fringe brushes past Blackman and again Blackman becomes sad. King goes off to play the viola. And Barend de Wet starts talking to me. We start arguing about the biodiversity of the Johannesburg fynbos and its roll in the Avant-garde, the car guards take his side. I am grabbed and wrapped in wool and some fringe. I slowly suffocate and I hear my gravestone being chiseled. I am placed in a cardboard Dada outfit and McGarry cuts me the most beautiful fringe in the world. They dance on my grave and I hear the strains of a preacher.
My spirit hovers over my hapless bunch of minions and I watch Blackman decide to go home alone but he is forced to lift Sloon, Pippa, Stupart, Leibbrandt, Jacques the Happy Wizard, Kentridge, and Chapman. Sloon decides to give Blackman totally the wrong directions and gets them totally lost. Jacques the HW summons a Mandogpig to give them directions and they drop off Stupart and Pipa. But again they lose their way. They end up grabbing a meal at MacDonald’s Rock and Roll Cafe ‘restaurant to the fifteen-year-old miniskirt-wearing girls in several limousines with fat boyfriends’. Leibbrandt calls a halt to the car while they are circling the byroads of Brianstown. He opens the window, extends his body to its maxim point of extension and produces one of Jackson Pollock’s smaller works onto the road - I assume that he must have eaten it at the Fair. They wonder around like a bunch of fools and not even Kentridge knows the way home. Jacques the Happy Wizard’s power reaches 0HP from the Macdonald’s and he can’t summon a Mandogpig. Finally they drop off Kentridge and Leibbrandt and the wizard is eaten by a fifth level purple mage. Sloon and Blackman get totally lost again and are pursued by a plethora of woman who seem to want them. My spirit slowly starts to lose interest and it flies and enters the Art Fair. I finally find some rest under the Grolsch ‘Fluid’.

Prawn Again (From the Daily ArtHeat at the Joburg Art Fair)

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Sloon) — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 10:11:00 +0000

It comes in cycles. In the period immediately after 1994, there was an international excitement about things South African, and a concurrent interest in our cultural production. It was a heady period of rainbow mist. Then everyone, the artists, got really depressed when the reality didn't add up to the shiny promise. Things were changing, but the baggage was heavy, full of skeletons and bickering crows. It was hard to represent this change, visually, culturally, in any meaningful manner. Interest waned both internationally, as new exciting experiences took up the media attention, and locally, when art failed to say much. The Johannesburg Biennale fizzled. We entered the tepid water of the early 2000's. The Brett Kebble awards were summarily cancelled. In 2007, Cape '07 was a wet blanket.
However, there is a new interest in South African culture. Tsotsi was the first blip, then District 9 and Invictus took the world by storm. And W. Kentridge opened his Nose opera at the Metropolitan. Perhaps influenced by World Cup Fever, there is a fresh interest in South African culture and art.
This month Bonhams conducted their 7th auction of South African modern art, and once again attained high prices. The top sale was by Pierneef, titled ‘An Extensive View of Farmlands which sold for R3.9m. Gerard Sekoto’s Market Street Scene, Cape Town, sold for R2.1m while Maggie Laubser’s Woman Wearing a Red Doek reached R554,000.

Towards the end of 2009, trendsetter blog boingboing.net featured South African rap band Die Antwoord. Within days the millions of international visitors had crashed Die Antwoord’s server downloading their video designed by Roger Ballen. The band’s semi-maybe-ironic white trash Flats sound, styled by the band as Zef rap, found a fascinated audience who debated their authenticity and shared interpretations of what zef means (essentially it means trashy Bellville uncool cool).
While both these stories are exciting and encouraging, what is worrying is the way, within this burst of interest, South Africa is being represented. It seems that the two extremes are either as a venerable product of European history (and European visions of Africa) or as a prawn-like (to use the District 9 sense of the word) abject outsider victim to a wanton and deranged culture.
While the wave is building, there is an opportunity to approach this idea of culture and South African identity in a wholly unique way. And possibly critical. And maybe without the irony.

Art and Industry

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Sloon) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 11:22:00 +0000

Eskimos in the Antarctic: a Response to the idea of “Art and Industry” (From the Daily ArtHeat at the Joburg Art Fair)

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Sloon) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 11:16:00 +0000

I must confess that my automatic response to this year’s Joburg Art Fair’s theme was peppered with my usual onslaught of cynicism. This was perhaps attributable to a skim-reading of the theme registering only the words “art” and “industry”; “art industry” if you will.
Read this piece on Its Not a Tumor

Party Party Party

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Sloon) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 11:12:00 +0000

Title Withheld (From the Daily Artheat at the Joburg Art Fair)

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Sloon) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 11:12:00 +0000

by Linda Stupart

What I think is necessary in our country today is a long overdue debate on what is art and where do we draw the line between art and pornography. What do we wish to encourage as a community concerned about the imaginative possibilities of art to shape our nation and our future? South Africans last engaged in such a debate before the democratic era. It is time that we open this discussion in the context of moral regeneration, social cohesion and nation building. - Minister Lulu Xingwana, MP
What may read above as a (certainly relatively) reasonable statement from our Minister of Arts and Culture has set alarm bells ringing in the minds of artists, writers and activists throughout South Africa. In a country where censorship is synonymous with the actions of an inherently immoral police state, what does it mean that our minister is questioning the moral value of art production? Or, more specifically, the very value of ‘that kind of art’, where, not incidentally, ‘that kind’ refers here to art made by black women representing their body and the bodies of others (where the Other here is the lesbian black body) in an exhibition on Constitution Hill intended to celebrate the work of contemporary black women artists in South Africa.
While the context implied by the very idea of a ‘new South Africa’ (14years old as it may be) suggests that freedom of expression, artistic or otherwise, is not only a right, but a given, it seems we are in an increasingly unhealthy state at the moment. A jogger is taken into police custody and searched for pulling a zap sign at the Zuma cavalcade; Andries Botha’s world-famous life-size elephant sculptures are stopped halfway through construction by an ANC heavy in an SUV because Durban is an ANC state and elephants, of course, are an IFP symbol; and then to top it off it is reported in the news that our Minister of Arts and Culture walked out of an exhibition featuring photographs of black lesbian women embracing because she found the work "immoral, offensive and going against nation-building".
When The Times reported of the minister’s August walkout of Innovative Women on March 2, the media went wild. This new disgrace seemed to be the nail in the coffin of a woman already associated almost entirely with a clusterfuck of mismanagements that started long before she even took on the Arts and Culture portfolio, and have seen the Department of Arts and Culture not only cut the National Arts Council’s budget in half, but also fail to deliver on millions of Rands worth of promised grants for 2010. Of course, even as reporters, artists and free-thinking members of the public were aghast at the minister’s prejudices, she had already garnered a large number of sympathisers, with responses to the News24 report of the incident including real gems like:
Tired of having naked & / or gay people shoved down my throat as freedom of anything. Do your thing if you must but why the hell is my tax paying for it. You go Minister, on your side on this one.
And it is this comment, posted even before Lulu’s response to the press, which was a backtracking text saying, basically, “I’m not homophobic I promise, actually I just don’t think any of this is art. Wait, actually it wasn’t the lesbians I didn’t like, it was a piece called ‘Self Rape’(which doesn’t exist) because it trivialises the issues of rape in this country (the work is actually Nandipha Mntambo’s re-imagining of The Rape of Europa, which does nothing of the sort)”, which lies at the crux of the minister’s potential for curtailing artistic expression.

Call me paranoid, but I can’t help feeling shades of a major conspiracy here, and one that is not without precedent:

In New York in the 90s Mayor Giuliani launched this very same ‘public debate’, when he tried to withdraw state funding from the Brooklyn Museum of Art, because it was holding Sensation, a travelling show of Young British Artists (YBAs), which undoubtedly was one of the most important of the decade, launching artists like Damien Hirst into superstar notoriety. After condemning the show as "sick stuff" - a judgment passed prior to the opening and without him having seen the show, Giuliani, like our minister, appealed to the moral conservative un-arts-educated public saying: Well, if the taxpayers don’t like this work because it offends them so much, then why should public funding support it? While this argument has the unfortunate position of sounding totally valid, it completely negates arts purpose; to question, to challenge to show. Because if we, as artists, are always to make work in line with the moral majority, then we will always be making our work in exile.

As discussed, the Department of Arts and Culture hasn't released any of their grants for 2010 yet, and have cut the NAC's budget in half. In essence, they aren't funding the arts anyway. What concerns me is that the minister may indeed put these issues to public debate, but in the worst kind of way: Sad as it may be, the majority is conservative when it comes to the arts (not to mention homophobic). Thus, if you put it to the taxpayers, they will argue that they don't want their money spent on 'that kind' of art (never mind what else our money is spent on), thus justifying the cut of government funding to the arts, which has already happened anyway.

Certainly, there are countless issues raised within the debates, not least of all including homophobia, sexism, ignorance and just blatant mismanagement. At the root of many of these, and of this article, lies a very real threat to South African art production at large. But, already, everyone is talking. It seems it may finally be time for the artists of this country to stand together and finally hold the government accountable for its actions and policies regarding Arts and Culture.
Let’s have a public debate then, but just let us speak!
To conclude, I’d like to quote another gem from the News24 comment box:

Hooray for the minister, she had the guts to stand up for herself (a rare thing amongst politicians), rather than swallowing what is viewed as polictically [sic.] correct by a small, but very vocal minority. Why should everyone have to put up with graphic images of nude people being bandied about in the name of being creative? Anyone can take photos of nude women and sadly there are too many 'artists' out there who rely on shock value rather than actually doing anything of real note - will the next Pierneef please stand up! If anyone wants to look at nude women, I am sure that there's plenty of 'tasteful nudes' on the internet. Three cheers for the minister!
It should be noted that, amongst other things, South African ‘Master’, J H Pierneef was a card-carrying member of the Broederbond. Moral regeneration, it’s a bitch.

Jackson Xidonkani Hlungwani (1923 - 2010) (From the Daily ArtHeat at the Joburg Art Fair)

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Sloon) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 11:10:00 +0000

For many years Jackson Hlungwani's work existed primarily within his
community of Limpopo. Born in 1923 in Nkanyani, Northern Province, Hlungwani sought out an urban exitence in Johannesburg during the early 1940's but found little success in employment after an accident cost him one of his fingers. Back in his hometown, Hlungwani became a member of the African Zioist Church and later formed his own denomination known as 'The New Jerusalem' in Mbhokota, Limpopo. He began producing sculptures in the 1960's and for years sculpted in the comfort of his hometown before being sought out by curator Ricky Burnett, who first brought Hlungwani's work to the gallery space in a 1985 show titled 'Tributaries'.

Burnett's relationship with Hlungwani strengthened during these years and Hlungwani's career as an exhibiting sculptor and artist flourished with Hlungwani reaching superstar status at a retrospective held in Newtown, Johannesburg in 1989.

Collected by the Irma Stern Museum, the South African National Gallery, the Sandton Convention Centre (various works are dispersed throughout the building), multiple South African universities including the University of Cape Town's Centre for African Studies as well as Wits University, Hlungwani's sculptures are also exhibited internationally.

Hlungwani's religious zeal permeated his sculptures. His belief was deeply and personally held, and Hlungwani recounted anecdotes (including prenatal experiences) that influenced his decision to become a priest and commit himself to a life of worship.

Sadly, Jackson Hlungwani passed away on Wednesday 20 January 2010 in Limpopo. Remembered with fondness as an eccentric mystical priest-cum-artist by those who both knew and worked with him, Hlungwani's work has left an indelible impression within the art community. He is survived by his wife Magdalena and 12 children.