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Risky Business, Anthea Moys throws herself to the Pirates, in her award winning show at The Everard Read Gallery, Jhb. Moys who won the prestigious Bait-Everard Read Award 2009 worked with the Pirates Rugby Team in Johannesburg. In her words she states: “In this performance I played the role of the ball. Throwing oneself into unfamiliar territory always involves risk. It asks of both performer and participant to engage in a shared space of play. For modern humans, this is a risky proposition, for there are no winners or losers in my rugby game. The outcome is the experience”. See her show at The Everard Read Gallery, 6 Jellicoe Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg from Thursday 30 July. Or visit there website at www.everard-read.co.za or www.antheamoys.co.za Photo: John Hodgekiss
Report back session from The Joburg Art Fair
Breaking Art News Daily at The Art Times
The SA Business Arts publishes 2 keynote speakers at the JAF disscussion held at the Narina Trogon restaurant in Braamfontein last month Clive Kellner’s speech In reflecting on the Joburg Art Fair, its past and future, I thought I might raise a number of comments, facts, contradictions and ideas about art fairs, the art market, curating and values as a means of addressing this post Joburg Art Fair assessment. In a sense, what is at stake here is the relationship between art and commerce. Often, it would appear that the two are diametrically opposed, more especially in relation to curating, academia, museums and art history. Damien Hirst’s now infamous two-day sale at Sotheby’s on September 15 and 16, 2008, brought in sales of 95.7 million Pounds, on the same day that the Lehman Brothers collapsed initiating a global financial crisis. Art has never been so popular! Art certainly does reflect its time and in the Warholian sense, appeals to everyone and is accessible to all. Art Fairs have become symbolic of a time where money and art are synonymous and everybody knows the name of Damien Hirst. There is a story that goes, in the 16th century, Mrs Albrecht Durer, would set up her stall of art works for sale in the public square in Bruges. The roots of the art market can be traced to the fairs of Brabant and Medina del Campo in the 15th century and during the 16th century the public sale of art became widespread particularly in the Netherlands. Art, for a long time has remained the domain of the select few, a rarefied field where connoisseurship, the canon and art history were the purveyors of knowledge and therefore taste. The more things change, the more they stay the same! I believe that during the Salon’s of the 17th century, where art works were hung wall to wall, floor
to ceiling (sounds like an art fair!); the art works were not for sale! Here the academic and artistic merit of the works were paramount and sales were for tradesmen. Art was not seen as a trade but as a higher activity. Far from where we are today! Today art’s value is created by headline newspapers, high prices and business managers. However the global financial crisis is beginning to show signs of a downturn, postwar and contemporary art auction have tumbled 77% from totals achieved a year ago. Although records prices for select artists continue to be established. It is a contradictory time. There are 284 art fairs and Biennale’s in the world today and they in total receive a total of 4.9 million visitors in a year. By comparison, the Tate Modern received 5.3 million visitors in 2007, MOMA 2.6 million visitors and the metropolitan 4.24 million. The Joburg Art Fair is in its infancy. Art Basel has been going for four decades and has changed significantly over this period. Perhaps one of the oldest, the cologne Art Fair which started in 1967 with just 18 galleries. Art Basel, started in 1968 when 3 Swiss gallerists – Trudi Bruckner, Ernst Beyler and Baltz Hilit decided that Switzerland needed an Art Fair too. One of the most celebrated newer Art Fair’s must be the Frieze Art Fair in London. However American art critic, Dave Hickey had some very controversial things to say about it at the keynote lecture he gave at Frieze in 2007. I will quote a few lines, “This is a great moment. There are people out there who like art more than money”. How do we know what makes for ‘good art’. We live in an age where money defines taste and images are everywhere. So much so that economists are beginning to define this era as the image economy or i-conomy. Sir Alan Bowness in his 1989 Walter
Neurath Memorial Lecture given at the University of London gives four factors that lead to an artist’s success: 1) peer recognition 2) critical recognition 3) patronage by dealers and collectors and 4) public acclaim. Art Fairs are not the all conclusive defining arbitrator of artistic taste or merit. But they are important vehicles in a network of artists, dealers, auctions houses, media, curators, collectors and museums. Increasingly they are changing their focus from purely economic, dealer booths to include collateral events and programs. These include: talks by leading figures in the art world, music and film pro-grams, education programs, curatorial programs, artistic commissions, awards, public art projects and collaborations. I remember in the 1990’s – there was an outcry by galleries and artists not being presented at the Basel Art Fair and they ended up creating the un-fair! The Joburg Art Fair is important in a South African context. It promotes an active and positive image of the contemporary South African art market internationally, contributes to cultural tourism and facilitates the growth and development of art collectors and patronage. Even more importantly, it brings contemporary South African art into the mainstream public domain. A recent article in the Art Newspaper runs with the heading, “At times of crisis, fairs should take a more ‘curated’ approach”. It would appear that there is a move toward bigger, better, more complex and more competitive art fairs as the pressures of success, hype and the ‘shock of the new’ are increasingly present. Art’s function, at least, one of them, has shifted from an academic role to that of a social function. It is now cool to be seen at Venice Biennale or Art Basel. In the end, does this help make better art?
The South African Print Gallery Presents:
GABRIEL CLARK-BROWN Mid Life Retrospective Exhibition Work from 1990 – 2007
Alex Dodd’s report back to The Art Times Before I begin, I feel it is necessary to state upfront that I undertook some media strategy work for Artlogic in the runup to this year’s Joburg Art Fair. There was an article published in a recent edition of SA Art Times that suggested that I was compromised or some kind of sellout as a result of this. So perhaps this is an opportune moment to respond and say that, as an independent writer and editor, it is my prerogative to associate with whomever I choose on whatever basis I choose. Those associations are often deep and implicated ones. I have never claimed to be a detached and unbiased onlooker commentating on the toings and froings of the art world. I write in the first person and have never striven to be some ideologically unstained bystander. For this reason, I have always had difficulties with the term ‘critic’, although it is often tagged on to my name. For me, it is too cool a term. I am far more interested in the generative possibilities that my writing may serve, than in criticising things in a manner that shows no concern for the potentially damaging impact of published words. I am not suggesting that criticism be discouraged, merely stating that I am personally more committed to constructive collaboration, translation and invention, than in detached deconstruction. This year’s Joburg Art Fair was the first big test for the local art market since the dreaded turbulence in the global economy
kicked in late last year. Despite the fact that the Fair’s attendance was up by 4 000 and that the production value of this year’s event way outstripped last year’s, art sales at this year’s Fair grossed about half of what was achieved last year. It was a jackpot of a Fair in every sense other than sales, which must surely be attributed to the dreaded slump having metamorphosed from a hazy projection into an uncomfortable reality. Since then we have seen the landmark closure of Warren Siebrits Contemporary and an article in the latest edition of SA Art Times in which just about all the key Johannesburg galleries, barring Everard Read, admit to having to tailor their strategies around an impaired art market and a limping economy. It is against this choppy backdrop that we are evaluating the Fair. And for this reason that I wish to encourage a spirit of treading gently, not roughly stamping on a seedling before it has a chance to put down roots. We South Africans are all too quick to slag off things and people when they’re still trying to find a foothold and then mourn the loss of them when they’re suddenly not there anymore. This said, the Joburg Art Fair is not the delicate young calf that needs my protection. It has already proven itself to be quite a strapping and muscular young event, drawing thousands through the doors of the Sandton Convention Centre and commanding a healthy chunk of airtime and page space across Johannesburg’s various media platforms. Yet the vinaigrette criticisms have also been fairly rife, centred
chiefly around the argument that fairs are nothing more than meat markets for art. The same criticisms have been leveled at Art Fairs the world over, and I quote Jerry Saltz from an article in The Village Voice a few years ago: ‘Art fairs are perfect storms of money, marketability, and instant gratification – tent-city casinos where art is shipped in and parked for five days. They’re adrenaline-addled spectacles for a kind of buying and selling where intimacy, conviction, patience, and focused looking are essentially nonexistent. They are places where commerce has replaced epistemology, and the unspoken contract that existed between artists, dealers, and collectors has been scraped.’ Eish! More than a touch of pulpit-style fulminating there. Since the 1990s, when art fairs started to become big events on the global art calendar, there have been countless articles comparing fairs to the other big international forums for contemporary art – biennials. Usually the biennale is introduced as counterpoint to protest against the gross commodification of art. But, in my view, although they are different animals, they are not at opposite ends of the art spectrum. Biennials are not exempt from conceptual trendiness or favouritism, and fairs generate a lot more than just cash. While biennials are curated with quite specific ideological or methodological aims, art fairs are hybrids combining elements of trade fairs, conferences, and big family get-togethers. Money might be their motive but community is their medium. Fairs can superficontinued on page 2
In an effort to break the monthly and even quarterly South African art news cycles The SA Art Times brings you daily breaking news stories from South Africa and beyond. See us at www.arttimes.co.za Also Read us at Facebook at SA Art Times as well as follow our Twitterings at www.twitter.com
People in the Spotlight Britz: Kebble’s Lost Orchid, not the Lost Orchid (27 Jul 09) After months of speculation, auctioneer Graham Britz has admitted, in an interview with Beeld, that a painting sold as Tretchikoff’s “Lost Orchid” earlier this year, is “without a doubt” not the original. Forensic tests have proved that the painting is definitely not the work it was billed as in the catalogue, but, says Britz, may still be an original work by Tretchikoff. According to the auctioneer, forensic tests prove that the work is at least 60 years old, while other tests and the opinions of experts suggest that the work, is “in all probability”, another work by Tretchikoff, entitled “After the Dance”. [more...] An arts adviser for Zuma? (27 Jul 09) Sean O’Toole writes a letter to president Jacob Zuma, in the Sunday Times, offering the president Kudzanai Chiurai as official cabinet photographer. ‘Sobriety Tool’, as the Art South Africa editor coyly signs the letter, says that he has already entreated the president to accept his services as an art consultant. “You didn’t reply. That’s OK, really, I understand”, says a mock hurt Tool. Chiurai, whose satirical posed photographs are currently on show at Goodman Gallery Cape, portrays “extreme stereotypes” of African success, and says he would love to photograph the real cabinet. [more...] ABSA L’Atelier 2009 Award Winners announced (24 Jul 09) The results of the 2009 Absa L’Atelier competition were announced last night at a gala exhibition in Johannesburg, and the this year it’s Eastern Cape artist, Stephen Rosin, who will be taking home the R110 000 prize money and jetting off for a six month jaunt in Paris, Die Burger reports. [more...] Babelaas after the festival: NAF Director reports back (24 Jul 09) National Arts Festival director, Ismail Mohamed compares himself to an alcoholic in a report-back on this year’s Grahamstown fest, on Artslink. “I guess there is much similarity between a festival producer and an alcoholic. As soon as the alcoholic’s bottle is empty he looks for the next.” The morning after the end of a successful festival, is, says Mohamed, like a “lekker babelaas”. [more...] START Nivea Art Award winners announced (22 Jul 09) The winners of the 2009 START The Nivea Art Award were announced at a packed gala award ceremony at the KZNSA last night. First prize went to Pinetown artist, Jane Oliver, who received R20 000 in cash, a sponsored art studio and art materials for six months, as well as an exhibition at the KZNSA in 2010. [more...] New CEO for NAC (14 Jul 09) The National Arts Council has a new CEO, in the shape of Annabell Lebethe, Mail and Guardian reports. Lebethe has a background in provincial government, where Newsfeeds continued on page 2
ARTTHROB PRINT EDITION Opens Saturday 27 August 09 11h30 - 14h00
including a brand new Robert Hodgins Print. Artists include: Guy Tillim, Mikhael Subotzky, Penny Siopis, David Goldblatt, Willem Boshoff more.
runs until Thursday 25 August 09
Creating our Eden, Etching 1996
South African Print Gallery 107 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock Cape Town. Tel 021 462 6851 www.printgallery.co.za