Sue Williamson's Diary
Thursday, January 26, 2012
As January hits the third week of the month, the city’s art galleries take down the group shows directed at the summer visitors, and get serious again. Or, relatively serious.
At blank projects last week, Avant Car Guard and friends were staging a finissage. The text on one of their banner pieces read, IF YOU DIE, CAN I HAVE YOUR CELL PHONE ? Perhaps only in South Africa could this statement seem like a reasonable request.
Across the road from blank, at the Stevenson, Viviane Sassen’s seductive, off kilter images are a complete antidote to the perfectly lit, carefully placed subjects one has grown accustomed to encountering on gallery walls.
Viviane Sassen’s Kapijmpange
In this portrait of a young girl, the focus of Sassen’s attention is the fragile, rose printed voile of her dress. In order to concentrate on this gentle texture, the girl’s features have been lost in a soft dark pool. Conversely, this makes her more magnetic than if we had been able to discern every eyelash.
Stuart Bird’s Blood Knot
Round the corner at the Goodman, Stuart Bird has mounted his first solo show, and displays a dazzling virtuosity in his handling of materials. Blood Knot is the title of a searing Athol Fugard play about two half brothers, one black, one half white. it is also the title of Bird’s intertwined knotted sculpture, made not of rope, but carved, meticulously and sinuously, from wood.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
It’s really too hot to work today. Come on, it’s a baking 34°C, or 93.2° F. Of course, there’s no air con in the studio. And if you open the windows more than a crack or turn up the fan, papers blow everywhere.
So I’m trying to keep cool by writing about Athi Patra Ruga’s watery Ilulwane at the RoseLee Goldberg-directed Performa Biennial of performance in New York last November.
Ruga drew part of his inspiration from the 1970s and 80s photographs of Alvin Baltrop, a photographer who struggled for recognition for his photos of queer life on the West side piers of Manhattan. Baltrop died in 2004, and it is only now that his work is beginning to be exhibited in mainstream galleries. Working with Baltrop’s evocative visual references, Ruga added elements from his own Xhosa culture, on initiation ceremonies, and also reflected on the AIDS crisis to build up his 45 minute synchronized swimming performance.
A performance detail from Athi-Patra Ruga’s Ilulwane
Synchronized swimming? This is a sport I have always associated with ruched floral bathing suits and colour coordinated rubber caps. I believe Ilulwane will be performed in South Africa later this year. I can’t wait to see how Ruga pulled all these diverse elements together.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Storm Janse van Rensburg and Claire van Blerck
One of the best things about the New Year is the opportunity given to wipe last year’s messy slate clean again. Emails one should have – but did not – respond to ages ago can now be sent out with Happy New Year wishes and the recipient will probably forgive you.
This period of armistice doesn’t last long, however – after January 15 the truce is toast.
It’s also the time of year to make a list of all the half formed projects in your mind, and see which ones have strong enough legs to warrant further work. And which ones can be dumped right now.
Over at the Goodman Cape last week, the artists gathered for end of year drinks and to say goodbye to Storm Janse van Rensburg, who is off to Berlin. The incoming director is Federico Freschi, currently associate professor in the history of art department at Wits. Let’s raise a glass to his success.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Last time I saw Okwui Enwezor was in Venice in June, at one of the Goodman Gallery Biennale bashes. It was great to meet up. Okwui was, of course, the director of the legendary 2nd Johannesburg Biennale in 1997, and is now the director of the Munich Haus des Kunst.
This week I heard news of him from two different sources: curator Rory Bester told me he was due in Johannesburg at the end of this past week, to make final choices for the show he will be curating some 18 months hence at the International Center for Photography in New York, The Rise and Fall of Apartheid.
And from an unrelated email from NYU student Allison Young, who was part of my Other Voices: New York shoot earlier this year (I MEAN, WHERE ELSE ARE YOU GONNA GO?) I learned that Okwui will go to New York in the new year as visiting professor to teach a course on contemporary African at NYU.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
As a child of 7, I stood at our living room window in Florida, just outside Johannesburg, and watched two curved dark tunnel shapes spiraling powerfully across the horizon. The tornado hit Roodepoort, five miles away, and next day I learned that four people had died. My father packed us into the Pontiac and drove us out to view the streets littered with crumpled corrugated iron roofs.
Today, in those parts of the US where tornados occur, tracking them has become a popular pastime with those who crave being drawn into the elemental. But experiencing being drawn into the force field of a tornado is now as possible as dammit at the Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town. On the exhibition ‘What we talk about when we talk about love’ the brilliant Mexican based Belgian artist Francis Alÿs is presenting Tornado.
Running with his camera directly into the swirling dark forms of the tornados in what seems an act of total madness, Alÿs, allows himself to be battered by flying debris and huge volumes of sound. One cannot but be awed by this unstoppable natural force.
The beam of light emanating from Penny Siopis
Last weekend at the lagoon at Churchaven, walking with Penny Siopis and Emma Bedford as the sun sank in the sky, we witnessed an intriguing natural phenomenon of a much quieter kind. Each of us could perceive a beam of light above the shadow of our own heads, but not of the other two. Interestingly, the beam could be seen even as we each photographed our own shadow.
Friday, November 25, 2011
No pictures today. I need all the space for writing. A few weeks ago, the diary featured David Goldblatt’s remarkable photograph of jubilant parliamentarians celebrating the signing of the new constitution in front of the House of Assembly. You can view it on David’s current show at the Goodman Cape.
At the opening of the show, David told me he had had only thirty minutes to shoot the picture, taken from a high window in a building opposite the parliamentary buildings. Communication with his subjects was by bullhorn. After each shot was taken, the parliamentarians cheered and waved ecstatically and had to be subdued via the bullhorn for the next shot.
On Wednesday this week came the news that David has declined to accept the State Order of Ikhamenga Silver, awarded to South Africans who have excelled in the arts, in sports or in journalism. The letter was sent to President Jacob Zuma following Black Tuesday, the day on which the Protection of State Information Bill was passed in Parliament.
Wrote David, ‘Firstly … this action severely undermines our brave but fragile democracy and the rule of law. Secondly, I decline the award in protest against what has been done to the spirit in which the award was created.’
The letter in full can be found elsewhere on the net.
To my knowledge, David’s action is the first sign from artists that State patronage is no longer acceptable when that State attempts to muffle debate and silence the press.
One thinks back to the time of the 1979 State of Art in South Africa conference, when artists signed a pledge not to participate in any State backed art exhibition (and that included invitations to international biennales, then channeled through the government) until art education was open to all races. Artists refused from then on to give legitimacy to the apartheid government.
Sadly, it seems that the need of opposition to the State has once again arrived. Each of us will have to consider again what it is we need to do as artists and as South Africans to make the State understand how crucial it is to preserve the democracy which was achieved at such terrible cost.
We cannot sit back and just hope for the best.
Sunday, November 20
My room, decorated by Dokter and Misses
I am in Johannesburg for an intensive conference on public art organized by Stephen Hobbs and Marcus Neustetter of the Trinity Session. On the first day, there’s a packed programme of presentations of public art and architectural interventions from around the country. The Johannesburg Development Agency has a policy in place that allocates 1% for art on public building projects – would the rest of the country please take note.
On day two, conferees can choose between tours of public art in Soweto, or in the inner city parks. A difficult choice, but I am interested in taking a look at Hillbrow and the city centre in their current manifestations, and it’s good to see how heavily the parks are used on this Sunday morning.
Mpho Mpolokeng talks about his playground project, next to a sculpture by Marco Cianfanelli
By 6 p.m. we are back up on the roof. By now, it’s pumping.
Donna Kukama and Roger van Wyk at the rooftop bar.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
What does one do with a piece of art that you have finished, but don’t really like and you certainly don’t want to have shown?
Jane Alexander once told me that in the very early stages of her career, the Butcher Boys period of the 80s, she was so concerned that a reject sculpture might be found frightening by rubbish collectors if dumped in the bin that she cut the sculpture up and took the pieces to the municipal dump herself.
I once took some poorly printed etchings to the local charity shop in Observatory, thinking at least they could be sold anonymously and raise a few bucks for a good cause, only to have Peet Pienaar gleefully announce a few weeks later that he had found a cache of my work and bought it in. One print must have been signed after all. My heart sank as I imagined the titters as Peet showed them around.
This week, like a unwanted body resurfacing, a steel book piece I made 20 years ago and never liked and finally threw into the recycling bin several months ago was carried back into my studio by our cleaner. Even the recyclers didn’t want it, it seemed. But strangely, when I opened up the plastic wrapping for the first time in ten years and had another look, time had softened by poor opinion of the work, and I think with a few changes ….
And on the social side, the Stevenson Gallery hosted a highly convivial dinner at Anatoli for visiting artists Frohawk Two Feathers and Angela Ferreira, following the opening of their excellent show at the gallery.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Every day, at least 20 invitations to exhibition openings from here and from around the world arrive on the screen of my laptop, most of which I glance at and delete, noting one or two I would like to know more about, or visit.
Today there is one from the Goodman Gallery Cape announcing a new show of work by David Goldblatt. The invitation images shows a large group of people formally grouped for an official photograph in front of the Houses of Parliament.
The caption reads: Members of the Constitutional Assembly on the steps of the Senate House in the parliamentary precinct, shortly after they had unanimously adopted the Constitution of South Africa, Cape Town, 11 October 1996.
As a photographer who had unrelentingly recorded the harsh effects of apartheid through the years, from the demolitions to the grim faced Nationalist ministers in all their high handed arrogance, this photograph must have marked a significant career moment for Goldblatt, the recording of the people who had signed the country’s pledge to transform itself.
The mark of a great artist is one who works continuously for years, pushing through periods of self doubt in the attempt to share a personal vision with the world and thus building a sustained and authentic practice. Of no one is this truer than David Goldblatt. How much poorer would this country be without his photographs.
Tuesday, October 11
By the second week of the Istanbul Biennial, walking the streets every day, I was beginning to feel almost at home in this pulsating metropolis of 17 million people. Frances Goodman and I had steamed and been scrubbed in a hamam, interior designer Yelda Bayraktar had generously introduced me to a hidden world of antique dealers who work behind unmarked doors, and it was time to get down to work.
The young Biennial staff had offered to be part of a workshop to discuss what it meant to them to live in this city as part of my Other Voices Other Cities project. The group finally voted on ISTANBUL IS RELENTLESS As Ceylan Hepis said, ‘one moment you can be having a nice time with your friends in a club, the next, someone has been stabbed on the street’.
We decided to do a night shoot in Taksim Square, a central meeting point. We started with the longest word, RELENTLESS and as we moved on to ISTANBUL the police arrived and told us to stop shooting. I learned they had looked up the meaning of ‘relentless’ on the internet, and were not happy.
A noisy argument followed, with people on the square taking sides, and in the end, the police said it was okay, we could go on. A relief.
Sunday September 25
Week One at the Istanbul Biennial: A picture round up
The 12th Istanbul Biennial is being held in two large orange coloured warehouses, next to the Nesretiye Mosque and the Istanbul Modern on the waterfront.
Posters for the Biennial are up all over town.
The view from Gallery Rampa’s rooftop party was stunning, and
the food and drink just kept coming …
but the best food in town is Bread Fish from a streetside seller behind the spice
market … a freshly caught grilled fish with herbs, cress and onions on crusty Turkish bread. The cost: 3.50 Turkish Lira … R14.
A detail from Mentalklinik’s retrospective, curated by Jerome Sans in Haskoy
Breakfasting with artist Frances Goodman at Café Firuz
Wednesday, September 13, 2011
The yellow freesias I bought the day I got back from Switzerland to bring spring into my apartment have not yet died, but I’m leaving again today. For Istanbul. The 12th Biennial opens on the 17th, under the curatorship of Jens Hoffmann and Adriano Perdrosa, and is titled ‘Untitled’. It’s a homage to the late great Felix Gonzales Torres, and I am on a section called ‘Passport’.
One highlight since my return was a performance in a small, sharply raked theatre once used for anatomy demonstrations. Titled After Cardenio, this new play by Jane Taylor had the author reseaching early English literature on the web, and mixing ‘Shakespeare’s world of heightened psychological realism … with the wild novelistic romance and idealism of Cervantes.’
A detail of the backdrop
As the audience files in, artist Penny Siopis is on a ladder, sketching in chalk on the blackboard backdrop, a backdrop added to each night, but designed to be washed clean at the end of the play’s run.
Based on the story of a 17th century woman hanged for the murder of her infant, the cast of five plus one Gavin Younge designed puppet, the silent effigy of the woman, give a vigorous and often humorous performance of the play, which succeeds in raising a series of ethical and moral questions which linger in the mind long after the play is ended.
Actress Jemma Kahn and her alter ego puppet
Thursday, September 8
Dineo Seshee Bopape, with a vitrine of dying flowers beneathCurator Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist chose as her theme, Juicy Contaminated Circle: from Art to Life and back, and the discussions of the first wrap up afternoon were followed by a performance which involved the fellows serving juicy contaminated cocktails to the assembly. You drank them at your own risk. Many took the risk. Several times over.
A selection of juicy contaminated cocktailsThe evening finished with a buffet dinner in a marquee set up next to the swiftly flowing Aare. By this time, the rain was bucketing down, and I felt sorry for the catering team trying to get a braai going under umbrellas, but in true art world fashion, the party went on regardless …
Cooking in the rain
Tuesday 23rd August
Twelve days ago, I celebrated the end of my residency at Bellagio with a final swim in the invigorating waters of Lake Como.
And to answer a question many asked when I got back, no, I did not see George, either on his motorbike or on the lake or in a restaurant, but nonetheless, I had had an extraordinary time.
As I stepped off the plane in Cape Town, my phone rang. Shahena Wingate-Pearse, the daughter of Naz Ebrahim, a monumental figure in the dying days of District Six in the 70s and 80s, was in town. Shahena left the city more than thirty years ago because her marriage to a white man was illegal, then, and she was back now to launch Naz’s autobiography at the District Six Museum the following day.
The book is called The Truth is on the Walls, which is what Naz wrote on the walls of her Rochester Street home, Manley Villa, in 1981, when it was one of the last houses standing in the demolished District Six. Veteran journalist John Battersby has written the foreword.
For me, the book launch at the Museum with everyone remembering ‘those days’ was a sad pleasure. How much more authentic would this city be if District Six was still the energetic heart of the city, instead of a desolate, almost empty space.
Sunday, August 7, 2011
My time at Bellagio is coming to an end. In fact, I’m the last resident here, alone in the vastness of the Villa grounds. I thought I would feel a bit deserted when the last four residents (except for me) departed for Malpensa airport last Thursday, but in fact, as I drift around in silence, a not unpleasant mood of gentle melancholy and retrospection has set in.
It's been extraordinary being here. Imagine a country house party which goes on for weeks, except that each day you get to work at whatever you want to all day without the stress of your daily life back home. Occasionally there’s a spot of croquet or tennis in the late afternoon and three times a week a pre-dinner presentation from one of the other residents about their specific project, projects which have ranged from composing music for operas to discovering new black holes in space.
One evening, I ran a workshop rather in the style of the Other Voices series I have been working on, to be followed by a next-day shoot. The question to all the resident scholars was: What does in mean to be here at Bellagio? The response: WE”RE NOT REALLY HERE.
It’s definitely been almost too good to be true.
Monday, July 24, 2011
I’ve fallen in love again. With a city, as usual. This time, it’s Naples, a city of golden stone and black flagged streets, streets already old when they resounded to the tramp of the conquering Roman legions. It’s a chaotic, exciting sprawl, with steep climbing streets, filled with racing, swerving motor scooters, the preferred mode of transport for everyone from immaculately suited businessmen to families of four.
So when on my first evening, PAN curator Stefano Perno arrives to pick me up on his Vespa, I jump on. And if my eyes are closed for the first two minutes, once I open them, it’s an amazing sensation to be part of the city this way. And of course, we go for pizza. ‘My first Neapolitan pizza’, I sigh, breathing in the fragrance. ‘Your first pizza ever’, Stefano corrects me, explaining that it has to be prepared with buffalo milk mozzarella made fresh that day and baked in a stone oven with a wood fire.
I ask Stefano about the mountains of rubbish on the streets. He says that rubbish collection and landfill in Naples is controlled by Camorra, known as ‘the other Mafia’ of Italy. ‘If you really want to understand Naples, you have to read the book by Roberto Saviano, Gomorrah’.
Buying the book was the first thing I did next day, and reading it was a revelation.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
This morning I was the only passenger on the 8 a.m. ferry from Bellagio to Varenna, to get the train to Naples via Milan. The morning was cool, and too grey to tempt the tourists from their breakfasts.
The letters which I made in New York and used again in Krakow are with me, still packaged in two plastic carrier bags bought in Harlem.
I am leaving behind the peaceful haven of Bellagio with its ritual of working days and the long, conversational evenings which begin with drinks before dinner and end hours later. But I will only be away for six days.
I can’t wait.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
I have given up being a conceptual artist on my Bellagio residency. This beautiful little town clinging to the banks of Lake Como is too far removed from reality, a ferry ride to the nearest train station. Lake Como was once the highway of northern Italy, carrying traders, silk merchants, diplomats and scurrilous adventurers from one end of the lake to the other, but today the travelers are nearly all tourists, bent on buying a beautiful Missoni scarf before tucking into lunch at a waterfront café.
Yesterday I heard a loud English voice under my studio window, and opened the shutters to find a group of tourists gazing up at me.
So I climb up instead to the hill below the Villa, spreading a cloth to sit on, and setting out my watercolours. Ahead lies the difficult decision of wondering whether to attempt to paint the rapidly changing patterns of the ferry trails on the water, or whether to settle for the obligingly stationary olive and cypress trees.
The cicadas have struck up their summer song, the scent of wild thyme has been released as I settle myself, and I try to position my water jar so that not too many ants drown themselves today.
Later, I will lunch off the delicious saturnine peaches that have the shape of squashed doughnuts, and go swimming at the edge of the lake.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
I’m back in Bellagio, Italy after a week in New York for a colloquium organized by Judy Hecker, prints curator at MoMA around the ‘Impressions: Prints from South Africa’ show currently up on the second floor of the museum. Co organizers were the Clark Institute, with Natasha Becker, ex of Cape Town, taking a leading role
Judy Hecker gives a walkabout of ‘Impressions’With the topic on the table the curating of contemporary African art, a number of interesting issues came up, including the ongoing debate about the pigeonholing of artists into national contexts. Alisa LeGamma of the Metropolitan Museum talked of the need to skew African artists out of the context of African art into more of a global context, and American artist Willie Cole responded by asking what museum departments would do when all the regional departments were blurred into one.
MoMA director Glenn Lowry suggested that perhaps the term ‘global’ is no longer really useful, and maybe what is needed is to uncouple ‘global’ from ‘modernism’ and ‘modernity’.
A post colloquium dinner at Il Gattopardo: Bradley McCallum, Riason Naidoo,In between sessions, it was great to wander round MoMA, but the really incredible museum experience this week, was the Alexander McQueen show at the Met, Every artist could learn from studying his complete mastery of technique, materials and concept, and the way in which he could turn a historical reference into something new and brilliant. It was simply astonishing.
An Alexander McQueen jacket 
