gauteng reviews

The decision to intervene into the space by painting the ceiling and free standing wall green, creates an environment that interacts with the works displayed, and destroys the usually quiet of the white cube space. Colour is one thing the exhibition is not short of. The series of large paintings immediately grab your attention with their crudely applied, toxically bright colours. Together with the trippy sound emanating from the video installation, it makes for intended uneasy viewing. Robin Rhode and William Kentridge are two of the many artists ridiculed in this exhibition. These two icons, whose work has entered into the global arena, are obvious and soft targets. In Rhode. Not Alone (2009), Rhode is characterised in two personas: as the trickster/magician and as flashy rapper. The limp rabbit, we assume he pulls out of his hat, is overworked and fed up, it also happens to be William Kentridge. The surface of the painting is treated awkwardly, especially Rhode’s face, which is heavily painted and blotchy.

Stepping into the video installation, the trippy electro sounds together with the visuals roots one to the floor. Created in celebration of ACG’s third birthday, the video pulls you in and keeps you there, while insulting you throughout. Obscenities and pies –  many pies – flash before you erratically. After a few minutes I began to recall the torturous Ludovico technique endured by Alex DeLarge in Kubrik’s A Clockwork Orange.

As easy as it is to call them buffoons, these tricksters with their clown-like antics use humourous approaches as means of resistance and critique. Avant Car Guard addresses the South African art world vis-a-vis their works. They question the integrity of art institutions, galleries, art viewers, art collectors – with not even the wives of collectors spared.  ACG can be likened to the clown, and with their assumption of the role they again suggest the the gallery/art world as a circus. Playing the clown and being a performer always implies an audience, and as much as ACG ‘critique’ the system, and poke fun at its custodians, they are intimately involved in the world they love to hate.  In summation, I’ll leave you with the title of Nastio Mosquito’s manifesto, ‘Hypocritical, Ironic and Do Not Give A Fuck’.   

Bhavisha Panchia is currently completing her MA:FA at the University of the Witwatersrand.