My year as meat
by Ed Young
Jesus Christ. What a year... a roller coaster ride that makes Charlie's Angels look like a Walt Disney production. A lot of ups and downs, and a little bit of sideways shagging thrown in for good measure.
Congratulations, first off, to Kathryn Smith, the new Standard Bank Young Artist for 2004. She is definitely my hero. James Webb hit the nail late one night on a noisy dance floor: "Ha... Finally a young artist for the Young Artist Award".
There has been a dramatic shift and focus on Contemporary Art production in South Africa over the last year, which is a good thing. Individuals involved in the art world seem to have finally woken up to what it is that is supposed to be Contemporary Art practice. But will it last? I have already been detecting some anti-contemporary art sentiments as the year draws to an end. And I don't mean contemporary as in Michael Stevenson Contemporary. A bit too '97. But let us pause for a moment in reverie at what it was that actually pushed the contemporary shift.
Art South Africa, the local arts magazine published by Bell-Roberts Publishing, has made it through the year despite the denouncing remarks by countless cynics. It has proven to be one of the most important platforms for contemporary practice and debate. In my opinion it reached an all time high with that issue with the matchstick on the cover [Vol.01 Issue 03]. The last two issues were a bit less edgy and slightly more conservative, with the exception of the articles on Moshekwa Langa and Stephen Cohen.
We cannot afford to move back to the state the visual arts were in a few years ago. We have come too far.
ArtThrob continues to provide a remarkable platform for discussion and records almost everything of importance happening in the South African art world. It provides an incredible support structure for artists and is easily accessed by international curators who jet in and take our tapes and are then never heard from again. It is insightful, serious when needed and light when necessary. We have seen another great year.
Like almost everything good, we encounter little wobblies. An ArtThrob favourite of mine was Paul Edmunds' account of the YDEsire exhibition earlier this year. As I recall it went something like this: "Oh, Julia Clark is so great, so beautiful, so intelligent". No Paul, but what about the hundreds of artworks, the people, the party? Paul: "Oh Julia, how you make me feel like a seventeen year old 'sk8er-boi'. Oh, my cranky knees".
(See Paul Edmunds' review: www.artthrob.co.za/03mar/reviews/ydesire.html)
Nice one Paul. He did, however, manage to redeem himself a couple of reviews later.
In many respects the year kicked off with YDEsire, the YDE sponsored art party at the Castle of Good Hope. It was Big. It was so big that I had trouble locating my own work after a couple of Heinekens. In the first quad, immediately to the left, Julia Clark installed a skate ramp with a couple of hot, young, sweaty, half-naked teenage boys doin' their thang. Paul Edmunds was spotted slightly to the left of the ramp.
Sanell Aggenbach made a floating bed that looked more like a collaboration between Brett Murray and Doreen Southwood. A general hit amongst the audience was Jean Brundrit and Dorothee Kreutzveldt's synchronised two-channel video of girl singers against a background of a tropical island. I think the piece was about love. Later in the evening the exhibition areas were closed down and thousands bounced to David West spinning Nirvana's Smells like Teen Spirit.
More than 7,000 people attended this year's event. This figure marks Softserve's biggest success. But, as in the case of the previous Softserves, the curatorial judgements just weren't exactly there. There were too many works, not enough quality control and eventually rooms cluttered with artworks that later became objects on which to place one's empty beer cans. Andrew Putter reassured me that Softserve never attempted to be a kick-ass show, but rather an exhibition that provides possibilities for young artist to exhibit, as this country lacks the infrastructure to support our younger artists. So it's a good thing.
Then Jeff Koons came to town and we were all very happy. He gave a lunchtime lecture at Michaelis where I found my quote of the year: "The art world (he pauses and stares into the distance) is a place of green pastures. It is a happy, comfortable place". I did not exactly understand what he meant and thought that maybe he was just jet-lagged. We all know how emotionally and economically difficult the art world is. It's not an easy job.
Afterwards we all went for drinks and Jeff agreed to fill in and sign my ABSA l' Atelier entry form, to use as my artwork for the competition. He stood me up though. I went to his hotel the next morning finding a message saying: "Sorry, I had to leave". I had to fill out my own form. That's probably why I didn't win.
So Andrew Lamprecht and I went off to Venice to make a documentary film about this year's biennale. We met up with the artwork known as Bruce Gordon, and his wife Sue Williamson. We had a great time. Halfway through press week my foot broke in three places. The doctor said it was a mosquito bite. The mosquito was almost as big as a medium-sized dog.
The night before, I had gone off to the Haig's Bar and Grill with Swiss art duo Daniel Bauman and Sabina Lang, because this was apparently where Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan hung out at night and I really wanted an interview with him. At about 2a.m., my foot started breaking. I had to leave because the pain was intolerable. I got a text message the next morning from Bauman that read: "Good Morning! I was at fifteen-man party last night. Cattelan was there. Bye". I wanted to cry.
Andrew bought me some crutches and we pushed through the rest of the forty-two degrees and humid press week. Sue Williamson got us into the 'Fault Lines' lunch with Salah Hassan and Okwui Enwezor. We arranged to meet with them for an interview and Salah gave us his business card to phone him. When we tried to call, we found that the card only had his Cornell University landline on it. That was not a very nice thing to do.
We did manage to secure some shrewd interviews with a number of high profile individuals, including biennale director Francesco Bonami, French theorist Nicolas Bourriaud, and artists such as Moshekwa Langa and Santiago Sierra. We were able to put together an insightful dialogue pertaining to the politics of the biennale vis-�-vis the concerns of the artists. It's just a pity that 'Africa in Venice' pulled a fast one on us, and as a result the African voice had to be excluded to some extent.
A definite highlight of the year was forming the curatorial collective Gallerie Puta [the writer's emphasis]. Puta was founded by myself, Michaelis theory lecturer Andrew Lamprecht, and young artist Cameron Platter. It is an initiative that aims at circumventing the normal art elite structures in the small Cape Town art scene. It provides a platform for younger artists to show their work alongside more established artists, the latter in order to maintain public interest.
Puta is a de-localised system that changes with every project. Andrew Lamprecht recently gave a lecture on Gallerie Puta at Wits University for the postgraduate students, in which he outlined methods for graduating students to make their mark in an art scene, something extremely difficult to infiltrate as a young artist. The students found the lecture extremely inspiring and this led to independent exhibitions such as DIY, which was held at the MuseuMAfricA in the Newtown Cultural Precinct in Johannesburg.
Puta's first exhibition, in Cape Town, was an enormous success. Malcolm Payne contributed a memorable work titled Colin Richards-Red-Slim Medium: R. Butt, a prominent response to a remark that Richards made about the artist in an article on conceptualism. The work consisted of a red butt plug that was to be inserted in a gallerist's anus and worn for at least one hour during the exhibition. The object was accompanied by a legal document that had to be signed by the gallerist and two witnesses.
(See Tracy Murinik's review: www.artthrob.co.za/03june/reviews/galerieputa.html)
Puta later went to the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG) disguised as an artwork of mine. This event formed part of Christian Nerf's 24/7 residency programme, which included artist such as Barend de Wet, Kathryn Smith, and Kim Lieberman. The residency was brilliant. Nerf set up a system by which all the participants could spend 24 hours at the JAG and leave their residue or what Nerf calls 'evidence'. This evidence was then collected at the end and reconstructed as an exhibition called 'Art as Usual'.
Once again we encountered the problem of people in power not being able to identify contemporary art systems. JAG curator Brenton Maart failed to understand how an exhibition of evidence was to work and also did not seem to get the fact that paintings and sculptures were not displayed as the product of the residency. In a recent fisting session on ArtThrob, Maart and Nerf had it out about 24/7 turning sour. The problem however, seems to lie with the power structures of our art institutions. They really just do not seem to understand or even attempt to engage with contemporary art. I felt that my "ashtray overflowing with butts" was the perfect evidence of our performance at the JAG.
(Refer to: www.artthrob.co.za/03oct/news/24_7.html)
Cape Town is no different. Large parts of the Cape Town art world are extremely apathetic towards contemporary art production. It is not that we as artists can't do it. It's just that powerful people are ignorant. How will we compete in an international arena when our representation internationally relies on Dale Yudelman and Arlene Amaler-Raviv? Why are we showing the world that we are still learning to paint?
We should rather aim to realise our capacity to promote our contemporary artists. We will have to stand together and really educate ourselves with what is happening in places outside our country. Maybe new super structures like the Cape international exhibition initiative will allow us to show the world that we are able to compete. We just have to concentrate and try not make the same mistakes twice.
The increasing interest in contemporary art over the last year has been matched by a decline of art criticism in the popular press, with the exception to the new newspaper ThisDay. We see endless newspaper articles with critics hitting their heads on their typewriters and not actually engaging with what is going on. Chris Roper does not even attend most exhibitions, does not set a foot in the AVA, and - apparently - on one occasion even embarrassingly reviewed a show two weeks before it opened. Artists get upset. The critics just don't seem to want to engage.
Maybe it just boils down to good old laziness, or attention deficit disorder. Melvin Minnaar reviewed the tattooing of Bruce Gordon based on a two minute SABC news insert. The best he could come up with was that I was a doe-eyed artist and that Andrew Lamprecht was ugly. Why was he not there? Instead of coming to the actual event, Minnaar made up for it by feeling my arse at Estelle Jacobs' birthday party. He continued doing so after I told him that I was a heterosexual male. I thought that I would at least get a nice review for that one - nothing!
Wake up sleepy heads, and thanks to those who are actively engaged. In the words of Liam Gillick:
"... it's not fantasy land anymore, it's like real life, and you can do it, too. You just make a slight conceptual side-step when you wake up one morning. You decide to get involved."
It has been a long year. I sold a bar owner and exhibited a string quartet. I am tired now. I want to fall asleep in the arms of Christina Aguilera. By the way, Andrew Lamprecht has read my article and complained that he was not mentioned enough. He suggests: "Just imagine this is Sue Williamson's Dairy and I am Lisa Brice".
Cheers!
