Getting spicy with Robert Hodgins in London
by Sean O'Toole
Looking down from the first floor of artist Robert Hodgins' temporary studio, situated on London's trendy Brick Lane, I pointed excitedly to Fournier Street. The painter, however, was seemingly unperturbed by my gesticulations. Instead he focused his attentions on the wire-haired terrier scurrying around his studio.
"Gilbert and George live down there, you know," I told him.
The avuncular painter approached the window with only the slightest hint of interest, the pacified dog draped over his one arm.
"Are you going to visit them?" I ventured. (In my mind it made perfect sense to think that this great painter from South Africa should walk down the road, knock on the door of this eminent British duo's home and drop in for tea.)
"No," Robert Hodgins summarily replied, a youthful twinkle visible in his eyes. "I don't thrust myself upon the famous."
Currently on a three-month residency in London, Robert Hodgins will shortly present a series of new painted works to a discriminating London audience. The forthcoming show, which will be held at a gallery on Cork Street, is due to open in the last week of September.
According to London-based art dealer Simon Mee, who is facilitating the painter's residence and upcoming show, this exhibition will help finally introduce Hodgins to a wider British audience. "Robert Hodgins needs to show internationally," said Mee unequivocally.
Although widely acknowledged as one of South Africa's foremost contemporary artists, Hodgins enjoys nowhere near the same privileged international status as say William Kentridge, Moshekwa Langa or Zwelethu Mthethwa.
Not that Hodgins has allowed all of this to deaden his characteristic levity. Hell, even his London dealer was smiling. "Robert sees this as a good opportunity to spend time in London," commented Mee without any sense of urgency. "He wants to visit friends and old haunts, to simply enjoy England in the summer."
Then again Hodgins is hardly some precocious young artist who needs endless coaxing to produce work. With his show still two months off, his Brick Lane headquarters was already crammed with nearly completed works. "I can't believe these young artists who try finish everything the night before the show," he remarked. "I like to finish two weeks in advance so I can go on holiday."
Still standing in front of the large windows that illuminate his airy temporary studio, I asked the artist about London, the home he turned his back on so long ago. "It's a cleaner town now than when I lived here," he remarked without any hint of sentimentality. Which is quite correct, when Hodgins called London home in the 1940s there was indeed a lot of rubble around - the city had just emerged from the ruinous German blitzkrieg.
And what about the east London scene that confronts him outside his studio window, I ask. "It's not London," he responded with a smile, pointing generically at Brick Lane's celebrated curry houses. "It's pure Bangladesh - without the floats."
And that's where I left it. After a few parting words with the artist and his dealer I headed off in the direction of the nearest tube station. Of course no meeting is complete without an afterthought. Walking down Brick Lane I smiled, not an uncharacteristic action when in the company of Robert Hodgins.
The reason for the smile had nothing to do with his choice of words (I heard "lekker" a lot), or because he called Johannesburg and Pretoria's meeting point Halfway House when everyone else knows it as Midrand these days. It was something far more idiosyncratic. Despite having created a body of work noted for its rich and spicy lashings of colour, I was told beforehand that Robert Hodgins wasn't all that chuffed with his Brick Lane haunt. The man doesn't like curry.
