Archive: Issue No. 75, November 2003

The fluid cultural landscape heralded by the 1990s presents many rewards, especially for the astute art dealer. Ignore for a moment the long list of deceased art galleries and consider instead those large new corporate edifices, often plonked in what used to be empty veldt: someone has to clothe them, make them look pretty inside.

As too those once venerable public museums that suddenly realised their collections were rather skewed, to put it rather politely. The vagaries of change have been profitable for a youthful breed of entrepreneurial art dealers, tastemakers whose influence has shaped who and what is being collected in the post-apartheid era.

One such figure is Monna wa Mokoena, the independent art dealer who recently opened Gallery Momo, a new contemporary art space in Johannesburg. Dread-locked, freckled, debonair, earnest: Mokoena epitomises much of the can-do gusto driving the contemporary art scene.

"It's self-funded," he shyly revealed of his impressive brut concrete and glass space in the trendy neighbourhood of Parktown North. "Which makes it difficult," he added, probably intending to mean risky. "I am trying to sell dreams here."

Mokoena is however enthused by what he sees as a culture rebounding from the uncertainty of the 1990s. "I think there is a turnaround," the former Fort Hare law graduate affirmed. "Just look at how many local visual artists are now world renowned. Okay it's not a big number but just think back ten years ago."

Not that he isn't exasperated by the profound sense of ignorance many people show towards the achievements of South African artists. "What amazes me about Johannesburg, and indeed South Africa, is how little has been done with art here," he remarked.

"If you take Senegal, for instance, the art market there is thriving. Despite being the leading economy on the continent of Africa, we are nowhere."

This seemingly audacious claim is clarified - but by no means diluted - by Cape Town dealer Michael Stevenson. "I think contemporary art is under-represented in South Africa generally," he told me, "especially in Cape Town."

A well-respected and long-established dealer in modern and contemporary works, Stevenson only recently decided upon a fixed, publicly accessible address from which to run his operation.

"This town has changed dramatically in the past few years and is now an international city," he said of factors motivating the recent opening of his eponymous De Waterkant art space. "Accordingly, there is an audience and market for the cutting edge and the established presented in a professional context."

For his inaugural show, titled Contact Zones, Stevenson showcased contemporary artworks alongside traditional pan-African artefacts. Commenting on this strategy, he said: "I think South Africans are very South Africa centric in their taste.

"There is a historical and contemporary context to art practice in this country that is mostly overlooked, perhaps a legacy of the isolation of apartheid." Mokoena agrees. "South Africa has always seen itself in isolation. You always hear people talk about going to Africa, when in fact they are in Africa."

Keenly aware of the implications of this statement, Mokoena has purposefully set up Gallery Momo as a cross-cultural space, one that will be attuned to promoting a pan-Africanist version of contemporary African art.

For his inaugural show, Mokoena exhibited a series of abstract expressionist paintings by Roger Botembe, a well-known figure from Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. "It forms part of a bigger plan," he commented. "I am moving beyond our containment here, I am approaching the continent as one."

As keen to espouse a more holistic understanding of art practice, particularly in the South African context, is Warren Siebrits. Formerly with Sotheby's, and also a curator with Trent Reed's Everard Reed Contemporary, many still fondly remember his Metroplex window gallery in Rosebank's Mutual Gardens, from the mid-1990s.

In his new Parkwood space Siebrits has however done away with the tomfoolery. After launching with a studied look at protest art, he explored the nuances of township art, sculpture and printmaking, this diligently curated series of group shows earning Siebrits wide-ranging respect.

Earning equal respect in this somewhat macho environment is Alet Vorster, of Art on Paper. Her discreet Melville space recently upped its profile with a significant coup: a solo show by Colin Richards. "Alet has been running a highly professional and very successful business," observes Wilhelm van Rensburg, a critic with Die Beeld newspaper.

"We are passionate about what we are doing," explained Mokoena on the thinking underlying the new galleries. "I think our approach is totally different." As with Leo Castelli or Charles Saatchi before them, even the Goodman Gallery's Linda Givon, this difference stems largely from the temperament of these new dealers.

"Art dealing is a very personal business," explained Stevenson. "Your name is attached to the gallery and your choices and preferences are what define its programme. Hence, there are artists, both young and established, who have been acclaimed, who I don't exhibit because I do not personally connect with their work."

Which largely benefits art audiences: as these new spaces develop so to will their distinctive imprimatur. For those already involved in the art business, such as the Bell-Roberts Gallery, a well-known Cape Town space, this has necessitated some clever manoeuvring.

Following the successful invention of a cell phone company as art patron in downtown Johannesburg last year, Suzette and Brendon Bell-Roberts recently paired up with financial services company Mettle, the latter running a series of full-page, full-colour ads in a major financial daily featuring works by artists from the Bell-Roberts stable.

This partnership was further extended with an exhibition at Mettle's Johannesburg head office, in Illovo, where traders got a sneak preview of Doreen Southwood's Brett Kebble Art Award winner, 'The Swimmer'. As was bound to happen, the setting invested the show with a certain indeterminacy: was the art simply plumped-up décor or really an investment commodity.

Opinions will necessarily differ, depending on your take on the difficult union of art and money. I tend to concur with the critic Robert Hughes, that immeasurably gifted cynic who once said: "The idea that money, patronage and trade automatically corrupt the wells of imagination is a pious fiction, believed by some utopian lefties and a few people of genius such as William Blake but flatly contradicted by history itself."