The Fresh series
by Sue Williamson
In his launch speech for the Fresh set of boxed catalogues, BLAC founder and independent curator Zayd Minty called this artist-in-residency programme "the best thing the South African National Gallery has ever done", and he is not far wrong.
Fresh, funded by a gift from artist Marlene Dumas and curated by the SANG's Emma Bedford, gave a one-month residency at the gallery to seven emerging artists, allowing them the space and the funding to make new work. The importance of this period for each of them and for the South African art world is attested to by the quality of the work they made at this time, as recorded in this compact set of seven boxed catalogues.
The artists were Dorothee Kreutzveldt, Moshekwa Langa, Senzeni Marasela, Robin Rhode, Tracey Rose, Berni Searle and Usha Seejarim. Each 31-page catalogue carries an introduction by Bedford, a framing essay by the critic of the artist's choice (the likes of Annie Coombes, Kellie Jones and Kathryn Smith) and a series of photographs of work and performances developed during Fresh.
Tracey Rose used the time to work on her submission for the upcoming Venice Biennale, Ciao Bella, a three-channel projection piece (described by Jones as "complex, insanely comic") in which the artist plays her way through a number of iconic roles. Langa, on his longest trip back to this country since he left for the Netherlands in the late 1990s, produces I Love my Pashmina, a joyful stream of consciousness collage, and showed locals his latest videos. Kreutzveldt, in an installation which included photography and oral testimony, investigated the effects of the people of Cape Town of a series of bombings in 1999 and 2000.
The catalogues provide a vital resource. Already, the latest cover feature in Nka magazine, on Robin Rhode, can be seen to have drawn heavily on the Fresh catalogue on his work, carrying as it does excellent photographs of a whole series of performances in which the artist draws in charcoal on walls the framing devices for Upside Down Bike, Getaway or Leak. In this last named, the artist drew a urinal on a gallery wall, then used it, signing himself R. MOET. One might note here the importance of having a good photographer like Pam Warne around to record moments that might otherwise have been lost.
Fresh, Softcover, boxed, limited to 500
Publisher: South African National Gallery, 2001 - 3
ISBN: 1-874817-28-6
Price: R210 for the complete set. Available at the South African National Gallery and elsewhere
