Sue Williamson's Diary
Thursday, August 19
Art writer Sean O’ Toole and I take the night train from Bern to Berlin. When the train seems to have reached rocket speed, Sean takes a photograph of a screen showing we have hit 250 km an hour.
Friday, August 20
I am in Berlin to give a talk at the Daimler Gallery, where curator Christian Ganzenberg is presenting Ampersand, current performative and contemporary art from South Africa juxtaposed with work from the Daimler Collection. My own piece from 1990, For Thirty Years Next to his Heart starts off the show, together with a section of Willem Boshoff’s classic Blind Alphabet and from there the visitor moves on to view new work from such artists as Robin Rhode, Nicholas Hlobo and Nandipha Mntambo, along with their European counterparts.
Under the auspices of the gallery, I will also do a Berlin version of my Other Voices, Other Cities series, in which I run a workshop with a group of local residents to try to establish what it is exactly about living in that city which is unique, and not quite like any other.
Christian, photographer Abrie Fourie and I breakfast together at one of the charming pavement cafes in Prenzlauer Berg to discuss the planning of the project. The workshop will be tomorrow. So today Abrie and I will cycle around Berlin looking for possible locations for the shoot, at which some days after the workshop, participants will hold up letters spelling out the message they have decided on.
El Anatsui’s hanging at the Alte Neuegalerie
The location will depend on the message, but I need to look around for possibilities first. En route around the city, we pass El Anatsui’s extraordinary hanging, which is cladding the columns of the Alte Neuegalerie as part of the Berlin wide ‘Who Knows Tomorrow’ series of exhibitions by African artists.
A possible location shot
Or should we risk the participants being run down by a tram? Abrie Fourie is the man in this shot.
By the way, I am lucky enough to be staying in a most gorgeous apartment, so spacious, with high, high ceilings and a red couch in the kitchen backing a long table, opposite the very contemporary stove and gleaming stainless steel kitchen equipment.
A beautiful kitchenAs I entered the apartment for the first time, in the early hours of Friday morning, I was seized with an immediate urge to invite friends known and unknown to dinner, to sit on the couch and talk to me over wine, while I, of course, would be cooking something delicious for us all to share.
Monday, August 23
Last week, I visited the unique Hotel Everland for the last time.
The creation of Swiss artist friends Sabina Lang and Daniel Baumann, this moveable hotel for two will leave its position on the roof of their studio in Burgdorf and cross the Atlantic to become part of the collection of a Kentucky art museum.
The Hotel EverlandStaying in Everland with its retro curves and its calm aqueous toned interior in which one’s thoughts seem free to float undisturbed will be just a memory.
Inside EverlandThe occasion was the annual Paul Klee Sommerakademie in Bern, which offers 12 emerging artists the opportunity to participate in a 10 day workshop with a leading curator – this year, the international critic and writer, Jan Verwoert. The theme of his workshop was ‘When your lips are my ears, our bodies become radios’, and for the period of the workshop the fellows, including Cape Town Gugulective member Kemang Wa Lehulere, had to produce a daily radio programme and a poster. But that is only one aspect of the workshop – other lectures, debates, intense discussions, immerse the fellows in considerations of what art is, or could be. Or should be.
Jan VerwoertAt the conclusion of the workshop, the nominators, from all over the world, are invited to review the procedures, and this year, attend the launch of a book produced by last year’s fellows, including Bettina Malcomess. Meeting up again with one’s fellow nominators like the American writer Steven Madoff and the director of the Bern Kunsthalle, Phillipe Pirotte, becomes a pleasant summer ritual. Phillipe tells me Moshekwa Langa is scheduled for a major show at the Kunsthalle in the coming months.
The River AareA highlight last year was very physical – a plunge into the swiftly flowing Aare River which runs through Bern, its opaque icy green reflecting its glacial source, but this year, it’s just too cold to contemplate a swim.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Yesterday was a day of sad and shocking news. Artist Mark Hipper has died. at the too young age of 50. His body was found in his home in Grahamstown by a friend who had gone round to see why he had missed a meeting. Apparently a few days before he had told his new gallerist Heidi Erdmann that he was not feeling well. It is believed his death resulted from diabetic complications.
Only three weeks ago I stood with Mark and Heidi and Manfred Zilla in Erdmann Contemporary in Cape Town, looking at the work of the past 20 years, sheets and sheets of paper covered in charcoal drawings of figures, most clearly executed at high speed, a technique which can be disastrous if the hand holding the charcoal is not that of a master.
In a review of his work at the Joao Ferreira Gallery in 2003, I wrote:
‘'Disquieting' is a word that could be used to describe almost all of Mark Hipper's work. Or liminal. Nothing in his work is quite what it seems, and there is much which resists an exact interpretation. A viewing audience is constantly being engaged in a disturbing dialogue, one which is heightened by the way the artist suddenly switches from one medium to another, from an apparently straightforward charcoal drawing to a suggestive watercolour to a carved body mask to this new installation. It is a dialogue in which it is worth engaging.’
Mark Hipper, The Inquisitors (2002) Painted jacaranda, Installation view João Ferreira Gallery
The retrospective of his work planned to take place in September when the Erdmann Gallery reopens will still go forward, though now with an elegiac undertone.
Mark Hipper, rest in peace.
Wednesday, August 4
Dineo Seshee Bopape is back from a two year stint in New York where she completed her MFA in new media at Columbia and has set up her installation ‘The eclipse will not be visible to the naked eye’ at the Michael Stevenson. It opened last Thursday.
What IS visible to the naked eye is a dense assemblage of rotating mirrors, lino-like wallpaper, lace curtains and flowers, flowers in vases, videos and photographs … nature has been subjected to the Bopape sense of exuberance and colour and brought inside. At the same time, there is also a disquieting sense, as In the red roses in the first scene of the classic David Lynch movie, Blue Velvet, that all is not as it seems ….
Dineo Seshee BopapeAcross the street at Blank Projects, Swiss artist Kerim Seiler has done what might seem to be the opposite, though working from a very different point of view. Carrying with them brightly coloured neon tubes and wooden stakes, Seiler and his collaborator Gregor Metzger moved out of the gallery, making their ‘Nomadic Structures’ sculptures in places from urban to deep in the wilds, introducing the fluorescent colours of the city into nature.
Kerim SeilerThe week finished with an invitation to high tea at the Mount Nelson. Could anything be more colonial sounding than that? Finger sized cucumber and egg mayonnaise sandwiches, little choux pastry tubes filled with smoked salmon, warm scones with apricot jam and clotted cream, and a rich Black Forest cake. Yum. My host was Steven Dubin, in town to promote his book, ‘Mounting Queen Vicforia: Museum transformation in a democratic South Africa, and after tea we listened to Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka.
Wole SoyinkaSaid Soyinka, in a response to a question about how young writers should be addressing social issues like poverty: ‘Please don’t freeze out the age-old existential concerns of literature in favour of immediate concerns like AIDS and child soldiers’.
A response which applies equally to the visual arts.
Tuesday July 27 2010
What mortifications of the flesh artists will go through to make art! Belinda Blignaut’s ‘Stealing the Words’ installation on the windows of the YoungBlackman Gallery required the artist to chew 10 000 pieces of bubblegum to make enough bubbles which in their weirdly detumescent state pinkly coat the windows of the gallery. Only by leaching the bubblegum in hot water first to draw out some of the nauseatingly sugary flavour could the artist complete her project.
Belinda Blignaut at the opening of ‘Stealing the Words’.
Anti xenophobia stickers are popping up all over town. The next meeting of the Artists Action Group against Xenophobia takes place on Saturday, August 7 in the Oliver Tambo Centre in Khayelitsha from 11 am to 2 p.m. It’s really easy to get there – just take the Mew Way exit from the N2 and you’re right there. Email organizer Suzy Bell at HYPERLINK "mailto:bellsuzy@gmail.com" bellsuzy@gmail.com for more details of the workshop.
Seen on an ad at the airport
This past weekend, 20 years of figure drawings strewn across the floor of Erdmann Contemporary gave viewers a mini retrospective of Mark Hipper’s graphic work. Many of the vigorous charcoals were done in life drawing sessions, but there were a number of the late great Robert Hodgins, naked but still robust, brought back to life by Hipper’s swift and always assured line.
Mark Hipper takes a closer look at past drawings at Erdmann Contemporary
‘Mounting Queen Victoria’ is the title of Steven Dubin’s book on the transformation of museums in South Africa, and whether museums are still relevant –or not - will be the subject of a Book Fair panel on Sunday afternoon at 2 for 2.30 at Iziko South African National Gallery. I will be part of the panel, together with Riason Naidoo of the SANG, Andrew Lamprecht, Pippa Skotnes and the author himself.
Friday, July 16
In a week when the World Cup final ended a month of celebration, a time in which all South Africans seemed to have discovered – again – how much they really liked each other, Dan Halter’s exhibition ‘Double Entry’ opened at Whatiftheworld …..
Halter’s entry visa
The title of the show refers to the artist’s visa to enter once more the country of his birth, and and focuses on the cruel situation in which Zimbabweans trying to leave the country find themselves.
Performance poet Suzy Bell flashes her Goodbye Mugabe T shirt in front of Halter’s Beitbridge Space Invader video.
And then this week, as if to bring us all down to cold reality now that the World Cup is over, there were fresh outbreaks of xenophobic violence all over the Western Cape, with Somali shop owners being chased from the shops, beaten up, and their shops looted.
So please take note that on this Saturday, July 17, there will be an anti-xenophobia creative workshop from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Oliver Tambo Centre in Khayelitsha. And if anyone needs directions to get there, phone
Suzy at 076 375 5675. For more info, email Suzy at bellsuzy@gmail.com Also, on Sunday, there will be a march from a 12 noon meeting at St George’s Cathedral.
Suzy Bell’s graffiti
We have to do everything we can to creatively bring about a change in consciousness, to make all feel welcome in our midst.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
The Friday before last, I spent the evening wandering down Greatmore Street in Woodstock. It is here one can find Greatmore Studios, the centre of the latest Thupelo workshop, a two week interaction between local and international artists. That Friday was the culmination of the workshop, the open night.
Julia Raynham prepares for the night.
On the Main Road corner, Julia Raynham had made up a bed for the night. Dressed in a white woollen dress which made her look like a legendary snow queen, Julia was preparing to talk to visitors, sleep a little – a bodyguard was there to stand over her while she slept – perhaps give a performance, and generally see what encounters the night would bring.
Julia with Thupelo artist Lionel Davis
In the grounds of the school where the artists had been staying, there were drinks, bands, entertainers and artists’ videos, and the great thing was to see how many local residents were taking in the scene. High up on the school building, visiting artist Rob Moonen had written his message to himself, the artists and the community: Challenge Yourself.
Rob Moonen’s message
In one of a number of interactions with the locals, Jenny Parsons painted beautifully subtle broekie lace designs on the façade of a house in a deeper tone of the wall colour, so that at first glance, they appeared as a trompe l’oeil shadow of this traditional cast iron trim. Look closely at the right hand house in the photo.
Roscoe Martin renovated not only the shopfront of a corner shop, but also painted an expressive portrait of a resident on the wall of his bedroom.
The Roscoe Martin portrait and his subject.
The Thupelo workshops play a unique role in the art life of this country, and provide one of the few points of access for international artists to work here alongside local artists. Long may they continue.
Monday, June 28
South Africa may be out of the World Cup, but their exit, with a 2-1 win over France, was respectable enough for the country to go right on partying. On Wednesday night last week Mark Coetzee, energetic Program Director of PUMAVision was the benign host at the opening party of an exhibition of portraits of football stars by American artist Kehinde Wiley, who I last encountered giving a talk about his solo show at the Studio Museum of Harlem almost two years ago. Wiley is celebrated for his portraits of young African American men, posed against rich backgrounds of African fabrics.
Puma had commissioned Wiley to paint portraits of three stars of African football teams, from Cameroon, Ghana and the Ivory Coast, with one portrait of the three together. Unfortunately the portraits had got stuck in Chinese customs and had not arrived in the country by the opening night, so overnight the Scanshop, working from digital images, had printed the portraits on fabric and stretched them like canvases.
Did anyone notice? After all, the labels still read ‘Oil on canvas’ and television cameras and photographers were everywhere. Wiley was there, of course, and fashion mogul Kimora Lee Simmons arrived with an entourage, and head down, made straight for the roped off VIP space at the back.
We went on to the opening of the Andrew Lamprecht curated show, ‘Tretchikoff and Me’, at Salon 91 in Kloof Street. Vintage prints by the artist, long considered the king of kitsch, hung in tandem with responses by local artists, some very witty. The gallery was packed, with people spilling out onto the street. There seemed to be just as many guests here as at the Kehinde Wiley bash, causing my friend Dutch artist Rob Moonen to comment in astonishment that in Holland, one was lucky to get thirty people at an opening.
Fashionista Suzy Bell shows off her Tretchi lookBut if we didn’t go to openings, how else would Capetonians keep up with all their friends?
Tuesday, June 22
Thursday June 17.
There are figures of orange footballers in the foyer of my hotel and vuvuzelas (orange) being blown on the streets – I am in Holland at the invitation of
Angelique Spaninks, director of Eindhoven’s Stichting MU.
Ready for action in my hotelTomorrow night I will give a lecture as part of the programme around For those who live in it: popculture politics and strong voices, an exhibition of the work of young(er) Southem African artists – Love and Hate, Zanele Muholi, Faith47, Athi Patra Ruga, Kudzanai Chiurai, Musa Nxumalo, Anton Kannemeyer, Chimurenga and Gugulective.
Anton Kannemeyer’s wall drawing at MUThe Stichting MU is located on the first floor of the old Phillips factory, the lightbulb industry which brought Eindhoven into economic prominence, and in its more than ten years of existence, has concentrated on presenting provocative and experimental work.
Ex-UCT Art History student Clare Butcher is now working as a guest curator at the impressive Van Abbemuseum nearby, (seeing the Rebecca Horn show there years ago is one of the highlights of a lifetime of art-viewing) and as it is her birthday, we go out to supper. The seafood platter at Usine – for three – is quite a display.
Supper at Usine with Clare ButcherFriday June 18
In the courtyard of the Van Abbe, guest artist Antonis Pittas is stenciling in graphite a phrase selected from a newspaper on to a curved white wall – one a week over a period of three and a half months. The earlier phrases have already faded and run slightly.
Antonis Pittas at the Van AbbeIn the workrooms of the museum, as part of a Free Sol Lewitt project, artisans are welding up exact copies of a Sol Lewitt sculptural ‘drawing’ in aluminum – visitors may fill in a form entering a raffle to win one. Lewitt’s Untitled Wall Structure (1972) is part of the museum’s collection, and this offer is in line with Lewitt’s statement:
‘I believe that ideas, once expressed, become the common property of all. They are invalid, if not used, they can only be given away and cannot be stolen. Ideas of art become the vocabulary of art and are used by other artists to form their own ideas (even if unconsciously).
I wish my studio mate Paul Edmunds was with me. He would love this. He returned from a recent sojourn in New York completely into Lewitt.
Sol LeWitt’s Untitled Wall Structure (1972) (the original)Over a delicious nut risotto at a restaurant called Boom that night, Angelique and I talk about the role of project spaces like MU in the art world, and how important they are, and as for my lecture – I enjoyed giving it, and if you want to read more about that, you can link to http://thedossier.nl/siphoning-identity-sue-williamson/"
Blogger JaneHardjono has my admiration for getting this entry up just an hour after the lecture finished. Wow. That is dedication.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Today, a picture round up of the last ten days in Cape Town.
Odidi glam trashes her way through a cabaret number at the opening of Nicholas Hlobo’s Umtshotsho at the South African National Gallery on May 30.
Inside the gallery, one of the eight sculptures on Umtshotsho (which refers to a traditional party for young people about to enter adulthood) is a figure draped in swathed and beribboned rubber and red lace – off to a mad Halloween party in Sherwood Forest, perhaps.
On the street outside my studio, two giant vuvazelas are loaded on to a truck – off to add to the World Cup festivities, no doubt.
Kendell Geers is in town for the opening of his show at the Goodman, and in a parallel event, planned to repeat his 1993 work Title Withheld (brick) in which he threw a brick through the window of the Market Gallery in Johannesburg.
‘The idea was to make a hole to let the street in and the stuffiness of the gallery out’, says Geers.
This re-enactment was to take place at YOUNGBLACKMAN, the storefront gallery on Roeland Street, but when Geers arrived at the gallery carrying the brick he was going to throw, he found one already at the gallery door, with a hate mail message attached.
In the end, this seemed fortuitous. The level of violence has increased since 1993, so where once a single brick made a strong statement, now the ante had to upped.
So the hate-mail brick was pitched through the window too, and became part of the piece, along with a few extras. Which is why there are three holes rather than just one.
Sunday, May 30, 2010
For the last three months I have been working on a public art commission for Cape Town airport – an artwork now inscribed on the thirty metre glass wall at the back of the new IRT bus station. This bus service will carry arriving and departing passengers between the Civic Centre and the airport – a long awaited necessity.
Standing inside the station, looking through the glass, one can see Table Mountain just visible above a messy foreground of rent a car companies. My brief was to make a work which engaged with this view of the mountain, and also with the political and social history of Cape Town.
My solution was to work on both sides of the glass. From the road, or bus side, one can see a landscape of the Peninsula as it can be seen from a high point of the airport, stretching from Muizenberg to Signal Hill, and the sea. Clouds float over this landscape.
Sandblasting the landscape into the glass through stencils.
View of the artwork from the road
The piece is called A Random History of Cape Town, 1499-1994, and passengers on the inside of the bus station can read text inscribed on to the clouds. These texts are quotes from the journals of people from Vasco da Gama through Lady Anne Barnard to Ahmed Kathrada and Nelson Mandela, and range from the poetic and informative to the slightly shocking.
Detail of the clouds from the inside.
Actually, the work is not quite finished. A few of the quotes were considered too liable to cause offence and I am looking for some new ones to complete the piece.
But next time you are at the airport, have a look.
Monday, May 17
I’ve had an email from Signe Bergstrom, my editor at HarperCollins New York with some interesting news. There is to be an e-book version of South African Art Now, the large sized hardcover overview of contemporary art in this country which was launched in October last year.
The book is going electronic!
Signe explained that with the launch of the Apple i-Pad, technology has caught up with the reproduction of colour images. The first electronic device designed as a hand held device which would allow e-books to be read page by page was The Kindle, (which became available in South Africa late last year, at a cost of about R3000). The problem with The Kindle was that it could handle black and white text and images only.
Now that the Apple i-Pad is here with its groundbreaking full colour technology, HarperCollins is in the process of converting all their titles to an e-book format. The permissions form HarperCollins required artists signed to allow reproduction of their works in the book anticipated this development, and covered electronic reproduction.
Of course, the i-Pad costs a bit more than The Kindle, and is being advertised online here at R7599. But it would be nice to carry round your entire library in your pocket.
In the meantime, the book (the one with paper pages) continues to sell nicely in the States, garnering reviews in such unlikely publications as Urban Ink ‘the Tattoo magazine for people of color’.
Sunday, May 9
So who is watching ‘A Country Imagined’ at 9 p.m. on Sunday nights? SABC2?
Two years in the making, this 13 part series of one hour programmes is hosted by Johnny Clegg, and produced by Curious Pictures, with writing by the excellent Tracy Murinik. If you are one of those artists (like me) who keeps meaning to get into your car and drive off into the country for an extended trip to see what and who is out there, this series will strengthen that resolve.
Host Johnny Clegg
Tonight was the Karoo segment, and the landscape footage was breathtaking. The relaxed and engaging Clegg, who is an anthropologist as well as a musician, talks about photographers David Goldblatt, and Mikhael Subotzky and the context of their work in places like Die Hell and Beaufort West and visits actress Antoinette Pienaar, who for the past four years has been living with 91 year old herbalist and sheepherder Johannes Willemse to learn his skills. There is footage from the other worldly Afrika Burns music festival in its desolate setting, and in a David Kramer-esque moment, Clegg meets a group of four musicians on string instruments who play for the ‘Sandskoppers’ – a group of dancers, dressed in bright yellow and green who kick up the sand with their fast and fancy footwork.
Perfect viewing for a Sunday evening, and there are ten episodes of this major series to go.
A Mikhael Subotzky photograph from the Beaufort West series
Monday, April 26, 2010
A lot of you have been asking why ArtThrob has not reviewed Spier Contemporary yet. I know. The review is coming. I’ve just been so incredibly busy trying to complete a commission to make an artwork which reads from both sides of a 30 metre glass wall at the IRT station at Cape Town airport, here beautifully illuminated from the road side by the rising sun. There are 26 panels which must be sandblasted and in some cases painted from both sides. And of course it’s all got to be finished for the World Cup. But more about that another time.
The glass wall at Cape Town airport
Back to Spier. I have walked round the show three times, wondering quite what to say. I thought of doing a whole review just on the labeling of the images with the artist’s statements, many of which could be entered for a most cringe worthy of the year contest. There is a terrible self consciousness, and an earnestness which pervades overall, and which does not sit well with what art should be. To say nothing of the grammar.
A label from Spier Contemporary
Take this one, which accompanies a photograph of a grimacing man holding a dead white rabbit. ‘In this self portrait I AM holding a dead white rabbit and dressed in an academic gown, this comments on MY struggles for employment as an art lecturer at a higher education institution. The belief is, the struggle is because of skin colour. The ‘Crazy Store’ frame makes reference to the strained financial implications of being an academic.’
One’s understandable reaction to reading this drivel might be, Get another job, dude. But speaking generally, South African artists have to get rid of the idea that spelling out every nuance of every thought that goes through their mind in making a piece has to be shared with their public.
The work must stand on its own, and be open to a variety of readings.
Saturday, April 17
I never miss a William Kentridge lecture if I can help it. William really has a way of explaining his working processes in such a way that one can continue to learn from him. At the Gipca lecture at Michaelis last week, he talked about his approach to turning Gogol’s story ‘The Nose’ into a new version of Shoshkatovich’s opera.
William Kentridge at Michaelis
This approach is a process of sedimentation – taking in ideas through reading, seeing, listening, reacting. And layering these ideas. In Gogol’s story “The Nose’, about a nose which leaves its owner to live a life of its own, there is no horse. But William liked the idea of putting the nose on horseback. So of course, the nose on horseback became a part of the opera. One has to work to justify the image through the concept, say Kentridge.
The Nose on horseback
Kentridge’s opera opened at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in March, the same month that his retrospective opened at MoMA. Surely a first for any artist. Over drinks after the lecture, William told me the MoMA show was pulling in a record 6000 visitors a day. Incredible.
Donna Kukama performs
This week’s highlight was the opening of the new National Gallery exhibition. Incoming director Riason Naidoo closed the gallery for six weeks to rehang the permanent collection in a show called From Pierneef to Gugulective. Big crowd. Lots of work on the walls. Looking good on first walkthrough. Samoosas and music in a marquee outside. And Donna Kukama giving a really engaging performance as a speechless museum spokesperson – pushing round a trolley of noisemaking machines, attracting the attention of visitors by blowing a whistle, lots of body language signals, writing her interpretations of works on a little board.
Tuesday, March 30
The Joburg Art Fair is over for another year, and energy wise, it was the best year ever. Thank you everyone who came to the ArtThrob stand and bought prints from the Editions for ArtThrob series. You will be keeping us going for many months ahead!
Here's a picture round up to conclude:
Mary Sibanda gives an artist's talk
A cleaner sweeps her way past Sibanda's archetypal mounted Sophie figure
Clive van den Berg, with his new lithograph for ArtThrob, Cyber Erotics
The ArtThrob stand, with team members Chantal Louw and Natasha Norman
The Goodman Gallery stand, with Wendy MacDonald, Liza Essers, Neil Dundas and Bethea Frank
Storm Janse van Rensburg, Tracey Rose and Tracy Murinik with Mia
Sunday, March 29
On Saturday at the Joburg Art Fair the highlighted event was the keynote speech by invited guest, Klaus Biesenbach, Director of PS1 in New York, and curator at large at MoMA. No title for this speech appeared on the programme, no theme, and perhaps this was the problem. The suave curator appeared to be speaking from the hip.
Klaus Biesenbach in Johannesburg
Biesenbach opened his attack by saying 'I don't like art fairs' where you can 'buy things to carry back under your arms', contrasting them to biennales, under the direction of a single curator, which provide 'an incredibly important way for people to talk'. He did concede that an art fair 'might be bearable and useful in a city like Johannesburg, where there is an art scene.' His audience, largely only too well aware of the differences in intent of an art fair and a biennale, was not receptive to this prescriptive approach.
William Kentridge, with whom Biesenbach has worked closely on Kentridge's current exhibition at MoMA, responded from the floor that the Joburg Art Fair was obviously not a biennale, but whatever its limitations, for the art community of the country, it was 'our best and only meeting point', where artists and curators gather to talk and see what is going on.
And so saying, Kentridge summed up what seemed to be the general feeling about this year's Art Fair. Of course there is the usual component of less than great work, but overall there is much to see, the contributions from foreign galleries are welcome, and one feels the big galleries have gone to considerable trouble to present new work from their top artists.
And it is a real opportunity to talk, even informally.
Saturday, March 27
It's the first official day of the art fair, and the talk around the media table is about what a washout the opening night afterparty was. It was all supposed to happen at the Monarch Hotel in Rosebank, but when partygoers found that the cheapest wine at the Monarch was R220 a bottle, they predictably, moved on.
Looking at ArtHeat correspondent Matthew Blackman behind his shades, it's clear that other party venues were more hospitable ...
An equaly beautiful pair of eyes is to be seen on Barend de Wet's Insincere Object with Insincere Title. This painted bronze cast from a knitted creation of Barend's has knitting ball eyes, painted in a shade of green that used to be reserved for public lavatories, but that Barend has had specially mixed to a hue now known as Barend de Wet green.
Barend de Wet’s knitted bronze object
On the Centre for Contemporary Art (Lagos) stand, Moroccan artist Safaa Erruas is showing delicate small works which are almost white on white, utilising fines wire, drops of silicone, pins, and pricked paper surfaces. Luckily, Safaa brought these small works with her in her suitcase, as the large works she was hoping exhibit got stuck in transit somewhere ...
Friday, March 26
It was a night of 1000 kisses, kisses that grew increasingly sloppy with the free flowing of the wine, as the local artworld gathered en masse in the Sandton Convention Centre for the opening of the 2010 Joburg Art Fair.
The subdued atmosphere of the previous year (I wasn't there, but by all accounts the mood was gloomy) seem to have lifted. Buyers crowded the aisles and red stickers began to make their cheerful appearance.
Last year, the Michael Stevenson Gallery reputedly failed to sell a single work. Times have changed. This year, the gallery made the decision to show the work of a single artist, Penny Siopis, and the space was sparely hung with six of her paintings. By the end of the evening, half had been sold.
There is generally more space around, more space within the gallery booths themselves and in the centre of the exhibition space, a welcome exhibition by Source of some of the most innovative design in South African furniture and lighting by young designers.
Again, several galleries from outside South Africa's borders are here: the October Gallery, from London, Gallery Watatu from Kenya, Galerie Beatrice Binoche from Reunion Island, and Peter Hermann from Berlin.
A highlight of this year's fair is Siemon Allen's Records, a long corridor space lined with two metre square images of of 78 r.p.m. vinyl records of African music, well worn, well rubbed. The installation is part of the Gordon Schachat Collection.
But there is lots to see, on every hand. But only till Sunday. Don't miss it.
Opening night at the Art Fair
Siemon Allen's Records
