Busi Zokufa with one
of the witness puppets
from the Handspring
Puppet Company's
production of Ubu
and the Truth
Commission directed
by William Kentridge
Ubu and The Truth Commission
Two of the most significant events in the artistic life of South Africa in recent years were the brilliantly collaborative productions of Woyzeck in the Highveld and Faustus in Africa.Many talents were involved in these productions, but key were artist William Kentridge and the Handspring Puppet Company under the direction of Basil Jones and Adrian Kohler. The plays combine three-quarter lifesize hand-carved puppets, directed by handlers, who speak for them, with actors, all playing against Kentridge's savagely animated video backgrounds.
The new production, Ubu and the Truth Commission, had its South African premiere at the Grahamstown Festival on July 11, and will be followed by an extensive touring schedule here and in Europe.
The Alfred Jarry play Ubu is the source of the play, transposed to South Africa and rewritten by academic and curator Jane Taylor, drawing for dialogue on transcripts from the proceedings at the Truth Commission.
Writing in the Sunday Independent, Darryl Accone says: 'Ubu is a triumph of less is more. It is utmost art that contains exquisite richnesses, layer upon layer of telling detail'.
Details of Bridget Baker's
Self Portraits installed
in a Portapool in the
Hanel Gallery
Bridget Baker
It has been announced that Bridget Baker's recent installation in Cape Town's Hanel Gallery is headed for the prestigious Art Cologne Art Fair in November. The installation consisted of a circular blue waist-high Portapool which filled the centre of the Hanel Gallery. On the surface of the water floated 22 inflatable 'bellyboards' of the kind used to teach small children to swim. Baker's bellyboards, however, are hand-made, and each is painstakingly embroidered by the artist with a facsimile of one of the certificates - for education, ballet, piano, perfect attendance at a mission - which she has earned or received in her life. (Baker is currently doing a masters degree at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town).The artist describes her swimming aids as a 'metaphor for vulnerability'. The skills we learn in life do not always protect us from disasters.
Two of 140 photos from
Andrew Putter's show
found at the Hanel Gallery
Attacked Headline
Screen (Haphazard) 1997.
Paper, cardboard, duct tape
Coke City 1997. Found torn poster,
electrostatic print, cardboard
Andrew Putter
Following Baker at the Hanel was Andrew Putter, whose show featured dozens of photos of Putter's friends looking silly or slightly alarming with a set of false sheep's teeth transforming their usual appearance. What was the point? Perhaps to prove that art can be playful and fun. There were also geometrical glitter paintings which combined severe composition with seductively sparkling surfaces, and crisp, attractive wall pieces made of assemblages of rectangles of sometimes brutal text cut from newspaper billboards. Coke City was a series of postcard -sized black and white images of Table Mountain with details ripped from Coke ads superimposed. Sounds like a strange combination of themes, but isn't that life? Putter's strong sense of aesthetics held the whole show together.
The photograph by
Terry Kurgan used for
the poster for Purity
and Danger at the
Gertrude Posel
Purity and Danger
In Johannesburg, two shows in recent months stirred up controversy - Purity and Danger curated by artist Penny Siopis ran at the Gertrude Posel until June 17, and at the Generator Art Space, Hentie van der Merwe held his first solo show (closed June 20). Described by Brenda Atkinson (Mail & Guardian May 16) as 'a snake's tail rattling in the grass of social propriety', Purity and Danger explored such taboos and angst-ridden themes as chronic disability, pornography, and the links between homo-eroticism and violence. The interesting line-up of artists included Siopis herself, Clive van den Berg, Minnette Vari, Tracy Rose, and Terry Kurgan, whose beautiful photographs of her nude six-year-old son posing playfully for the camera provoked mixed reactions amongst viewers, eliciting whispers of 'pornography'. Kurgan defended the photographs, saying they 'stride the gap between some kind of illicit looking and the tenderness and sensuality of the mother-child link'.
Hentie van der Merwe
At the Generator, the issue which has dominated discussion in the South African art world in recent months was given a fresh airing with the opening of Hentie van der Merwe's show of recent work. The issue is this: if it is permissible for artists to use ('appropriate' in art-speak) photographs of others (usually in some subservient role) in their own work, then what are the rules governing this use? Is the artist free to use these images as he/she wishes? Or can this use in itself become a form of exploitation?Van der Merwe's exhibition focussed mainly on a series of blow ups of photographs of naked Royal Air Force recruits during World War 2 taken for identification and classification purposes. Writing in The Star (June 11), controversial critic Kendell Geers' review was headlined "Colonising others' bodies is questionable" 'Van der Merwe's work speaks of his own experiences as a young gay man in a world preoccupied with categories and definitions', adding later,'The photos were undoubtedly taken under duress.. and it is this submission that Van der Merwe has taken advantage of to his own ends. The entire exhibition has been constructed so as to change the meaning of these images from deadpan documentary into homo-erotic peepshow'.
In an angry response, the artist replied: 'Through Geers'criticism of the fact that I use specific images in my capacity as a gay man, I want to argue that this critic has colonised my work through subjecting it to his own narrow definition of an art practice, and in so doing, joining the ranks of those bureaucratic forces that this exhibition set out to criticise and undermine'.
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