THE ART TIMES APRIL 2021 EDITION by SA ART TIMES

APRIL 2021 ARTTIMES.CO.ZA

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Art Times April 2021 Edition

CONTENTS Cover: Anton Smit, Crouching Man, Anton Smit Open Air Exhibition at Century City 10 M.O.L.18 - AGAINST A NARROW HEARTCHRISTIAAN CONRADIE By Ashraf Jamal 16 INTRODUCING THE JAN RUPERT ART CENTRE The “Klein Londen” 18 DYLAN LEWIS SCULPTURE GARDEN New Installation 24 CENTURY CITY ARTS TRAIL PRESENTS THE ANTON SMIT OPEN AIR EXHIBITION By Natalie Du Preez 32 EARTHBOUND Third wave of the design exhibition titled 11:11 36 WILLIE BESTER - Interrogating the gap between us By Ruzy Rusike 40 VERTICAL ANIMAL - Hermanus FynArts Sculpture on the Cliffs By Gavin Younge 52 APPEARANCES Portraits by Jaco Benade & landscapes by MJ Lourens 56 NDITSHENI MANAGA We Will Rise Again 64 Business Art Fine Art Auction highlights galore 76 ENIGMAS OF ARRIVAL - John Meyer paintings of the life of Nelson Mandela By Ashraf Jamal 82 ARTGO April Exhibition Highlights John Meyer, Insights, Everard Read Gallery

Editors Note

lthough it feels almost a lifetime ago, this month of March 2021 marks a year since Covid 19 lockdown, and for most artists and art dealers it’s been the toughest year since the last financial dip of 2009. In this case, mainstream media like to create an illusion that “it’s the end of the world as we know it”. I would like to respond by saying that at the Art Times established in 1999…is that we are feeling fine, … and bring on these changes. As Winston Churchill mentioned ...the further back into history one goes the further forward one can see the future. For me, Stephan Welz is my shining light, my SA Artworld Churchill, a giant of a man with great passion and vision for what he did and believed. I don’t totally believe him as he horridly dissed photography, printmaking, and digital art, let alone NFT’s, but for his ability to see and understand the future he was incredible. Yes, we do live in chaotic times, but human values and pursuit of aesthetics haven’t changed. All I am saying is ..be well-read, consume media, but at the end of the day don’t mistrust your inner feelings and values. These are eternal. This Month I give my Editorial space to an artist living in Prince Albert who is making a difference to humanity through his work to the community via painting on dustbins. Please find more on this artist by logging onto our arttimes.co.za website. Thank you again for all your support in these trying times. - Gabriel Clark-Brown

Inspired Prince Albert Artist changes a Karroo Community One dustbin at a time Kevin de Klerk, a caring Prince Albert artist with a big heart saw the real need to support the towns NGO’s that do incredible work within its communities. Kevin over the last year has transformed the previous dusty Karroo oil drum into a attractive and effective means of spreading a strong community message to the young and old alike. The campaign is to assist in creating a daily awareness of the essential work that local NGO’s such as Prince Albert Community Trust and Prince Albert animal welfare are doing. In addition he has also sought to popularise little known local Khoi San culture including the legend of “Eporia” The Mermaid. Read more about it www.storyweaver.co.za See more of Kevin’s work at kevindeklerk.com

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CONTACT ART TIMES Tel: +27 21 300 5888 109 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock, Cape Town PUBLISHER Gabriel Clark-Brown editor@arttimes.co.za ADVERTISING & MARKETING Eugene Fisher sales@arttimes.co.za DIGITAL MEDIA & EXHIBITION LISTINGS Jan Croft subs@arttimes.co.za ON THE KEYS Brendan Body ARTGO CONTENT info@artgo.co.za Rights: the Art Times magazine reserves the right to reject any material that could be found offensive by its readers. Opinions and views expressed in the sa art times do not necessarily represent the official viewpoint of the editor, staff or publisher, while inclusion of advertising features does not imply the newspaper’s endorsement of any business, product or service. Copyright of the enclosed material in this publication is reserved. Errata: Hermanus FynArts - would like to apologise for omitting the name of Karin Lijnes from the list of artists who are exhibiting at Sculpture on the Cliffs - 2020. Her work, Freedom Tree comprises of a large steel mobile of five ceramic bird forms.

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IN CONVERSATION WITH COLOUR SYMPHONY

Group exhibition 5 March - 5 September 2021

Leoni Aucamp, Kathy Botha, Katherine Bull, Arabella Caccia, Fawa Conradie, Ronél de Jager, Eve de Jong, Klara-Marie den Heijer, Nontokozo Dladla, Johannes du Plessis, Evert Esterhuizen, Debra Field, Adela Friedmann, St. John Fuller, Michaella Janse van Vuuren, Beate Jordaan and Quinton Lehnert, Sandra Lemmer, Babette Ludick, Cecilia Maartens, Odette Marais, Sharle Matthews, Johann Moolman, Darshana Nagar, Tracy Payne, Nathan Petersen, Sonya Rademeyer, Mark Rautenbach, Hannalie Taute, Guy Thesen, Marinus Uys, Theodor van der Merwe, Ariana van Heerden, Marelise van Wyk, Sassa van Zyl, Elizabeth Vels, Rix Welmann, Caroline Wheeler

Jan Rupert Art Centre, 41 Middelstraat, Graaff-Reinet Mon – Fri: 9h00 – 12h30 | 14h00 - 17h00 Sat – Sun & Public Holidays: 09h00 – 12h00 Entrance fee: R10

M.O.L 18

AGAINST A NARROW HEART - CHRISTIAAN CONRADIE Ashraf Jamal

urs is a bigoted brutal age – a narrowing of the heart. One expects less each day because no one cares. Love is dead. We witness emptiness, cruelty, a deluge of nothingness, as if people were no longer human. If I begin this way, it is because we all know cruelty, it creeps, consumes, defies our best instincts. And yet, despite of this nothingness that consumes us, there is hope. I know, in an apocalyptic hour what I ask for is an indulgence, who, right now, is prepared for good will? Who, truly, believes in kindness, sensitivity, warmth – love? Very few. There is talk of course, much care akin to the rearranging of deck chairs on a sinking ship. You may assume that I am being gloomy on God’s day, but I never believed in God’s death. Neither did Nietzsche. What he threatened us with was the loss of belief, the realisation that we would no longer believe in anything other than our self-actuated surround sound. He warned us against fascism and institutional religion, asked us to be better than the dirt we dig. His threat – God is Dead – was a plea to rethink faith, bind it bodily, psychically, heartfully, so that we were never the victims of those who would reduce us to dirt. On an afternoon, in my home, I listen to Christiaan Conradie. Recently returned to South Africa, having left in 2013 for Mexico, and, since then, exhibited in the Americas and Europe, he is understandably perplexed as to his purpose here, in this country in which bigotry, hate, and distrust is rife. Having exhibited and sold his work internationally – primarily in Europe and the US for the past eight years – he is now, for the first time, launching a solo South African solo exhibition at 131 A Gallery in April.

6 ft 3, blond, blue eyed, he is hardly the cache which Cape Town dealerships are looking for. I mention his bodily presence because it matters, not to him or me, but to those in the business of making money off the backs of black bodies who, at this point in history – bigoted and brutal as I’ve stated at the outset – care not a jot for humans who don’t fit an engineered profile. Everything these days, after all, fulfils an algorithm, a psychometric, some ‘in’ in the enterprise of ‘emotional capitalism’. Right now, its black, its woman, as though these discrete and massively complex categories could be reduced as such. But they are. But no one is so easily reduced, so easily categorised. No man, woman, black or white, no gender that defies heteronormativity, is ever the sum of the category inflicted upon them. Life is complex, art is not. Well, not now. The art world, right now, is dealing with its hypocrisy, its lack of complexity, its inhumanity. It never cared for art, only the idea of art. How people look at things, talk about what they are looking at, reveals the subtractive power of the art world. It never truly cared for feeling. Art, especially now, has zero instinct – other than the instinct to manipulate a work’s monetary value. It’s a hoax, a joke, a prank, worse, an abomination. The root of the problem is a profound loss of feeling. Art is dead. Or rather, it is the business of art that is dead. How does one instil faith, feeling, hope, trust, in a dead idea? One ventures forth. Conradie tells me that when a friend looked at a painting he’d made, he ‘didn’t know what to feel’. It is this loss of focus, this incapacity to orientate oneself – make sense – that is, thankfully, reassuring. It is not only the lack of capacity to think, in relation to

Opposite Page: We travel at night all crooked and quiet, Oil on canvas, 150cm x 200cm 10

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body felt, touched, painted. If the human head is primary – the defining motif-factorcondition for the painting – its substance is only realisable when, in the aftermath of the painting of flesh-bone-muscle, one arrives upon its tenuousness-fragility-complexity.

I’ve seen the oceans rise when they were hungry, Oil on canvas, 200cm x 140cm

Conradie’s work, that is reassuring, but the fact that it refuses orchestrated feeling. In a world as frantic, anxious, confused, confounded as ours, it is not only mind that is destroyed, but heart. This confounding of generic triggers is only possible when one STOPS MAKING SENSE. This is the crux of what Conradie does. He implicates one in a zone, then refuses its resolution. His works are not made, but unmade. They hover between sense and senselessness. Given the obsession with resolution – be it aesthetic or ideological – he refuses it. This is not a conscious act. It is not doubt which the artist seeks to instil. His works, mostly painting, occasionally mixed-media, are non-algorithms – they don’t fit, fix, explain. Instead, Conradie lives inside of obfuscation – he does not aspire to be obtuse. His struggle is focused on two distinct optics – the human body and its ethereality. What matters is matter – flesh, bone, muscle – and then another dimension – dimensionless – that makes us human. His quest, through pictures, is to hold fast to the intangible within the tangible. It is all too easy to assume him a surrealist – someone who distorts the surface of reality – however, his pictures of an alternative or metaphysical reality, while literally expressed, is never simply thus. This is because of his bodies. Human embodiment is his anchor and ground from which he departs into the groundless. Nothing in his world is possible without the bodies’ primacy, that is, the

Conradie loves the aged body, primarily male. Some are family members, others not. What he sees is not the being as he/she imagines themselves to be, but what their bodies generate. We all generate. Self-possession is a fantasy. As is self-aggrandising portraiture. Conradie does nothing of the sort. Instead, he shifts the yearning intrinsic in a body, asks what it is, not what it claims itself to be. That he does so without permitting himself the fantasy that he – the painter – knows the consciousness of his subject, is remarkable. In short, Conradie has given up the ghost, centuries in the making, that he, the painter, knows his subject. Instead, what we get is a rune and an oddity, a figure in situ whose consequence is irreducible to their consciousness, or the artist’s projection thereof. Instead, what we get is a doubt – the subject’s, the artist’s – which outweighs the Kantian fantasy: KNOW THYSELF. In an age as urgently declamatory as ours, in which there is zero room for human complexity, it is vital that we as artists, or those who pay attention to art, recognise the criticality of doubt. Christiaan Conradie is primarily a painter who believes in the potency of the human form and the struggles which incur in its – impossible – making. No surety exists in a likeness. Especially for someone who has chosen to paint the impossibility thereof. No one looks in the way they expect themselves to. Ever. Rather, we are bludgeoned at every turn by time’s refusal to subject itself to our demands. That Conradie has chosen to paint the aged white – primarily male – body is instructive in this regard. It is his template and stone – his crux. In my view, at this moment in history, it is a striking choice of focus. Old bodies don’t care for young ideas, they say. And yet, this is what Conradie has chosen to do – to embrace the aged and make them anew. Opposite Page: We travel at night all crooked and quiet, Oil on canvas, 150cm x 200cm

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These walls are where my house used to be, Mixed media on canvas with cotton balls 100cm x 83cm

Firstly, he does not consecrate age. Rather, he breaks away from the fetish of age, altered why and how we look at older humans. Secondly, he shapeshifts what older people are supposed to be. How so? Because he does not merely look at them, but because, inwardly, he sees himself and because he knows that no one, no human, is ever the sum of their inhered or apparent condition. Agism is a folly, tiredness perpetual for anyone. So, what does he do? He mixes it up. In painting this is both obvious and perilous: how does one mesh the apparent and unconscious, the physical and dream worlds? Never easy, given the terrible legacy of surrealism. What one does is institute a hiccup, a slip, mistake. At this point in his career, this is Conradie’s answer. Visualisation of the invisible is the first stop for the absurd. Conradie knows this to be the case. And yet he must venture forth – find ways, visually, to express a fundamental discrepancy – that the 14

aged are not dead, that they thrive and have worlds, realms, impossible to countenance. This, I think, explains the reach of his work. He asks us to rethink naturalism, portraiture, and, in the midst of an embodied presence, the magical reality that is existence. I began this essay with a horror in the face of rage and fascism that dominates the earth today. I now wish to remind all of us that we are not the victims of this age of anger, that love, care, compassion, understanding, stills thrives. We need artists who refuse to genuflect to dogma, who hold fast to the greater depths of being, and those, like Christiaan Conradie, who trust in the power of wonder. For this I think is the artist’s calling. He does not seek to explain the world or alter it, he seeks instead to liberate us from its narrow heart.

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DYLAN LEWIS SCULPTURE GARDEN

V I S I T S B Y A P P O I N T M E N T: T U E S - S AT 0 9 H 0 0 - 1 7 H 0 0 STELLENBOSCH DYLAN LEWIS SCULPTURE GARDEN

I N F O @ D Y L A N A R T. C O . Z A +27 (0)21 880 0054 W W W. D Y L A N L E W I S . C O M

INTRODUCING THE JAN RUPERT ART CENTRE

he Neo-Gothic building was erected around c1870 by the London Missionary Society as a place of worship for the so-called Mantatees, a refugee Sotho tribe, which fled across the Orange River in the 1820’s. The building became known as the “Klein Londen” (Small London) to distinguish it from the “Groot Londen” (Great London) the other church of the London Missionary Society in Parsonage Street, also in Graaff-Reinet. In time the two congregations merged, and the building became vacant and neglected. The building was restored on the initiative of Dr Anton Rupert and named in honour of his brother, Jan. It was proclaimed a National Monument (Heritage Site) in February 1987. After restoration, the building housed a spinning and weaving cottage industry, followed by various exhibitions by the Rupert Art Foundation and Rupert Museum.

The Centre hosted the following exhibitions: • The Johannesburg Station Panels by JH Pierneef (2002 – 2009) • Art of the Space Age (2012 – 2015) • Fear and Loss – The Industrial Karoo (2015 – 2016) • Jean Lurcat (2016 – 2019) • The Lay of the Land – a selection of 20th century South African Art (2019 – 2020) • The Social Impact Art Prize – finalists and winners exhibition (September 2020 – February 2021) • In Conversation with Colour Symphony – a group exhibition (5 March – 5 September 2021) COLLABORATIVE EFFORTS With the Jan Rupert Art Centre as a satellite museum of the Rupert Museum, Stellenbosch, a deliberate effort is made to bring the Centre to the Graaff-Reinet community and attract tourists to the town. Exhibitions in the past have broadened the view on artists whose works are in the collection of the Hester Rupert Art Museum. The Fear and Loss exhibition shed light on drought and other economic and social challenges in the Karoo. This year marked a collaborative effort with the Imibala Gallery, with the Rupert Museum’s first ever Open Call to artists, launched in September 2020. The initiative was to use one of the most iconic pieces from the Rupert Art Foundation

Collection namely Colour Symphony by South African artist Michéle Nigrini for the public to respond to. While artists were producing in response, Nigrini was working towards her solo exhibition Outside In to open at the Imibala Gallery just a few feet away from the Jan Rupert Art Centre. This collaboration aimed to introduce both established and upcoming South African artists to Graaff-Reinet. The exhibitions In Conversation with Colour Symphony and Outside In has a further reach as profits generated from sales will go directly into the Imibala Educational Fund. In Conversation with Colour Symphony The Open Call received 135 entrants, 37 were chosen by the judging panel as the most successful responses to Colour Symphony. The artworks are varied in style and across mediums, bringing a textured yet energetic feel to the exhibition. The visually arresting impact of all 395 individual panels that make up Colour Symphony, is balanced by a sharp and bold exchange from the responding artists’ work. Nigrini introduced the decorative mural art of ‘Litema’ to the children of Graaff-Reinet. The budding young local artists worked with Nigrini one afternoon in the lead-up to the opening event to complete the mural at the Jan Rupert Art Centre. This is the first of many community related projects the Centre is set to offer. Featured artists: Leoni Aucamp, Kathy Botha, Katherine Bull, Arabella Caccia, Fawa Conradie, Ronél de Jager, Eve de Jong, Klara-Marie den Heijer, Nontokozo Dladla, Johannes du Plessis, Evert Esterhuizen, Debra Field, Adela Friedman, St. John Fuller, Michaella Janse van Vuuren, Beate Jordaan & Quinton Lehnert, Sandra Lemmer, Babette Ludick, Cecilia Maartens, Odette Marais, Sharle Matthews, Johann Moolman, Darshana Nagar, Tracy Payne, Mark Rautenbach, Sonya Rademeyer, Hannalie Taute, Guy Thesen, Marinus Uys, Theodor van der Merwe, Ariana van Heerden, Marelise van Wyk, Sassa van Zyl, Elizabeth Vels, Rix Welmann and Caroline Wheeler. Both exhibitions can be viewed virtually and catalogues can be accessed on www.rupertmuseum.org under Jan Rupert Art Centre.

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DYLAN LEWIS

SCULPTURE GARDEN A New Installation By Tim Leibbrandt www.dylanlewis.com

he Dylan Lewis Sculpture Garden on the outskirts of Stellenbosch has a new installation in the Grotto. Regular visitors to the garden will also notice a number of new works sited along the 3 km of paths, in the remarkable 7-hectare open-air gallery that Lewis has created on the slopes of the Stellenbosch Mountains. The outdoor setting naturally lends itself to social distancing and visits are by appointment only, making it a safe space to view art during the pandemic. The immersive journey of Dylan Lewis’s Grotto installation begins outside in the garden with a prologue. A subtle plaque embedded in the greenery contains a poem by Spanish poet Antonio Machado, describing an encounter with a handsome demon in the protagonist’s dreams. This demon asks the protagonist to journey into the ‘deep dungeon of the soul’. Opposite the inscription, one of Lewis’s masked shamanic figures – titled Male TransFigure II – beckons the viewer to follow a path through increasingly dense foliage towards the stone archway of the Grotto. One crosses this threshold into the earthy darkness of Lewis’s sculptural manifestation of the realm of the unconscious. Lewis’s Grotto is a space of introspection, one that directly engages with the themes of individuation and embodied reconnection with nature and the instinctual. Sprawling yet confined, three of Lewis’s immense animalistic hybrid sculptures tower over the viewer in the shadows within. This primal darkness is significant. Throughout humanity’s myths and folklore is the recurring theme of travelling into a dark and fearful place with the intent of confronting something wild or foreboding, and to be changed by the experience.

Bronze sculptural ‘sketches’ against the backdrop of S363 Monumental Male Torso I.

Grotto Installation of monumental sculptures, ‘Beast with Two Backs’ series.

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Interrelation X Monumental I, on the central lawns of the Dylan Lewis Sculpture Garden.

In Joseph Campbell’s monomyth – which is a consolidation of the core structure of a vast number of diverse world myths – this is referred to as the hero’s journey into the ‘Belly of the Whale’. Carl Jung called this the chthonic portion of the psyche, a realm of darkness that must be confronted and incorporated if one is to achieve a true sense of self. Central to this is a rejection of the ideas perpetuated by narratives such as the Biblical Fall and banishment from the Garden of Eden that the body is something dangerous that needs to be tamed or controlled by the mind. The chthonic is where the instinctual parts of one’s psyche that are deemed negative or dangerous by the forces that shape development during childhood (be they familial, social, cultural or religious) are repressed in order to curate an ‘acceptable’

personality. They present themselves in dreams, in projections upon others, and in nature. The journey into the chthonic and the recognition and positive integration of these hidden elements are necessary to heal the fractured alienation that comes from this schism in the psyche. Consequently, the inclusion of the three sculptures from the Beast with Two Backs series serves a crucial thematic purpose: to exemplify the psychic bliss of embodied consolidation with these vital instinctual forces. Arising from an accident in the artist’s studio and taking on a life of their own, these three-legged hybrid figures can be seen to represent a spirited engagement with the reconciliation of the psyche’s agents. There is a sense of balance and wholeness in these works, but also one of power and vitality. They are an image of libido. Lewis’s

Beast with Two backs Bronze Maquette.

masculine and feminine figures are depicted as actualised entities not just in the sense that they are fully articulated sculpturally, but also in the sense that they exist on a plane of mutual consenting desire, participation and intimate connection. The sensuality of Lewis’s imagery corresponds to what Jung referred to as the anima (feminine within the masculine) and animus (masculine within the feminine), the repressed ‘other’ of these identities in an individual, depending on what the dominant archetype informing their outward personality is. Integrating these latent qualities within oneself is essential to achieving individuation. While the literal translation of the anima/animus into unified syzygy naturally ties into the sexual – ‘Sexuality is of the greatest importance

as the expression of the chthonic spirit,’ noted Jung – the form of libido that Lewis is seeking to celebrate can be expanded to a much wider expression of psychic wholeness and life force; a reconnection with what is lost when the body and the wild, instinctual nature are separated from the mind. This reconnection is the healing journey into the dungeon of the soul that the initial shamanic figure beckoned to the viewer to undergo. Visits to the Dylan Lewis Sculpture Garden are by appointment Tuesday- Friday 09:00 – 17:00. Contact reservations@dylanart.co.za to make a booking.

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04.02.21

29.04.21

11:11 group show

eleven

04.02.21

29.04.21

11:11 group show

eleven

CENTURY CITY ARTS TRAIL PRESENTS THE ANTON SMIT OPEN AIR EXHIBITION By Natalie Du Preez

een something different around Century City lately? A life-sized statue of a man, his arms open and his face turned toward the sky, his silhouette etches against the shape of Table Mountain in the distance. The figures of three women, balancing on the tips of their toes, circling inward. An enormous female face, its edges seemingly blowing in the wind. These impressionable sculptures are part of a 30-piece collection that make up the new Anton Smit Open Air Exhibition at Century City. Widely revered for his overwhelming heads and monumental African sculptures, Anton Smit’s works grace public and private collections countrywide and internationally. Anton collects sayings about the relationship between art and the individual artist’s experience of reality. “Art is not to render the visible but to render visible,” he asserts, and his art achieves this in many ways. Anton achieved his first artistic breakthroughs in 1977, when he received special mention in the South African Art Association’s New Signatures competition in Pretoria. He went international when, in 1994, he put 35 sculptures on exhibition in New York at the Grand Central Station as part of the Strengthening the Link initiative to boost trade between South Africa and The United States. Agape Effervecsence

Colossal Youth 26

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Crouching Man

Kungwini Head

Speed Head. Opposite Page: In Moment - Series

Century City Art Foundation contacted the artist in 2020 to purchase one of his sculptures, Voëlvry, for its Century City Arts Trail collection. Lockdown resulted in a complete shutdown of the arts and Anton made his work available during this time at discounted prices, with a portion of the proceeds donated to a local community. It was at this time that a meeting of minds kindled, and the idea of an Anton Smit and Century City Arts Foundation partnership took flight. “I had a consignment of sculptures returning from an international exhibition and when we heard about Century City’s love of the arts and its goal to increase public awareness and experiences, we loved the idea of an open-air exhibition.” says Anton. “On our first visit to Century City, we were blown away by the precinct. It is beautifully maintained, expertly designed and I could immediately picture my sculptures across all the green open spaces, some of them near the canals and others etched against the architecture. We were also interested in the sheer space, it interested me that we

could exhibit from one end of the precinct to the other, each sculpture exhibited against a unique backdrop.” The exhibition is made up of various sculptures, ranging from the ethereal Crouching Angel, a winged figure which seems to suspend in the air, to the imposing giant figures of The Walking Man and the famous masks, which have become synonymous with Anton’s work. “When Anton approached us for a possible collaboration, we were humbled and incredibly excited at the prospect of joining forces with such a renowned South African artist”, says John Chapman, Chairman of the Century City Arts Foundation. “Anton saw the unique potential of Century City as an extensive open-air exhibition space, and we are delighted to make his art accessible for free to the public in this manner.” To complement this growing ensemble of sculptures, murals and installation art, Anton Smit’s collection will be displayed from the one end of the precinct to the other for two years.

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Voëlvry

“A map of the Century City Arts Trail is available online and as a printed brochure and equally, we have created a separate map for the Anton Smit Open Air Exhibition”, says Chapman. “You will be able to start your walking, running, or cycling tour of the collection at any point and make your way through to the end. Each sculpture has a QR code, enabling you to find out more about the artwork as you scan the code with your smartphone.” For those interested in purchasing any of the artwork on display, kindly contact: info@antonsmit.co.za For more info about Anton Smit and his sculptures, visit the website: www.antonsmit.co.za Instagram: @anton_smit_sculptor

See the Century City website for more information about the Arts Trail: www.centurycity.co.za/ The Century City Arts Trail currently consists of 25 works of art in its permanent collection. In addition, and completing the wide variety of art on display in Century City, 100 bronze statues make up the outdoor procession of the Long March to Freedom, found opposite entrance 3 of Canal Walk. Embracing the principles of new urbanism, Century City is a 250ha mixed-use development in Cape Town combining office, retail, residential, leisure and environmental components in an integrated urban environment.

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SAL O N NI NETY ONE P R ESENTS

ANDREW SUTHERLAND. IMAGINARY PLACE I, 2021. OIL ON CANVAS.

ANDREW SUTHERLAND 05.05 -05.06.2021

WWW.SALON91.CO.ZA

EARTHBOUND www.eclecticacontemporary.co.za

clectica Contemporary presents a collection of Cape Town based ceramic artists in the third wave of the design exhibition titled 11:11. Highlighting sustainable design we draw reference to earth as an element and as a material property for creation. Earth is transformed by ceramic artists into key spiritual experiences through an ancient craft. Ceramics, like stone carving has been historically used as a method of documenting various life cycles including culture, politics and economics. Even though clay artifacts were widely used in South Africa for domestic and other purposes throughout the past two millennia, there is still remarkable absence of historical literature exploring prehistoric ceramics. In this exhibition the artists have replaced canvasses with clay to narrate their own histories, indigenous knowledge and personal experiences. Talented duo Majolandile (Andile) Dyalvane and Zizipho Poswa are reinterpreting African traditions through ceramics at their acclaimed studio Imiso. The term ‘Imiso’ is a Xhosa word that translates to ‘tomorrow’ and hints at the movement of African designs into unapologetically modern future. Imiso ceramics take inspiration from personal histories as well as indigenous methodologies and African traditions, making their practice conceptually rich. The scarified collection is inspired by the ancient African Tradition of body scarification. A traditional practice that is used to protect individuals against negative spiritual and physical manifestations in the African realm of traditional knowledge. Madoda Fani grew up in Gugulethu, Cape Town and pursued his creative practice as a fine art Student at Sivuyile College. He worked as a ceramic painter in various pottery studios, where he started to develop

his own style. He is known for his detailed finishing on minimalist wood-fired terra cotta shapes. His hand carved details echo the natural world and in the same breath speaks of the human imprint on the environment. Similarly, his hand-coiling technique that he has become known for is indicative of his hand as a tool for manipulating natural elements and mark making. His 2000 award at Le Salon International de l’artisanal de Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso was a crucial step in affirming his creative process and his work boasts of an extensive list of awards and exhibitions both locally and internationally. Sinethemba Xola was born and raised in a vibrant township of Motherwell in the Eastern Cape. He has pervasive training in the medium of clay and holds a B-Tech degree in ceramic design from Port Elizabeth Technikon. In addition, he also worked at two educational institutions namely College of Cape Town and Johannesburg TVET college as an educator in craft and ceramics. Currently Xola resides in Cape Town as a technician and facilitator of clay workshops at iMiso Studio and also practices as an independent ceramic artist. The organic curves of Xola’s clay sculptures intentionally announce the female body but can also be viewed as masculine due to its overarching ambiguous shape. The artist plays inside an in-between space that reflects his undeniable craftsmanship and talent. Melissa Barker is an established ceramics artist, qualified French chef and archaeologist, based in Cape Town, South Africa. Her archaeological studies focus on ancient Babylonian pottery and food recipes written in 1700 BC. Melissa’s extensive knowledge of Mesopotamian

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material culture, and the experience of working with ancient ceramics, has greatly influenced her vessels and pay homage to the sophistication of this ancient civilization. Her most recent collection, I See You is informed by the prehistoric relationship between humans and bees. The primordial act of gathering honey dates back to 10 000 BC where honey was first offered to the Gods. The metaphorical beehives are punctured by a hole that represents a sacred umbilical cord and is indicative of female form. The void can also be interpreted as a womb or an empty space before creation can take place. “Like the hives houses the Queen bee, so too does the female body house the creator spirit.”

Ceramic creations inherently carry a dual essence as functional objects and works of art. The merging of conceptual ideas and practical utility make these artifacts durable and functional, yet fragile. They carry inside them sacred meanings and delicate histories all earthbound through their materiality. The ceramic artists represented in this exhibition all connect through their individual experiences with clay and simultaneously contribute to the conversation of pioneering African design for a more sustainable future. - Marli Odendaal

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THE LANDSCAPE COLLECTION of Sculpture Art by ANTON SMIT Now open for viewing: Grande Provence Wine Estate - Franschhoek

IN MOMENT III

For enquiries or further information please contact: T: +27 (0) 21 876 8630 Email: gallery@grandeprovence.co.za

For more about Anton Smit, kindly visit: www.antonsmit.co.za

Dog of War, 2020, Mixed media, 235 x 178cm 36

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WILLIE BESTER

Interrogating the gap between us By Ruzy Rusike

www.themelrosegallery.com

or Willie Bester, the personal is political, and being apolitical in South Africa is a dangerous luxury that should be avoided. Utilising a cross-section of artist mediums such as mixed media, sculpture, painting and installation art, his art forms much of his protest. His anti-Apartheid activism is evident in his work, as is his more contemporary focus on decolonising the South African collective mind. Therefore for him mixed-media acts as the line between reality and imagination, in the sense of bringing an idea or a narrative that was repressed back to life. Abruptly this interchange between the two ‘worlds’ becomes the relationship that is very much dependent on each other. Resulting in the gap between the unconscious and conscious mind becoming blurred. Making Willie Bester no stranger to political, psychological and personal commentary – it has been an intrinsically personal aspect of his very existence, dating back to his childhood where he was classified as ‘other coloured’ by the Apartheid state. For something to be frightening, it need not to be frightening in and of it self, it needs to be frightening in the sense that one is able to familiarize with it as a case of concealment. By the unconcealment of the self. For Bester the ‘self’ determines the location of the works and those perceptions therefore become the unconcealment of self. Translating “himself into that state of feeling (uncanny), and to awaken in himself the possibility of it” (Sigmund, F. 1919:369). The possibility of going beyond who he is, that is why the uncanny is both an aesthetic and psychoanalysis of the self. So when we look at Bester and his illustrious career where he has made the personal political by taking the gap between the unconscious and conscious mind. Bester’s use of a crosssection of artist mediums such as mixed media, sculpture, painting and installation art to convey his protest and resistance, with much of his recent work considering the dangers of colonisation’s permanent legacy.

(Detail) Dog of War, 2020, Mixed media, 235 x 178cm

Our humanity is shared, and thus to consider oneself apolitical is inherently perilous to society. Bester stimulates that which inspires by giving us an awareness of our own dignity and limitations as that which is humanity shared. Holy Bible, 2020 is like most of Bester’s works that integrates our human fragility. He incorporates the two childhood shoes and juxtaposes it with the broken typewriter. By doing this he uses the fragility of nostalgia and uses it as a signifier of the fragility of the mind of a child and how we are able to absorb that which is already broken without questioning it. The glass that seals this is a glass that is fastened by that which he defines as the Holy Bible, 2020. By using nostalgia as a tool when dealing with an object and its historical significance he opens us up to the possibility to see ourselves but to simultaneously better ourselves as we find ourself or our idea I without limitations. Simultaneously the shoes of missing children, the Swastika, symbols and representations of Apartheid South Africa and scenes of informal settlements that speak to poverty present themselves in Bester’s artworks to bear witness to the ills in our society.

His artworks are hard hitting and demand the full attention of the viewer. These range from larger than life sized steel sculptures that weigh several tons to realistic oil and acrylic paintings framed in hand beaten and painted iron. Although Bester is renowned as one of South Africa’s most crucial resistance artists, with his work exhibited and studied worldwide, his view on contemporary issues still is unwaverly significant of a man who uses everyday objects degraded and regarded to integrate the human experience. His art is featured in collections around South Africa as well as abroad in notorious collections such as the De Beers Collection, the Contemporary African Art Collection in Geneva and the David Bowie Collection, Pretoria Art Museum, University of Cape Town, University of the Witwatersrand, UNISA, Department of National Education, Smithsonian Institute, Jean Pigozzi – Contemporary African Art Collection, David Bowie Collection and many others. Bester’s art speaks to our history, our present and begs the question of our future.

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Barometer for Poverty, 2020, Mixed Media, 167 x 120cm

Holy Bible, 2020, Mixed media, 87 x 62 x 10cm

Social Engineering, Metal, canvas, found objects and paint, 174 x 132 x 20cm

David Griessel, Jaco Sieberhagen in the rear 40

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VERTICAL ANIMAL Hermanus FynArts, Sculpture on the Cliffs exhibition www.hermanusfynarts.co.za

2020 marked the 8th anniversary of the Sculpture on the Cliffs exhibition. Gavin Younge, renowned sculptor and Emeritus Professor of Fine Art at Cape Town University, acted as curator and chose 12 outstanding artists following a site meeting and briefing in November 2019. The exhibition was meant to open in June 2020 and form a highlight to the annual 10day Hermanus FynArts Festival. A global pandemic changed that, but the artists pushed back—and adopted the necessary Covid protocols to find new meditative ways of engagement. Let us start our walk with a consideration of Collen Maswanganyi’s United We Stand. At first sight, he has gathered some sticks and painted them. On further inspection, we realise that he is addressing cattle farmers’ need to protect their cattle herds at night. In her work entitled The View Jean Theron Louw uses line to delineate volume. This drawing in space conjures up the unintended and unresolved conflict between the animal world and the human world. Her project for Vertical Animal draws on what she calls the ‘overlap’ zone: Together, animals and humans have a long history of overlapping, or shared space. Our ever-increasing urban sprawl creates conﬂict as we invade and encroach on the baboon’s natural habitat. Residents of the southern coast are aggrieved that they have become a food pantry for baboons. Right Mukore’s sculpture Watchdog has a self-authoring authenticity. It speaks to neither right nor wrong in its ADTlike purpose, and claims Gonzalez-like improvisation (the re-purposed car parts) in its striding gesture. Right has an ability to see into the branches and tree trunks and to imagine the forms hidden within.

Site-specific Land and Nature Art Collective. Above: Karin Lijnes. Opposite Page: Nanette Ranger

Guy du Toit

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Above: Jean Theron Louw. Opposite Page: Jake Michael Singer

Wilma Cruise’s Zara and Phoebe features a pair of gamboling pups. Often her works are guided by what John Maxwell Coetzee, via his novel, Elizabeth Costello, regards as the embodiment of feeling and mental reasoning. Not, “I think, therefore I am” but the existential inversion – that existence precedes essence. So, if Cruise can picture two dogs on a promenade, Guy du Toit can picture a rabbit-about-town waiting for his Uber pickup. Hare with Baggage is playful, charming and free of menace. He is, after all, a bunny His suitcase contains no secrets and he carries no time piece. The animal world is never in a hurry. Kevin Brand’s Bremen Arpeggio is based on a story entitled Town Musicians of Bremen by the Brothers Grimm. The Bremen story normally depicts the animals’ (‘musicians’) triumph over the bad-guys by means of standing on top of each other, and producing a combined cacophony of sound (chord). Kevin’s interpretation

was to place the animals in a processionlike format, leading to the title, Bremen ‘Arpeggio’. Karin Lijnes’s large, rotating totem pole, Freedom Tree was inspired by an earlier work that played with the notion of language—more explicitly Twitter. Here, she grapples with the interface between land and sky. She writes, “Freedom Tree, inspired by Alexander Calder’s mobiles, explores the movement of birds. As the mobile rotates and as the birds circumnavigate their environment their freedom is both celebrated and curtailed. Each of these bird forms are inscribed on the rear with a red cross, signifying the ICUN index of endangered birdlife. Jake Michael Singer’s work seems birdlike as well – however his Marine Murmur could also be an eddy in the wind—an eddy that has been made visible. Wind, and air movement in general, is not visible—we see only its effect. In the movement of leaves, or scraps of paper blown down the road.

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Anni Snyman

Anni Snyman and PC Janse van Rensburg’s engravings also make reference to prior art forms, art in circulation. Kombuis is conceived of as a kitchen table, initially it carried a rock engraving of a dassie, one of the smaller animals inhabiting the rocky shoreline of South Africa’s coastline, now it has been extended to include other species inhabiting the littoral zone and the coastline. Whereas a folk tale may have a salutary purpose in mind, warning young children against accepting sweets from strangers, for instance—legends have a more tenuous grip on reality. Their exact meanings are not clear. Take the legend of Artemis and Actaeon, written by Ovid, a poet, 2043 years ago. In Ovid’s story, written all those years ago, Actaeon spied on the naked Artemis whilst she was bathing. Artemis, in revenge, turned him into a stag (or kudu)! Nanette Ranger is drawn to history and the nature / culture divide and she draws on this myth for her work The Hunt, in reference to the fact that poor old Actaeon was eaten by his own hunting dogs.

David Griessel Traveling Hermit has taken on a new surprise meaning with the occupation by an arts collective of an upmarket AIrbnb in Camps Bay. In his notes, David states that humanity and crustaceans have something in common, both are ensconced in a shell. A metaphorical one, in our case (but limited by an environmental lack of certainty) and a literal one in the case of the ten-legged crab. Sculpture has long been concerned with materials and processes. We hear of the death of easel painting almost every second day – David has expanded the range of available processes by ‘printing’ this very large form on a 3D printer. Jaco Sieberhagen also uses new technology – light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation—Laser. Well, the technology is not so new—the first prototype dates from1960. Jaco is more interested in the forms and narratives that he can create on flat panels. For Taking Flight, he used two planes to create a tableau of a boy taking wing, Icarus-like, and soaring off across the bay. - Gavin Younge

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OPEN CALL TO ARTISTS FROM THE ENDANGERED WILDLIFE TRUST

The Endangered Wildlife Trust is invi�ng ar�sts with a love for wildlife and a passion for South Africa’s natural wonders to submit their works for possible inclusion in a group exhibi�on en�tled The EWT Contemporary21 at the Gordon Ins�tute of Business Science (GIBS) in Illovo, Johannesburg, from Saturday 4 September–Sunday 12 September 2021. EXHIBITION THEME The vision behind everything that the EWT does is a healthy planet and an equitable world that values and sustains the diversity of all life. We are dedicated to conserving threatened species and ecosystems in southern and East Africa to the beneﬁt of all people. We invite you to interpret through your art one or all of these three pillars of our strategy: 1. 2. 3.

Saving Species Saving Habitats Beneﬁ�ng People

Linocut by Phillip Mabote

For more information: ewt.org.za/get-involved/ar�sts Tammy Baker EWT Business Development Oﬃcer ewtartexhibi�on@ewt.org.za

DREAM WINDOW

A solo exhibition by Jeanne Hoffman Presented by Salon Ninety One www. salon91.co.za

ream window borrows its title from a 1992 documentary on Japanese gardens, referencing the conceptual and aesthetic devices of the ancient horticultural artform – that juxtapose outside with inside, order with wildness, the stasis of framing (the captured moment) with perpetual movement, growth, and change. These purposes run parallel to those of Hoffman’s practice, where her paintings are intended as places, spaces, or stages upon which various gestures and encounters take shape. Jeanne Hoffman sees paintings as places where words engage with what cannot be verbalised. Conversations of another sort – even conflicts – arise as realities invade one another’s territory. But the result is a fertile space, creative through the multiple encounters. From one territory, moves the unmitigated, primordial, ineffable; from another, the mediated, rationalised, observed – drawn towards each other in this space of painting, processed by the artist through poetic responses to these fragmented recollections. These conversations compound in the act of exhibiting: Individual pieces interact with each other; the artist and the viewer engage one another through the work. The paintings are, thus, intended as devices for contemplation – what Roland Barthes describes as a “stage” upon which thoughts roam freely and both artist and viewer are confronted and transformed by the gestures playing out.

Hoffman elaborates: “The architecture of the space (the stage, or the painting) frames a symbolic constellation that is a space of continuous transformation: It is where the contemplator, both the viewer and the artist, moves between movement and stasis, between separation and union, between what is real and what is possible, between the visible and the sayable. This is a movement towards an improbable synthesis of waking life and the imagination. In this perspective, painting is the site, a place and an imaginary space, where paradoxes can, and do, co-exist. The artwork does not testify to difference, but opens it into a region, a productive space, and a site for moments of insight.” Dream window will open on Wednesday the 31st of March and run until Saturday the 01st of May 2021. This is the artist’s second solo exhibition with Salon Ninety One. Please note the gallery is currently trading by appointment only. On the day of the opening, and for the duration of the exhibition we will be hosting small group viewings. The artist will also be hosting a walkabout on the evening of the 31st of March. Booking is essential. Venue: 91 Kloof Street, Gardens, Cape Town. If you wish to receive the catalogue or to make a booking to view the show, kindly contact +27 21 424 6930 or enquiries@salon91.co.za Fragment Garden, 2021, Acrylic on Italian cotton, 800 x 600mm

Self-portrait as a vase, 2021, Acrylic on Italian cotton, 1200 x 1000mm

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Stage, 2021, Acrylic on Italian cotton, 600 x 500mm

APPEARANCES RK Contemporary Riebeek Kasteel

MJ Lourens, The spoils of yesterday, 25x45cm, oil on hardwood

A collaborative exhibition of portraits by Jaco Benade & landscapes by MJ Lourens. RK CONTEMPORARY is set to wow again with Appearances, an exhibition featuring celebrated South African artists, Jaco Benade and MJ Lourens. The exhibition is running from the 4th to the 25th of April, leaving ample time for art lovers to make their way to the picturesque town of Riebeek Kasteel, less than an hour’s drive from Cape Town. Jaco Benade’s career as a painter started in 1996 and RK Contemporary will join a list of several prominent South African galleries to have exhibited his work. He paints wistful images of people he once knew, emotions he once felt and possessions he once owned. Renowned for his radiant and sensitive images, he manages to capture the randomness as well as the richness of the human experience. “During the painting process, I touch on issues in my own life, and it is through the faces in my portraits that I try to find out where everyone fits into the bigger picture,” he describes.

His pieces for Appearances reveal the complexities and emotions behind a face, suggesting that our initial interpretation can often differ from the truth. Benade’s art shows how our subjective gaze can change a person’s entire appearance and he is intrigued by this potential for deception. Pretoria-born MJ Lourens’ talents are extensive and varied. His body of work includes paintings, sculptures, and film his 2006 PA/FATHER was screened at the Commonwealth Film Festival and was in the official selection of the African International Film Festival in Spain. Lourens started sketching at a young age and found that it helped make sense of the world around him – he is fascinated by constant change and how it can be viewed and understood from a distance or in passing. This curiosity and attention to the small things that others may miss results in striking, photo-realistic artwork that evokes feeling and nostalgia. Opposite Page: Jaco Benade, Girl with blue collar, 25 x19cm, oil on paper

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Jaco Benade, Fower Girl, 65 x 50cm, oil on paper

For Appearances, Lourens is exploring South Africa’s contemporary landscape as a place we live and move in. “It is both marred and burdened with the perceptions of the current outlook and the history it contains,” he explains. His pieces for Appearances reflect how inevitable change takes place as humans claim their place in nature, visible from the battlefields to railway graffiti signage as we try to understand the appearances of our times.

RK Contemporary has established itself as a platform for thought-provoking, fine art and Appearances promises to be another meticulously planned display of the depth of South Africa’s artistic talent. For queries contact Astrid McLeod art@rkcontemporary.com www.rkcontemporary.com

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NDITSHENI MANAGA We Will Rise Again NWU Gallery 11 March - 9 April Curated by Amohelang Mohajane

Opposite Page: Marketplace

he past year has been an unmatched one, triggering our survival instincts. We have all been affected by Covid-19 differently over the past year. Over the months we have adjusted our lifestyles to survive. The informal sector is about survival, hustling and strategizing to make ends meet. Informal traders are at most not seen, invisible but play a huge role when we need something spontaneously. The people behind these small businesses are strong willed, patient and show great perseverance. What are their stories? What are their dreams? What is the vision? What is their anchor? As I travel the streets of Johannesburg they have become part of my consciousness of needing to understand their stories. I am curious about how Covid19 has affected their livelihood. The different levels of lockdown affected how they could trade, customers were no longer buying at

the same usual rates. This also made it competitive as traders fought to be noticed, another impact was the stock. In the case of food, did they have to get rid of rotten stock, how did they comprehend this whilst trying to survive? However I see their strength as well. The virus has also taught us appreciation, as the different levels of lockdown open and close. We are able to see the local bicycle ice cream man return to his business and put a smile on the kids’ faces again. Families are able to access affordable food for their households. Informal traders teach us many lessons about this life, they are a metaphor for what we are faced with globally and if we can take one thing from them today, is that we will overcome this challenge, that we stronger than we believe we are, that we play an important role in this life and we will rise again.

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Eatery. Opposite Page: Bree Street Bananas

Park Sation Tomatoes 58

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THE ENDANGERED WILDLIFE TRUST CONTEMPORARY 21 Gordon Institute of Business Science, Johannesburg 4 September - 12 September 2021

n 1973, Clive Walker, passionate about the conservation of South Africa’s Cheetah, decided to use his talent as an artist to raise awareness and much-needed funds for a study on the species’ conservation status under the Eugene Marais Chair of Wildlife Management at the University of Pretoria. On 20 June 1973, he put out a Cheetah Appeal in wildlife magazines and newspapers, advertising the exhibition and sale of 240 limited edition, numbered and signed prints of a painting he did of a Cheetah (pictured here). The exhibition was a sellout at R20.00 a print. After the exhibition’s success, Clive continued his quest to raise awareness of the plight of threatened wildlife species by joining up with James Clarke and Neville Anderson to establish the Endangered Wildlife Trust later that same year and remaining at its helm for thirteen years. Borne at the hands of an artist, the EWT has always used powerful imagery to evoke the emotional connection and sense of wonder many people feel towards wildlife and to tell these animals’ stories. Art and photography are profoundly powerful means of communication and are useful as both teaching and learning tools - visualisation a more in-depth, and often more honest, form of expression. While our work is informed by robust science, some things are better understood visually, and some have to be seen to be believed. We can wax lyrical about a pangolin, describe its scaled body, tapered at both head and tail, its long tongue, and the unusual way it walks on two legs, but there are nuances to living beings that one can only feel and fully understand by using our senses of sight and sound, and smell if we can get close enough. These are, after all, the fundamental tools of scientific investigation and discovery.

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The painting of a Cheetah Clive Walker sold in 1973 to raise funds for the conservation of the species (Image credit: Clive Walker).

Clive Walker destroying the original printer plate to show that the prints sold were indeed limited editions. (Image credit: Clive Walker).

One of the first things we do in conservation awareness and education programmes is to ask learners to draw an animal. This activity helps them understand the animal’s structure and what habits and behaviours its particular physical attributes afford it. It also gives us an indication of how the learners interpret their conceptualisation of an animal. Do they know enough about it to depict it accurately, or are there perhaps elements of cultural perceptions or stereotypes present in the drawings? How do they feel about the animal – are they afraid of it? Armed with this knowledge, we are better equipped to provide compelling educational experiences that deepen our understanding of wildlife and what needs to be done to ensure its survival. Almost 50 years after Clive Walker took up his paintbrush for conservation, the EWT has grown into one of South Africa’s largest

and most respected regional conservation non-governmental organisations, with an expanding footprint throughout southern and East Africa. This year, we are going back to our roots to celebrate what the visual arts have contributed to the conservation of our wildlife and the breathtaking ecosystems they call home. We invite local artists to submit works that speak to the EWT’s vision of a healthy planet and an equitable world that values and sustains the diversity of all life for an exhibition entitled The EWT Contemporary 21. The exhibition will be held at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) in Illovo, Johannesburg, from Saturday 4 September–Sunday 12 September 2021. We hope you will join us to celebrate our natural heritage and look towards a brighter future, protecting forever, together.

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2021 TONDO COMPETITION TOLLMAN BOUCHARD FINLAYSON ART AWARD

BIOMIMICRY The finalists’ tondi will remain on exhibition from FRIDAY 18 JUNE 2021 until THURSDAY 30 SEPTEMBER 2021. Prize money to the value of R30 000 will be allocated at the judges’ discretion. Closing date for entries is FRIDAY 4 JUNE 2021. Postal entries are accepted.

Entry form and all information is at www.hermanusfynarts.co.za For any queries: contact artcompetition@hermanusfynarts.co.za

Auction News

STEPHAN WELZ & CO. www.swelco.co.za

he art world has seen many changes in recent months, with buying pools shifting and markets changing direction and focus. While it would be easy to attribute these changes to the effects of Covid-19, many dynamic factors power the art sector, and changes within one area influence those that move around it. The art specialists at Stephan Welz & Co. have been witness to an extremely exciting time in the art realm, as buyers are becoming more receptive to new ways of consuming and purchasing art, leaving room for innovative approaches to art auctioneering. Following our recent Cape Town February auction (which saw some extremely pleasing results in terms of our contemporary collection), recent changes in the focus of the art market are beginning to become more apparent. Over our last few sales, we have seen an unprecedented amount of interest in works by the likes of William Kentridge, Penny Siopis, Marlene Dumas, Diane Victor and Deborah Bell.

Penny Siopis, The Bench, Grahamstown Library, Sold for: R240 000 64

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Deborah Margaret Bell, In The Shadow Of The Lion, Sold for: R100 000

William Joseph Kentridge, Sexti Properti, Sold for: R60 000

“These living artists, beginning to be seen as ‘Contemporary Masters’, are at the forefront of both the South African and international art market.” These living artists, beginning to be seen as ‘Contemporary Masters’, are at the forefront of both the South African and international art market. While there will always be a core pantheon of South African artists, made up of the likes of Irma Stern, Alexis Preller and J.H Pierneef, contemporary masters of the South African art scene are building on the foundation of these already-acclaimed artists, to present works that represent a more modern South African context. Our art team has seen a steady shift in the sales of more traditional works, such as classic landscapes, as these pieces— often inherited from older generations— have seen a decline in popularity. Not only does this suggest a refinement of the current market, but it also reflects the way in which contemporary art is moving up the ladder within the context of the auction world. We have seen an exciting overlap between primary gallery spaces and the more traditional auction environment, as

younger, emerging contemporary artists are being featured on auction more frequently. In this way, a variety of contemporary pieces are being exposed to more people than just gallery-goers, widening audiences and in turn, buyer pools. These buying pools are also seemingly dominated by younger buyers that are either looking for a range of art investment opportunities, or are passionate art collectors. A younger buying market may also be as a result of ever-changing art spaces and how we handle art in the age of Covid-19. While the characteristically traditional auction world has previously been hesitant to adopt technology into auction practices, many auction houses have now made the move to online platforms and adopted a hybrid approach to selling works. This makes the larger art market more accessible to the average person, and can be accessed easily, without needing to dedicate hours of time to visit a gallery or auction, as buying art could potentially be a process of only a few clicks.

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Marlene Dumas, The Supermodel, Sold for: R130 000

Irma Stern, Melon Seller At A Zanzibar Market, Sold for: R950 000

In combination with an increase in contemporary interest, it is extremely encouraging to see an increase in acknowledgement for certain historical artists who were previously overlooked. Artists such as John Muafangejo, Esther Mahlangu and Helen Sebidi were always seen as important in the history of South African art, but have recently seen a surge in secondary market value, becoming highly collectable within a more contemporary context. This also translates to a broader increase in international interest in South African art, which can be seen by the presence of dedicated sales at Bonhams and Sotheby’s. In this way, we are no longer only dealing with local tastes and interests, but also international demands, which can in turn affect local markets.

It seems apparent that the new way of conducting art business is more in tune with contemporary artists and buyers. Stephan Welz & Co. is pleased to be part of a new wave of art, making its way into the auction realm, and we stay dedicated to making the procurement of art, consignment and buying as effortless as possible for our clients and collectors. We are so looking forward to what the next chapter of art at Stephan Welz & Co. will look like.

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Auction News

STRAUSS & CO

KWV Collection and five-star Pierneefs lead Strauss & Co’s April marquee sale

trauss & Co is pleased to announce details of its forthcoming live sale of modern, post-war and contemporary art, decorative arts, jewellery and fine wine, due to be held over three days from 11 to 13 April. This sale, the company’s first marquee live event for 2021, includes an important historical collection of art assembled over half a century by the Cape Wine Growers Association (KWV), two important collections of Chinese porcelain and a producer-themed sale of wines from three legendary Cape estates. A transcendent JH Pierneef landscape dominated by baobab trees leads a top-quality selection by this master landscape painter. “Our four marquee live sales are important calendar events for collectors, as this is when Strauss & Co reveals its premium offerings and presents its single-owner properties,” says Strauss & Co joint managing director Bina Genovese. “The catalogue for the April sale is no exception. The painting selection is bracketed by two important historical landscapes by Thomas Bowler and a selection of graphics by contemporary

masters of the form, Mr Brainwash and Banksy. The live sale will integrate various bidding options, from commission to telephone, online and in-person bidding, to ensure effortless transacting and personal well-being.” Started in 1958, the KWV Collection features post-war paintings rooted in the Cape region, its landscapes, people and industries. Formerly displayed at the Laborie Manor and KWV Sensorium in the La Concorde head office, both in Paarl, the consignment to Strauss & Co includes The Origin of Wine/The Epic of Gilgamesh (estimate R800 000 – 1.2 million), an elaborate panel piece commissioned by KWV from Cecil Skotnes. The work narrates the history of wine and its arrival in South Africa and marked a pivotal moment in the artist’s later career. The collection also includes two Skotnes table settings, notably Still life with Bottles (estimate R400 000 – 600 000) and Wyn wat die Meuse-hart Verheug (estimate R60 000 – 80 000) Other highlights from the KWV Collection are Erik Laubscher’s late landscape Winter Vines, Kloovenberg (estimate R400 000 – 600 000) and Maggie Laubser’s Still Life with Dahlias and Grapes (estimate R250 000 – 350 000). Collectors of Cape landscapes are directed to works by Marjorie Wallace and Gregoire Boonzaier, in particular the latter painter’s Edge of the Forest, Kenilworth (estimate R150 000 – 2000 000) and After the Rain, Kenilworth (estimate R 250 000 – 350 000). The KWV Collection also includes figure studies and portraits by François Krige, Christo Coetzee and Maurice van Essche. Left: (Detail) Banksy, Happy Choppers, 2003, colour screenprint image size: 67 by 48cm, R 900 000 - 1 200 000. Oppsite Page: Mr Brainwash, Madonna, silkscreen and spraypaint on canvas 120,5 by 120,5cm.

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Thomas Bowler, Port Elizabeth circa 1861, oil on canvas laid down on board 40 by 63cm, R 150 000 - 200 000

Oil paintings by Thomas Bowler are exceedingly rare with only twelve examples known to be in existence. Strauss & Co is delighted to offer two Bowler oils consigned by Metropolitan Life: the undated maritime scene Arrival of the East Indiaman, St. Lawrence in Table Bay, Cape of Good Hope (estimate R100 000 – 150 000) and a bay scene of Port Elizabeth made circa 1861 (estimate R150 000 – 200 000). Both works have excellent provenance and exhibition histories. Two works by JH Pierneef from the property of a gentleman lead an impressive selection of works by this auction bellwether in the April sale. Painted in 1952 and measuring 44,5 by 59cm, Baobabs (estimate R2.5 – 3 million) is a fine example of Pierneef’s ornamental late style of depicting the northern landscapes of South Africa. Consigned by the same seller, a 1906 still life executed in charcoal and pencil (estimate R250 000 – 350 000) reveals Pierneef’s solid grounding in the academic tradition.

Other notable Pierneef lots in the April catalogue include his epic of tone and mood, Sunlit Mountains, Clarens (estimate R1.5 – 2 million), and Elephant Castle, Selati Rivier, Phalaborwa (estimate R1.8 – 2.4 million), an assured work from 1945 depicting the confluence of the Selati and Olifants rivers outside Phalaborwa. Findlay Farm, Magaliesberg (estimate R1.2 – 1.6 million) portrays the region surrounding Hartbeesport Dam and was made shortly after Pierneef’s divorce from his first wife, Agatha, in 1924. A tireless traveller of his homeland, Fishing Boats, Hout Bay (estimate R2 – 3 million) dates from 1942 and depicts a pair of sculptural fishing boats backed by a row of coastal houses and mountains. A notable highlight of the sale is Maggie Laubser’s Shepherd and Sheep (estimate 1 200 000 – 1 500 000). Executed in 1924 when Laubser returned from Europe to her family farm, it represents one of numerous paintings of Ou Booi, the bushman who was the shepherd on the farm sporting his trademark outfit.

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Jacob Hendrik Pierneef, Stillewe, charcoal and pencil on paper 43,5 by 57,5cm, R 250 000 - 350 000, Property of a Gentleman

The middle of the twentieth century was a time of change and innovation for South African painting. Three painters stand out. Alexis Preller’s Constellation from 1966 (estimate R650 000 – 850 000) is a low relief made of gesso, oil and gold leaf on wood and features abundant galactic allusions. Christo Coetzee’s After Japan (estimate R250 000 – 350 000) recalls his important work visit to Japan in 1959-60, and was first exhibited at Galerie Stadler, Paris, in 1961. Erik Laubscher’s vividly coloured trio of acrylics – Eggs and Gasket, Still Life: Homage to Marsden Hartley, recto; Buildings, verso, and Abstract Still Life (estimate R250 000 – 350 000 each) – derive from his confident middle period in the 1970s. The vibrant Laubschers are the property of a private collector. Another notable lot from this collection is American painter Larry Rivers’s notational portrait of his lover titled Head of Molly (estimate R200 000 – 300 000). The work was acquired from dealer Joe Wolpe and has been authenticated

by the Estate of Larry Rivers. The story of painting is one of many possibilities Adriaan Boshoff’s impressionist studies of farm life and youth have been a staple of private collections since the 1970s and over the past two decades he has commanded solid prices at auction. Boshoff’s Cattle Branding (estimate R900 000 – R1.2 million) leads a selection of four works by this self-taught painter. Contemporary painters represented in the sale include Arlene Amaler-Raviv, Beezy Bailey, Jan-Henri Booyens, Tom Cullberg, Matthew Hindley, Ayanda Mabulu, Joel Mpah Dooh, Thierry Oussou, Lionel Smit and Pierre Vermeulen. Esther Mahlangu’s 2014 canvas Abstract (estimate R70 000 – 100 000) records her commitment to a culturally resonant hard-edged abstraction. Mustafa Maluka’s two canvases, They have got to Hate what they Fear from 2008 (estimate R200 000 – 300 000) and You Say you Know how we Feel from 2007 (estimate R200 000 – 250 000), are large, colourful, bold portraits of street smarts.

Anton van Wouw, Slegte Nuus, bronze on a wooden base, height: 33cm, excluding base; 37cm, including base, R 2 000 000 - 3 000 000

The sculpture offering also spans generations. Anton van Wouw’s Slegte Nuus (Bad news, estimate R2 – 3 million) was conceived in 1907, during a hot streak of creativity, and movingly portrays two crestfallen Boer soldiers. Dylan Lewis is best known for his large cat bronzes. Resting Cheetah III S224 (estimate R900 000 – 1.2 million) dates from 2004 and is from a small edition of only 12 bronzes. Following on a successful run of themed fine wine sales, Strauss & Co’s wine department will present a producer-focused sale devoted to De Toren Private Cellar, Meerlust Estate and Mullineux Family Wines. Tracing its history back to 1991, De Toren is undergoing a transformation under Swiss-based CEO Daniel Mueller. The De Toren list for the April sale focuses on the winemaker’s celebrated Bordeaux blends: the maiden vintage of their Fusion V (1999), the ultra-luxurious and widely feted Book XVII (2012), handcrafted, limited-run Fusion V Directors Reserve (2009).

The decorative arts department will be presenting historical Cape and contemporary international furniture, fine jewellery, silver and two exceptional collections of Chinese porcelain. Strauss & Co’s offering of historical Chinese porcelain, jade and objets d’art have consistently exceeded pre-sale estimates in recent live sales. Strauss & Co’s marquee live sale will commence on Sunday, 11 April with a session devoted to the three Cape wine producers and it will conclude on Tuesday, 13 April. The sale will be livestreamed to bidders from two sales venues in Cape Town and Johannesburg. There is an option of inperson bidding at both venues. Covid-19 safety protocols apply throughout. Auction Preview: 6-11 April 2021Brickfield Canvas, 35 Brickfield Road, Woodstock, Cape Town

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ENIGMAS OF ARRIVAL JOHN MEYER Ashraf Jamal

riving towards Rosebank from OR Tambo airport, I see a monumental declaration running down the flank of a tall skinny building: JESUS = LOVE. I send the pic to a friend who promptly replies: ‘Now you know’. I’ve never been OK with equivalences. This one is dressed up as mathematics, except its metaphorical, and, as Nietzsche reminded us, a metaphor is nothing but the equating of the unequal. Not wishing to be churlish, I’m prepared to give a believer the benefit of the doubt. For me, Jesus is more explicable than love can ever be. Whether they are one and the same thing is questionable, because love is that mysterious portmanteau in which one size fits all – all faiths, desires, hopes, and longings. This preamble – JESUS = LOVE – returns to me on entering the Circa Gallery in Rosebank, Johannesburg, in which a suite of sixteen paintings of the life of Nelson Mandela were on show. Painted by John Meyer, they range from Mandela’s childhood to his last moments on earth. If the series reads like a biopic, the artist distilling heightened moments in the great leader’s life, it is because Meyer is greatly inspired by cinema. Distillation is key, because as Meyer tells me, the paintings are not records of documentary footage, but re-imaginings of moments which many South Africans collectively recall – Mandela defiant at the Rivonia Trial, incarcerated on Robben Island, for example. However, it is not a historical record which Meyer gifts us, but, more loosely, more capaciously, visions of Mandela, spanning decades, which, moment by cinematic moment, conjure what might have occurred, how that scene might have shaped him. Because, of course, lives are never merely predestined,

they are created. A great life is one in which key moments, when bound together to form a rosary, can, in their coupling, produce a divine or profound congress. One could say that MANDELA = LOVE. For if there is one distinctive marker in Meyer’s paintings, it is his ability to convey the bounteous and steadfast grace of the greatest leader of the last hundred years. There is nothing deferential, or reverential, about Meyer’s record. Instead, what Meyer captures is the sublimity built into ordinary and dramatic moments. If Pantheism supposes that there is a God in all things, then, I imagine, it is this more inclusive divinity which Meyer captures. If MANDELA = LOVE, it is because of the many faces which love conjures. The opening painting is of three young black boys racing along a dust country path led on by a dog, all about we see rolling fields and hills, a great bright sky. The closing painting is of Mandela, cane in hand, his back towards us, walking along that same path. Now the sun is setting. As bookends, these paintings sum up the arc of a life from birth to death. But what distinguishes Meyer’s take, be it of youth or age, is its painterly exuberance, its elan vital. In the opening painting it is clear that vitality is the key. That no photographic record exists of this moment, means that it had to be invented – which is Meyer’s central point. His paintings are not objective records but fabulations, or ways of dreaming. What interests the painter most of all is that Nelson Mandela is as mortal as he is saintly, as ordinary as he is stately. Given our terrible tendency of turning celebrity into myth, men into gods – the result of our increasing divorce from reality, our enslavement to the virtual – it is

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Jazz Club

Nelson Dreaming

unsurprising that Mandela, today, is more a godhead than a man. But, as Meyer reminds us, to subtract and abstract a human being thus is to lose sight of the mortality that allows for grace. Grace is the one word which Meyer returns to when he reflects on his personal encounter with the great statesman. That he was personally chosen to paint Mandela’s portrait is, in itself, a towering achievement. For Meyer, however, it was never merely a matter of honour, or a ground-breaking career moment, but, most profoundly, a way to express what pervades all his paintings – emotion. While he is hailed as a great South African Realist – I see him as an Impressionist – what, for Meyer, matters most in the act of painting is an emotional trigger – the moment in which he and his subject connect, what unfolds in that moment of connection. In the case of Mandela, it was the great man’s boundless patience and generosity.

far more than any defining detail. It is the looseness and lightness of the brushwork, suggesting a speed in the making, which further helps us to understand how Meyer arrives at a dramatic and emotional moment. Because his painting are never declarations, but, rather, suggestively choreographed, it is as if one were entering a scene in mid-flow, as if one were meant to piece together what had happened and what is to follow. It is in this way that his painting read as cinematic stills.

In the central painting we see Mandela standing erect, his hand clutches the back of a chair, the other softly unfolded, the gaze direct. In many ways this painting is classic portraiture, in the manner, say, of Anthony van Dyck’s painting of King Charles I. But what makes Meyer’s take striking is the fact that he is never preoccupied with meticulously recorded detail. On closer inspection you see the looseness of the brushstroke, as though the painter, moving back and forth, sought an aggregation

In the case of his series of paintings of Mandela, what we get is a broken narrative, certain fragments in a life which we are compelled to suture. This is because it is the viewer who must complete the story – the great mystery of a great figure. Before speaking with Meyer, I assumed the challenge of painting a great public figure would be daunting. After all, how does one paint someone as mythic yet real and profoundly honest as Mandela? Where is the painter in the project? How does one reconcile the iconic power of Mandela with Meyer’s particular way of painting? For if Meyer’s eye can be said to be cinematic, one cannot ignore that that very eye is also obtuse and fungible. Given that Meyer is inspired by photographs – which abduct and skew the truth, despite the fact that we view them differently – it seems that photographic records, for Meyer, are no different to invented memory, in so far as both are merely foils for an inner painterly vision.

Black Pimpernel

If Meyer’s way of combining technique and invention is important, it is because it profoundly informs the way he sees Mandela, whether in person, or via a photographic image. For Meyer, I imagine, it’s the mystique and enigma of the man that matters most. Looking at his suite of paintings – each an evocative moment – I’m guessing that he knew that we, the viewers, would have to complete the story, that the role of his paintings in our lives – in the life of the nation, and the world – would be to profoundly add to the narrative in our heads and heart. In a nightclub scene, jazz musicians in the background, we see Mandela in avidly intimate conversation with

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A crucial decision

Prepared to die

President Mandela

Father of the innocents

a woman. The tagline might be ‘Mandela the lover’, or ‘Mandela the romantic’. The taglines for other paintings might read, ‘Mandela the firebrand’, Mandela the bruiser’. The scenes vary from pastoral to urban, longshots to medium shots with Mandela as a remote speck in the gloaming distance or prominently showcased in a heated or gentle debate. The variety is deliberate, because no man is ever one thing. The man, the symbol, is never quite the same being. Add to this mystery, the mystery of painting itself, and we arrive at a very fertile compound. If what we get in a Meyer painting is both the elemental and the ordinary, it is because the painter drifts between worlds. Therefore, to interpret this series of paintings solely as works devoted to the life of Mandela is to miss a key point – that technique is a vital ingredient in any illumination. In Meyer’s case, paint quivers, darts, the whole is as evocative, as plausibly real, as it is schematic. Is Meyer perhaps a roughshod Pointillist, someone who stubs and dabs meaning into the world? Is the perceptible blur he conjures a lesson in obfuscation?

Here, the title of a painting by Giorgio De Chirico comes to mind – ‘enigma of arrival’. To my mind, Meyer’s cycle of paintings on the life of Mandela amounts to a quest – they are enigmas of arrival. If this is so, it is because they were never a record of definitive moments but intuitions thereof, and, therefore, never intended to be exemplary. I say this because I believe that Meyer never intended to create myth, despite knowing that this graft would prove inevitable. In conclusion, I return to the hoarding which reads: JESUS = LOVE. I doubt that John Meyer would agree. This is because what inspires him is never an equivalence. His paintings of Mandela are a record of this disagreement. Therein the known encounters mystery, legend rubs against fallibility, grace its passing and its eternality. In that final painting we see an old man drift away into the descending sun, and know that never, not in this lifetime or the next, will such a man ever be forgotten.

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Art, antiques, objets d’art, furniture, and jewellery wanted for forthcoming auctions

Alexis Preller, oil and gold leaf on canvas laid down on panel SOLD R210, 000 View previous auction results at www.rkauctioneers.co.za

011 789 7422 • 011 326 3515 • Bram Fischer Centre, Lower Ground, 95 Bram Fischer Driver Cnr George Street, Ferndale, 2194

NASIONALE MUSEUM • MUSIAMO WA SETJHABA

Department of Sport, Arts and Culture

ARTGO

APRIL 2021 ONGOING SHOWS AND OPENING EXHIBITIONS Jaco Sieberhagen, Hermanus Fynarts

ARTGO: APRIL 2021

OPENING EXHIBITIONS

ART@AFRICA FRANSCHHOEK FOUR SEASONS 01/04/2021 UNTIL 31/05/2021 WWW.ARTATAFRICA.ART

ART@AFRICA HERMANUS SO MUCH TALENT IN OUR COUNTRY 01/04/2021 UNTIL 31/05/2021 WWW.ARTATAFRICA.ART

CAPE PALETTE ART GALLERY PECULIAR GROUP EXHIBITION 01/04/2021-30/04/2021 WWW.CAPEPALETTE.CO.ZA

ECLECTICA CONTEMPORARY EARTHBOUND GROUP EXHIBITION 01/04/2021 - 29/04/2021 WWW.ECLECTICACONTEMPORARY.CO.ZA

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ARTGO: APRIL 2021

OPENING EXHIBITIONS

EDG2020 MAICO CAMILO EQUIVOCAL 01/04/2021 UNTIL 29/04/2021 WWW.EDG2020.COM

THE CAPE GALLERY RETURN BOWEN BOSHIER AND PETER VAN STRATEN 01/04/2021 UNTIL 30/04/2021 WWW.CAPEGALLERY.CO.ZA

GALLERY AT ALLIANCE FRANÇAISE INSIDE OUT GROUP SHOW 01/04/2021 UNTIL 30/04/2021

WWW.CPT.ALLIANCE.ORG.ZA/TAG/FIRST-THURSDAY

RK CONTEMPORARY APPEARANCES PORTRAITS BY JACO BENADE & LANDSCAPES BY MJ LOURENS 04/04/2021 UNTIL 25/04/2021 WWW.RKCONTEMPORARY.COM

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ARTGO: APRIL 2021

OPENING EXHIBITIONS

THE ENDANGERED WILDLIFE TRUST CONTEMPORARY 2021 GORDON INSTITUTE OF BUSINESS SCIENCE (GIBS) ILLOVO, JOHANNESBURG 04/09/2021 UNTIL 12/09/2021 WWW.EWT.ORG.ZA

GALLERY 2 FALSE REFUGE A SOLO EXHIBITION BY MARLISE KEITH 17/04/2021 UNTIL 08/05/2021 WWW.GALLERY2.CO.ZA

RUST-EN-VREDE GALLERY SAILORS AND SIRENS GROUP EXHIBITION CURATED BY DONAVAN MYNHARDT 20/04/2021 – 19/05/2021 WWW.RUST-EN-VREDE.COM

RUST-EN-VREDE GALLERY TRIFECTA ANTOINETTE DU PLESSIS, SAREL PRETORIUS, SHENAZ MAHOMED 20/04/2021 – 19/05/2021 WWW.RUST-EN-VREDE.COM

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RUST-EN-VREDE GALLERY URBAN ART GROUP EXHIBITION CURATED BY HAMLIN JANSEN VAN VUUREN 20/04/2021 – 19/05/2021 WWW.RUST-EN-VREDE.COM

ARTGO: APRIL2021

ONGOING SHOWS

NWU GALLERY WE WILL RISE AGAIN UNTIL 09/04/2021

DEEPEST DARKEST JOHN-MICHAEL METELERKAMP NOCTURNES UNTIL 10/04/2021 WWW.DEEPESTDARKESTART.COM

AITY GALLERY SOLO EXHIBITION BY HELEN VAN STOLK DIVING DEEP & FLYING HIGH UNTIL 14/04/2021 WWW.ARTINTHEYARD.CO.ZA

SMAC CPT BONOLO KAVULA SEWEDI SEWEDI UNTIL 17/04/2021 WWW.SMACGALLERY.COM

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131//A//GALLERY ETERNAL GROUP SHOW UNTIL 18/04/2021 WWW.131AGALLERY.COM

OLIEWENHUIS ART MUSEUM

TIRO YA DIATLA: NEW ACQUISITIONS OF THE ART BANK OF SOUTH AFRICA EXHIBITION UNTIL 18/04/2020 WWW.NASMUS.CO.ZA/OLIEWENHUISTEMPORARY-EXHIBITIONS

ARTGO: APRIL-MAY 2021

ONGOING SHOWS

GALLERY AT GLEN CARLOU A SOLO EXHIBITION BY JEAN DREYER BURNT WHITE UNTIL 22/04/2021 WWW.GLENCARLOU.COM/ART-GALLERY

ECLECTICA CONTEMPORARY 11:11 DESIGN EXHIBITION UNTIL 29/04/2021 WWW.ECLECTICACONTEMPORARY.CO.ZA

GOODMAN GALLERY JHB KENDELL GEERS STRIPPED BARE UNTIL 25/04/2021 WWW.GOODMAN-GALLERY.ART

BREYTENBACH GALLERY WELLINGTON ELEGIE VIR DIE KAROO AN EXHIBITION OF PAINTINGS BY ANNARI VAN DER MERWE UNTIL 30/04/21 WWW.BREYTENBACHSENTRUM.CO.ZA

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EBONY CURATED CAPE TOWN RENTIA RETIEF AND LARITA ENGELBRECHT THE LONG VIEW UNTIL 30/04/2021 WWW.EBONYCURATED.COM

THE MELROSE GALLERY INTERROGATING THE GAP BETWEEN US WILLIE BESTER APRIL 2021 WWW.THEMELROSEGALLERY.COM

SALON NINETY ONE DREAM WINDOW JEANNE HOFFMAN SOLO EXHIBITION UNTIL 01/05/2021 WWW.SALON91.CO.ZA

THE VIEWING ROOM ART GALLERY THE THREADS THAT BIND US FIBER ART EXHIBITION UNTIL 01/05/2021 WWW.STLORIENT.CO.ZA

ARTGO: MAY-SEPTEMBER 2021

ONGOING SHOWS

PRINCE ALBERT GALLERY DIANE JOHNSON-ACKERMAN SOLO EXHIBITION NOSTALGIA UNTIL 02/05/2021 PRINCEALBERTGALLERY.CO.ZA

ZEITX MOCAA WAITING FOR GEBANE SENZENI MTHWAKAZI MARASELA UNTIL 02/05/2021 WWW.ZEITZMOCAA.MUSEUM

SMAC CPT CALLAN GRECIA’S ARTIST ROOM LAPS AROUND THE SUN UNTIL 08/05/2021 WWW.SMACGALLERY.COM

OLIEWENHUIS ART MUSEUM HOME LEGAE-LEHAE-EKHAYA-HOME-TUISTE UNTIL 09/05/2021 WWW.NASMUS.CO.ZA/OLIEWENHUISTEMPORARY-EXHIBITIONS

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SMAC STELLENBOSCH BLACK LUMINOSITY UNTIL 20/05/2021 GROUP EXHIBITION WWW.SMACGALLERY.COM

NORVAL ART FOUNDATION THE REUNION GEORGINA GRATRIX UNTIL 31/05/2021 WWW.NORVALFOUNDATION.ORG

LA MOTTE MUSEUM CELEBRATING THE LOVE OF ART A PERSONAL SELECTION BY HANNELI RUPERT-KOEGELENBERG UNTIL 25/07/2021 WWW.LA-MOTTE.COM/PAGES/MUSEU

JAN RUPERT ART CENTRE IN CONVERSATION WITH COLOUR SYMPHONY GROUP EXHIBITION UNTIL 05/09/2021 WWW.RUPERTMUSEUM.ORG

ARTGO: SEPTEMBER - DECEMBER 2021

ONGOING SHOWS

RUPERT ART MUSEUM

ANTON SMIT OPEN AIR EXHIBITION AT CENTURY CITY ARTS TRAIL WWW.ANTONSMIT.CO.ZA

ART@AFRICA CAPE TOWN WATERWARS UNTIL 31/12/2021 WWW.ARTATAFRICA.ART

DYLAN LEWIS SCULPTURE GARDEN GROTTO - A NEW INSTALLATION WWW.DYLANLEWIS.CO.ZA

IN CONVERSATION WITH COLOUR SYMPHONY GROUP EXHIBITION - JAN RUPERT ART CENTRE UNTIL 05/09/2021 WWW.RUPERTMUSEUM.ORG

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BILL DAVIS, SCULPTOR Born 24th February 1933 - 14th March 2021 - Christopher Gregorowski

he cover illustration that Bill Davis chose for the book that encapsulates the major part of his life and work, Bill Davis, Sculptor: His Life and Work, depicts his bust of Nelson Mandela. His last major work, it is on view in the foyer of the headquarters of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation in St George’s Street in Cape Town, and also in the Cape Town City Hall, on the staircase leading to the balcony from which Madiba addressed the massive crowd that gathered to welcome him on his release from prison on 11th February 1990. Bill’s sculpture is a magnificent work which captures the spirit and likeness of our beloved Madiba as few artists have managed to do. It also represents Bill’s entire and prolific body of work over seven decades. he Old Mutual building in Pinelands T and the Artscape Theatre house major installations of his, and his artworks are to be found in numerous public places and churches including the Stations of the Cross in St Cyprian’s Cathedral in Kimberley and sculptures commissioned for churches in the Cape Peninsula, Hermanus, Paarl, Worcester, Stellenbosch, Mitchell’s Plain and Johannesburg. His sculptures, woodcuts, drawings and paintings grace many private collections in South Africa and abroad. ill’s tuition in art began at St George’s B Grammar School in Cape Town and with private lessons from Mrs Nan Buncher whose sister was the renowned artist Frieda Lock. In 1951 he entered the Michaelis School of Fine Art, majoring in sculpture under Lippy Lipschitz. He then continued his studies in Amsterdam, at the Rijks Normaal School and the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten. He travelled extensively, absorbing the cultural riches of Europe, Britain, Ireland

and Israel. While in Amsterdam he met and married Ellen Mesman, entering into a partnership in which she was his stay and support. Their first daughter Cassandra was born in Holland, and after moving to South Africa in 1962, daughters Francesca, Angelique and Cairine were born. In Cape Town Bill taught art at SACS High School and then at his alma mater UCT’s Michaelis School of Fine Art, until, with Ellen’s full support, he decided that he would devote himself full-time to his life as an artist. ill represented South Africa in biennales B in Venice in 1964 and 1968 and Sao Paulo in 1965. He exhibited in many group exhibitions, and held numerous solo exhibitions, the first in Kimberley in 1953, in Amsterdam in 1961, 1962 and 1966, a dozen in Cape Town and numerous others in Worcester, Hermanus, Stellenbosch, Durban, Bellville, Johannesburg, Randburg, Port Elizabeth, and finally in Hermanus to mark his 79th birthday in 2012. He won many awards and prizes. A full biography and catalogue of his works may be found in the comprehensive BILL DAVIS, SCULPTOR: His Life and Work. e died on 14th March, sixteen years H after his beloved Ellen, and is survived by his sister Shirley Davies, four daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. For Enquiries regarding Bill Davis contact Ebbe Rabie Ebbe.Rabie2@gmail.com or 0826592293. To view more work by Bill see www.capegallery.co.za/bill_davis To get a copy of Bills book: Bill Davis, sculptor, his life & work go to clarkesbooks.co.za/products/bill-davissculptor-his-life-work

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021 683 6560 | ct@straussart.co.za | www.straussart.co.za

From the Property of a Collector

LIVE VIRTUAL AUCTION Cape Town | 11-13 April 2021

Erik Laubscher Eggs and Gasket (detail), R 250 000 - 350 000

19th Century, Modern, Post-War and Contemporary Art, Decorative Arts, Jewellery and Wine

THE ART TIMES APRIL 2021 EDITION

Articles inside

NDITSHENI MANAGA

EARTHBOUND

APPEARANCES