Wanted September Issue 2020

wanted SEPTEMBER

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2020

ART ISSUE

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ED’S LETTER

09 / 2020

Sarah Buitendach

EDITOR.

TURN AND FACE THE STRANGE “Read this magazine and you’ll be able to convincingly blag your way through that next art conversation”

Kiss (series Bioporn),Justus Jager, 2015, grahamcontemporary.co.za

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NE FULL rotation of the globe around the sun ago you would have found me and the Wanted gang lazing on the Ligne Roset sofas of our Art Joburg stand. There we were, laughing amongst Sam Nhlengethwa’s jazz players, gossiping between the Lady Skollies, bumping into absolutely every single person we know in town (many of you, in fact), and wondering whether Jeff Bezos might like to fund a painting-and-sculpture buying spree for us.

Enter 2020, and oh, how the mightily social have fallen. Here I sit in my sweatpants — yes, they

are still in rotation — finishing off an issue that we largely put together virtually. Again.

Sure, lockdown is abating, the booze is back — I have even ventured out to clock lovely new developments like the recently opened stores you’ll spot in our Navigator section — but I don’t need to tell you what a different world this is.

There will be no physical art fairs in the City of Gold this month, but that’s not the only element of the art landscape that has been absolutely altered thanks to the pandemic. From auctions going online to young artists using Instagram to market themselves, we’re seeing a wave of new, different, and interesting.

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PRETTY FABULOUS FINDS

I know the players in this game must be nervous of what’ll happen next. Hell, they’ve already withstood six months of instability and must be spinning.

That said, it’s always fascinating to see what comes of huge change; who takes the gap, who falls by the wayside, and what emerges from a state of flux.

This issue is a crash course in all of the above. With a smattering of crystal-ball-gazing thrown into the mix too.

We’re lucky that our managing editor Matthew McClure knows his stuff where this terrain is concerned. Along with top writers like Zodwa Kumalo-Valentine and Graham Wood, he and our team have packed these pages with new faces, the experts, beautiful artwork, and compelling opinion. Read this magazine and you’ll be able to convincingly blag your way through that next art conversation, know where to head once the weather warms up (it’s sculpture parks, by the way), and you’ll hopefully have spotted a little something you’d like to add to your collection.

I’m morose that I won’t see you all on the fair scene this year, but those days cannot possibly be gone forever. And oh, what a razzle we’re all going to have when we can get together next.

I cannot wait.

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1. Van Gogh’s Self Portrait ¼oz gold proof coin, scoinshop.com 2. Handmade dress ring in rose gold featuring a diamond-encrusted bumble bee on a Nacula Island mother-of-pearl cabochon, Charles Greig 011 325 4477 3. Fragonard Encens Fève Tonka EDP, 50ml, tbls.co.za 4. Lyndi Sales, Fook Island plate, 2020, everard-read.co.za Cover credits Katlego Tlabela, Dubai Desert, UAE, 2020

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EDITOR Sarah Buitendach (sarahb@arena.africa) MANAGING EDITOR Matthew McClure 082 446 0747 (mcclurem@arena.africa) CREATIVE DIRECTOR Anna Lineveldt JUNIOR DESIGNERS Carike de Jager

and Manelisi Dabata SUBEDITOR Benazir Cassim FASHION DIRECTOR Sharon Armstrong (armstrongs@arena.africa) FASHION EDITOR Sahil Harilal BEAUTY EDITOR Nokubonga Thusi (thusin@arena.africa) FASHION INTERN Nombuso Kumalo DÉCOR DIRECTOR Leana Schoeman (leanas@sundaytimes.co.za) GROUP MOTORING EDITOR Denis Droppa (droppad@arena.africa)

FINAL EYE Elizabeth Sleith DESIGN HUB ONLINE EDITOR Stephen Haw (haws@arena.africa) WANTED ONLINE DIGITAL EDITOR

Katharynn Kesselaar (kesselaark@arena.africa) BUSINESS DAY EDITOR Lukanyo Mnyanda PUBLISHER Aspasia Karras HEAD: Advertising Sales Eben Gewers CEO Andrew Gill BUSINESS MANAGER Yvonne Shaff 082 903 5641 (shaffy@arena.africa) ACCOUNT MANAGER Johannesburg Tamara Nicholson 083 604 0949 (nicholsont@arena.africa) ACCOUNT MANAGER Western Cape Samantha Pienaar 082 889 0366 (pienaars@arena.africa) ACCOUNT MANAGER Durban Gina van de Wall 083 500 5325 (vdwallg@arena.africa)

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Six artists on our radar ..............................................................

22 A portrait of the South African art landscape and its future

32 Dish of the day: The art plates we love and simply must have

34 Let’s take it outside to these sculpture parks and urban art

42 If you’re happy and you know it, check out these artworks

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48 These are a few of Zanele Muholi’s favourite things

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WAT C H E S

09 / 2020

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OB DYLAN’S 1964 anthem The Times They Are a-Changin’ not only resonates with current sentiments on the status quo but also highlights the role of arts and culture as a powerful mirror and voice for social and political change.

Before the world became hyperconnected, artists such as Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela united people through song in a rallying cry for justice and freedom.

Fast evolving into spaces more for social cohesion than self-centredness, we’ve finally found better uses of our digital tools as new media for change. Our September issue usually coincides with Joburg’s annual art week, but the fairs have gone online to keep us engaged. At the very least they’ll provide some much-needed escapism, as will Cartier’s new novelties presented under the theme “Unexpected Encounters”, which seems somewhat prescient given the challenges of 2020.

In recent years, the luxury brand has been associated with FNB Art Joburg, however its association with contemporary art began in 1984 with the establishment of Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain. Since moving to Paris in 1994, the home of the foundation is the lightfilled glass-and-steel building, designed by the architect Jean Nouvel, where you can discover work by artists from all creative fields and genres of contemporary art. The Nomadic Nights programme is “a rendezvous” focused on the performing arts, “where artists explore links between the visual arts and other forms of contemporary artistic expression”, and is one of the foundation’s many successful springboards for young artists. On the current programme, The Yanomami Struggle showcases the work of artist/activist Claudia Andujar, who has devoted over five decades to photographing and protecting the Yanomami, one of Brazil’s largest indigenous groups.

Cartier is one of the most distinguished jewellers in the world, with every haute-joaillerie piece a meticulous work of art that captures the spirit of each era. Cartier’s founder, his sons, and their influential creative director

Ronde Louis Cartier Straw and Gold Marquetry

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QUALITY TIME Cartier Maison des Métiers d’Art text

Gary Cotterell

Jeanne “La Panthère” Toussaint have all been particularly good at capturing the spirit of “the moment”, which regularly finds expression through the iconic panther that has been part of the maison’s rich history for over 100 years.

Cartier is also lauded for its distinctive playfulness with shape and style, as can be seen in the covetable updates

to its iconic Santos this year and the quirky new Tank Asymétrique or Maillon de Cartier.

For this arts issue, we turn our gaze to its Maison des Métiers d’Art in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, where fine watchmaking finds expression through the innovative use of materials on decorative dials.

The 42mm Ronde Louis Cartier Straw and Gold Marquetry timepiece celebrates the remarkable skill of the artisans who, in working with volumes, have created a meticulous bas-relief rendering of nanoscopic detail. The head of the panther is comprised of more than 65 elements in white, yellow, and pink gold, as well as 75 blades of natural straw of different shades that are embedded with yellow-gold wires. Spots on the coat and the eyes are created through traditional enameling.

The artisans push the limits of enameling with the 36mm Enamel Filigree edition.

The glass enamel powder is heated and stretched, and the strands are then set and fixed to the dial with tiny threads of yellow gold to create the bamboo effect.

The prowling panther, bezel, crown, and buckle are set with brilliant-cut diamonds (2.07ct). Although telling the time may not appear to be the main focus here, beyond the brilliance of the dials is the exquisite ultra-thin, hand-wound Calibre 430 MC movement, which is also to be found in the Drive de Cartier ExtraFlat. Both are limited to an edition of 30 pieces each. Price on request, 011 666 2800, cartier.com and fondationcartier.com/en

NEWS 01.

OCEAN TREASURES Based on the first professional diver’s watch launched in 1953, the Blancpain Fifty Fathoms Bathyscaphe was created for everyday use. Reissued in 2013 with more contemporary styling, the Bathyscaphe has been presented in a variety of complications and materials. This year, the 43mm luxe sports watch is offered with a blue dial and bezel with a proprietary Sedna gold case with water resistance to 300m. blancpain.com or Swatch Group SA

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NEW BEGINNINGS This 40mm Patek Philippe Calatrava is a special limited edition of 1 000 to commemorate the completion of the company’s new production building in Geneva. The reference 6007A-001 is Patek’s first release of the year and is presented in stainless steel – extremely rare for Patek – with a broad, cambered bezel and unique graphic, greyblue dial design. patek.com or 011 784 259

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SUMMER READY With Tag Heuer’s recent updates to its Aquaracer collection you can match your wristwear with your eyewear this summer. The two 43mm models sport resin bezel inserts in faux tortoiseshell in blue/ black and red/black colourways. They are powered by the Calibre 5 time/date automatic movement and are ready for summer activities with a water resistance of 300m. tagheuer.com or Picot & Moss 011 669 0500

THE MUSEUM MASTERPIECES COLLECTION

THE SELF PORTRAIT, THE WAVE AND GUERNICA Monnaie de Paris’ Masterpieces Of The Museum collection highlights major works created or exhibited in France each year. Made of .999 fine gold, these proof quality, uniquely square coins have a scarce mintage of only 1,500. The South African Gold Coin Exchange & The Scoin Shop are the proud and exclusive distributor of these breathtaking masterpieces. For the art enthusiast or discerning coin collector. Limited to one (design) per customer.

THE WAVE BY HOKUSAI ¼ OZ GOLD COIN The Wave is reproduced in its entirety on the face of the coins, accompanied by an interior view of the nave of the Grand Palais, which hosted a retrospective of Hokusai’s work in 2014.

THE SELF PORTRAIT BY VAN GOGH ¼ OZ GOLD COIN Between 1886 and 1889, the Dutch Impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh produced a series of selfportraits, one of the most famous, resulting from the three self-portraits of Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, is exhibited at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris.

GUERNICA BY PICASSO ¼ OZ GOLD COIN Made in 1937 in Picasso’s Parisian workshop, Guernica depicts the horror of the bombing of the eponymous Basque city on April 26, 1937, by the German and Italian aviation, allied to General Franco in the context of the Spanish Civil War.

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SHOP ONLINE AT SCOINSHOP.COM | CALL 011 784 8551 T’S & C’S APPLY

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09 / 2020 Sahil Harilal Judd van Rensburg

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a n g Ze o ld i g ne e Erm

STOCKIST ERMENEGILDO ZEGNA 011 326 7767

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STYLE NOTES

09 / 2020

Nokubonga Thusi Sarah Buitendach

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THE DESIGN DREAM

From fauna to the treasures of ancient civilisations, the new Kingdom range of fabrics — a collaboration between Envy & Co and Hertex — is inspired by Africa’s heritage.

It’s undeniably rich and mesmerising.

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hankfully, perfume brand Berdoues wasted no time in thinking of a way to curb our verboten cross-border holiday wanderlust with its new Mix & Match Summer collection. It features two fragrance duos that can be worn as individual scents or layered together. Try the citrus-lacedbasil scent of Corsica’s Calvi Beach mixed with the aromatic woodiness of Venice Beach, or match up the fruity, coconut scent of Sunrise Beach, Thailand, with the vanilla zestiness of Australia’s Bondi Beach.

These little bursts of summer are just what we need right now.

Berdoues Collection Grand Crus Mix & Match Summer Collection, 30ml, R595 each, foschini.co.za

MIX & MATCH

Dolce & Gabbana

hertex.co.za

A REALM THAT ROCKS

This fantastic Paradise Found drinks cabinet is a bespoke piece created by Villa Africa’s founder Philip Tyers.

With its hand-painted portrait detail, it takes functional art to the next level. To commission your own version, go to villaafrica.co

NOTES FROM THE TROPICS Perfect for penning your tell-all memoir and/or extensive shopping lists, these coordinated notebooks are the work of Wanderland Collective and artist Victoria Verbaan. wanderland.co.za

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If hairdryers had Tinder accounts, we’d swipe right on GHD’s new Helios Professional Hairdryer. Before you think we’re, erm, full of hot air, let’s compare notes. Does your current hairdryer give you high-speed drying with quieter sound while styling, give hair 30% more shine, have an ergonomic design that equally balances weight for an overall lighter device, and make hair super smooth with Aeroprecis technology — all at the same time? We thought not. GHD Helios Professional Hairdryer, R2 900, ghdhair.com/za

IMAGES ANDREAS RENTZ/GETTY IMAGES AND SUPPLIED

&

Deborah Bell, Vase R30 000 - 50 000 To be sold on forthcoming North/South Auction, 8 - 12 November 2020

NORTH/SOUTH New cross-country, cross-departmental live virtual flagship auction Modern, Post-War and Contemporary Art, Decorative Arts and Wine 8–12 November 2020

011 728 8246 | jhb@straussart.co.za 021 683 6560 | ct@straussart.co.za www.straussart.co.za

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DOWN TO BUSINESS

09 / 2020 Manelisi Dabata

I COLUMN.

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Lukanyo Mnyanda

“But one has to find a reason, from time to time, to be optimistic — or else SA feels like it’s going to swallow you up”

T’S BEEN a rather testing few months in South Africa. It’s been so long since there was something to be optimistic about that, in a recent conversation with a friend, we found ourselves reminiscing about the early days of the national lockdown.

Perhaps lulled into a sense of security that the lockdown would indeed be just three weeks, we allowed ourselves to be impressed about the new spirit of togetherness as we set out to fight a common enemy in the form of Covid-19. For a few weeks, she said, even Cyril was inspiring, referring to those early days when we used to look forward to President Ramaphosa’s conferences for soothing words and reassurance.

As it is, that didn’t last too long. It’s hard to pinpoint when exactly it went wrong. With hindsight, some say it was rather early in the process. It may have been the dispute about whether Woolworths could sell cooked chicken, or the decision to prevent Takealot from safely delivering goods ordered over the internet. The tobacco and alcohol bans weren’t even controversial then, but people started to suspect that maybe, just maybe, the people in charge

didn’t entirely know what they were doing.

To say it went downhill from there would be a bit of an understatement. It wasn’t long before the national conversation was about corruption and disillusionment over some of the incomprehensible decisions and their devastating impact on the economy. With no light at the end of the tunnel and no reassuring father or (mother) figure to tell us it was going to be alright, South Africa seemed to descend into its everyday state of depression and division.

But one has to find a reason, from time to time, to be optimistic — or else the country feels like it’s going to swallow you up.

And immigration came to the rescue for me again. One morning in July I woke up to the sad news that Andrew Mlangeni, the last of the remaining Rivonia trialists, had died. About an hour later, I found myself witnessing the fruits of his sacrifice at work.

Like many others, I have been to Constitution Hill many times over the years. It was usually one of the first places on the itinerary whenever friends came over. The last of such visits was with my daughters and their cousin, who was on his first trip to the big city. But I’d never

seen the Constitutional Court in action with the judges in session. How fitting that that would be the day.

This particular case involved the citzenship rights of people born outside of this country who found themselves unable to get citizenship due to a home-affairs interpretation of the law that excluded those who hadn’t been registered as citizens before an amendment to the legislation in 2010. It was perhaps written in the stars that the hearing I witnessed would be about the department of home affairs, given my own trials with getting travel documents for children who are part South African.

To cut a long story short, the applicants won and the department was compelled to recognise their citizenship and issue them with the appropriate documents.

Every day, it seems, we despair at the country’s rulers and how they’ve used the lockdown to unleash their worst authoritarian instincts. But witnessing the constitution for which Mlangeni and others sacrificed showing itself, indeed, to be a living document that works for ordinary people (such as attorney Liesl Muller’s clients) meant at least that wasn’t such a day.

Mnyanda is the editor of Business Day

We ’ r e g o i ng b a c k to o ur r o o ts, so w e c a n lo o k a t the futur e in a new li ght – from the landscapes which inspire us to the local designers who explore the essence of great design.

C e l e br at i n g raw be au t y. Sup p o r ting lo c a l. Se a r c hing fo r ne w w a ys o f se e ing & si mpler ways of li vi ng.

Coming soon www.samsung.com

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Samsung continues to pioneer an entirely new category of mobile devices

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EVER BEFORE have we relied on technology like we do today. It’s how we are staying connected as we navigate the extraordinary challenges faced around the world. Technology can make life easier, and complex.

That’s why Samsung continues to create powerful new devices to help people maximise work and play. Together, as part of the Galaxy ecosystem, they work together seamlessly so you can spend your time focused on what matters most. And now Samsung is about to launch the follow-up to one of it’s greatest technological achievements.

THE FUTURE UNFOLDS Meet the device that is changing the shape of the future — introducing the Galaxy Z Fold2.

Galaxy Z Fold2 is for users who want the unique, innovative foldable form factor and enjoy the

“The Galaxy Z Fold2 will reveal another quantum leap forward”

latest technological innovations.

Discover the cutting-edge hinge technology that allows it to fold like a book, stand on its own, and break the rules of what you thought a smartphone should do.

Last year Samsung launched the Galaxy Fold. The Galaxy Fold represented the biggest leap forward in mobile technology since the first smartphones arrived a decade ago.

Samsung continues to pioneer an entirely new category of mobile devices by introducing the next generation of foldables— Galaxy Z Fold2.

After releasing two foldable devices and listening to user feedback on the most requested upgrades and new features, Samsung unveils the Galaxy Z Fold2 with meaningful innovations that offer users enhanced refinements and unique foldable user experiences.

Galaxy Z Fold2 combines the portability and flexibility of a smartphone with the power and screen size of a tablet for ultimate productivity.

Whether folded or unfolded, you can enjoy a luxury mobile experience with Galaxy Z Fold2’s premium design. Hidden behind the Samsung logo on the back, the state-of-the-art hinge is designed to smooth out your every fold and unfold.

The Galaxy Z Fold2 comes packed with two edge-to-edge, nearly bezel-less Infinity-O Displays.

Open Galaxy Z Fold2 to reveal a

7.6-inch tablet-like display, made with Samsung Ultra-Thin Glass for smooth flexibility.

The cover screen is 6.2-inches and the massive main screen is 7.6-inches, making them both larger than the Galaxy Z Fold.

With its sleek design and refined engineering, Galaxy Z Fold2 comes in two equally stunning colours: Mystic Black and Mystic Bronze.

When folded, Galaxy Z Fold2 is a cutting-edge smartphone with a 6.2-inch screen, delivering onehanded comfort.

With Galaxy Z Fold2, Samsung will continue to inspire all-new possibilities for the entire foldable category.

ARTISTS, &

SPACES

SOCIAL MEDIA. ART NOW!

ODYSSEY Online Group Exhibition: 20 October – 3 November 2020

JOHANNESBURG

CAPE TOWN

LONDON

6 Jellicoe Avenue, Rosebank +27 (0)11 788 4805 gallery@everard.co.za

FRANSCHHOEK

Teresa Firmino Race, Class and Shame (detail) 2020 acrylic and collage on canvas 97 x 113 cm

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SSTTA ATTEE O OFF TTH HEE A ARRTT

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A CLICK AWAY

GUIDE TO ART 2020.

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Graham Wood

OR DIFFERENT?

SAME, SAME Graham Wood chats to key figures and commentators in the local art world to try to predict what it might look like after the pandemic

“The move online has really defined this period,” says Mary Corrigall, who heads an art advisory and research consultancy and is the author of South African Art Market: Pricing & Patterns.

“I don’t think the South African art world had really been exploiting the online environment all in all,” she says.

“It was something that everybody was doing a little bit reluctantly, I think,” says Lucy McGarry, director of Latitudes, SA’s newest art fair, which launched in 2019 and this year reinvented itself as an online marketplace.

Five months of lockdown certainly created demand enough to sustain a plethora of virtual viewing and artist

rooms, and online exhibitions.

Art buyers, given no other option, adjusted remarkably quickly to online sales — a hurdle that, once overcome, they are likely to remain comfortable with.

Art fairs and their role in creating sales for galleries, both at home and internationally, have seen major upheaval.

While some international fairs are tentatively resuming live events, local fairs, including the Turbine Art Fair (TAF) and Art Joburg, have launched online events, while Latitudes and design fair Handmade Contemporary (HMC) have abandoned the event-based, time-specific format in favour of a year-round approach.

The secondary market — auction houses — was perhaps better placed than the rest of the art world to weather the pandemic, partly because

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HE COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown hit the art world hard. As a field that seemed to rely heavily on physical presence — from viewing artworks in the flesh to the social whirl of gallery openings and art fairs — lockdown presented a radical disruption.

A lot of heady talk followed about the crisis levelling the playing fields and ushering in a new era. Some commentators even suggested that it might be an opportunity to reset, optimistically predicting that some of the elitism and frivolousness (not to mention the high-paced commercialism that has dogged the art world and sustained a bloated offering of questionable work) would be dismantled, leaving behind something leaner and more vital.

Others remained sceptical that the changes would be lasting, believing that many were simply contingencies that would be abandoned as normality resumed.

There’s no doubt that the lockdown caused both upheaval and innovation, but what changes are likely to be permanent? Some certainly will be hard to reverse, while some old habits might prove surprisingly resilient.

artwork: 1. John Koenakeefe Mohl’s Acacia Karroo in Flower sold for R 170 000 on auction at Strauss & Co in July

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FEELING THE PINCH The state of the economy, at home and abroad, affects the art market too, of course.

“Artists particularly are really very fearful of the fact that, in

the South African economy, people aren’t going to be spending money on art,” says Corrigall.

She elaborates: “The surveys that I’ve done, from artists to gallerists, all confirmed that collectors are spending less.” She points out that the Cape-Town art market, which depends heavily on tourists, is likely to suffer most as “the local economy is expected to contract quarterly by 50%”.

Some galleries, including Smith Studio in Cape Town, have closed their physical spaces, and so has No End in Johannesburg. She adds, however, “I think there is less necessity now for a gallery to have a brick-and-mortar space.”

While the pivot online — particularly among art fairs — has helped many galleries survive lockdown, Corrigall says that the online environment moves slowly, and doesn’t drive concentrated bursts of activity as fairs do.

“What I suspect will come out of it, which I think is very positive, is that there will be less… frenzy for young, hot artists, because it’s very hard to build a frenzy in this kind of situation.” Another positive development, she observes, is the way galleries have begun promoting artists “outside of exhibitions”. However, the downside is that galleries have begun shedding artists because they aren’t able to promote all their artists equally this way.

McGarry adds that, as much as the move online might have made it difficult for artists to secure new or first-time representation with galleries, creating a barrier to entry, it has also opened up new possibilities for them. Online, artists “can test out different ways of selling their work and different relationships to see what works for them”, she says. Some are talented online self-promoters and the opportunity to do so has proved empowering.

Corrigall notes a surge in new online dealers, but remains sceptical about their longevity or long-term value.

“I don’t know how positive that is for the art market, to have so many people dealing online,” she says. In a situation

like this, buyers rely heavily on established and trustworthy brands to guarantee the quality of the works for sale. (This is true for artists too.)

She also notes the additional effort it takes to attract collectors to a virtual platform.

Galleries and fairs have found themselves behaving like media organisations, abandoning their old strategy of emulating “museum-type structures to support the value of an artwork”, as she describes it.

“Now, really, in trying to create value around an artist’s work, you are actually going to rely on the narrative and how you can bring that into an online environment.”

McGarry concurs that once the “glory moment” of launching online passes, “You have to keep thinking of ways to draw traffic to your site, so that’s a continual content-related exercise. There is going to be a big drive for meaningful, engaging, and niche content going forward.”

Corrigall adds that oneon-one appointments and quieter interactions appear to be proving more effective in creating the kinds of conversations that ultimately lead to sales than glamorous gallery openings ever were.

Latitudes actively facilitates introductions between collectors and artists, and McGarry says the response has been resoundingly positive.

THE BRIGHT SIDE Another effect of local galleries having their circuit of international fairs interrupted has been increased concentration on and support for the local market. Neil Dundas, senior curator of the top-tier Goodman Gallery, says the gallery would have taken in eight or nine international fairs a year, and is showing at TAF (online) for the first time this year. TAF concentrates on affordable art, capping prices at R50 000. “This year we felt, more than ever, that it was important to support the base

here at home,” says Dundas, making the point that it was increasingly important to the gallery to nurture local and younger collectors.

McGarry points out that the move online has simultaneously connected galleries and artists to international audiences. “I think that’s, in large part, got to do with the rand and it being so affordable to buy such great works,” she says. Corrigall says that the counterintuitive result of this international reach may well be that local art fairs take on a much more local or regional flavour as they concentrate on local galleries.

The growth of international audiences, however, has been a significant consequence of lockdown all-round. Goodman says that this period has introduced Strauss & Co to “quite a large number of new collectors”. “Consistently, we have reached between 40% and 50% new buyers on each sale,” she says. A good portion of those, she adds, are international buyers who have never bought South African art before. The age profile of buyers in the recent auctions has also changed. “We’ve got a much younger audience coming in,” she says.

The pool of bidders overall has also been much bigger.

“One session in the last sale, there were 1 000 people online,” says Goodman. “You can’t fit 1 000 people in a room watching a sale.”

The auction process online — traditionally opaque, mysterious and intimidating to newcomers — has been demystified by its online format. “It makes the whole process… much easier to understand if you are new to the way of buying art,” says Goodman. The bidding console pops up, you can see exactly where the bids are coming from, and when there is or isn’t interest.

She says that it is unlikely that fine-art auctioneers will ever return to the traditional format. With that follows the likelihood that the amount of information made available — history, condition reports, detailed images — about the artworks on auction will have to be sustained, too. Buyers expect it now.

A fascinating spin-off of this

period has been the abandoning of traditional auction “seasons”.

During lockdown, Cape Town and Johannesburg sales at Strauss & Co were rolled into one, their geographical separation no longer a consideration. The timing of sales is a hangover from the traditional 18th-century seasons when the landed gentry came to London, Goodman explains.

Now, it scarcely matters where they are, or where the auction is. “All of that has gone out of the window,” she says.

Lastly, the prices of works that can viably be sold online have skyrocketed. Until now, online auctions have been most effective selling works priced in the tens of thousands. Under lockdown, Goodman says, there have been paintings worth millions sold online.

The transparency about the pricing of artworks ushered in by the online era is unanimously considered irreversible. The move online has necessitated the clear publishing of the prices, whereas, before, galleries were often secretive about them.

These market adjustments have, in turn, begun to feed back into the practice of artists.

“There is an adjustment that has occurred in art production itself,” says Corrigall. “[Some] artists are saying, ‘We’re making smaller works’; [others] have said to me they’re changing their medium.” Screen-friendly works are likely to be favoured, for a while at least. Although Corrigall also points out that, as a result of art fairs moving online and circumventing the expense and logistical difficulty of transporting large sculptures or installations, they have proved surprisingly popular online.

Whether all these changes amount to the virtuously clean slate is hard to tell. Certainly, at the moment, the art world looks like a place that demands real quality and commitment to succeed. The terms of that success, however, seem significantly less coy than they were: art has made a much more honest admission of its status as commodity, even as the icky sheen of commercialism has been stripped from it.

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most had been running online auctions for a number of years, and quickly developed the capability to hold hybrid online, virtual, and live sales, including telephone bids.

Susie Goodman, executive director at fine-art auctioneers Strauss & Co, says, “In times like this, an auction house takes on a different role, because... the importance of being able to liquidate people’s assets is a responsibility that we have to be able to fulfil. This is a lot of people’s ‘rainy day’.”

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Shaun Uthum

THROUGH

THE LOOKING GLASS SOCIAL MEDIA AND ARTISTS.

Matthew McClure asks whether, post-pandemic, art fairs and galleries will cede power to the social-media artist

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Matthew McClure

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FINDING A NEW WAY Within months, my Instagram feed began buzzing with the vibrant work of young, dynamic, South African artists grappling with the social, political, and cultural material that makes our country unique. Artists and their followers were moving online as screen time multiplied exponentially during one of the harshest lockdowns in the world and gallery openings were put on ice. I wondered whether we were soon to

bear witness to the demise of the commercial power enjoyed by art fairs and galleries, as artists chose digital platforms for their exhibition spaces above the pricey square metres offered by galleries and fairs.

Everard Read is one of the oldest commercial art galleries in Joburg, with office and exhibition spaces in Rosebank, Cape Town, Franschhoek, and London.

Mark Read is the chairman of the group and, in many ways, the face of the gallery’s success. “We prepared for the worst, and we had very little experience with online marketing,” says Read as he gives me a condition report of the gallery for the past few months. “But sales have continued unabated and Everard Read South Africa has done very well.” The gallery’s vast database of loyal clients, the result of relationships nurtured over many years, is what has tided it over during lockdown as buyers and collectors have been inundated with e-vites for virtual openings and exhibitions all over the world.

I try to sense from Read whether he feels galleries are losing their foothold in the uncertainty of an upside-down world where digital has raced ahead. “I’m hesitant to say what the trends are, or what the reality is. It’s tiring to be on the front foot every time. I think the sheer exhaustion of trying to project yourself out there successfully is going to take its toll and people are going to find other things to do,” he says. From what Read tells me, it sounds like this thought is preying on the minds of many who hold a stake in physical art spaces. “The lumbering old institutions will be tested. I think it will affect galleries, and I think the same will be the case with art fairs. The days of giant art fairs will be challenged. Will people want to go to Basel in Miami and stay in giant hotels? I’m not sure.”

Major international art fairs like Art X Lagos, Art Basel Miami Beach, and Frieze Art Fair in London are still being planned as physical events, placed as they are towards the end of the year when viral infection curves have hopefully been flattened. The Sydney Biennale, as an example, has extended its public days between June and September to allow for less visitor congestion.

Art Joburg is the relatively new incarnation of the old Joburg Art Fair, rebranded and with a business model radically changed since my internship days 13 years ago. Its founding director Mandla Sibeko has recently made the bold decision to make the fair entirely virtual. “There’s been a sense of collaboration, or conversations, with the bigger players in the world,” Sibeko says as he describes how he’s been reaching out to international fairs for advice on pioneering an online model for Art Joburg. “We’ve taken a long-term view, because physicality is still so important for the kind of stuff that we do. Online can never replace that.”

Sibeko is aware of the power of social media as a means of communicating and raising awareness of an artist and their work. “It’s important in many ways, because it’s an opportunity for the artist to market themselves, and it’s complementary to what the galleries are doing. They hire professionals to run the online platform, which is something that they never did years ago.” Similarly to Read, Sibeko believes that the networks of local and international collectors fostered over many years by galleries and fairs cannot be replicated by social media. “When you go to the biennales, there’s no energy like it. The location, the environment, the conversations. And, of course, the tourism.”

A CHANGE IN POWER Social media isn’t new, and using online platforms such as Instagram and Facebook as a means of direct exposure and marketing, even less so. However, in an environment where the arts and artists are under more financial pressure than ever before, will social-mediasuperstar artists emerge above galleries and fairs as the new powerhouses of the art world?

Joburg-based artist Puleng Mongale’s collages of rural and urban landscapes have been popping up on my Instagram feed for weeks, every post accompanied by a torrent of likes and comments. “I always shared my work on social media,” Mongale says. “During the lockdown period people have been engaging with it a lot more, but I also think it’s because I share my work more often and I create more often.” Mongale classifies herself as an independent artist and isn’t formally represented by a gallery. She says the traction generated by likes, shares, and follows on social media has raised awareness of her work, especially among galleries and fellow artists. “Ever since galleries have started following me, my sales have increased significantly.” But she’s also aware of the commercial traction that a formal association with a gallery would afford her work, and how the formidable networks of financial value built up by art galleries and art fairs are as unavoidable as they are vague and intangible.

Mongale participated in the online Latitudes Art Fair in July and noticed an increased interest in her work purely because she had exhibited on this forum. “It’s not even about whether the work is good or not — it’s basically about who you know.”

I’ll always remember 2008 as the year in which the Joburg Art Fair created a disruption in the status quo of the art world, promising that new and exciting things were possible. The industry won’t be exempt from the thorough beating that Covid-19 has dealt the globe, but as our conventional value systems and establishments are demolished, the tender shoots of individual expression and enterprise will build upon their foundations to create a world much more nuanced than ever before — and ultimately, isn’t that what’s important?

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N 2008, MY FIRST real job after graduating university was as a publicrelations intern for the first Joburg Art Fair.

It was a heady time. The repercussions of the global recession were just starting to lap at our shores, and South Africans were getting their first bitter taste of loadshedding as Eskom struggled to keep the lights on. In between all of this, and fresh from a fine-art degree, I was learning how to operate my new BlackBerry.

My employer Artlogic was responsible for curating and organising the logistics of South Africa’s first largescale art event since the second and, unfortunately, last Joburg Biennale in 1997. However, unlike a biennale, our fair’s purpose was commercial. Like other art fairs abroad, we would curate a space in which gallerists, artists, and buyers could network and negotiate over a glass of sauvignon blanc. It was all very classy, and we were tagging on to a powerful legacy of art fairs initiated in 1994 by the Armory Show in New York.

The primacy of art fairs and their ability to birth and nurture a matrix of high-net-worth collectors through their cooperation with major commercial galleries has been undisputed for decades. A veil of secrecy usually shrouds the exact sales figures from these events, but those exclusive pre-show, buyers’only tickets were like hen’s teeth. If you could borrow, beg, or steal one of these glittering passes, you were guaranteed to bump into the same champagne-toting, well-heeled VIPs you’d encounter at any gallery opening in the city on a Thursday night. The type who know the gallerist by name and have had the finest examples of work on show tagged with those innocuous red dots hours before you arrived.

Fast-forward 12 years and a microscopic virus — perhaps now more widely travelled than these wealthy collectors — has effectively shredded the exhibition calendars of art fairs, biennales, and galleries all over the world.

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PROFILE.

Nabeeha Mohamed

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Zodwa Kumalo-Valentine

N THE 1970S, the label “Bad Painting” was given to art that showed a deliberate disregard for what traditionally qualified as so-called “good” painting. In 1978, critic Marcia Tucker curated an exhibition of the same name in New York, describing it as work “characterised by deformation of the figure, a mixture of art-historical and non-art resources, and fantastic and irreverent content”. In this instance, “bad” is used ironically and was not meant to denigrate, but rather to elevate it and explore its relevance.

This style of art has influenced many artists, including Cape-Town-based Nabeeha Mohamed, who, as an ardent purveyor, found herself naturally gravitating towards it. Broad brushstrokes of bright colour, oversized cigarettes stuffed in mouths, floral explosions, and curious faces demand the viewer’s attention. While the works appear light and cheerful, there is an underlying sadness in the distortion of faces, colours gently seeping into one

Mohamed recently decided to create portraits out of collages and sell them on Instagram as a fundraising mission under the #CoronaCommissions banner.

“They were born as an exercise in ‘sketching’ (the idea being to use the collages as preparatory drawings for oil paintings) but also as a result of running out of watercolour paint and paper when art-supply stores were still closed and needing to find other creative solutions to make work.”

Mohamed says it’s the puzzle-piecing aspect of collaging that she really enjoys, as well as being able to add a lot more detail than she can when painting. “There’s no conceptual basis, no narrative and no definition required; just these made-up characters that assume form.”

In comparison, her paintings are made quite intuitively.

“While I generally start with a drawing, the composition and colours of any given work almost always change once I’m working on the canvas surface. My paintings always feel very alive to me in that they dictate their own direction, as well as their own end,” says Mohamed.

She has had one solo exhibition and her work has been part of various group shows and art fairs. Her solo show, which opened in February of this year, titled Sunshine on my skin is my favourite colour was “an autobiographical body of work that examined my identity as a womxn of colour in South Africa and a person of wealth privilege. I’m still trying to find a way to discuss and articulate how these identities intersect.”

another, widely grinning dentures sketched in pencil, textbased art with words that sting.

“I am a sensitive person and, although this may sound like an overly ambitious endeavour, my desire is to bring the full spectrum of my emotions into a painting. In doing so, perhaps I can attempt to create a painting that begins to speak to the entirety of what it means to be human. Joy, melancholy, humour, heartbreak, frustration, anger, romance, frivolity.”

Mohamed describes the ever-present almond-shaped eyes, tinted, cat-eye shades, and long, deliberate lashes in her work as a sort of reclamation of the gaze. The eyes are a comment on “the fetishisation of women of colour and the problematic tendency to compare our physical features to food; as if our bodies, like food, are there to be consumed.”

Mohamed also describes her upbringing in a predominantly white school, and grappling with microaggressions she was not overtly aware of when she experienced them.

In a text-based work titled Ethnic Enough, the jarring words lovingly nestled in a gold locket represent a time when she expressed her wish to get a nose ring to a white friend, only to be told that she looked “ethnic enough” without it. While the words were not meant to intentionally hurt, they stung and stayed with Mohamed. However, she chose to hold those words close to her heart rather than obsess over their meaning and allow them to erode her.

“I think beyond much of my subject matter being directly drawn from my life, my work also reflects the spirit of my world. On the surface my work is joyous and playful, but at its core it is built upon melancholy,” she says.

artwork 1. Give Up Girls, 2020

We chat to six young artists blazing the trail 2. Mister Love Machine, 2020

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Cow Mash (@cow.mash)

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Zodwa Kumalo-Valentine

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LEASE call me Cow,” says the artist born Kgaogelo Mashilo, whose sobriquet Cow Mash is derived from both an endearment and the subject of the exploration of her works. “When I was younger — before realising the derogatory connotations of the cow towards a woman — Mom called me Kgaoza, which got shortened to Kgao and ended up sounding like Cow. It stuck; I fell in love with pet-naming myself a whole Holy Cow.” Born in Limpopo in 1994, and now based in Pretoria, the artist is a lecturer at Tshwane University of Technology, currently studying towards her master’s in fine and applied arts, majoring in sculpture. Her most striking works can be viewed on her Instagram account: a series of black-and-white, mixed-media art — some works on canvas — depicting cows personified as women, for example, one kneeling, bent over a seemingly innocuous but immediately identifiable enamel bowl as part of an African household; as well as fashion garments made from material such as silicone.

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artwork 1. Baeletsi (younging and molomo), 2020

2. Tiisa

“My work explores the experiences of existing as a black woman in this contemporary world. There is a lot of heaviness to that. There is also strength, growth, and transformation in the mix of that weight,” she says. The point of reference is always herself but she speaks of issues in a generic way so people can relate and take from it what they want. “Stories of pain and loneliness are not something that I can carry alone.”

Mmadihlofa, the Sepedi word describing a cow that has too much milk, titles her sculpture of a woman sitting on the arm of a chair. Her mammoth breasts are a metaphor for the emotions of women, the heaviness of the weight of the world women carry on their chests. On the base of the chair is a mould of a grass mat or legogwa, traditionally used for women — never men — to sit on. By placing the woman on an elevated surface, she wants to challenge the idea of men sitting on a raised surface; always higher than women.

“There’s a lot that needs to be challenged and to transform when it comes to culture and gender roles, especially in the context of now and gender-based violence. A lot of it stems from what we thought to be culturally right,” says Cow. “Oftentimes I am thinking about cows; how they exist in the meat industry, how they existed in rural communities, idioms and metaphors in Sepedi and in English, and how all of these

3. Holy Kgomo, 2019

can be used to explain or compare the experience of existing as a woman. In some cases, I just create and allow my spirit to lead with the thought of cows or the black body as a starting point.”

Even though Cow is a sculptor, fashion has always influenced her work and how she dresses. “Fashion records cultures; it tells a lot about a certain era by what people are wearing. In my culture, I’m interested in the conversations around how single women are covered or bare-chested and what women wear for marriage ceremonies.” In 2019, she bagged the prize in the fashion category of the PPC Imaginarium, an annual competition that celebrates design innovation.

She has presented smaller, more intimate works at this year’s Turbine Art Fair, the size of which, she clarifies, may and may not have been inspired by lockdown.

“When lockdown first hit it changed the way we moved, the way we thought.” She says it influenced The Herd series — the title is a play on words on the idea of an individual cow in a breeding herd that is likely not heard. It also explores the idea of ear tags — systemising, the herding of cattle — and how relatable it is to women.

Cow works as an independent artist who has exhibited with various galleries, including Circa Everard Read, developing relationships in the art scene until she is ready to make an informed decision and sign up with a gallery, without fear.

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PROFILE.

Lesego Seoketsa

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(@azaniaforest)

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realised something essential was missing and that led her to the doors of Lisof, where a BA in fashion gave her an appreciation for the intricacies of identity politics. “That’s where I think I learned how to develop my practice in art. That really shifted my approach. Maybe I’m just finding a way to merge the two worlds?”

The Mbona Lisa series, she tells me, is a way for her to navigate her position as a black South African woman through visual cues and symbolism that hold intense personal meaning.

“I had these consistent thoughts about my position in the world as a woman, and being black, and being African. Your location in the world also determines your relationship to privilege, to patriarchy, to white supremacy.” Seoketsa draws inspiration from Renaissance-era visual iconography, and uses her work to interrogate the archive of classical art in relation to what was happening in South Africa in the same chronological period. “I always question, during the Renaissance, what was happening here? What were my people doing?” Her use of maize (mbona

in Xhosa), she says, is a signifier for the politically contentious issue of land, land ownership, and femininity in relation to her position in South Africa as a young black woman. “I’m thinking of the reclaiming of land and the process of reclaiming autonomy and our bodies as black women, because women in general are not allowed to have ownership of their identity. We aren’t allowed to freely express ourselves sexually. You can’t express your identity in that way.”

There is a deeply current and considered methodology in Seoketsa’s textural conflation of the rich fertility of earth and land, and what it means to be a woman in a post-democratic South Africa. “It’s a discovery of myself in relation to the world,” she says. “I guess I feel that I’m not a single personality. I have two minds about things all the time. The story is always linked and I’ll have different ways to express it.” Seoketsa has been using the Covid-19 lockdown as a time to focus exclusively on her creative output and to refine some elements of her practice, while also

Matthew McClure

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HE WOMAN in the image stares at us with disinterest.

There is a self-assured confidence in her gaze that contrasts sharply with the faded paintwork and chipped plaster of the brick outhouse behind her. The artificial green door of the Portaloo in the middle distance — a sight sadly familiar in the many informal settlements that dot the South African landscape — is jarring against the softer and more fertile hues of the maize that she clutches to her breast, and that is also strapped to her head with a bright white sash.

The title of this evocative work is Mbona Lisa II, and it is part of a series of photographic collages

by Lesego Seoketsa. This dynamic and intelligent young artist has her finger in many pies, having studied fashion at Lisof, starting her own garment collection called Rise, and also being gifted with a keen eye behind the lens of a camera. After a short stint at university studying biological science, Seoketsa

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branching out into new areas. “I’ve now picked up painting and I’m learning so much. I’d love to go back to school, to be honest.”

Seoketsa’s fresh and vital take on the issues that occupy our social consciousness and public debate is a rare glimpse into the mind of someone at the centre of it all. She is part of an emerging group of artists who are finding their way into South Africa’s art lexicon through means other than traditional art galleries. “I’m studying online. I’m picking up things from friends who are doing the same thing,” she says, listing Zanele Muholi and their recent work in KwaThema as a source of inspiration and activism. “It’s a time for reconstruction, and finding the artist within ourselves.”

artwork 1. Lady Liberty, 2020

2. Lady Liberty II , 2020

3. Crown of Liberty, 2020

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Puleng Mongale

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(@pulengmongale)

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Matthew McClure

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NSTAGRAM HAS been a treasure trove of local creativity during lockdown, and one of its most sparkling jewels is Joburg-based artist Puleng Mongale. Having originally studied communications science and English, she soon realised her creative itch needed some serious scratching. It was while she was working as a creative director at Umuzi, a contentcreation service provider, that people first started taking serious notice of her talent. Intimate Strangers was produced during her time there, and is a four-part photographic series that debuted in 2016, giving her a taste for styling, photography, and art direction. The series was widely shared on social media and resulted in her purchasing her own photographic equipment and experimenting with the technique of collage.

Mongale’s imagined, photoshopped landscapes are vivid renderings of a life she yearns for; one that deftly avoids the tropes of abject

artwork 1. Lord Lift Us Up Where We Belong, 2019

poverty that we see so much of in photographic work that depicts South Africa’s rural environments.

She says living in Johannesburg has always made her feel slightly displaced. “I grew up in Soweto. I didn’t realise this at the time, but Joburg is very Zulu dominated.

I’m a Tswana girl, Sotho speaking.

There’s that thing in townships of being black but still being ‘othered’ because you weren’t part of the mainstream language, which is isiZulu.”

Her works are an answer to this, a form of intensely personal catharsis into which she inserts images of herself and, in some cases, her mother. Her selfportraits are placed like foreign objects in their settings, sometimes sitting slightly uncomfortably on burnt and blackened grass or a glossy parquet floor, occasionally with vestiges of the built environment haunting the backdrop like the threads of a dream from the night before.

“I always have this longing to be part of a culture that’s in my blood but doesn’t translate to how I live or who I am.”

Mongale’s presence in her concocted landscapes is as much a fantasy as the environments themselves. “I’m trying to connect with that part of me that I feel like the city has diluted to such a great extent, and also trying to 1. just reimagine how it would be had I been involved in that kind of upbringing.” Her mother, she says, is a natural storyteller and is her closest link to the rural settings 2. Manyeloi a phelang, 2019 she attempts to evoke through her works. “She’s the one person who did grow up in the Free State and townships that side, so she’s literally like the bridge for me.” Mongale’s work also laments the lack of a reliable historical archive of rural culture, of the everyday motions of millions of people living on the fringes of our cities. “It still breaks my heart, the lack of archiving of our ordinary day-to-day lives as black people. There were ordinary lives that we never got to be a part of because there’s no documentation of it.” In this sense, her works are also romanticised, nostalgic reconstructions of a narrative that has been largely lost to urbanisation and the deeply destructive processes of the apartheid state that sought to dismantle any culture other than its own.

Reactions to and feedback on her work have been positive, but also surprising. Mongale relates how viewers sometimes immediately associate the landscapes she depicts with destitution and deprivation. “There’s a life; there’s an identity beyond the trauma that we’ve experienced. There’s beauty there.” As young people crave the bright lights of the fast-paced and glamorous city, there’s an aversion to their families’ places of origin that Mongale’s work is starting to challenge. “It affects us so much — not having a sense of what home really is, or being so disconnected from that.”

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PROFILE.

Zwelethu Machepha

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(@izwelethu.machepha)

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Paula Andropoulos

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WELETHU Machepha was born in 1990 in Soweto. On completing high school, Machepha attended art classes intermittently at both the Johannesburg Central Library and at the Joburg Art Gallery, discovering in the process what can only be described as a mine of innate talent and technical capability. Encouraged by his mounting enthusiasm for visual artmaking, Machepha completed a printmaking course at a specialised institution, which he characterises as his only formal training. “I made a conscious decision to take my art seriously in 2010, when I said to myself, ‘Fuck it’, and took a leap of faith,” Machepha recalls. “I quit my job, enrolled in the printmaking course, and started to produce artworks.

I was motivated by the fact that art allowed me to become myself and gave me the ability to do what I wanted; it was a turning point for me as a creative.”

Machepha is a multidisciplinary artist by nature,

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artwork 1. Karabo Malebaco

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but is currently focused primarily on drawing and portraiture.

“I don’t have a preferred medium: the materials I work with include but are not limited to fine-line pens, charcoals, embroidery, acrylics, Indian ink, watercolours, and pastels.”

The charcoal portraits that currently feature most prominently on his Instagram page are a testament to the artist’s highly developed sense of the complexities surrounding personhood.

These works give the illusion of a continual flicker, of motion suspended on the page, evoking dynamic features that deny the viewer a definitive snapshot of the identity of Machepha’s subjects. Multiple faces dance across the plane of a single head; transience and synchronicity are at the fore of his renderings.

“The works were meant to go on exhibition at the 1-54

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Contemporary African Art Fair in New York, but things are on hold due to the pandemic.

So, I’m keeping busy and working on studio projects,” Machepha says.

In terms of local influences, he admires Themba Khumalo, Nhlanhla Nhlapo, Lady Skollie, and Nelson Makamo, to name but a very few. “I have not been following a lot of [international] artists, but I am inspired by Bisa Butler, Kerry James Marshall, Ryunosuke Okazaki, and Joana Choumali, a visual artist based in Côte d’Ivoire — I think her work is mind-blowing.”

Machepha has participated in an array of exhibitions and has had residencies at Assemblage in South Africa, and in Italy at the Centro Luigi Di Sarro. That said, he’s known to be reticent and somewhat shy about discussing his work; wary of lapsing into a state of selfobsession. Given the outward, societal focus of most of his artworks, this is not entirely surprising — he is evidently always working in service of overlooked contingents of South African society. This is perhaps most notable in Slaves Without Masters (2017), a striking collection of visual documents that narrates the activities of South Africa’s waste reclaimers. Sometimes called South Africa’s “street surfers”, these men and women are after all an omnipresent but voiceless cultural force, which has only recently begun to attract critical discussion. In this respect, Machepha was three or four years ahead of the curve, but I doubt that his humility would permit him to acknowledge it.

Machepha has made the most of the rare solitude the global pandemic precipitated: “I have not been negatively affected by Covid-19; instead, the quiet time has encouraged me to engage with my work more, and has allowed me time to play, to be more expressive than experimental.”

He does not think that the significance of art is peculiar to the moment; or, if it is, “maybe it is for people who are only experiencing (or engaging) with art now for the first time. Art has always been important and valuable; it’s the best therapy that offers us healing at the moment. That alone creates the value of art: the fact that it offers you more than a prescription.”

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PROFILE.

Katlego Tlabela

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Paula Andropoulos

“M

Y childhood birthed many introductions to art,” says Katlego Tlabela.

“Whether it was my collection of Disney books, or drawing in the sand in Limpopo, or seeing my uncle drawing caricatures of his friends, or even repeatedly watching The Lion King, or Dragon Ball Z, and then drawing from memory later on.” Tlabela recalls “monetising” his artistic talents when he was still a child: apparently, he used to charge for the graffiti tags his school friends commissioned from him, sometimes just to adorn their bookbags. “Because I hardly received any pocket money for school, I would charge for my talents, and that would bring me joy — I, too, could then eat hot dogs or pies for lunch, like my peers.

Passion, storytelling, and being able to live off my talent and hard work all motivate me.”

Tlabela was born in Pretoria in 1993 but spent most of his life in Cape Town, from pre-school until the completion of his BA at

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UCT’s Michaelis School of Fine Arts, where he ultimately majored in printmaking. Today, he splits his time between Pretoria, Johannesburg, and Cape Town.

In addition to his printmaking prowess, Tlabela is a selftaught painter, with a penchant for lurid colours, intimate, domestic tableaux, and a signature surrealism that unfailingly elevates each of his pieces. “I’ve been learning to paint since February 2020, so it’s difficult to label myself as ‘painter’ as yet. This is because I’m still learning, but also because I’m a printmaking major. I try not to box myself in. My goal for each major body of work is to vary in medium.” Since graduating from Michaelis in 2017, Tlabela has exhibited extensively, both at home and in Brazil, Poland, and Portugal (Ganda and the Rhino Project, 2014-15), London (Medium is the Message, 2020), and Lagos, to name but a few. In 2021, Tlabela will be exhibiting solo in The Netherlands.

At present, Tlabela is working on a multitude of projects for upcoming exhibitions, auctions, and collaborations. In particular, he’s finessing his latest project, Nouveau Riche. It’s a body of work that speaks to the intersections between Instagram-capitalism-culture and black identities and aspirations, in a post-apartheid landscape. It toys with the concepts of luxury, lifestyle, and the world of the “nouveau riche”, as these variously present in contemporary South African society. This is not to say that the project is a condemnation of status-mongering, however; Tlabela’s approach to the pursuit of black capital is refreshingly celebratory and tender — a clever, beautiful tribute to the “black diamond” generation and all it augurs for the future.

Tlabela has been reluctant so far to comment on the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic on his artistic practice, citing the “struggling-artist” stereotype as a deterrent: “I am not saying the stereotype is false, but the truth is, most of us were struggling prior to Covid-19. But most of us are resilient, and that resilience has been heightened during this time of adversity.

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I didn’t have a studio before (the pandemic), nor do I have one now. I just proudly own a table, some canvases, and some paints. I have tried to acknowledge the effect of Covid-19, but not let it affect my practice and career,” Tlabela says. “It would be redundant to give it the power to dismantle the research and work I’ve put in thus far. I have only referenced the pandemic once in my work (Upper Eastside, New York), and I doubt I would do it again. I want to think beyond this global disaster. I’m thinking legacy and not temporary.”

Tlabela refuses to restrict the value of art and artists to this historical moment, rejecting any faddish veneration of art in times of crisis. “It raises the question, what happens postpandemic? Where was the interest in buying and viewing art before Covid-19? I’d like to compare it to the new hiking phenomenon. Everybody is hiking now, but what happens when the clubs and movie theatres open up? Will there be as much interest in hiking then? Only time will tell.”

artwork 1. Ikoyi, Lagos

2. Bust Study I of III

3. Dubai Desert, UAE

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Chuma Maweni 2.

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Sarah Buitendach lays out her selection of art plates to suit all palates and palettes

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artwork 1. Lucinda Mudge,(from left) Bad bad boy, 2019; I just can’t get enough, 2019; Unchain my heart, 2019, Everard Read everard-read.co.za 2. Chuma Maweni, Blue plate, 2020, Southern Guild southernguild.co.za 3. Rise and Shine Works, Johannesburg Travelling Willow plate, 2020, riseandshineworks.co.za 4. Eugene Hön (from left) Untitled I, 2019; Xenophobia I, 2019, eugenehon.com 5. Ruan Hoffmann, (from left) Bird People, 2020; Around and Very Close, 2020 (on auction at Strauss & Co in November) straussart.co.za

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Ruan Hoffmann

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O G GO O TTHHEE PPLLAACCEESS TTO

09 / 2020

PRIVATE SCULPTURE PARKS.

ART IN THE OPEN

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Fresh air. Beauty.

Open space. Everything we’re all craving in one convenient package.

Here’s the Wanted guide to private sculpture gardens, and some public art, to explore

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Richard Holmes

Everard Read Sculpture Garden

Benguela Cove Sculpture Park

The new kid on the block, the Everard Read Sculpture Garden, is just about to open in Franschhoek. They’ve already got a beautiful gallery up the main drag of the winelands town but the new indoor and outdoor gig, which is part of the Leeu Estates property, is an utter delight. The new outdoor offering links to Leeu’s already glorious sculpture park and kilometres of property to ramble through, and features works by the likes of Speelman Mahlangu, Beth Diane Armstrong, and Deborah Bell.

It’ll be our 2020 summer art hangout for sure.

Anton Smit’s work is found on many upscale estates in the Cape winelands, but the opening of a dedicated sculpture park at Benguela Cove in late 2019 has provided a permanent home for his work down south. Overlooking the Bot River Lagoon, the waters of Walker Bay not far off, the estate is home to 90 sculptural works, each placed alongside a poem or snatch of verse that has inspired Smit’s creative journey. Aside from the art, from 24 September the estate will reopen for dining, wine tasting, cellar tours and lagoon cruises.

everard-readfranschhoek.co.za Free admission

benguelacove.co.za Free admission

artwork: 1. Dylan DylanLewis LewisSculpture SculptureGarden, Garden,Male MaleTrans-Figure Trans-FigureVV 2.2. Norval NorvalFoundation, Foundation,Again AgainAgain AgainbybyBrett BrettMurray; Murray;Volition VolitionbybyMichele MicheleMathison Mathison 1.

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Nirox Foundation

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While Covid-19 has seen the gates of Nirox locked tight for the last while, it’s worth adding to your hotlist for when this all (finally) blows over. Situated west of Johannesburg in the Cradle of Humankind, this lively garden is yet another reason to plan a weekend break in this corner of Gauteng. Angus Taylor’s enormous Morphic Resonance is a centrepiece of the garden, but allow yourself ample time to discover the growing permanent collection of works donated to the garden though its artist-residency programme. niroxarts.com Admission: R120pp (under-12 free)

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MAGES DYLAN LEWIS, ELSA YOUNG;.PARDUS; SMANGALISO KHUMALO, ALET PRETORIUS/GALLO IMAGES; EVERARD READ, MICHAEL HALL AND SUPPLIED

Norval Foundation With a fine restaurant under the knife of chef Phil de Villiers, a boutique full of covetable design-forward goodies and — oh yes — airy galleries of innovative contemporary art, it’s easy to skip past the charming sculpture garden at the Norval Foundation in the Cape-Town suburb of Constantia. But you’d be mad to. Set around a natural wetland, the garden features pieces by the likes of Brett Murray, Yinka Shonibare, and Michele Mathison. Indoors, a trio of new exhibitions featuring works by Zanele Muholi, Jackson Hlungwani, and AthiPatra Ruga awaits.

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norvalfoundation.org R150pp (under-18s free), free on first Thursday of each month

3. Benguela Cove, Agapé Effervescent by Anton Smit 4. Nirox Foundation, performance artist Smangaliso Khumalo 5. Anton Smit Sculpture Park, Faith 6. Everard Read Sculpture Garden, Howler by Jop Kunneke

Anton Smit Sculpture Park

Forget about syrah, your next visit to Stellenbosch should be for the sculpture in this garden fashioned from a tract of disused farmland. Aside from its remarkable landscaping, the garden’s 60-odd works offer a fascinating timeline of Lewis’ creative journey: from his very first bronze sculpture — a small bird — through to the monumental works that erupt from the hilltops, framed by the surrounding mountains. In between you can glimpse the creative process in the artist’s former studio, admire the shamanistic sculptures of Untamed, and discover his new “sculptural sketches” centred on the human journey. A small café offers light refreshments. dylanlewis.com/garden R150pp (under-18 free), visits strictly by appointment

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On a high plateau overlooking Bronkhorstspruit Nature Reserve, this sculpture park is the cultural highlight of this sleepy corner of Gauteng. An hour’s drive from Joburg, it’s an ideal day trip from the city.

Working mostly in metal and stone, Smit is perhaps most famous for his fractured and fragmented expressions of the human form. In the park, dozens of iconic works are carefully sited amid natural rock formations, succulent gardens, and manicured lawns.

The on-site gallery offers a range of Smit’s work for sale, while the Art Café dishes up a compact menu of light meals and drinks. antonsmit.co.za Free admission

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Dylan Lewis Sculpture Garden

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T H E P L AC E S TO G O

09 / 2020

photography

Judd Van Rensburg

PUBLIC, OUTDOOR ART.

The heart of SA public art: The Johannesburg inner city

N A TIME WHEN experiencing art in crowded galleries and museums is challenging and everyone from all walks of life needs a morale boost, public art has never been more important. The Johannesburg inner city lays claim to hundreds of pieces of public art, created both as part of a government art policy and donated by corporate and private investors. It’s hard to pick just a few, but for all the William Kentridge fans, Fire Walker, located just off the Queen Elizabeth Bridge, is a must-see. The 11m-high fragmented sculpture depicts a female street hawker with a burning brazier on her head.

The Newtown Precinct is home to hundreds of wooden

ART ON THE STREETS

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Jo Buitendach

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heads, created by sculptor Americo Guambe and a team of artisans. Originally installed nearly two decades ago, and then refurbished in 2018, the artworks were created using repurposed railway sleepers and depict the diverse people who call the City of Gold home.

Drive along Bertrams Road on a sunny day and you cannot miss a glistening mosaic by inner-city artist and

resident Andrew Lindsay.

This eye-catching red, white and black artwork, located on a row of historic mining houses near Ellis Park Stadium, pays tribute to the 1922 miners’ strike.

Situated in the former heart of Johannesburg’s jewel-and-diamond precinct and neighbouring the artistic Maboneng Precinct, Jewel City is a new billion-rand investment from Atterbury.

Comprising of mixed-use retail, commercial and residential spaces, this large pedestrianised city space also boasts some beautiful murals by leading Johannesburg artists Dbongz and Dekor One. While most cities see pigeons as a hindrance, Johannesburg creates a sculpture to honour them.

Part of the government art programme and designed by artists Gerhard Marx and Maja

Marx, the origami-inspired Paper Pigeons are located in the historic Ferreirasdorp neighbourhood. Standing at about 3m high, the sculptures include perching rods for the local pigeon community that is fed on the site daily. And an honourable mention for graffiti and street art… On top of Joburg’s more official artworks, the city is fast becoming known as a graffiti and streetart destination. Drawing in top local and international artists, including Shepard Fairey and Vhils, vibrant, crazy throwups, stencils, tags, and stickers snake their way across the walls of many downtown neighbourhoods including Newtown, Braamfontein, and Jeppestown.

artwork:

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1. Gerhard Marx and Maja Marx, Paper Pigeons 2. Mural by Dbongz 3. Andrew Lindsay, 1922 Strike 4. William Kentridge, Fire Walker 5. Graffiti by Zesta, Page33, Dreda, Breeze Yoko, and Mr Ekse

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HILE the world braces for the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, investors experiencing losses are questioning whether their once-careful financial plans are still sound. This sense of anxiety in the face of the unknown is driving more South Africans to seek out financial planners, many of them for the very first time.

From the onset of the national lockdown in March until May this year, Old Mutual Wealth saw an increase in new clients seeking the help of a financial planner. How will current investments weather further volatility? Are last year’s money goals realistic now — or even relevant anymore? These questions are top of mind for investors.

These increasing figures demonstrate the recognised value of financial planning in times of uncertainty. Unlike the economic and political crises we’ve faced in the past, the health crisis created by the coronavirus pandemic has resulted in personal pandemonium and wide-reaching socio-economic consequences that have affected the performance of our investments.

In times of crisis, it’s important to remember that most of our decisions are based on fear and scarcity. A financial planner can help take the emotion out of the moment and help you see the situation more clearly.

To get the most value from a financial planner, you should see them less as an instructor and more as a financial coach. An excellent financial planner acts more like a partner and provides you with the space to come up with the solution that best suits you. Instead of expecting a monologue from your financial planner, you should engage in active conversation.

HERE ARE SIX WAYS TO GET THE MOST OUT OF YOUR FINANCIAL PLANNER: 1. TAKE AN INTEGRATED APPROACH At Old Mutual Wealth, our Integrated Wealth-Planning philosophy, coupled with our Wealth Integrator, allows us to centre our approach around the client’s desired lifestyle. We believe this should be the starting point in any wealthplanning discussion.

Our approach to partnering with you on your wealth-creation journey should

Both parties must understand clearly what the client wants their money to do for them. It’s not about the best return possible, but rather the appropriate strategy to achieve the life the client wants.

If the only conversations you’re having with your financial planner are around performance, you might need to reconsider what you’re paying them — there are many other variables that you can control in your planning that will have a bigger impact on the success of your plan. Integrated Wealth Planners know how to have the right kinds of conversation.

THE CRITICAL ROLE OF THE FINANCIAL PLANNER IN TIMES OF UNCERTAINTY 4. LET THEM HOLD YOU ACCOUNTABLE

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Sharon Moller

Expert advice is hugely important, but knowing what to do is not the same as getting it done.

Your financial planner should always set you tasks at the end of each meeting. The accountability that they then provide by following up is one of the biggest benefits this partnership has to offer.

5. BE OPEN AND ASK LOTS OF QUESTIONS not start with what you don’t want, but rather with a clear view of the lifestyle you desire.

Once we have identified that ideal lifestyle, we can calculate the return required in order to sustain it.

We can then recommend the ideal asset allocation that will achieve this return most reliably over time, which entails a certain amount of risk. If you are uncomfortable with the risk, we reconsider the lifestyle and other possible trade-offs.

2. BE HONEST WITH YOURSELF A successful investment strategy requires self-awareness. If, for example, you have a history of impulsive spending that keeps you from meeting your goals, start by admitting this to yourself. We all have behavioural patterns around money. Cultivating a willingness to see them will make it

easier for your financial planner to get you where you want to be.

3. SHARE FULLY AND AUTHENTICALLY The best planner in the world can’t help you if you don’t disclose the nittygritty of your financial life. Neglecting to mention specific details is only cheating yourself. It is not the planner’s job to judge you, rather, they should create a safe space in which you can freely put all your numbers on the table. And not just your numbers, but your thoughts and feelings too, as these are a big part of finding the strategy that’s right for you.

Feeling a sense of security with a planner will help to bring the best out of the partnership. This is more likely to be achieved when the client and the planner have a shared investment philosophy and can agree on what direction to take.

Since you’re paying for an expert and objective perspective, it makes sense to stay sincerely open to feedback, changes and new ideas — even when this takes you way beyond your comfort zone.

And if there’s something you don’t understand, ask until you do. The more willing you are to ask and to learn, the more you’ll gain from your planner.

6. TAKE FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR MONEY Don’t outsource your financial decisions to anyone, not even to your financial planner. Clients must participate in cocreating their investment strategy. We often find that if a client doesn’t fully own their decisions, they aren’t likely to stick to their investment plan, however solid it may be.

Sharon Moller is a financial-planning coach at Old Mutual Wealth. oldmutual.co.za/ wealth

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READ ALERT

09 / 2020 Shannon Daniels

COLUMN.

A FIGHTING CHANCE

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N THE CLOSING PASSAGE of Tsitsi Dangarembga’s new novel her character Tambu observes: “There is more war in your country’s way of peace than any of you had expected.”

The line is eerily prescient, given that as I write this, the author has just been arrested during protests in Harare.

It had been a triumphant week for the 61-year-old writer and filmmaker, after she had been longlisted for the esteemed Booker Prize, but the weekend found her slammed up in a cell after she was picked up by the feared security agencies.

This Mournable Body ( Jacana) is the third book in a trilogy. The first, Nervous Conditions, was published in 1988. It is the first book published in English by a black Zimbabwean woman, and was instantly acclaimed. It won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 1989 and recently the BBC voted it as one of the top 100 books that changed the world.

Set in the last days of Rhodesia as it was heading for independence, the story centres on two girl cousins, Tambu and Nyasha, as they kick against the crushing inequality and sexual discrimination of their society. It begins with the famous line, “I was not sorry when my brother died.” With him out of the way, Tambu can step up as heir apparent in the family, including having access to a decent education. But traditional ways run deep, as she discovers.

The book is also an acidic portrait of colonialism, which Dangarembga further explores in the sequel, The Book of Not. The curtain rises, hideously, on a severed

The eyes of the world are on Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga, and not just because her latest book is in the running for the Booker Prize text

Michele Magwood

THIS MOURNABLE BODY Tsitsi Dangarembga

leg flying through the air and getting hooked in a tree. It serves throughout the story as a metaphor for the ongoing war of independence.

Here we find Tambu attending a prestigious, predominantly white convent school and suffering both the overt and the subtle violences of racism meted out by the nuns and her schoolmates.

But she is determined to escape from her rural upbringing and absorbs the warping cruelties as she focuses on her goal and the ideal of assimilation. Not

surprisingly, these will be unfulfilled, and she can never satisfy the demands of her impossible family.

We turn to This Mournable Body eagerly, then, to find out how Tambu has fared.

She is living in a run-down hostel, having thrown in her job at an advertising agency, where the white colleagues had taken her best copy and put their names to it. Still remorselessly upwardly-mobile, she hunts for jobs in her precious Lady-Di shoes. There is something worrying going on here, though, that Dangarembga

enhances by writing in the second person.

Tambu is numb — numb to the attack on a provocatively dressed woman at a taxi rank; numb to the striving and setbacks of her fellow women. She sees them only as adversaries.

She asks herself, “When you were young and in fighting spirit, growing mealie cobs in the family field and selling them to raise money for your school fees, you were not this person you have become. When and how did it happen?”

And then she is offered a job in an eco-tourism company. It is a dream come true, complete with a bungalow. No more dodgy accommodation; pride again for the family that she has a smart job, a proper salary. But the company is owned by her old foe, Tracey Stevenson. Tracey, who unfairly beat her to the honours roll at school. Tracey, who worked at the ad agency and turned a blind eye to the racism there.

Once again, Tambu absorbs the arrows, and Dangarembga is slyly funny sending up the tourism business. But when the company takes a group of European visitors for an “experiential” visit to her rural village, the clash between tradition and capitalism, the old ways and modernity, erupts humiliatingly.

In one interview Dangarembga expanded on the title, which was inspired

by Teju Cole’s essay titled “Unmournable Bodies”.

“Women often find it difficult to mourn themselves and their circumstances. In Zimbabwe today a lot of women think they are born to put up with all sorts of abuse. It is the idea that society foists on women that suffering is a woman’s lot.”

The word “seminal” has come to be slapped on any outstanding work, but its true meaning is of something that strongly influences later developments. Nervous Conditions is a truly seminal book that led the way for a blaze of Zimbabwean women writers.

Petina Gappah, Novuyo Rosa Tshuma, Sue Nyathi, NoViolet Bulawayo, Panashe Chigumadzi, and Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu are just some of the writers following Dangarembga’s trail.

After her arrest, she tweeted: “Friends, here is a principle. If you want your suffering to end, you have to act. Action comes from hope. This [is] the principle of faith and action.”

This month the shortlist of the Booker Prize will be announced, and Dangarembga returns to court to face charges of incitement to commit violence and breaching anti-coronavirus health regulations.

There will be many watching the outcome of both.

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09 / 2020

Denis Droppa

MOTORING

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N ZEN AND THE ART of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M Pirsig writes: “In a car you’re always in a compartment, and because you’re used to it you don’t realise that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame.

“On a motorcycle the frame is gone.

You’re completely in contact with it all.

You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.”

Pirsig’s words will ring true to many a biker who equates riding with freedom, and the sentiments take on even more

FREEDOM ON TWO WHEELS From left: Journey on Route 62; (top) Triumph Tiger

THE BEST COUNTRY ROUTES TO HIT FOR BREAKFAST RUNS

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hether you’re cruising on a Harley or scorching around on a superbike, here are some of the best riding routes in Jozi and Cape Town.

Shake off lockdown’s cabin fever with BMW’s and Triumph’s new bikes

2020 / 09

meaning in these times of restricted liberties. As we emerge from winter and a pandemic-enforced hibernation, it’s time to hit the open roads on a two-wheeler. The breakfast runs beckon.

With the eased lockdown regulations and warmer weather luring more people outside, BMW and Triumph have timeously launched new bikes in SA to feed the wanderlust.

TRIUMPH TIGER 900 This is the successor to the popular Tiger 800, a middleweight adventure bike that made its debut in 2010.

The versatile tourer and gravel motorcycle gets a power boost and the

latest technology.

A 100CC (cubic capacity) increase to the three-cylinder engine, along with the bike being 5kg lighter, has made a punchier performer out of the British machine. It also gets more vocal charm — a change in the engine’s firing order gives it a gruffer voice.

Two versions of the Tiger 900 are on sale in South Africa: the off-road-focused Rally Pro at R229 000 and the more tarbased GT Pro at R225 000.

The Rally Pro tackles bumpy adventure trails with a higher ground clearance and more rugged wire-spoked wheels, while the road-oriented GT Pro has a lower seat more suited to shorter riders, along with

electronically adjustable rear suspension.

Both versions come with a heated seat and hand grips, making the Tiger 900 a more cold-weather-friendly bike.

A raft of high-tech features includes ABS brakes, traction control, and various rider-selectable modes including Rain, Road, Sport, and Off-Road. These modes, and various other features, are displayed on a TFT digital screen. Roads less travelled can be explored with the integrated My Triumph connectivity system which enables phone-call and music operation, turn-by-turn navigation, and GoPro control.

A quickshifter allows gears to be swiftly changed without using the clutch

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“On a motorcycle the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all.

You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming”

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or releasing the throttle, and the generous spec sheet is rounded off by cruise control and an underseat USB charger for cellphones.

BMW S 1000 XR Outgrown crotch-rocket superbikes and looking for a high-adrenaline buzz without the sore wrists? Devour distance with comfort and real gusto on the S 1000 XR, a tourer with a sporting heart.

The potent 1 000CC four-cylinder engine is transplanted straight from BMW’s track-bred superbike, but the XR is an adventure-sports bike with an upright seating position and big windscreen that are made for comfy long-distance touring.

It’s a bike that enjoys corners too, and the 2020 version has shed 10kg to give it improved agility. ABS and traction control manage all the muscle, with four ride modes plus wheelie control.

The S 1000 XR swops its old analogue clocks for a modern digital instrument panel, offering tailor-made displays.

The front and rear lights are LEDs, and the headlight comes with an optional cornering function.

The new S 1000 XR also adopts engine drag torque control (MSR) for the first time, an electronically controlled system that prevents the rear wheel from slipping as a result of abrupt throttling or downshifting.

The S 1000 XR retails for R240 000. BMW has also bolstered its local motorcycle range with a more budget-friendly F900 middleweight sport bike in two versions: the naked F900 R “roadster” for R164 700 and the more touring-friendly F900 XR with a windscreen for R169 100.

CLARENCE DRIVE (R44)

01 For scenic beauty there’s little to beat this iconic 21km road that hugs the turquoise coastline between Gordons Bay and Rooi-Els. It’s a smooth road with plenty of corners, but wake up early if you want to experience the curves at a faster pace as later the road becomes popular with slow-moving, sightseeing tourists.

FRANSCHHOEK PASS (R45)

02 This rollercoaster of a road provides dramatic scenery as it curves, rises, and dips through the mountains.

A road like this deserves to be ridden twice, so after stopping for breakfast in Franschhoek and letting the adrenaline settle, turn around and ride it again in the other direction.

ROUTE 62

03 Fancy a longer ride? Head out to Route 62 and pick a section of this snaking, scenic road that stretches for 248km from Oudtshoorn to Ashton in the Klein Karoo. It passes through picturesque farming towns and entertainingly twisty mountain passes, including the Cogmanskloof Pass connecting the towns of Ashton and Montagu.

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CAPE TOWN

900 instrument panel; (bottom) BMW S1000 XRXR instrument panel; BMW S1000 XR; Railroad station serving thethe Cullinan diamond mine 900 instrument panel; (bottom) BMW S1000 instrument panel; BMW S1000 XR; Railroad station serving Cullinan diamond mine

THE CRADLE OF HUMANKIND

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The Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site is home to fossils of some of the earliest known life forms on Earth, but is more recently frequented by helmeted homo sapiens on two wheels. It includes the scenic R540 Kromdraai road that passes the Rhino and Lion Nature Reserve and is a gateway to tourist hotspots like the Sterkfontein Caves and Maropeng.

Wide-open spaces and breakfast venues abound along the roads meandering through the Magaliesberg mountains via Hekpoort, Broederstroom, and Hartbeespoort.

The R400 “satellite road” is a favourite of breakfast runners who like to open the throttle a little.

Located 30km east of Pretoria, the site of the world’s biggest diamond find is also a geographical jewel for bikers who come to experience the little town’s quaint restaurants, street cafes, and old-school charm.

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NAVIGATOR 09 / 2020

D i sp a t ch e s o n a l l t h i n g s c ool , c ove t a bl e , a n d c onve r s a t i o n - wo r t hy

W E A S K E D A R T L O V E R S A B O U T T H E P I E C E S T H A T M A K E T H E M H A P P Y — B E C A U S E S O M E T I M E S T H A T ’ S A L L W E N E E D

1.AYANDA

MABULU

2020 / 09

LANGA KHANYILE CEO, Sun Media piece of art that makes me happy is King Poetic

by Ayanda Mabulu. The piece is a large, mixed-media ode to jazz legend Miles Davis (complete with an actual trumpet). The artwork is bright, brash, and unaffected.

It lords over me in my home office and reminds me to keep pressing against the boundaries of the mundane and the confines of the acceptable.

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Thembalethu Zulu and Sarah Buitendach

SAME MDLULI Manager, Standard Bank Gallery ’ve been reading the book Listening to Distant Thunder: The Art of Peter Clarke by Philippa Hobbs and Elizabeth Rankin. While there are many of Clarke’s works that I have been drawn to, one resonates with me most. It is an early gouache painting from 1944, painted when he was still a schoolboy.

The work is quite simply titled Rest, with the word inscribed at the bottom of the painting by the young Clarke. It depicts ships on the dock and has a delightful naivety to it. It reminded me of how children mostly make pictures from imagination and how having an imagination is important in a time of uncertainty.

I thought back to my own childhood drawings and remembered the joy of getting lost in my imagination as young girl.

MONDLI KUNENE, Artist create art to raise awareness about contentious issues in Africa and how they resonate with the rest of the world. None of that would be possible without the woman who conceived me. A mother’s touch is important to a child. Her physical, emotional, or spiritual touch contributes to the child’s wellbeing: how they grow up and become self-aware, ultimately contributing to society positively.

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ELANA BRUNDYN CEO, Norval Foundation love the way Georgina Gratrix uses thick, highly textured layers of paint, and her palette of brilliant colours fills me with joy. Pink Pop (Still Life with Hylton Vase and cheese curls) depicts an added love of mine — the Hylton Nel vase with cat.

The painting is quintessential Georgina: humorous, playful, endearing, but with an element of critique.

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NWABISA MAYEMA Director of strategic partnership, Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship This trip to Mozambique was the first of many backpacking — and slightly mad — adventures with my friend, Sarah. We’d taken a bus from Johannesburg to Maputo and travelled up and down the coast of Mozambique using public transport. We joined one of those very touristy “ocean safaris” as this was the only way we’d be able to access Bazaruto Island. While we were waiting for lunch to be served, I was entranced by this little guy playing with his toy in the water. He paid no attention to anything else but chasing the waves and keeping his toy afloat as it dragged behind him. He was so happy, so full of joy; so I couldn’t help but sneak a photo of him.

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DAVID BRODIE Partner, Stevenson Gallery ylton Nel continues to make the most wonderful, whimsical, affecting and all-around gorgeous ceramics in SA. He recently launched his website where one can spend much time delighting in his world of grumpy cats and dealing with love and loss in time of plague. Highly recommended for anyone who needs to remember that this too shall pass, and that sometimes we should laugh and sometimes we should cry. hyltonnel.co.za

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1. Ayanda Mabulu, King Poetic, 2018 2. MondliArt, What’s a Mother’s Touch to a Child, 2019 3. Nwabisa Mayema, Boy with his toy, 2010 4. Georgina Gratrix, Pink Pop (Still Life with Hylton Vase and cheese curls), 2019 5. Peter Clarke, Rest, 1944 6. Hylton Nel, Dog on stump with twin birds, 2019

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09 / 2020

Sarah Buitendach

TINSEL GALLERY

When Tinsel first opened at Melville’s Bamboo Lifestyle Centre in 2006, it put the spotlight on South African contemporary jewellery like no one had before.

It stocked the work of 50-odd jewellers back then and did an awful lot in promoting the genre of craftsmanship.

Fourteen years and various iterations of the brand later, and Tinsel is back in the centre — just in a bigger and slicker space that’s a sophisticated but welcoming treat.

Owners Geraldine Fenn and Eric Loubser are, of course, two of the country’s leading contemporary jewellers themselves, and you’ll find their working studio in this new spot too. With its ochre walls, dashes of moody blues and top contemporary art dotting the interior, it’s an, erm, jewel box of beautiful things and smart ideas.

The gallery portion of the space sells their exceptional work, plus a curated selection of artfully handmade pieces by 15 other top jewellers, including Songezo Baleni, Nicky Savage, and Ashley Heather.

They’ll also be hosting exhibitions, so watch out for those. Pop in to browse, buy, and learn a thing or two from Fenn and Loubser, who are always happy to chat about their fascinating and really cool day jobs.

Corner Rustenburg Road and 9th Street, Melville

THE SUMMER WIND CAME BLOWING IN…

a n d w i t h i t , c a m e t w o n e w t o b r i g h t e n u p o u r d a y s

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RELAX, GO TO IT

Forget your worries and escape to the Western Cape’s wide-open spaces now. These beautiful boltholes are where we want to be

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Richard Holmes

De Zeven Guest Lodge

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WINELANDS: DE ZEVEN GUEST LODGE

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----------------------------------------------If you’ve not yet heard of the Banhoek valley, add it to your list. Set neatly between Stellenbosch and Franschhoek, this dramatic amphitheatre of mountain offers top-drawer wineries (hello Bartinney and Oldenburg) to sip at, conservancy trails to cycle on, restaurants on the doorstep (Tokara, anyone?) and the rest of the winelands within easy reach.

And De Zeven Guest Lodge is your go-to guesthouse in the Banhoek. First off, there are those valley views: just as remarkable whether you admire them from the pool deck, the glass-walled lounge, or through the picture window in the custom-built sauna.

Eleven elegant rooms are shared between the Manor House — more classic in style — and the contemporaryart-filled Barn Rooms that overlook vibrant fynbos gardens laid out by designer Rentia Hobbs.

It’s bed-and-breakfast only, but there’s no shortage of great restaurants nearby. If you really can’t bear to leave, there’s a private chef on speed-dial. dezeven.co.za

Jonkmanshof

Bartholomeus Klip

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ROUTE 62: JONKMANSHOF

---------------------------------------------In Cape Town’s foodie circles, Hemelhuijs is spoken of in hushed tones. And rightly so, what with the detailed décor, bespoke crockery and fine food — unfussy, yet full of care — from chef-patron Jacques Erasmus.

Those same qualities carry through to his intimate guesthouse in the laidback village of Montagu, sitting pretty between the Breede River winelands and the Klein Karoo.

Just four suites are split between two historic properties set a few doors apart on Bath Street.

What they have in common

is the inimitable aesthetic and eye for detail of Erasmus and partner Hein Liebenberg.

Artworks hang easily beside antiques; contemporary décor marries with subdued country chic. Four-poster beds and percale linen hint at no shortage of luxury, but fresh citrus from the garden and the best breakfast in the Klein Karoo are what add the unforgettable country touches.

Road-tripping Route 62? This is where to break your journey.

If you can’t stay the night, do stop in at De Nagmaal, the farm-style shop where you’ll find Erasmus’ ceramics and homemade goodies from the gardens. jonkmanshof.com

SWARTLAND: BARTHOLOMEUS KLIP

-------------------------------------------------While the maverick winemakers of the Swartland have put the region on the map of late, it’s wheat, not wine, that has long made this the breadbasket of the Cape.

So, fittingly, it’s the corduroystraight lines of wheat that frame the gravel road leading up towards Bartholomeus Klip, seated on the rump of the Elandsberg mountains.

This beautifully restored Victorian farmhouse offers just four rooms, plus one larger adjoining suite. The décor is vintage farmhouse, and charming in all the right places. Expect warm hospitality from sisters Lesley and Louise Gillett, who run the show.

During the day, enjoy nature drives in the adjoining reserve, take a kayak out on the dam, or pack the bike and tackle the trails up the slopes of the Elandsberg. Or just settle in on the stoep and decompress.

Need more space, or coming with the kids? Wild Olive House (sleeps six) and Heron House (sleeps 10) are better bets, with private pools and large gardens. bartholomeusklip.com

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THE GORGEOUS SHOP If flowers lift your spirits like they do ours, then get thee to this new Parkhurst florist and décor shop on the double. Bence Tallian has just opened this delightful little store and it will make your heart sing.

Swing by and choose fresh flowers for a bouquet or arrangement that they’ll make up for you on the spot.

Or ogle the wonderful selection of décor and homeware that ranges from locally produced mid-century style furniture to ceramics. Tallian is a dog lover, so just know that if you visit with your beloved hound, there will always be vegan treats on hand for them while you stock up on the, well, gorgeous, blooms.

34 4th Avenue, Parkhurst 0828850418

N AV I G A T O R

2020 / 09 text

DRINKS

CABINET

A GREAT NEW SERIES

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FRESH EIRE

ITH ITS garnet-red colour, warm vanilla aromas and smooth, seductive mouthfeel, Vilafonté’s series m 2017 is a real symphony for the senses.

An elegantly balanced blend of merlot, malbec, and cabernet sauvignon (aged for 21 months in new and old French oak), this beauty is immediately engaging, but will certainly reward the patient collector.

VILLA ASCENTI GIN

AN XO TO ELEGANCE

The Camus XO Elegance is an explosion of lavish, fruity notes mingled with just the right amount of wood and spices. The result of a careful selection of Camus’ best eauxde-vie matured for at least 10 years in small oak casks, this intensely aromatic cognac is as golden on the eyes as it is on the palate.

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rom its distinctive hexagonal bottle through to the fact that it’s an Irish single malt (a rarity in South Africa), The Sexton Irish Single Malt is set to send shivers through the local whiskey world. Made from 100% Irish malted barley, distilled in copper pot stills and exclusively matured in hand-selected sherry casks, The Sexton is also tripledistilled and thus oh-sosmooth and drinkable.

L’ORBE VODKA X CAVIAR

L’Orbe is intent on creating an entirely new category of luxury white spirits, and so uses patented infusion technology to combine ingredients that would otherwise be impossible. For this first edition, L’Orbe homed in on the iconic marriage of caviar and vodka. The combo of Dankowski Diamond-rye vodka and Baeri Royal caviar is a buttery, oceanic flavour fusion that’s as decadent as it is desirable. Enjoy in a cocktail, as a martini twist, or straight with caviar or seafood.

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teeped in Italian provenance, Villa Ascenti Gin celebrates the beauty of its home region through locally sourced ingredients like freshly picked moscato grapes, mint, and thyme. During the final distillation, the grapes are infused with Tuscan juniper berries, resulting in a light, fresh take on gin.

Every year since 1843, the House of Krug has endeavoured to create the very best champagne. This year is no exception.

A blend of no fewer than 198 wines from 11 different vintages, the Krug Grande Cuvée 168 spent some seven years in Krug’s cellars and is a sublime blend of pinot noir, chardonnay, and meunier.

K RU G G RA ND E’S 168T H ED I T I O N

With over two decades of experience in the luxury-drinks market, Wade Bales’ passion is sourcing really great drinks and sharing them with really great people

47 Wade Bales

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GIFTED

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ssential grooming products?

Hydra-Oil, Nivea deodorant, and a detox mask. Favourite scent? Dior Fahrenheit.

The building everyone should visit before they die? The Duomo di Milano in Italy. What tech gadget couldn’t you live without? My Canon camera because I see everything in visuals and taking photographs keeps me sane. Coffee or tea? Tea. Your ultimate luxury?

My photography equipment.

All-time favourite place to eat out? Durban’s Jaipur Palace, for the variety of dishes. If money was no object, what would your dream purchase be?

A Hasselblad H6D-400C camera. What are you reading at the moment?

Essays from my Somnyama Ngonyama series. All-time favourite clothing brand?

Anything comfortable and traditional. What are you listening to? Local singer and songwriter Moneoa. The artist you’ve got your eye on? Lindani “Nsizwa” Nyandeni. Your favourite

way to spend a Sunday morning? Taking a long walk on the beach. What luxury item would you take to a desert island?

My camera. What series have you been bingeing on recently? The Spanish show Unauthorized Living on Netflix. What’s the little luxury you’ve missed most during the Covid-19 crisis? Seeing people and mingling. Are you a collector of anything?

Cables and kitchen knives.

What makes you happiest? Being with my partner. Minimalism or

maximalism? Maximalism.

Last travel destination you visited that knocked your socks off? Mauritius.

What inspires you? Women thinkers. What is the first thing you add to your grocery cart and the one thing you’ll always find in your fridge? Apples.

Something that’s recently caught your attention?

Durban’s landscape. It’s breathing, raw, and teaches one to appreciate nature and be humane. Your favourite city in the world? Paris — my Somnyama Ngonyama series was fully realised there.

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ZANELE MUHOLI A glimpse into the mind of a stellar artist whose latest exhibition just opened at the Norval Foundation — and who’s showing at London’s Tate Modern in November too 1. Dior Fahrenheit 2. Duomo di Milano 3. Paris 4. Pretty Disaster by Moneoa 5. Contusion in Soul by Lindani “Nsizwa” Nyandeni 6. Hasselblad H6D-400C camera 7. Unauthorized Living

IMAGES DUOMO DI MILANO AND PARIS BY 123RF AND SUPPLIED

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