New kid on the block may shake up existing art spaces
by Robyn Sassen
There is a sharp level of awareness of the need to empower or be empowered in Johannesburg's art world at the moment. Perhaps it's in the ether, but there are a number of diverse initiatives afoot that give substance to the notion of artists as entrepreneurs. A powerful illustration of the validity of this type of initiative is The Premises, Johannesburg's newest art-critically aware space.
The Trinity Session was formed of an intellectual and emotional synergy between three friends - Kathryn Smith, Jose Ferreira and Stephen Hobbs, in 2000. Upon his departure to the UK, Ferreira's position was taken up by Marcus Neustetter. With sharp minds and a confident grasp of the hot issues in artmaking, the three quickly realised the potency of their company. They were each involved in different aspects of making and conceptualising art, but their ideas were growing and shifting.
Smith was on the Advisory Board of what was then the Civic Art Gallery. Things were administratively and conceptually crumbling for the awkward little art space in the corner of front-of-house. Hobbs had developed a respectable reputation for himself as curator and administrator of the Market Theatre Gallery in Newtown from his six-year tenure there.
From a whole rash of statistical perspectives the disintegration of the Civic Art Gallery presented a gap to Smith, who was representing a bunch of different loyalties in her Advisory Board committee and already richly complicated art career. The Trinity Session decided, on the strength of this, to pocket their pride as art academics, for the time being, and acquire the necessary business acumen to present their ideas of art administration and facilitation to the brand new CEO of the Civic, Bernard Jay. He was convinced and the rest is almost history: As a pivotal space in Johannesburg's Cultural Arc project, aimed at rejuvenating the spaces from Newtown to Braamfontein to Hillbrow, the Civic Theatre was the best possible institution to approach with an art-focused business plan.
In mid-2002, as the theatre precinct itself was undergoing structural and infrastructural shake-up, the Trinity Session was granted office space in the theatre's disused admin suite. The first Premises was a small, grungy, trendy corner of the parking garage. Enthused by the energy the Trinity Session brought with them, Jay began hustling potential stakeholders to pump lifeblood into the burgeoning new art space.
At the beginning of this year, the gallery was completed - all 150m x 4.5m of it. Downstairs from the buzz of the News Café, it's close and yet far enough from the theatres. It is the perfect partner for the machine of popular entertainment Jay has made of the Civic Theatre.
The inaugural show opened in early March, and featured works by Jo Ractliffe, Terry Kurgan, Frances Goodman and Alison Kearney amongst others. A two-part programme, the second installation of the show opens on April 3. Collectively billed 'Show us what you're made of', the shows present mostly young practitioners, competent and exciting in their approach, with work that functions best in this type of pristine box, exuding a heady mix of professionalism, integrity and cutting-edge sensibility.
Unlike any other gallery space at the moment, The Premises is less about vast monies, belonging to a stable or showing off one's conceptual facility or ability to shock a public. From this perspective, and at this time, it seems like a space with a most refreshing potential to redress previously held imbalances in the discipline.
Smith, Neustetter and Hobbs have coloured the space they've created with the entrepreneurial spirit of tenacity and flexibility. Perhaps, if The Trinity Session is able to maintain this edge and their position in the gap between the profoundly commercial and the outrageously avant-garde, that ethos of self-empowerment and of the real possibility of making a living from art could indeed grow right under our noses.
Watch this space!
April 3 - 24
