Omenka magazine Issue 3

AFRICAN CONTEMPORARY

PHOTOGRAPHY AT AUCTIONS

CONFIDENCE IN THE INTERNATIONAL MARKET REACHES AN ALL-TIME HIGH

CAPE TOWN ART FAIR’S RISING PROFILE

ART 14 LONDON,

SETTING NEW HEIGHTS HASSAN HAJJAJ DAVID GOLDBLATT SIMON OTTENBERG JOACHIM MELCHERS UGOCHUKWU - SMOOTH C. NZEWI PAUL SIKA JOHN FLEETWOOD ARTUR WALTHER

THE PHOTOGRAPHY ISSUE II 2346 7088

1 0 0 0 0

OMENKA MAGAZINE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 2

Contact +44 (0) 20 7468 8355 africanow@bonhams.com

Ben (Benedict Chukwukadibia) Enwonwu, M.B.E (Nigerian, 1917 - 1994) ‘Snake Dance’ carved wood 141 x 20 x 20cm (55 1/2 x 7 7/8 x 7 7/8in) (including base) £50,000 - 80,000 US$83,000 - 133,000

Africa Now

New Bond Street

bonhams.com/africanow

2014 Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg 22-24 August

To submit your application, please visit www.artlogic.co.za/fairs The deadline for applications is the 28th of February 2014.

Decoration or Asset?

The Art Exchange’s Product s and Services include...

Advisory Services Acquisit ion Financing Cust odian & Insurance Services

www.theartexchangelimited.com info@theartexchangelimited.com +234 706 590 4800

VOLUME 1 ISSUE 3

118 99

FEATURES Spot Lighting The Sanlam Food Wine Design Fair 2013

100

John Fleetwood: The Market Photo Workshop

106

Peer Conversation Jude Anogwih and Adejoke Tugbiyele

114

Art 14 London, Setting New Heights

118

Cape Town Art Fair’s Rising Profile

124

5 OMENKA MAGAZINE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 3

81 COLUMNS

ArtTactic Confidence in the International Photography Market Reaches an All-time High

82

Ask the Curator Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi

84

Letter to the Editor

87

100 DEPARTMENTS

18 ANTENNAE NEWS, EVENTS

28

Art14 London, The Capital’s Global Art Fair Returns to Olympia Grand Hall

18

Gabrielle Alberts, This is Where I leave You

18

Tian Wei, October Gallery

19

Cameron Platter, I Saw This Zanele Muholi, Stevenson Gallery

19 20 20 21

Wim Botha, Stevenson Gallery Haim Steinbach, Once Again the World is Flat

6 OMENKA MAGAZINE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 3

23 FOCUS

INTERVIEWS, PROFILES Hassan Hajjaj David Goldblatt Paul Sika: My Work is a Work of Love

47

24 28 40

MARKET FILE COLLECTOR, AUCTIONS, GALLERY Bomi Odufunade in Conversation with Simon Ottenberg

48

The Walther Collection

54

Highlights of Bonhams South African Sales in 2013 Auctions

60

African Contemporary Photography at Auctions

62

Portrait of a Gallery: Joachim Melchers, Gallery Owner and Publisher

66

40 70 LIFESTYLE

Zegna: The Art of Clothing Destination Lagos Nectar of the Gods

91

93

REPORTS REVIEWS Frieze, Frieze Masters, 1:54, Art Basel Miami, FIAC and Outsider Artfair Choices, 11th Edition of Frieze Art Fair London

7 OMENKA MAGAZINE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 2

70 74 79

92 96

2003 - 2013

The Foundation was established in 2003 in honour of celebrated Nigerian artist, Prof. Benedict Chukwukadibia Enwonwu MBE, NNOM (1917-94).

Through exhibitions, education and public debate, our mission is to increase the global perception and appreciation of modern and contemporary African art

LONDON’S GLOBAL ART FAIR GALLERIES

Featuring over 180 modern and contemporary galleries from 40 countries

Art on 56th, Lebanon \\ the A·lift, Hong Kong \\ Advanced Graphics London, UK \\ Aki Gallery, Taiwan \\ Aktis Gallery, UK \\ Albemarle Gallery, UK \\ Alif Gallery, UAE \\ All Visual Arts, UK \\ Andipa Gallery, UK \\ Arario Gallery, South Korea / China \\ Art Sawa, UAE \\ ArtChowk, Pakistan \\ ArtCo Gallery, Germany \\ Arthouse – The Space, Nigeria \\ Artspace, UAE / UK \\ Athr Gallery, Saudi Arabia \\ Atlas Gallery, UK \\ Beaux Arts, UK \\ Beers Contemporary, UK \\ Jack Bell Gallery, UK \\ bo.lee, UK \\ CCA Galleries, UK \\ Circle Culture Gallery, Germany \\ Coates and Scarry, UK \\ Contemporary Indonesian Art, Indonesia \\ Crane Kalman Brighton, UK \\ Cynthia-Reeves, USA \\ Dam Gallery Berlin | Frankfurt, Germany \\ Dark Matter Studio, UK \\ Delhi Art Gallery, India \\ Dillon Gallery, USA \\ Galerie Robert Drees, Germany \\ Eleven, UK \\ The Empire Project, Turkey \\ EOA.Projects, UK \\ Faur Zsófi Gallery, Hungary \\ Fehily Contemporary, Australia \\ FeldbuschWiesner, Germany \\ Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire, France \\ The Fine Art Society Contemporary, UK \\ Flowers Gallery, UK / USA \\ Fabien Fryns Fine Art, China \\ Jill George Gallery, UK \\ Michael Goedhuis, UK \\ Taymour Grahne Gallery, USA \\ Galerie Grand Siècle, Taiwan \\ Dominic Guerrini, UK \\ Galleria H., Taiwan \\ Habana, Cuba \\ Galerie Mark Hachem, USA / France / Lebanon \\ HackelBury Fine Arts, UK \\ Hakgojae Gallery, South Korea \\ Catherine Hammond Gallery, Ireland \\ Kashya Hildebrand Gallery, Switzerland / UK \\ Tristan Hoare Gallery, UK \\ Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery, UK / USA \\ HUA Gallery, UK \\ Jamm, UAE \\ galerie pascal janssens, Belgium \\ Jealous, UK \\ Ivo Kamm, Switzerland \\ Robin Katz Fine Art, UK \\ Kleinschmidt Fine Photographs, Germany \\ Gallery K.O.N.G., South Korea \\ Galerie Kornfeld, Germany \\ Pearl Lam Galleries, China / Hong Kong / Singapore \\ LAMB Arts, UK \\ Lazarides, UK \\ Leehwaik Gallery, South Korea \\ Liang Gallery, Taiwan \\ Lin & Lin Gallery, Taiwan \\ Long & Ryle, UK \\ Louise Alexander Gallery, Italy \\ Diana Lowenstein Gallery, USA \\ Galerie Maria Lund, France \\ Maddox Arts, UK \\ maerzgalerie, Germany \\ James Makin Gallery, Australia \\ Kálmán Makláry Fine Arts, Hungary \\ Primo Marella Gallery, Italy / China \\ Laura Mars grp, Germany \\ John Martin Gallery, UK \\ mc2gallery, Italy \\ Gallery Meno Parkas, Lithuania \\ Meshkati Fine Art & Austin/Desmond Fine Art, UK \\ Millennium, UK \\ Galerie du Monde, Hong Kong \\ Mummery + Schnelle, UK \\ NK Gallery, Belgium \\ Anna Nova Art Gallery, Russia \\ Alexander Ochs Galleries Berlin | Beijing, Germany / China \\ October Gallery, UK \\ Omenka Gallery, Nigeria \\ One East Asia, Singapore \\ Other Criteria, UK \\ The Outsiders, UK \\ Paci Contemporary, Italy \\ Julian Page, UK \\ Frank Pages, Germany / Switzerland \\ Claudine Papillon Galerie, France \\ Paragon, UK \\ Galerie Paris-Beijing, France / Belgium / China \\ The Park Gallery, UK \\ Paupers Press, UK \\ Pertwee, Anderson and Gold, UK \\ ph-projects, Germany \\ Piano Nobile, UK \\ PIFO Gallery, China \\ Podbielski Contemporary, Germany \\ Praxis International Art, Argentina / USA \\ Priveekollektie Contemporary Art | Design, The Netherlands \\ Purdy Hicks Gallery, UK \\ Quadro, Romania \\ Janet Rady Fine Art, UK \\ Riflemaker, UK \\ Petra Rinck Galerie, Germany \\ Ronchini Gallery, UK \\ Rooke and van Wyk, South Africa \\ Rossi & Rossi, UK / Hong Kong \\ Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Lebanon \\ Galerie RX, France \\ Galerie Vincenz Sala, France / Germany \\ Richard Saltoun, UK \\ Karsten Schubert, UK \\ Mimmo Scognamiglio Artecontemporanea, Italy \\ Scream, UK \\ Alon Segev Gallery, Israel \\ Shine Artists London, UK \\ Shirin Art Gallery, Iran / USA \\ Galerie Simpson, UK \\ Sims Reed Gallery, UK \\ Paul Stolper Gallery, UK \\ Sullivan+Strumpf, Australia \\ Gallery Sumukha, India \\ TAG Fine Arts, UK \\ Sundaram Tagore Gallery, USA / Singapore / Hong Kong \\ Tang Contemporary Art, China / Thailand / Hong Kong \\ Galerie Tanit, Germany / Lebanon \\ Tasneem Gallery, Spain \\ Ermanno Tedeschi Gallery, Israel / Italy \\ Tezukayama Gallery, Japan \\ Triumph Gallery, Russia \\ UDG / Bon Abattoir, UK \\ Vanguard Gallery, China \\ Vigo, UK \\ Galerie Olivier Waltman, France / USA \\ X-ist, Turkey \\ Zipper Galeria, Brazil \\ Jerome Zodo Contemporary, Italy The Gallery Apart, Italy \\ Bearspace, UK \\ C-Space, China \\ Galerie Dukan, France / Germany \\ Edel Assanti, UK \\ Gallery EM, South Korea \\ Fiumano Projects, UK \\ FOLD Gallery, UK \\ Hada Contemporary, UK \\ Hanmi Gallery | London • Seoul, UK / South Korea \\ Galeria El Museo, Colombia \\ Gallery Nosco, UK \\ Son Espace, Spain / Norway \\ Gallery SoSo, South Korea \\ Galerie Wolkonsky, Germany \\ Gallery Yang, China 401contemporary, Germany \\ 43 Inverness Street, UK \\ Sabrina Amrani Gallery, Spain \\ Anonymous Gallery, USA / Mexico \\ Black Ship, USA \\ Choi & Lager, Germany \\ Art Factum Gallery, Lebanon \\ Fitzroy Knox, USA \\ Patricia Fleming Projects, UK \\ FQ Projects, China \\ Christophe Guye Galerie, Switzerland \\ Jhaveri Contemporary, India \\ Standing Pine, Japan \\ Star Gallery & 劳动分工, China / UK \\ T.H.E.O. Art Projects, Singapore \\ Tiwani Contemporary, UK

NOT-FOR-PROFIT

Daegu Art Museum, South Korea \\ Daugavpils Mark Rothko Art Centre, Latvia \\ Delfina Foundation, UK \\ Dundee Contemporary Arts, UK \\ Ikon Gallery, UK \\ Iniva, UK \\ Modern Art Oxford, UK \\ Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, UK \\ Royal Academy of Arts, UK \\ Shanghai Jing’an International Sculpture Project, China \\ University of the Arts London, UK \\ Whitechapel Gallery, UK \\ Zabludowicz Collection, UK / Finland / USA

Subject to change

artfairslondon.com

OMENKA MAGAZINE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 2

CONTRIBUTORS Anders Petterson

Bomi Odufunade Bomi Odufunade is the London and New York Editor for Omenka magazine, She is also a writer and consultant at Dash & Rallo Art Advisory, a bespoke international consultancy specialising mainly in contemporary art from Africa and its diaspora. She advises on all aspects of establishing and building art collections and providing art consulting services for private art collectors and corporations. Her writings on art and the art market have appeared in a variety of publications, including Arise, Huffington Post, Contemporary and New African. She previously worked at Thames & Hudson, Tate Modern and Haunch of Venison gallery in London. She is based between London, Lagos, and New York.

Anders Petterson is a leading authority on the art market, with a particular focus on the modern and contemporary emerging art markets. He is the founder and Managing Director of ArtTactic Ltd, a London-based art market research and advisory company set-up in 2001. He previously worked at JP Morgan in the investment banking division, responsible for debt capital market and structured products for banks and corporates. He worked as an independent research and evaluation consultant for Arts & Business in London between 2002 and 2007, and has been involved in a number of large research and evaluation projects in the cultural sector.

Petterson is lecturing on the topic Art as an Asset Class for CASS Business School and Sotheby’s Institute in London. He is a Board Member of Professional Advisors to the International Art Market (PAIAM), and a founding member of the Art Investment Council (AIC).

Nana Ocran Nana Ocran is a London-based writer and editor specialising in contemporary African culture. She was Editor-inChief for the Time Out Group’s series of guides to Lagos and Abuja, and has consulted on, and established publications on West African culture for the Danish Film Institute, the Arts Council England and the Institute of International Visual Arts. She was a nominee for CNN’s African Journalist of the Year (2011), and Curatorial Advisor for the Afrofuture programme at La Rinascente during Milan Design Week 2013. Nana Ocran is a regular features writer for Arik Airline’s in-flight magazine, Wings, in which she writes about art, lifestyle, innovation and cultural trends relating to Arik’s 33 destinations. She has been a jury member for Film Africa London and the Festival del Cinema Africano, d’Asia e America Latina, Milan. She currently blogs about Lagos for Virgin Atlantic.

Heidi Erdmann

Inês Valle Inês Valle is a curator at Omenka Gallery and holds a Degree in Visual Arts from the Fine Art University of Lisbon and a postgraduate certificate in Curatorial Studies from the same institution in collaboration with the Caloustre Gulbenkian Foundation.

She is working on her thesis for the Master in Curatorial Studies, which focuses on conflict territories in artistic practice. Valle started her career by collaborating and developing art projects with the shadow curator, Nuno Sacramento. She also curated Post-Human and Hot Fast, exhibitions of the work of Portuguese artist, Aldo Peixinho, the first exhibition program of the 0.1 Art Residency at Casa Dell Art, titled Good Morning in Torba starts at 2:53am in Portugal, in Turkey. She has also collaborated with several Portuguese art Institutions namely Centro Cultural de Belém and Carpe Diem Arte Pesquisa, and writes critical articles for the Portuguese contemporary art magazine, Arte Capital. Recently, she conducted an internship as a curatorial assistant at Canberra Contemporary Art Space in Australia, through a scholarship sponsored by the Portuguese Ministry of Culture as part of its program, INOV-Art. Beyond the scope of this internship, she also took the opportunity to research about some of the conflicts that emerge in Australia including the contemporary indigenous art practices and the relations between political power and art practice.

Heidi Erdmann was born and grew up in Swakopmund, Namibia. She graduated from the University of Stellenbosch in 1987 with a BA Degree, majoring in Psychology. Erdmann curated a multi-media group exhibition in 1993, featuring the work of 33 South African artists amongst them, Brett Murray, Barend de Wet, Kate Gottgens and Elizabeth Gunter. In 1994, she joined the South African National Gallery in Cape Town as the assistant to the Director.

Erdmann was appointed the curator of AREA Gallery in 1997. While under Erdmann’s management, AREA, a gallery dedicated to photography, received a BASA nomination. In 1999, she was invited to the Centro de la Imagen in Mexico to present a workshop on African and South African photography. Erdmann opened the Photographers Gallery za in 2001 to focus her energies on contemporary South African photography.

The gallery participated in Photo San Francisco 2005 and Photo LA 2006.

Her gallery also participated in Artseasons 2007. Heidi Erdmann and Jacob Lebeko are the co-curators of the exhibition, Construct: Beyond the Documentary Photograph, which has travelled to several museums throughout South Africa, including Durban Art Gallery and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan Art Museum in Port Elizabeth. Over the years, the Erdmann galleries have carved a niche for their particular ethos and style.

11 OMENKA MAGAZINE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 2

Art Dubai 2014 • Contemporary: 313 Art Project, Seoul • Agial Art Gallery, Beirut • Sabrina Amrani Gallery, Madrid • Art Factum Gallery, Beirut • L’Atelier 21, Casablanca • Athr Gallery, Jeddah • Ayyam Gallery, Dubai/ London/Beirut/Jeddah/Damascus • Baró Galeria, São Paulo • Bolsa de Arte, Porto Alegre • The Breeder, Athens/Monaco • Laura Bulian Gallery, Milan • Carbon 12, Dubai • Carroll / Fletcher, London • Chatterjee and Lal, Mumbai • Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai • Galleria Continua, San Gimignano/Beijing/Le Moulin • Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris • D Gallerie, Jakarta • Experimenter, Kolkata • Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, Dubai • Galerie Imane Farès, Paris • Selma Feriani, London/Tunis • Galleria Marie-Laure Fleisch, Rome • GAG Projects, Adelaide/Berlin • Galerist, Istanbul • Giacomo Guidi Arte Contemporanea, Rome • Gladstone Gallery, New York/Brussels • Marian Goodman Gallery, New York/Paris/London • Alexander Gray Associates, New York • Green Art Gallery, Dubai • Grey Noise, Dubai • Hales Gallery, London • Leila Heller Gallery, New York • Kashya Hildebrand Gallery, London/Zurich • Hussenot, Paris • In Situ / Fabienne Leclerc, Paris • Rose Issa Projects, London • Galerie Jaeger Bucher, Paris • Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels • Kalfayan Galleries, Athens/Thessaloniki • Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna • Lombard Freid Gallery, New York • Lumen Travo, Amsterdam • Elmarsa, Tunis/Dubai • Galerie Greta Meert, Brussels • Victoria Miro, London • Marisa Newman Projects, New York • Galleria Franco Noero, Turin • Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco • Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris/Brussels • Omenka Gallery, Lagos • Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo/Singapore • Paradise Row, London • Pechersky Gallery, Moscow • Pi Artworks, Istanbul/London • Pilar Corrias, London • Galerie Polaris, Paris • Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York • Schleicher/Lange, Berlin • Sfeir-Semler Gallery, Hamburg/Beirut • Gallery Ske, Bangalore/New Delhi • Tashkeel, Dubai • Tasveer, Bangalore • Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris/Brussels • The Third Line, Dubai • Galerie Tanja Wagner, Berlin • Yavuz Fine Art, Singapore •Modern: Agial Art Gallery, Beirut • Aicon Gallery, New York/London • Albareh Art Gallery, Manama • Artchowk, Karachi • Elmarsa, Tunis/ Dubai • Karim Francis, Cairo • Grosvenor Gallery, London • Jhaveri Contemporary, Mumbai • Lawrie Shabibi, Dubai • Galerie Janine Rubeiz, Beirut • Shirin Gallery, Tehran/New York •Marker: ArtEast, Bishkek • Asia Art, Almaty • North Caucasus Branch of the National Centre for Contemporary Art (NCCA), Vladikavkaz • Popiashvili Gvaberidze Window Project, Tbilisi • Yarat Contemporary Art Space, Baku.www.artdubai.ae

12 OMENKA MAGAZINE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 1

CONTRIBUTORS Jude Anogwih

Daniela Roth Daniela Roth, D.phil. is the Munich Editor for Omenka magazine.

She was born 1970 in Aalen and completed studies in Art History, Sociology, Comparative Literature and law at the universities of Würzburg, Bonn and München. Her doctoral thesis is on the work of artist Romuald Hazoumè from the Republic of Benin, West Africa. Roth is a specialist with extensive knowledge of the art history of the African continent. She has travelled widely acquiring profound insights into movements within contemporary African art. Roth has carried out numerous research projects and published extensively on art, cultural developments and pop culture and globalization phenomena.

Daniela Roth also contributes regularly to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on cultural issues in Africa.

Jude Anogwih is a multimedia artist and curator living and working in Lagos, Nigeria. Anogwih has participated in several curatorial and artistic residencies. One of which was an exchange initiated by Tate Modern in collaboration with Gasworks and supported by the World Collections Programme. His art interrogates the concept of field dynamics, mobility and migration. They take the form of experimental photo-painting/drawing, video, installation and map production. Anogwih was a Goethe-Institut Fellow at the dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany. He is a founding member and Co-coordinator of Video Art Network, Lagos.

Romina Provenzi Romina Provenzi is a London-based art journalist and a writer. She specializes in contemporary art and art market reporting.

Provenzi is a specialist of the Cuban art market and of the London art scene.

Her articles have appeared in several art magazines including Arts Hub, Artinvestor, Hart International, and Art Info and can be found online at www.rominaprovenzi. blogspot.co.uk

Ijeoma Loren Uche-Okeke

Belinda Otas Belinda Otas is a versatile journalist, writer, cultural critic, and an independent blogger. She has a passionate interest in Africa: politics, social development, arts and culture, business, gender and the African diaspora. Currently working as a freelance journalist with various publications aimed at the international community, she has contributed to: Al Jazeera, CNN, BBC News Online, the Africa Report, Selamta, New African, Wings and Under the Influence magazines, Think Africa Press and This is Africa, both online platforms, among others. For these various publications, she covers politics, social development, gender, health and education stories, business, fashion and the arts and culture. An award-winning journalist, Otas is the Assistant Editor of the New African Woman magazine and is a news and social commentator on African affairs on Monocle Radio’s, The Globalist. She has also appeared on the BBC World Service NewsDay programme. Belinda Otas is one of ‘50 Remarkable Women’ connected by Nokia, a celebration of 50 women who are true ‘Unfollowers.’

Ijeoma Loren Uche-Okeke, Omenka magazine’s Johannesburg Editor. She worked for over 3 years as the arts projects manager at Gallery MOMO in Johannesburg, and has over ten years of professional experience in the arts and culture sector as an administrator, curator and facilitator. UcheOkeke has also worked actively as an arts and culture manager in both the creative and performing arts sectors in Nigeria, and more recently in South Africa. She has a BA (Hons) in Fine and Applied Arts, a PGD in Arts and Culture Management, an MA in Heritage Studies and postgraduate certificate in Environmental Policy from the universities of Nigeria, Nsukka, the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and Bard College in the United States.

She currently serves on the Board of the Dance Forum, the initiators and organizers of the Dance Umbrella Festival, and is the Regional Network Development Manager of the Visual Arts Network South Africa (VANSA) Steering Committee.

13 OMENKA MAGAZINE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 2

OMENKA GALLERY + 234 8184553331 OMENKAGALLERY.COM 28 February – 2 March, 2014

‘Okhai Ojeikere and Gary Stephens Networks and Voids: Modern Interpretations of Nigerian Hairstyles and Headdresses Art14 London

Booth F9 Olympia Grand Hall, London

27 February - 2 March, 2014

Gary Stephens Cape Town Art Fair Booth G18

V&A Waterfront, Cape Town

19 - 22 March, 2014

10 - 13 April, 2014

Nnenna Okore and Tchif

Cologne Paper Art

Matter as Metaphor

Vulka-Hulle Lichtstraße 43, 50825 Köln

Art Dubai

Booth J17 Madinat Jumeirah, Dubai

Background image: Adejoke Tugbiyele, Mosquito Net Entrapment 2. Still 004

June 05 - 07, 2014

Adejoke Tugbiyele LOOP 2014 Hotel Catalonia Ramblas, Barcelona

August 22-24, 2014

October 14 - 19, 2014

Joburg Art Fair

1.54 Contemporary African Art Fair, London

Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg

Somerset House, London

OMENKA LAGOS 2014 We are delighted to announce the inaugural edition of Omenka Lagos, which coincides with Nigeria's centenary celebrations.

Designed by leading architect, KunlĂŠ Adeyemi, the fair will position Africa as the hub of an increasingly globalized world and offers an opportunity to engage with emerging trends in contemporary visual culture while cultivating taste in an atmosphere of the finest African cuisine and wine. Omenka Lagos will also feature an ambitious programme of talks including a well-tailored seminar on art as an alternative asset class, aimed at financial institutions, wealth managers and Africa's burgeoning and affluent collectors.

TO APPLY, PLEASE VISIT WWW.OMENKALAGOS.COM

R E V I L O

September 25 -28, 2014 External Ballroom Federal Palace Hotel Victoria Island Lagos, Nigeria

EDITORIAL

‘Omenka? is an Onitsha Ibo term? ome - is maker, traditional maker of; the maker of nka, who carves, who creates, who communicates through the making, or the making, or nka, being the attribute of his making through creative action...

Omenka is usually a genius type...Omenka means greatness, a man of valour...’ -Ben Enwonwu, January 1967 PUBLISHER AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF OLIVER ENWONWU oliver@omenkamagazine.com DEPUTY EDITOR OMOLADUN OGIDAN ladun@omenkamagazine.com LONDON, NEW YORK EDITOR BOMI ODUFUNADE bomi@omenkamagazine.com JOHANNESBURG EDITOR IJEOMA UCHE-OKEKE ijeoma@omenkamagazine.com MUNICH EDITOR DANIELA ROTH daniela@omenkamagazine.com

As part of our innovations this year, Omenka is proud to announce the addition of an online digital platform and an ipad application that supports our global readership through high-resolution and interactive content, slideshows, videos and more. In addition, we have increased the number of pages to 132 in our print version.

Omenka continues to keep abreast of the latest news on contemporary African visual culture around the globe, through our expert team of contributors and international editors in major cities in the world.

We welcome Daniela Roth and Ijeoma Uche-Okeke, our Munich and Johannesburg editors, who expand our scope and perspective by offering diverse viewpoints.

Our third issue, Photography II, includes profiles of renowned art collectors; Artur Walther and Simon Ottenberg by Daniela Roth, and London and New York Editor, Bomi Odufunade respectively. Leading market authority and Omenka columnist, Anders Petterson of ArtTactic surveys the international modern and contemporary photography market in the last 6 months, while specialist in contemporary African art, Romina Provenzi reviews contemporary photography from the continent at 2013 auctions.

This issue also includes in-depth interviews on renowned photographers, David Goldblatt and Hassan Hajjaj by Ijeoma Uche-Okeke and Nana Ocran, nominee for CNN’s African Journalist of the Year (2011).

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR LUCIANO UZUEGBU ART DIRECTOR YUSUF ARIYO DESIGNERS VICTORY JAMES SEUN ADEMEFUN PHOTOGRAPHERS MICHAEL SOSSOU ANDREW INEGBESE MARKETING AND PROMOTIONS MARY OMINUTA LILLIAN EREBOR CIRCULATION JAMES OJE OBIAJULUM NWABUNIKE

Cover Hassan Hajjaj, Hindiii, 2011/1432 Courtesy: Rose Issa Projects, London To subscribe, please call +234 809 802 7583 or go online at www.omenkamagazine.com To advertise, please call + 234 813 553 2154, 808 493 8545 Omenka is published quarterly by

Omenka looks forward to another remarkable chapter of the Art Dubai, Art 14, Cape Town Art Fair, Joburg Art Fair, and 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair as media partners. Furthermore, we have the pleasure of meeting the duo behind the fast-rising Cape Town Art Fair, while Stephanie Dieckvoss, director of the already acclaimed Art 14, London, talks about new art trends to look out for at this year’s edition in February.

Finally, in our Market File, we review Bonhams’ The South African Sale of March and October, and round off with Joachim Melchers, publisher and Director of ARTCO Gallery in Germany. This issue is by no means a comprehensive survey on the topic of photography, but a means of celebrating the new ideas and achievements, as well as the potential for photography in Africa.

On behalf of Omenka, I would like to thank our subscribers, sponsors and media partners for all their support and continuing patronage. I also encourage our readers to leave comments for our contributors and editors on our website.

Revilo Company Ltd 24, Ikoyi Crescent, Ikoyi, Lagos T: + 234 818 455 3331 www.reviloco.com Reproduction in whole or part is forbidden save with express permission in writing of the publishers. All material is compiled from sources believed to be reliable, but published without responsibility for errors or omissions. Revilo accepts advertisements from advertisers believed to be of good repute, but cannot guarantee the authenticity or quality or objects or services advertised in its pages. Omenka does not assume responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs or illustrations. Copyright worldwide of all editorial content is held by the publishers, Revilo Company Ltd. The name, Omenka is a registered trademark owned by Revilo Company Ltd. and cannot be used without its express written consent. @omenkamagazine

We’ve started off to an exciting new year at Omenka with a great deal of optimism and expectations. In only our third edition and launch mid-last year, we’ve firmly established ourselves as the premium art, business and luxury-lifestyle brand in Nigeria!

omenka magazine

Here’s wishing all our readers a Happy New Year!

Oliver Enwonwu

17 OMENKA MAGAZINE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 2

INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE, INTERIOR/PRODUCT DESIGN EXHIBITION Gida Uno Ile Design Exhibition MAY 9TH AND MAY 10TH 2014 Eko Hotel V/I Lagos Nigeria

R

O

O

T

S

building our design community for steady growth For more information

Kenny Onakoya: +234 703 723 179 info@theguide.com.ng www.theguide.com.ng

ANTENNAE

NEWS, EVENTS

Earth is Art, The Photographer is only a Witness.

The

Yann Arthus-Bertrand

19 OMENKA MAGAZINE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 2

ANTENNAE - NEWS, EVENTS

ART14 LONDON, THE CAPITAL’S GLOBAL ART FAIR, RETURNS TO OLYMPIA GRAND HALL London’s ‘refreshingly different’ approach.

Over 170 galleries from 39 countries will exhibit painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, video, editions and digital art at the 2014 fair.

Collectors, curators, buyers and visitors will have the opportunity to enjoy and acquire modern and contemporary art from regions such as Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Art14 London also presents two specially selected sections - ‘London First’ and ‘Emerge’ - providing the opportunity to discover new artists and new work.

London’s global art fair, Art14 London sponsored by Citi Private Bank, returns in 2014 from Friday 28 February to Sunday 2 March 2014 at Olympia Grand Hall. The launch edition of the fair in 2013 was attended by 25,000 visitors and was a success with critics, galleries, collectors and art lovers alike. Wallpaper praised the fair’s ‘impressive scope’, while the Financial Times reported on Art13

According to Stephanie Dieckvoss, Art14 London Fair Director, “We are delighted to increase the geographical spread of countries represented. The fair is growing organically, so visitors and collectors will have a more comprehensive experience in discovering exciting works from around the globe. We continue to have a strong presence from Asia with leading and new galleries from across the continent. We are also excited to welcome newcomers from all four corners of the world, including Lagos, Berlin, Beijing, Dubai, Buenos Aires, Osaka, Mumbai, and São Paulo.” www.artfairslondon.com

GABRIELLE ALBERTS THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU 6 February - 13 March, 2014 BRUNDYN+ is proud to present This is Where I leave You, Gabrielle Alberts’ first solo exhibition since completing her Masters in Fine Art at Michaelis School of Fine Art. The miniature installations in the exhibition investigate the spectacle of, and fascination with crime scenes through its representation in media, literature and television series. The ability to visualise or imagine a crime narrative from an inanimate object is central to Albert’s work. The work focuses on creating perceptions (of crime) by not portraying crime in action but rather the insinuation thereof.

The miniatures create an immersive reality for the viewer. Through a method of suggestion, the viewer questions their tendency to assume that a crime of sorts has been committed.

Audience participation is crucial to the construction of this alternate, fictional reality. One not only becomes a spectator of the work, but one is rather forced to look and engage with the work in participatory manner. The spectator takes on the role of a detective, and meticulously searches for clues in the apparent or perhaps expected crime scene. The artist plays with our curiosity of crime scenes, whether it is our desire to watch American crime scene investigation television shows, such as CSI and Law and Order, or whether we slow down at any sign of police lights at the side of

Gabrielle Alberts, Heartbreak Hotel, 2012, painted ceramics, 15 x 20 cm

the road. The ethics of this curiosity, often sparked by catharsis, is questioned.

The spaces depicted are familiar, ordinary and domestic. Through the viewer’s recognition of these spaces, the artist intends to lure the viewer in and subsequently disrupt that which is familiar into something ‘out of place’ or uncanny. For it is only through the establishment of the familiar that the uncanny can exist. The placement of something uncanny in the works determines an ambiguity, creating a sense of doubt in what has been presented. www.brundyngonsalves.com

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ANTENNAE - NEWS, EVENTS

TIAN WEI OCTOBER GALLERY 6 February - 29 March, 2014 October Gallery is proud to present an exhibition of new works by the Chinese artist, Tian Wei. This will be his premiere solo exhibition in the United Kingdom.

Both theoretically and formally, Tian Wei’s work constructs a bridge between things that appear as dyadic opposites, binary poles or complementary pairs. This perspective of Yin and Yang is deeply embedded in Chinese thinking, and the artist’s frequent reference to Classic texts such as the I Ching (The Book of Changes) and Tao Te Ching, appear as quotations in minute script patterning the background upon which larger semi-abstract cursive shapes are drawn. On trying to read these lines as Chinese characters, however, anyone familiar with Chinese poetry, painting or philosophy is bound to be frustrated, since the conundrum of interpreting the meaning of the flowing shapes can only be resolved in English. The lines, in fact, spell out simple English nouns, adjectives and phrases such as ‘Myth’,‘Red’ and ‘Money Makes the World Go Round.’ These carefully chosen words give the viewer access to the artist’s lived experience of both Eastern and Western spheres. In one of these large-scale works, the word ‘Sex’ stands out as bright red gestural daubs, on a canvas of the same colour, its thick impasto brush strokes layering the surface with tiny shadows. Drawn with great freedom, the brush strokes are sharp, yet sinuous and though enigmatic, the lettering is ultimately comprehensible to any viewer who reads English.

CAMERON PLATTER I SAW THIS 12 February - 29 March, 2014

Tian Wei (China), Sex, 2010, acrylic on canvas, 177 x 298 cm

The separation between English and Chinese aesthetics deepens into hermeneutics which quickly spirals out to include much larger universal questions about reality, Life: Death, Being: Absence and so on. To the Chinese way of thinking, this inevitably returns us to the concept of Tai Chi– the Great Universal level that includes both Yin and Yang and indeed contains everything that exists. In talking about his work Tian Wei has described the perspective of looking at two sides of a coin at the same time. “What fascinates me most is that there can always be a switching – perhaps even a continuity - between both sides”.

Tian Wei’s artistic vision is not one that divides or separates the East from the West but one that integrates both, and for this reason it is both timely and timeless. www.octobergallery.uk

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Cameron Platter’s interdisciplinary practice examines consumption, excess, detritus, discord and conflict within a fragmented South African identity. Through engagement with transitory sources, Platter’s work acts as a locus, documenting a dysfunctional contemporary reality. I SAW THIS, Platter’s current exhibition is an installation of new sculptures, drawings, ceramics, and tapestries.

He makes stories, pictures, and objects that are documents of contemporary morality; exploring a reality stranger than fiction, through fantasy, satire and subculture, using themes appropriated from the universal concerns of sex, love, violence, beauty, advertising, food, battle scenes, pornography, writing, politics, religion, crime, dancing, lust, greed, things falling apart, and spaceships.

Platter fills the ordinary and marginal, with incendiary new meaning.

Working from everyday experience with subjects overlooked or considered delinquent, sordid and lowbrow, he reconnoiters notions and concepts on the outside fringes of South Africa’s popular culture.

Cameron Platter, Arcadia III, 2013, pencil crayon on paper, 181 x 236 cm

His work appears in the permanent collection of; MoMA, New York; The FRAC Centre, Orleans, France; and the Iziko South African National Gallery. His work has also been highlighted in The New York Times, Vice Magazine, NKA Journal of Contemporary African Art, Artforum, and Art South Africa.

He lives and works in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. www.whatiftheworldgallery.co

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ANTENNAE - NEWS, EVENTS

ZANELE MUHOLI STEVENSON GALLERY 14 February - 4 April, 2014 Zanele Muholi won the fine prize for an emerging artist at the 2013 Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She is being honoured with a prestigious Prince Claus Award, to be presented in Amsterdam on 11 December, and was recently made Honorary Professor of the University of the Arts/ Hochschule für Künste Bremen. In 2013, she also won the Index on Censorship - Freedom of Expression Art Award in London and was named as one of Foreign Policy’s Global Thinkers of 2013. Her Faces and Phases series was included on the South African Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale, Imaginary Fact: South African Art and the Archive.

Her group exhibitions include Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive at the Walther Collection in Ulm, Germany (8 June through to 2015); SubRosa: The Language of Resistance at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum in Tampa, Florida (26 August - 7 December); Glyphs: Photography, Video and the Politics of Inscription at Pitzer College Art Galleries, California (19 September - 5 December); and the 2013 Carnegie International Survey of Contemporary Art (5 October - 16 March). www.stevenson.info Zanele Muholi, Lebo Ntladi, Newtown, Johannesburg, 2011 Silver gelatin print, 76.5 x 50.5cm, edition of 8 + 2AP

WIM BOTHA STEVENSON GALLERY 27 February - 5 April, 2014 Wim Botha has won the Helgaard Steyn Prize for sculpture, awarded every four years, for his 2010 public artwork, Blastwaveat at the Nedbank headquarters in Johannesburg. Botha’s third solo exhibition with Galerie Jette Rudolph in Berlin, Predicates, took place from 14 September to 12 October, followed by a solo show at Kunstraum Innsbruck, Austria, from 9 November to 11 January.

Botha was included in the 55th Venice Biennale, Imaginary Fact: South African Art and the Archive, the South African Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale (1 June - 24 November). An outdoor sculpture by Botha is presently on view at the Zeitz MOCAA Pavilion at the V&A Waterfront, Cape Town. www.stevenson.info

Wim Botha, Prism 8 (detail) 2013, bronze, wood, neon tubes, 237 x 160 x 155cm, edition of 1 + 1AP

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ANTENNAE - NEWS, EVENTS

HAIM STEINBACH: ONCE AGAIN THE WORLD IS FLAT 5 MARCH - 21 APRIL, 2014 Once Again the World is Flat is an expansive exhibition by American artist, Haim Steinbach, including key works from his impressive forty year career.

The exhibition comprises a number of Steinbach’s grid-based paintings from the early 1970s, a series of reconfigured historical installations, as well as major new works created with a selection of objects drawn from public and private collections in the United Kingdom.

Following his historic exhibition at Artists Space in 1979, Steinbach has exhibited internationally at institutions including Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Castello di Rivoli, Turin; Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna; CAPC musée d’art contemporain, Bordeaux and Haus der Kunst, Munich. His work was included in Documenta IX and the Sydney Biennale in 1992, the 1993 and 1997 Venice Biennales, the 2000 Biennale de Lyon, and La Triennale, Paris 2012.

Once Again the World is Flat will be presented at the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College in New York alongside works from their collection. Following the London presentation, the exhibition will travel to the Kunsthalle Zürich. www.serpentinegalleries.org

Haim Steinbach, Basics, 1986

a r t southafrica Art South Africa is a contemporary art publication that is on the move, experimental, provocative, intelligent; Art South Africa today sees itself as a vehicle that celebrates Africa’s future-present.

Available in print and digital: iPad, iPhone, and all Android devices. to subscribe to Art South Africa print publication visit www.artsouthafrica.com download the Art South Africa app to purchase the monthly digital edition, visit Apple or Google Play store

ART SOUTH AFRICA MAGAZINE 89A Bree Street, Cape Town, 8001, South Africa / Tel +27 (0)21 465 9108 Fax +27 (0)86 656 5931

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FOCUS

PROFILES, INTERVIEWS

I have discovered photography. Now I can kill

myself. I have nothing else to

learn.

Pablo Picasso

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FOCUS - INTERVIEW

Courtesy of Camille Zakharia

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FOCUS - PROFILE

HASSAN HAJJAJ WORDS NANA OCRAN

Award-winning photographer, designer, furniture maker, boutique owner‌ Hassan Hajjaj is an individual who neatly fits all of these titles. A London-based artist, and a creative multi-tasker he moves around a lot, so pinning him down to a Skype conversation while he was working on a couple of film projects in Marrakech felt like quite a coup.

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FOCUS - PROFILE “I’ve been working on a personal project with some Gnawa musician masters” he explains, “I’m trying to document them, but I’ve also been editing another film called, Karima: A Day in the Life of a Henna Girl.”

This second project is one that features a young woman, who has appeared in a number of Hajjaj’s photographs over the last 15 years.

Perhaps his best known shot of her is one in which she dexterously balances on the seat of a pristine white scooter, her feet resting on the handlebars, while wearing a polka - dotted djellaba and matching niqab, leather babouche slippers and funky 1950s-style shades.

It is a theatrical piece in as much as the background and the subject are equally as important as each other, and the riot of colours – from pastel to primary, speak volumes about Hajjaj’s North African aesthetic influences. These combinations of visual, cultural and sensory influences are what drive his arguably most famous work to date – the My Rock Stars portrait series. An ongoing project, Hajjaj holistically documents the people he knows and admires – from musicians and artists, to designers, dancers, writers and relatives – all of them dressed in clothes he has designed, with each sitter playfully positioned in spaces he covers in vibrant pop colours. His models’ images are then set in his signature frames, which are uniformly studded with mini soda cans with Arab script, or edged with brightly coloured raffia. The nod to recycling and the homage to African studio photography is clear.

“I want to continue this project” Hajjaj explains. “The first time I showed it was in Dubai in 2012 but I first started shooting the series in 1999. The idea of the studio shoot is nothing new because you’ve got Malick Sidibé, Seydou Keïta … you know, the masters, but my influence was also from when I was a kid”.

This was during the early 1960s in Larache, a small Moroccan fishing port, where he and his siblings had their pictures taken in a studio because there were no cameras. “Up to the age of 16, there were only around three pictures of me – one on a horse with a cowboy hat, another time with my mum and my sisters. My dad was in London so we’d have our pictures taken to send to him. That was my first influence of photography. Since then, I’ve always wanted to extend this to a new generation because Sidibé and all the masters were photographers, who took pictures of local people.”

Hajjaj’s memories of the colours of Morocco are key to his style of photography. Living and working between London and the North African country has had a strong influence.

“My work in fact goes beyond being a studio shoot. It’s about documenting people and also showing clothes that I’ve designed” he says.

“I try to get all the stuff that I use from the medina. They may be things that have been bought cheaply, but I make them look grand.”

Hassan Hajjaj, José James, 2009/1430, courtesy of Third Line Gallery, Dubai

Although there is a strong fashion element to Hajjaj’s Rock Stars images, this is not the element that drives him. He is definitely far more taken by subjects, who he considers to be unintentional models. People who inspire him, for their own specific reasons.

“If I had an offer to take a picture of Jay-Z for example, it’s the kind of thing I wouldn’t want to do because he’s already mainstream.

My work is much more about people around me, who I admire.

People who live by their own code.” People who may or may not be completely at ease in front of the lens. It is therefore crucial that Hajjaj’s skills don’t just lie in clicking the camera button. Any bashfulness has to be overcome so that the ability to play, blends into the whole experience.

“I usually do one or two sessions with people. Sometimes three” says Hajjaj. “Some people do feel out of their comfort zone but then they start to like it when they can step out of their world. It’s like a theatrical experience where I try to make sure they have a nice memorable day at the same time”.

I’ve been working on a personal project with some Gnawa musician masters’ he explains. ‘I’m trying to document them, but I’ve also been editing another film called, Karima: A Day in the Life of a Henna Girl.

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FOCUS - PROFILE

Hassan Hajjaj, Caravane, 2011/1432, courtesy of Rose Issa Projects, London

Hassan Hajjaj, Man Bellydancer, 2012/1433, courtesy of Third Line Gallery, Dubai

Strangely, the same type of showmanship doesn’t extend to himself, although this might be something of a photographer’s prerogative.

There is a distinct note of modesty at the suggestion that he himself should step in front of the camera. “It is uncomfortable for me” he admits. “If I ask a subject to get in front of the camera, it is because they’ve got something about them, so for me they deserve to be there”.

It is a humble, but also endearing admission, particularly when set alongside his personal experience of being culturally and spiritually out of sync with elements of his world during his adolescence.

Arriving in the UK from Morocco in his teens meant struggling with English – both spoken and written – for years. This is an experience that has influenced his choice of rock star subjects, many of whom hail from similar backgrounds, or who at least have some link with the immigrant experience.

Hajjaj’s discomfort at being the subject of a photograph has nevertheless found a perfect outlet in the visual language that he confidently speaks.

He is no slouch either when it comes to promoting his work. Since 2003, his solo and group exhibitions have been featured at both the Victoria and Albert, and British Museum in London, Gallery 44 in Toronto, Museu da Cicade in Lisbon, the National Museum of Damascus, Musée du Quai Branly in Paris and most recently at 1:54, London’s first contemporary African art fair, which featured 73 artists representing North, East, South and West Africa. These are just a handful of showcases. His one personal appearance in

West Africa was at the Bamako Photo Biennial in 2009, while some of his other work features album cover designs for artists including modern jazz and hip hopper, José James and Franco-Moroccan singer, Hindi Zahra. Awards include one for the interior design of the Andy Wahloo Bar in Paris, and there was also a 2009 nomination for the international Jameel Prize for contemporary art and design inspired

by Islamic tradition. It’s an eclectic mix of activity that’s earned Hajjaj an undeniably international following that’s persistently growing.

With much of his time spent between London and Marrakech, what about the photography scene in Morocco?

“It is getting there” he says, which pretty much means that the North African mindset in terms of seeing photography as art is changing – but slowly.

“If you’re talking about collectors, it is new for them” says Hajjaj.

“Normally, people would buy a painting, but there is a vibe going on with the new generation. There is a whole new breed of photographers, a lot of new talent, but it is still hard because there needs to be a lot more education about photography here.”

Within this visual world, Hajjaj is happy to admit that he himself is still learning. Self taught, he says that “Technically I’m not good,” and happily takes advice from friends, who have generously helped when more intricate uses of the camera are needed. But still, it is the capturing of a good image that is important to Hajjaj and in this, the quality of his aesthetic eye and judgement for a strong image is clear.

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DAVID GOLDBLATT WORDS IJEOMA LOREN UCHE-OKEKE

Art does not lie in the medium, it lies in the work itself. You can express yourself in whatever medium you like. The medium carries the work and that’s how it should be judged.

–David Goldblatt

FOCUS - INTERVIEW

The history of contemporary photography in South Africa cannot be written or told without David Goldblatt. His professional career spans several decades and he has exhibited extensively around the world, with his work in notable collections locally and internationally. A considerable number of David Goldblatt’s works have been sold in major auctions by the Swann Auction Galleries and Phillips in New York and Strauss and Co, and Stephan Weltz both in South Africa. Works sold include 8 Works: Selected Images from the Transported of KwaNdebele, sold at Phillips New York’s auction, Photographs for $52,500.

Some of the works from his Blue Asbestos series were auctioned at Bonhams Africa Now sale in March of 2010. He has also contributed significantly to the development and training of young photographers and the field of photography in general through the establishment of the Market Photo Workshop. He has won several awards for his work including the recent the Lifetime Achievement Award by the International Centre of Photography (ICP) in New York. Following the sombre mood of mourning accompanying the death of Dr Nelson Mandela on the 5th of December, Ijeoma Loren Uche-Okeke, Omenka’s Johannesburg Editor had a very interesting conversation with David Goldblatt about his early influences, inspiration, new projects, his views on contemporary photography and his relationship with the Goodman Gallery.

OM: What were the major decisions, events or people that influenced your decision to pursue photography as a career?

In the 1940s when I was in high school, I collected stamps and began to photograph my collection in order to document them. I borrowed cameras from family members, my mother and brothers. The images were poor in quality but they served my purpose. Around 1947, I became interested in photographs as things in themselves. At the time television was not in existence; in Europe people were still using magazines as their windows to the world. The most prominent magazines were Life and Look, and Picture Post from London, that covered remarkable things, did remarkable work and had the best images. After I left school, aspiring to be a magazine photographer, I spent about a year trying to work on my own to break into the field.

My technique at that stage was amateurish and I found that I didn’t really grasp what it was that editors wanted and this proved to be quite challenging. At that point, there was no one in South Africa who had the professional capacity to teach me. I continued to take photographs but not with any strong sense of purpose.

It became obvious to me that to gain the right skills and technique, I needed to be in the magazine world. After a year of trying on my own without much progress, I decided to shelve photography for a while and get involved in the family business. This was meant to be an interim arrangement. My father ran a men’s outfitting store.

Unfortunately, he became ill with cancer and I became responsible for the business and managed it for 12 years. In that time, I continued

to take photographs to improve my technique. Photography is a skill than you can acquire without any formal education. It doesn’t require a PhD, you just need practice and dedication. I continued managing the family business but it became clear to me that to work as a magazine photographer, I needed to be free to pursue that dream. In 1962, after my father passed, I sold the business, and the proceeds from the sale allowed me the freedom to set-up and work towards being a magazine photographer. At this stage, I was married with children. I sent work to a number of magazines but particularly to one that was established in England called Town. It was a highly sophisticated magazine that published work by excellent writers and had very strong visuals; the content and design were of high quality.

It was a reputable magazine and I was fortunate that they were interested in my work. They commissioned me to do some work on the Anglo American Corporation, which they published. It was a major step for me professionally.

Another significant break in my professional career as a magazine photographer was the appointment of Sally Angwin as the Editor for the South African version of Town, known as the Tatler. Angwin was South African and the Assistant Editor of the popular Town magazine before her appointment. The publisher’s brief to her was to turn the Tatler into a local version of Queen, which was the women’s equivalent of Town. Sally Angwin commissioned me to do a lot of work and it was a major shift for me because up until then, I had not photographed any human subjects directly. I was also exposed to

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FOCUS - INTERVIEW

Here, high on drugs, Cinto White and a friend robbed a man after Cinto had shot him. Signal Hill, Cape Town, 31 May 2010 (4_A620), silver gelatin print on fibre-based paper Image size: approx. 49.5 x 62cm, framed: approx. 90 x 85.5cm

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FOCUS - INTERVIEW

Khulelwa Pali at the house in Cape Town that she burgled in 2008. Site B, Khayelitsha, Cape Town, 23 August 2010 (A_4489111), silver gelatin print on fibre-based paper Image size: approx. 49.5 x 62cm, framed: approx. 90 x 85.5cm, edition of 10

a variety of subjects like fashion, furniture and so forth. It was almost like force-feeding because in a short while, I became adequate at least in these kinds of photography. I worked with Angwin for a while. She used other photographers but for me, working with her was a significant step-up. She was a highly competent magazine editor, took no nonsense and was very critical. I learnt a lot from her. Sally Angwin died in a freak accident and the Tatler rapidly came to an end. I became a freelance photographer specializing in magazine work rather than news work, and got commissions from publications, and gradually developed a professional practice.

OM: What were your sources of inspiration and motivation, were there any particular individuals, professionals or events that inspired you?

There were many individuals and professionals who inspired me. Most of them were not from South Africa, and

there’s a qualifying clause to that. At that stage, that kind of photography was not available in South Africa, and was virtually unknown until the publication, Drum. Drum came about 1951 or 1952, I can’t remember.

It was like an injection of adrenaline to me; it was very exciting to see that kind of amazing work. I never worked for Drum and I never tried to work there as I didn’t think I had sufficient skills at that stage to do so. I think they were adequately served by the highly skilled professionals they had at that time, people like Jürgen Schadeburg, Ian Berry, Peter Magubane, Alf Kumalo and Bob Gosane, They were very professional and did very fine work. One particular individual that had a considerable influence on me in South Africa was Sam Haskins but this was much later in the late 60s. At that time, I was very keen to publish a book on Afrikaaners.

Then they were the driving force of this society mainly through the National Party and the Afrikaner Protestant Churches. I had a collection of essays on Afrikaners, that

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I wanted to publish in a book but had no idea how to achieve my objectives. It was at this point I was introduced to Haskins and his wife Alida, who were Afrikaaners.

Haskins referred to himself and his wife as “excommunicated Afrikaners”. He was a particularly remarkable photographer and was also an established and recognised publisher. His publications were real advances in book publishing because he was very adventurous with type and design.

His books were very influential in South Africa, Europe and America. He was also very popular and influential with editors and the best magazines in the late 60s. He offered to design my book and that was very significant for me because I had no idea how to compile the photographs I had taken into book format. I gave him my rough proof and contact prints and he designed a marquette and template, which he eventually sent to me. I was amazed at how the photographs I had taken were by judicious placement and croppings, given a life of their own. Sam

FOCUS - INTERVIEW

Shaftsinking: As an empty kibble is lowered to the bottom. the team pushes it toward a position where it will stand upright on the uneven rock. Men have been crushed under kibbles that tilted over. January 1970, Silver gelatin photograph on fibre-based paper, approx. 30 x 40cm, edition of 10

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FOCUS - INTERVIEW

Mother and child in their home after the destruction of its shelter by officials of the Western Cape Development Board Crossroads, Cape Town, 11 October 1986 (4_3614), 1986 Silver gelatin photograph on fibre-based paper approx. 30 x 40cm, edition of 10

Haskins was an incredibly generous man, he held nothing back and wasn’t territorial about his contacts. He introduced me to his publisher in England and I went to England with a dummy of my book. At that time if you wanted a book published, you literally had to do it yourself.

Around this time, I met Barney Simon and Manny Manim, who founded the Market Theatre. Simon and I became good friends and he became interested in my book. He was very critical of the design and layout. I was impressed by what Haskins had done in terms of design and layout. He had put two pictures together in a way that they spoke to each other, often dramatically.

Eventually, I recognised that the predominant voice in my book was Sam Haskins and not me. I had taken these photographs not with the intention of creating those kinds of conversations between the pictures.

So I eventually discarded his layout and its underlying philosophy because I realised it

didn’t speak in my voice. I then adopted a completely different approach in the layout; putting a picture on the right, with a caption on the left, and vice versa. I used a more conservative approach in my layout as opposed to his very strong visual approach.

I created a rhythm in the book developing the layout to have specific relationships to each other that were not apparent unless you were prepared to spend time studying the book closely. I started to understand that if my work was shown publicly, there were certain dynamics in them that required the viewer to have the patience to look with particular attention. It’s not ‘quicklook’ photography. Haskins had given me a tremendous gift because the opportunity he provided to use his design as a basis for creating a layout that was more in keeping with my own philosophy, made me realise the importance of photographs in relation to a book and in relation to each other. As I previously mentioned, Haskins exerted considerable influence on my professional

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career as a photographer in this country.

He also printed in a particular way and my photographs for a time were printed in a way not unlike his, with the high contrast. I had over time started to really understand what I was doing and had now developed my own way of printing. Other influences at that time were literary. I developed an inclination to have the ability to translate into photographs, the kind of observations I found in literature about South Africa. I didn’t want a literal interpretation of what I had read in my photographs. What I wanted was to find a way of photographing this country, in this country, in a way that reflected the depth of understanding that you found in literature at that time in South Africa. I refer to the works of notable writers like Nadine Gordimerher earlier work in particular and stories by Herman Charles Bosman and J.M.Coetzee.

In the early days, those were the writers that inspired me.

OM: Were the images for your proposed

FOCUS - INTERVIEW

The swimming bath rules at the Recreation Club of the Cape Blue Asbestos Mine, Koegas, Northern Cape, 2002 digital prints on 100% cotton rag paper, edition of 6

book part of your collection from your commissions from magazines and corporates?

No they were not. It took me a long time to understand this but I eventually understood that in work I did for a client, it was the client’s imperatives I was attempting to put into the photographs, while in the work I did for myself it was my own imperatives that were reflected in the photographs, and the two were not the same. Therefore, to successfully execute an assignment, I had to understand what it was that the client really wanted. I found that clients working in big corporations and certainly at the magazines didn’t always understand what they wanted.

Or rather, they knew what they wanted but it wasn’t easy to translate their requests into photographs. The onus fell on me to try to grasp what clients wanted and deliver photographs that would meet those needs. More often than not, those needs did not necessarily correspond with mine.

In this country particularly, it was a difficult

minefield because I would not accept work that was in anyway supportive of the regime, and quite often the brief was couched in terms that didn’t directly say that one is in support of the regime. One also had to understand the nature of what you were dealing with here in this country during the apartheid era. Trying to define my own imperatives was not easy and I had to decline assignments quite frequently. I also had problems with magazines overseas because they tended to dramatize events or to couch them in their own terms, which reflected their views about the regime. And quite often that didn’t correspond with the views about those particular events. For them it was black and white but for me it was many shades of grey.

OM: Is there an underlying philosophy that guides and informs your creativity?

You are asking a very broad question.

I suppose what drives me to take photographs is an excitement and

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provocation in something outside of my own inside. I need to be stimulated by what I see to the point of taking photographs. It’s a very unsatisfactory way of putting it but that is the truth of it. For example, in 2001 had a strong desire to take photographs that reflected the new dispensation in this country but I had no idea what I wanted to photograph. I knew that I wanted to be free of the constraints of my previous work so I began taking colour photographs. I had used colour for my professional work almost from the time I started working as a full-time photographer.

From about 1964, I’d done work in colour for magazines, corporations, and institutions but not for myself. During the apartheid years, black and white for me was the only appropriate medium, colour was too sweet.

Now I wanted to take photographs in colour and I knew that I wanted to photograph within South Africa. There was no question about that but I was lacking what I had in the apartheid years, which was a clear cut sense of direction in terms of certain types of

FOCUS - INTERVIEW

Joe Maloney, Boiler-house Attendant, City Deep Gold Mine, 1966 (2_2846), 1966, silver gelatin photograph on fibre-based paper, approx. 40 x 30cm, edition of 10

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FOCUS - INTERVIEW subjects. So I decided to photograph intersections of whole degrees of longitude and latitude in this country.

I need hardly tell you. It has affected my wife and I personally. I was curious about people who’ve committed crime. I wanted to meet ex-offenders, who had either been released on parole or had served time. I realised from the beginning that it would be a difficult thing to do, to ask someone who had been in jail to go back to the place where he or she had committed that crime. Therefore, I have paid these people, even though I recognise that it goes against journalistic codes. On the other hand, I undertook that if there was any income from this work, I would give the proceeds from my share to organisations dealing with offenders. For a number of years, I’ve been photographing ex-offenders and paying them to allow me record their story. I felt the story was important as a context to the photograph. I conducted very extensive interviews with these individuals. The project ground to a halt recently because I wanted to meet a particular profile of ex-offender; white women. So far, I haven’t been able to photograph or meet any. I was recently invited to England to do a similar project by a community arts project in Birmingham. In 2012, I spent a month living there and going out with someone from the area to meet and photograph ex-offenders. I’ll be going back in March 2014 to continue with the project and I’m still waiting to meet white female ex-offenders over here so I can continue the project in South Africa too.

So if there was something at 25 degrees latitude and 33 degrees longitude, I wanted to go where they intersected. There were 122 intersections in South Africa, one or two were in the sea within territorial waters. I allowed myself a margin of 500 metres around each intersection. At that time GPS devices were hardly known.

I started travelling to points of longitude and latitude around the country. For a while it was quite stimulating because I didn’t know what I would find at these points but eventually I realised that working like this was completely foreign to me. I was working to a formula that was completely alien to my way of doing things and I didn’t like it. I wanted to find subjects that were particularly provocative to me and these were not necessarily at these points of intersection. I didn’t find any stimulation at some of these points, so I gave up that idea. I had also found two complicating factors, many of the intersections I wanted to photograph were on private land, mostly farms. Eventually, I discovered that there was a man on the east coast of the United Sates that had set-up a website inviting people to go to their nearest point of intersection of longitude and latitude and photograph it. So this kind of deflated that idea.

I was then motivated to do what I should have done initially. As I was travelling to the various points of intersection, I would see things of interest along the way but because I had a specific objective, I couldn’t linger at those places of interest. But I liked the whole idea of intersections; the idea corresponded with my own way of thinking.

I was interested in going to the points of intersections of values, of politics, of shared ideas much about the way the land should be.

For several years, I put colour film in my camera and went around photographing whatever interested me and out of that came a book titled, Intersections. I will be travelling to Germany next month in January to print another book titled, Regarding Intersections, around this idea of intersections, which was a very engaging idea that created a sense of freedom.

OM: What do you consider to be defining moments in your professional practice if any?

There are no particular defining moments in my career. There were defining moments in the history of this country; moments that completely changed things but they have not been effectively represented in my work. For instance, I think Marikana is a very important event in our country, which has not really percolated in the work I’m doing. I am sure it will eventually register but not yet.

So my defining moments can be viewed as little bumps in the graph but mostly a straight line graph. I’ve developed a particular way of thinking and it’s difficult for me to change track at this stage in my professional career though it is not impossible to achieve. In the history of photography, there are photographers who have been able to completely overturn their way of thinking and go in a completely different direction but I am not built that way.

OM: Are you working on any new projects currently?

Strictly speaking they are not new projects; they’ve been going on for a number of years but there is a new complexion to them.

One of these projects involves photographing ex-offenders at the scene of crime. We have a very high rate of crime in this country,

Another project I’m working on is titled, Structures. Over the years, I’ve become increasingly interested in structures of all kinds. Much of our ethos has been nakedly expressed in our structures. Now new structures are beginning to emerge that are representative of the ideas of the new dispensation, the sports stadia being one, in particular. Then there is public art of various kinds, for instance, in Doornfontein, Johannesburg a semi-industrial area, there is a herd of cattle in a taxi rank, perhaps expressive of their value in traditional African society, beautifully rendered lying on the ground. Another place of interest is Eastern Beach in East London, reserved for whites only, until one day some 25,000 people invaded Eastern Beach and destroyed beach apartheid forever. To commemorate that event, a sculpture was commissioned of a little black boy with a yacht on his lap sitting on a bench. A day after it was placed there, its head was smashed with a beer bottle by an unidentified individual and the sculpture has since been removed and was recently found in someone’s garden in East London. I hope to photograph it.

OM: Your commentary about how the new dispensation has allowed for a multiplicity of cultural voices to emerge, resonates with a conversation I recently had with John Fleetwood, Head of the Market Photo Workshop. I understand you were instrumental in setting up the Photo Workshop; did you have any idea that it would be as important and significant as it is today?

No, we had absolutely no idea. The Market Photo Workshop has evolved quite magically, and there have been a number of remarkable photographers who have emerged from the school.

I ascribe the school’s success largely to a number of significant individuals that have directed it. I think there is a particular spirit that has been developed and sustained, which has resulted in some truly amazing work. I am convinced that spirit would have emerged anyway with some of the people like Zanele Muholi for instance, the lesbian activist. I think she’s too powerful a person in her own right not to have done something like this on her own. But I think it’s true to say that the workshop has been a trigger to many people who

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Stairway to a storeroom, Meerlust wine farm. Near Stellenbosch, Cape. 24 November 1990 (4_6904), 1990, silver gelatin photograph on fibre-based paper approx. 30 x 40cm, edition of 10

have a talent that may otherwise have remained underdeveloped, to go on developing those talents. So in my view, it’s been an extraordinary phenomenon. I’ve never taught there and I have very little to do with the operations of the Photo Workshop. John Fleetwood, who is the Head, is an incredible guy and he runs it. I can only say that he has done so, very successfully.

The Photo Workshop was initially set-up as a place that would be a mix of, and an encountering of different cultures and ideas about the world and about photography. I particularly dislike the word documentary photography. In my view, all photographs are forensic documents, whether it’s high art or photographs that come out of a roadside camera, they all become documents and it’s very difficult to make distinctions that are valid between them. However, to use the common term, the people that have worked there and the people that have come out of the workshop have tended toward documentary photography. To answer your question, we had no idea that it would prosper or that there would be this energy that would sustain it for this long. We’d hoped that would be the case but one cannot be certain, given the fact that in South Africa, many NGOs

have ground to a halt from lack of funding. So we took it day by day.

There was a remarkable amount of freedom at the Market during the apartheid era.

OM: How did you transition from being an independent professional photographer to being represented by the Goodman Gallery?

My relationship with the Goodman Gallery brought a major shift in my life and my career prospects. In 1999, I was showing work in one of those night clubs in Newtown. Linda Givon, the then owner of the Goodman Gallery visited the exhibition, paid for some prints and became interested in showing some of my work at her gallery. I realised I would have to do this if I wanted to put bread on the table because the market for photography had changed fundamentally and there were few magazines commissioning work of the kind that I did at that time. Also with the emergence of the digital revolution, work that I would have previously been commissioned to do was now done in-house. Whatever the case, it was impacting on my practice, which was disappearing rapidly. So Givon came along at a very opportune moment. On the other hand, the digital revolution

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‘San Raphael’ townhouse complex under construction, Fourways, Johannesburg. , 2002, digital prints on 100% cotton rag paper, edition of 6

had changed my life and these things happened simultaneously. My experience working with magazines had taught me about digital reproduction and this had a significant impact on my photography.

The digital production company I worked with was based in Cape Town, so I flew down there for a few days every month or two to work on digital scans and prints. The prints were indistinguishable from my dark room work. I also met Michael Stevenson on my trips to Cape Town. I liked him very much and he began to sell my work over there. Eventually, it was necessary for me to choose whether to work with Michael Stevenson or Goodman Gallery as I couldn’t work with both galleries. So I chose the Goodman Gallery and that’s where I am. They represent me in all aspects and deal with all the logistics of getting my work to international clients and markets through art fairs. They have a good profile internationally and work hard to maintain it.

OM: What is your view on contemporary photography and what are your thoughts on the various debates on whether photography can be considered an artistic form of expression as opposed to being documentary?

I think it’s entirely up to the viewer how they choose to regard my work, whether as forensic documentation or as art. The history of art is not something I am particularly interested in. I am interested in the work itself, what does it say? Does it reflect the intention of the artist? You are free to call yourself what you like as a creative person. Art does not lie in the medium, it lies in the work itself.

You can express yourself in whatever medium you like. The medium carries the work and that’s how it should be judged. So whether photography is art or not, is to me kind of a nonsensical question.

OM: Have you actively sought to put your work in major auctions here in South Africa or overseas?

Generally galleries are not particularly keen to put their artist’s works into auctions. I sympathise with my gallery. That’s where I make my living. If they tell me they don’t want to put my work in an auction, I don’t argue with them. I don’t deliberately put my work into auctions. Once in a while if someone comes to me and requests my work for a specific charitable cause, I will donate occasionally and the Goodman Gallery deals with all the details.

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PAUL SIKA: MY WORK IS A WORK OF LOVE WORDS BELINDA OTAS

His colourful creations have intrigued critics and audiences alike, and Paul Sika has been described by the New York Times as a multi-media prodigy. But the Ivorian photographer, 29, prefers to call his work the art of “Photomaking” because his photographs are a combination of digital photography and the art of filmmaking (for they are created the same way a motion picture is made with attention paid to in-depth storytelling). Sika came to the UK to study software engineering but what started as a cathartic moment in London after he saw the trailer for the movie, The Matrix Reloaded 2, would change his life’s path. A self-taught cineaste and photographer, Sika’s passion for “photomaking” stems from his passion for storytelling, with monochrome, illustration and photomaking forming the multi-facet strands of his photography.

He tells Omenka why his work is “A work of love rather than a work of reason.”

OM: What inspires your art and the images you create?

My photography has quickly evolved from doing a lot of monochrome in the beginning to an enormous amount of photo illustration to finally settle in a personal style, which is known as “Photomaking.” “Photomaking” can be reminiscent of cinema, painting and even drawing at times, and puts a strong emphasis on storytelling and staged actions. What truly inspires me is known as Paisley - “Paisley is that which is the most beautiful in the world.

Paisley is when you have the right amount of all things.” This is evident in Lillian’s Appeal, my latest work. In this collection of photos and stories, there is a twofold description of Paisley shared over generations. This is what inspires me and my work. I don’t know if it sounds cliché but my imagination also inspires me. It is basically bending and distorting reality, this is what I think attracts me most to it. The fact that I can see it and put it on a screen. You know, being able to distort reality and turn it into something that is beautiful. I think this is something that inspires me the most.

OM: Why do you call the work that you create “Photomaking?”

Explain the process to us and what photomaking is all about and why you believe this is the best medium for you to tell the stories that you want.

Photomaking is a word I coined from PHOTOgraphy and

filmMAKING, reflecting my appropriation of the techniques of movie making and applying them to the medium of photography.

This includes the three major stages of preproduction, production and postproduction, which encapsulate steps such as story imagination, writing, sequencing, casting, rehearsing, the principal day of photography, image manipulation and digital painting. Photomaking is very effective in the sense that it allows me to produce and tell a story in much less time and investment. It also lends itself to an aesthetic expression that can only be rendered as a static image, in the same manner that only a book can capture descriptions and emotions. My vision and oeuvre is in reality, a multimedia experience.

This explains the reason I have released the book, At the Heart of Me. In the long run, well I see video games and films adaptations of my stories, which will also capture the intricacies of the different media.

My passions are both in art and technology, therefore, do not be surprised when something which is out of this world comes out.

OM: Colour plays a big role in your “photomaking” creations, especially the unusual way in which you make use of it. Tell us about your fascination with the various colour components, which are very vivid, that go into your creations, and how you go about the process of these different blends of bright colours to create the final work that we see?

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FEATURES

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Gloglo Gospel 1 from At The Heart of Me series

Truth is, my work is a work of love, rather than a work of reason; my colouring happens to be what speaks to my heart. Thus, I follow what my heart likes.

From the point of conception to actualisation, what role does imagination, your environment and the vision of what you want to create, shape the process of the work you come up with?

Environment in the sense of perceived information is the springboard upon which imagination will jump to reach, to follow vision. Once this loop is entered, the three elements feed each other.

Studio photography was for a long time a big part of photography in Africa but you have moved away from that and are now part of a new generation who focus on the external world around them rather than create it in a closed environment. What excites you about the new generation of photographers on the continent and are there particular photographers, whose work you admire, follow and why?

What excites me about the new generation of photographers is the amount of discovery we do. We have very different perspectives, which all together work to show Africa in its legendary vibrant aspect. The frames that will fill the minds from now on will leave

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FOCUS - INTERVIEW of Photomaker. The more work I produce and the more evident it becomes–I’m simply creative. I believe the time will come, the best way to describe me is to simply say “This is Paul Sika”. The boundaries I wish to push are those of beauty. Beauty here goes beyond just visuals, it is about harmony that materialises in many ways and demonstrates the essential pattern and fabric of life.

Can you tell us about the technical process involved in creating your images, including the technical aspects, and ways in which you have evolved and enhanced this process since you first started?

I’m becoming colour blind. This has become very evident while working on Lilian’s Appeal. There is a series of photos entitled “Puneu Puneu” in which the colour scheme is different from the other series.

While I was working on the photos, I could see how different they were becoming from the others but there was such a subtle yet strong voice in me telling me to continue. By heeding it, I grew in appreciation and started to see beyond just what my eyes could see in front of me. This is what I mean by becoming colour blind and being able to visualise the bigger picture of an image and the impact it can have on the eyes and mind viewing it.

How would you describe the current contemporary art scene in Ivory Coast, in particular the reception of photographic artistic work, and in what ways does this influence your work?

While photography is getting more and more to the expected art forms, the scene is still embryonic. However, with the right efforts, I am certain we can have in this generation the type of growth Ivorian soccer has known with the generation of Didier Drogba and Kolo Touré. My country, my environment provides me with a visual language, which is unique because of its unique realities. In a way it is as if I had come into contact with a new alphabet, opened a new dictionary – and what a beautiful book!

What excites you about the current position contemporary African art occupies on the global art scene?

What excites me about the current standing of contemporary African art is that it is going through an evolution. I believe African art as a whole will attain a status of nobility that will only be a benefit to the whole world.

In what ways would you like to see this sustained?

It is important that artists keep working hard, focusing on being artists and according the essential and pure meaning of it, for as the journey will be truthfully experienced, so will follow the promised greatness. African artists should find their own identities like the diver goes and finds a pearl at the bottom of the sea. I am sure the right aspirations will attract the right conditions of success. beautiful souvenirs; and beautiful souvenirs will bring beautiful relationships and beautiful relationships will foster a more united humanity. In the end, this generation of photographers are contributing to a better world.

That said, which word appeals to you more to describe your work, “photomaker” or photographer and what are the boundaries you want to push when it comes to the creation of images using photography?

Photomaker is an aspect of me and photographer is an aspect

In addition to sustainability, why do you think it is important for Africans (those who can afford the work that you and your contemporaries produce) to invest in contemporary African art, and contribute to the narrative of value and ownership of African contemporary art by Africans?

Your question is interesting in the sense that you’ve had to put in brackets “Those who can afford the work that you and your contemporaries produce”. Indeed, many times it has looked as if Africans were not interested in the arts but the reality is otherwise and at least twofold:

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Asita, from At The Heart of Me series

-Art as in gallery art is still for the financially privileged.

-Many Africans understand the relation between art and usefulness, therefore they will not accept anything that does not stand.

These are the two great barriers to exponential art consumption.

I hereby say that it is upon artists and their companions to find the solutions to give their art to the masses. When will this be properly carried out? There is a balance of happiness and wealth that will also be struck on both sides.

In your book, At the Heart of Me, you talk about how your desire to tell a different story about Africa fuels the images that you create. What is that bigger story that you want to tell about Africa and the people represented in your work?

There are as many Africans as there are people perceiving that thing called Africa. At the Heart of Me is the visual and written first witness account of a young man who aspires to attain the African Dream.

And what is the African Dream?

The African Dream is the African version of the Human Dream. At The Heart of Me can be considered the logbook of a contemporary voyager, as he sails through the days and nights in attainment of the dream of dreams. There are two interwoven books within At the Heart of Me. One is a collection of colourful photo series, painting the portrait of a vibrant world and the other is an ensemble of anecdotes and insights experienced over the distance travelled.

Together, they constitute the trail left behind by a joyful journeyman.

This book will serve Africa and its lovers, its thinkers, its tourists, its visionaries, its dreamers, its builders, its explorers and its questioners.

You have had two recent exhibitions in London and Switzerland, what has the experience of taking your work outside Ivory Coast been like for you and what has the response been like to date?

On a personal level, it was great to be in London exhibiting with Galerie Cécile Fakhoury at the 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair as London is the city where my will to become an artist rose and crystallised. The feedback and response in London was great and it was the same experience in Switzerland.

What are you exploring about Ivorian society and what kind of conversation/s do you hope it evokes in art lovers and those who come in contact with your work?

Ivorian society and especially its visual context, is providing me with a new vocabulary to tell universal stories. Indeed, whether it is from Japan, United States, Africa or France, those who have participated in guided visits loved it. Regarding what I hope it generates, I would say that at first I want people to be entertained. Then, I would love the art to help them in their lives one way or the other. For example, a young French woman visited Ivory Coast and came to the exhibition of my latest collection, Lilian’s Appeal at Cécile Fakhoury’s Gallery. As I gave her and others a guided tour of the exhibition, she was attentive and silent. Later on Facebook she sent me a message saying that she had been very touched by the world developed and shown in Lilian’s Appeal and that she found herself receiving answers

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Dandelia, from Lililian’s Appeal series, 2012

to existential questions she had.

What are you currently working on and what can be expected from you in the next 5 to 10 years?

I’m working on the sequel to Lilian’s Appeal, which will be ready later in the year. I will have early viewers this time, which will be the first time I do so. For the next 5 to 10 years, I simply hope that much more of the vision would have been realised if not better.

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MODERN AND C O N T E M P O R A RY A RT

ArtHouse Contemporary holds the highest sales records for modern and contemporary art in Nigeria and Sub Saharan Africa.

Ben Enwonwu, Anyanwu, 1956, bronze, 142.2 cm Sold for N30,800,000 ($ 192,500) November 21, 2011 Ben Enwonwu, Fulani Girl, 1957, fibre glass, 78cm Sold for N17,050,000 ($ 106,563) November 18, 2013 Ben Enwonwu, The Drummer, 1957, fibre, 89cm Sold for N14,300,000 ($89,375) November 18, 2013 El Anatsui, Ends and Means Committee, 2013, wood and aluminum, 106 x 217cm Sold for N13,200,000 ($82,500) November 18, 2013

www.arthouse-ng.com

MARKET FILE

COLLECTOR, AUCTIONS, GALLERY

When words become

unclear, I shall

focus with photographs. When images

become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.

Ansel Adams

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BOMI ODUFUNADE IN CONVERSATION WITH

SIMON OTTENBERG

W

Installation view: The Art of Translation

What begun as a research trip to Nigeria in the 1950s, resulted in what is now regarded as one of the most important collections of the arts of Africa in the world. In over 50 years, Dr. Simon Ottenberg, professor emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle built a renowned and historic art collection, acquiring works of painting, sculpture and prints throughout Africa, as well as assembling a compelling collection of carvings, masks, household tools and ceremonial objects. The collection’s strength lies in its historical richness, documenting the varying traditions of artists producing work on the continent from 1950 to 1991 amidst the Pre- and Post-independence period. It is a testament to Ottenberg’s occupation as a cultural anthropologist, wherein, he collected works for pleasure and for research interests, never seeing them as investments.

In 2012, he gifted 145 major works of modern and contemporary African art from his personal collection to the Newark Museum in New Jersey, where a selection of works are now on view in the exhibition, The Art of Translation. Presenting a historical overview of modern and contemporary Nigerian art, the show features 24 works spanning the 1940s to 2000, by artists including Bruce Onobrakpeya, Jacob Afolabi, Obiora Udechukwu, Ada Udechukwu, Chinwe Uwatse, Olu Oguibe, Chika Okeke-Agulu and Marcia Kure. The noted scholar says, “I collected West African objects until the mid-1980s for pleasure. By then, good affordable African pieces became hard to find and I stopped. But between 1992 and 1997, I did research on contemporary Nigerian art, curated an exhibition, and wrote a book, for which I purchased works from Nigerian artists.”

The Art of Translation is a powerful survey, both in its scale and focused presentation. It openly illustrates the story of a nation grappling with cultural and social evolution within the geopolitical landscape of Pre- and Post colonialism. Grouped in chronological order, the works, all on paper, reveal the aesthetics, and cultural contexts of art in African society. The show comprises of many captivating gems including works by one of the pioneers and masters of modern art, Akinola Lasekan. This early watercolour of a famous Yoruba king, Ajaka of Owo or Ajaka Owa (ca. 1944) painted while Nigeria

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Uche Okeke, The Unknown Brute, 1959, lithograph of an ink drawing on paper, 30 x 20cm The Simon Ottenberg Collection, gift to the Newark Museum, 2012, copyright the artist

was still a British colony; the Cubist Abstract work, Njikoka Series (1982) by E. Okechukwu Odita, revitalises the tired traditions of Western art challenging conventional forms of representation; and a suite of ink drawings from the Oja Suite (1962) by Uche Okeke. In 1960, Okeke declared in the Zaria Art Society Manifesto, “Our new society calls for a synthesis of old and new, of functional art and art for its sake.� He formed a rebel arts group with fellow artist, Bruce Onobrakpeya and others adopting new styles within the artistic process. The drawings highlight the process of their construction, making evident the diligence with which they were made. Embracing a new visual language from uli, an Igbo painting tradition, this group of works demonstrates that the drawings remain contemporary and relevant, continuing to engage.

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Akinola Lasekan, Ajaka of Owo or Ajaka Owa, ca. 1944, watercolour and gouache on paper, 60 x 50cm The Simon Ottenberg Collection, gift to the Newark Museum, 2012

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Chika Okeke-Agulu, Knotty Affair, 1993, watercolour on paper, 37.5 x 55cm The Simon Ottenberg Collection, gift to the Newark Museum, 2012, copyright the artist

“We are thrilled to be the home for this important collection,” adds Dr. Christa Clarke, the museum’s Senior Curator, Arts of Africa. “With Dr. Ottenberg’s transformative gift, the museum can present more comprehensively, the creative contributions of Africa’s artists over the past century, and in doing so, contribute to an expanded understanding of art movements across the globe.”

Omenka’s London and New York editor, Bomi Odufunade speaks to the enigmatic scholar about Africa, collecting and his legacy.

OM:You started collecting over 50 years ago. What specifically led you to collecting the arts of Africa?

I studied Anthropology at Northwestern University from 1949 to 1953, the first major African Studies program in the United States.

Our two major professors (Melville J. Herskovits and William R. Bascom) had both collected African art and were enthusiastic over it. Then I went to Nigeria in the early 1950s to study Afikpo social organization, kinship and local level politics. There I discovered these wonderful traditional-style masquerades, some with over fifty masqueraders and so I studied that too. This resulted in an article in a book, Humorous Masks and Serious Politics at Afikpo, and a book, Masked Ritual of Afikpo: The Context of an African Art. I used to pass through Lagos and sometimes visited Ibadan. In both places, and in galleries, I came upon the interesting work of painters, sculptors

and printmakers, employing European art techniques (which they sometimes modified in Nigeria) and African scenes, both traditional and modern. I was intrigued by this new art and collected some works in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Europe and the United States and continued to do so until almost recently. In the 1960s, there were maybe twenty Nigerian modern artists in the country. By the time I studied a group of artists from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka in the 1970s, there were several hundred of them, many trained in Nigerian universities, technical colleges and schools of education. I collected many works from Nsukka, which forms the heart of my modern African collection, now at the Newark Museum.

OM: What other works do you have in your personal collection?

I am a collector at heart and have also collected several hundred

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MARKET FILE - COLLECTOR Northwest Coast Native American and Canadian First peoples’ silkscreen works. This grew out of living since 1954, in the Pacific Northwest, where, as in Africa, I watched the development of ethnic consciousness and the related arts in local Native American communities. I have donated some three hundred of these silk screen works to two Seattle museums.

OM: What was your first purchase?

I do not remember what my first purchase was. Perhaps it was a work by Kevin Echeruo, a young, not yet well-trained Igbo artist, who had a show in Enugu in 1960. It was a village scene, a genre work. Unfortunately, he died of illness at the time of the Biafran war. When I bought these modern works in the early days, I knew virtually nothing about them or their artists. They were low in price and I had a little money in my pocket. I just liked them; sculpture, painting and prints.

OM: Many works in the collection demonstrate artists engaging in their countries’ cultural and aesthetic traditions such as in Nigerian artist, Uche Okeke’s The Unknown Brute (1959) and drawings from the Oja Suite (1962) where the artist is evoking a new visual language derived from uli, a traditional Igbo design.

Would you say your selection of works is a reflection of your anthropological background when choosing and acquiring pieces for your collection?

As an anthropologist, I tend to focus on the social lives of artists and how this influenced their art. I am not trained in art history and have difficulty describing art works in art historical terms. I was never trained to see. An art historian can look at a work of art and tell how it was built up, and is more conscious of contrasts in planes and in colours than I am. I am interested in the lives of artists.

OM: Your personal collection is remarkable for its number of iconic Pre-and Post independence period works by Nigerian artists. Included in the selection of paintings gifted to Newark Museum are various notable works such as, Ajaka of Owo or Ajaka Owa (1944 ) by one of the pioneers of art in Nigeria, the late Akinola Lasekan and E. Okechukwu Odita’s Njikoka Series (1982), father of renowned artist Odili Donald Odita. Why is Nigeria so significant and important to your collection?

Because Nigeria is where I did much of my research and because it is rich in artists, formerly traditional ones, and now modern ones.

There are now over several thousand practicing modern artists in Nigeria, numerous galleries in Lagos, some in Abuja and Ibadan, and a Lagos art auction house.

OM: You have also acquired works by artists from South Africa, Sierra Leone and Ghana. Are there any other artists from other countries on the continent that particularly interest you but have yet to purchase?

Yes, there are other artists, but living in Seattle and not travelling widely, I am not as aware of them, as I otherwise might be. I would have liked to collect Ibrahim El-Salahi, a Sudanese artist, and the South African artist, Gavin Jantjes.

OM: The growth of technology on the continent has led to experimentation of digital photography and video among artists.

What are your interests, if any, in say new media?

E. Okechukwu Odita, Panel 4-Njikoka Series, 1982, screenprint on paper, 87.5 x 44cm The Simon Ottenberg Collection, gift to the Newark Museum, 2012, copyright the artist

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Marcia Kure, Emerging from the Whirlwinds - for Chika, 1997, watercolor and pencil on paper, 75 x 55cm The Simon Ottenberg Collection, gift to the Newark Museum, 2012, copyright the artist

I have not followed new media. Though I like the video work of William Kentridge, the South African artist, and I found his recent Metropolitan Opera direction of Shostakovich’s The Nose, fascinating. I would like to collect some of his art.

OM: What is the last work of art you recently purchased?

I do not remember the last work I obtained. It was a few years ago.

OM: In 1997, you were instrumental in conceiving the seminal exhibition, The Poetics of Line: Seven Artists of the Nsukka Group, at the National Museum of African Art (Smithsonian) in Washington. Are there any other exhibitions you would like to see or initiate?

I was involved in an exhibition which you may not know of, at the Seattle Art Museum. I donated a fairly complete range of masks from Afikpo, the Igbo group. Pam McClusky, the Curator of African Art at Seattle Art Museum, suggested that I go back and collect dresses and costumes, that she would include a masquerade of mannequins for the exhibition. For the past five years, there have

been twenty five mannequins, fully dressed in masquerade costumes, representing two masquerade forms at Afikpo in the African section of the Seattle Art Museum. I would also like to see some exhibitions of work by Muslim traditional and modern artists from the Western Sudan area, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, and so on. Their art, while rarely representative, has been neglected.

OM: What will happen to the remaining works in the Simon Ottenberg collection?

The remaining works in my modern African collection will go to the Newark Museum, my Native American works to the Seattle Art Museum and The Burke Museum at the University of Washington.

The Art of Translation: The Simon Ottenberg Gift of Modern and Contemporary Nigerian Art is on view at Newark Museum, 49 Washington Street, New Jersey through to 26 January 2014, or visit www.newarkmuseum.org.

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FEATURE

Copyright Orla Conolly

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THE WALTHER COLLECTION WORDS DANIELA ROTH, TRANSLATION GRETA DUNN

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Sammy Baloji, Untitled 7, from “Memories,” 2006

Okwui Enwezor, Director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich and designated Director of the 56th Biennale in Venice (2015), curated the first exhibition of the Walther Collection, Events of the Self: Portraiture and Social Identity in Neu-Ulm. He also edited the accompanying exhibition catalogue. Events of the Self was the beginning of a series of exhibitions covering several years of African photography and video art from the Walther Collection.

This international private collection is concentrated on the discovery, collection, exhibition and publishing of modern and contemporary photography and video art, and is sponsored by the non-profit Walther Family Foundation. The main site of the collection is in Neu-Ulm Burlafingen, Germany.

The exhibition location is comprised of four buildings; three are exhibition rooms

and the fourth houses the administration and library. It is located in a quiet residential area, and care has been taken to scale the architecture to the surrounding buildings.

The only new building is the main exhibition house, the “Weiße Haus” (White House), a cube containing a large exhibition area on the ground floor. The other buildings were originally local residences. One house belongs to Artur Walther’s mother, today it is called the “Schwarze Haus” (Black House) of the collection and has an exhibition area divided into three galleries. The “Grüne Haus” (Green House) is a residential house from the 1950s, typical of the area. The interior is made up of cabinet-like rooms, which are suitable for exhibiting works in a small format. The exterior is covered with ivy, hence the name. The museum in Neu-Ulm Burlafingen was opened in June, 2010. Since April 2011, there has been a second location in New York – the Walther Collection Project Space.

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The founder, Artur Walther was born in Neu-Ulm Burlafingen, studied at Harvard, was a successful banker in New York, and after renouncing his banker profession, turned to photography via a friendship with Bernd and Hilla Becher, concentrating entirely on the aesthetics. Today, his collection comprises an internationally important stock of contemporary African and Asian photography. For him, it is the social relevance of the exhibits that is most important in all his exhibitions. Every year or two, there is a new exhibition in Burlafingen. This means new purchases can be made to fine-tune the exhibition profile and to enlarge the collection.

The first exhibition, Events of the Self: Portraiture and Social Identity presented three generations of African photographers from the 1940s until today. The main emphasis was on the development of portrait photography and posed the

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question as to how artists can make social change visible via portrait photography, while at the same time expressing their ideas of status, gender, sexuality and ethnicity.

Enwezor juxtaposed African discoveries such as Seydou Keïta, the classic works of August Sander and the Hairstyles by J. D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere with the industrial photographs of Bernd and Hilla Becher – based solely on formal comparisons. Enwezor collected the basis of the entire “African photography” for Artur Walther. Portrait art and social change; typologies and taxonomies; as well as figuration and theatricality are the subject areas that interest Enwezor intellectually. He shows eroticism and identity by means of works by Rotimi Fani-Kayode and presents self-display and performance to advantage with Oladélé Ajiboyé Bamgboyé, Yto Barrada, Theo Eshetu and Samuel Fosso.

The second exhibition shows landscape photography, mainly from southern Africa.

Appropriated Landscapes curated by Corinne Diserens comprises 200 photo and video works by 14 contemporary artists. The beauty of the landscape in southern Africa stands in contrast to the aftermath of apartheid. Numerous photographs have brought the inhuman rituals of the regime into plain view for the world public. This South African photography draws its significance from the political dimension.

The exhibition does not link the empathy of a landscape solely with the historical concepts of what is picturesque or sublime, but regards landscape “as a prism of experience, as a reflection of ideology and a manifestation of memory”. The great chronicler, David Goldblatt gives the viewer insight into the social conditions of South Africa – an almost unsurpassable, heterogeneous picture. His photographic vision often penetrates the depths of the space and encloses the human figures within the city or landscapes surrounding

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them, allegorizing their dependence on their environment. Works from the 1950s up until the 1990s were exhibited; blackand-white silver-gelatin prints, architectural “structures”, high-rise buildings and “Bantustans” – homelands, separate residential areas of the black population.

Both geographic and ideological structures.

Photo essays by Santu Mofokeng from the 1980s when he lived in Soweto are also shown; daily life in the township and on the farms, religious rituals and the landscape.

Beyond stereotyped news images of violence and poverty in Soweto, they make up an “authentic archive” of rural life, as well as of self-conception and the family histories of black South Africans. The famous picture, Winter in Tembisia from 1991(Tembisia was founded as a township in 1957), an OMO commercial set in a mist-shrouded landscape, was hung resplendent in the stairwell. The Billboards show photographs

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Pieter Hugo, Yasser Booley, Cape Town,, from “There’s a Place in Hell for Me & My Friends”, 2011

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of an artificial world of goods in the midst of bleak township-street landscapes.

Mofokeng states that the Billboards served as “instruments of power” during apartheid, promulgating laws and prohibitions. Today, they appear to float – over-large advertising billboards aimed solely at the automobile traffic, seemingly completely divorced from the real life below and on their own level of meaning and image.

The South African photographer, Jo Ractliffe presents the series, As Terras do Fim do Mundo (Land at the End of the World), a discussion with the war-torn landscapes of Angola (works from 2007 to 2010). The photographs are analytical while at the same symbolic; the eerily still, rural views are revealed at closer sight as nameless monuments, anonymous mass graves or minefields.

Pictures of South African and Mozambican landscapes, architecture, social rituals and migration – these are referenced, for instance, by Guy Tillim: one is Grand Hotel Mozambique from 2008, an enormous, decaying concrete palace. Tillim gathers architecture from the decolonization period in Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Mozambique in his series, Avenue Patrice Lumumba, thereby commemorating the first head of state of independent Congo, murdered by the Allies.

Sabelo Mlangeni’s, series At Home shows a village world marked by its own specific stillness and breadth. With Country Girls from 2009, the South African photographer achieves an intimate portrait of the life of homosexuals in the country, taken almost for granted there. Juxtaposed to this, Zanele Muholi, a young South African activist and photographer, thematizes the discrimination against lesbian women as Bodyscapes. A video film by Penny Siopis, Obscure White Messenger, 2010, shows poetic images from memory – an inner landscape indeed.

The third exhibition, Distance and Desire, Encounters with the African Archive, curated by the photo-historian, Tamar Garb, is the first exhibition in the Walther Collection that focuses on historic photographs, and is the third and last part of the exhibition cycle dedicated to the African section of the Walther Collection. It is to be seen until May 17, 2015. (Thursday to Sunday, viewing by appointment and with a guide.) Following

Samuel Fosso, La femme americaine liberee des annees 70, 1997

the themes of portrait and landscape, this exhibition offers the concluding view of the early history of photography in Africa. Distance and Desire gathers portrait photographs, cartes de visite, postcards, album pages and books from the southern and eastern regions of Africa, from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries.

It includes historic photographs from unknown photographers, as well as from C.J. Aldham, Samuel Baylis and Barnard Barnett & Co. to W.D. Young. These are set against contemporary photographs and videos from Philip Kwame Apagya, Jodie Bieber, Sammy Baloji, Kudzanai Chiurai, Samuel Fosso, Jo Ractliffe and Sue Williamson. The carefully curated presentation includes individual portraits of warriors, women with beautiful hair arrangements and curiously decorated children. It shows group portraits, as well as ethnographic photographs that owe their provenance to the stereotyped view and curiosity of the colonial rulers, and today

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impart the understanding of an archive as a repository and ideal representation. In the contemporary section, a “contra archive”

by Santu Mofokeng is shown; ethnographic photographs worked into large-format collages – by Sammy Baloji, Sue Williamson and Candice Breitz, for instance, as well as staged portraits by Samuel Fosso and Kudzanai Chiurai. Zwelethu Mthethwa and Zanele Muholi examine the relation between sexuality, modern dress and ritual.

In 2015, the collection will dedicate itself to a series of exhibitions that will present the photographic concepts of typology, taxonomy and seriality in cross-cultural studies (how related form languages appear in different parts of the world). Works by artists and photographers from Africa, Asia, the United States and Germany will be placed in a common context.

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HIGHLIGHTS OF BONHAMS SOUTH AFRICAN SALES IN 2013 WORDS IJEOMA LOREN UCHE-OKEKE

Gerard Sekoto (1913-1993), Girl with Guitar, 1949, oil on canvas, 79 x 98cm. Sold £86,500, courtesy of Bonhams

In the past few years, at local and international auctions, work by South African artists have fetched record prices. Works that sold were mostly by artists considered to be South African “masters”, such as Irma Stern, Walter Battiss, J.H. Pierneef, Alexis Preller and Gerard Sekoto. Leading contemporary artists like William Kentridge and Brett Murray also continue to fetch record prices. These auctions are led by the 2 main auction houses, Strauss & Co and Stephan Welz & Co, closely followed by Pretoria’s Bernardi Auctioneers, that have organised major sales in South Africa in recent years.

The two Bonhams South African auctions in March and October of 2013 recorded good sales. The March 2013 sale, A Focus on Kentridge, was dedicated to the work of the contemporary South African artist. Responsible Hedonism by Kentridge was sold for £115,250

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(R1,958,946), while Head (Green) went for £73, 250 (R1, 245, 056). Vladimir Griegovich Tretchikoff’s Chinese Girl achieved a record sale of £1m. Other works sold at the March auction are Pieter Hugo Naudé’s Garden of Remembrance, Worcester for £3,125 and Anton van Wouw’s sculpture, The Hammer Worker for £15,000. Irma Stern’s Malay Bride also sold at a record price of £1.2 million. Bonhams next The South African Sale comes up on 19 March and 1 October, 2014.

Giles Peppiatt heads the South African Department at Bonhams and is considered one of the top experts on South African art. Bonhams is currently the leading auction house in this field. However, it could in the very near future be facing competition from Sotheby’s, another player that is expanding its African department and market. There is also Artnet Auctions, an online auctioneer that is fairly new but making positive strides in the industry.

Top 5 at Bonhams South African Sales, October 2013

Artist

Title and Date

Sold £

Irma Stern (South African, 1894-1966)

The Malay Bride within original Zanzibar frame,1942

Irma Stern (South African, 1894-1966)

Still Life with Amaryllis 1940

Irma Stern (South African, 1894-1966)

Malay Girl with Fruit in carved wood Zanzibar-style frame 1949

£182,500

Jacob Hendrik Pierneef (South African, 1886-1957)

Wheatfields near Stellenbosch

£86,500

Gerard Sekoto (South African, 1913-1993)

Girl with Guitar 1949

£86,500

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£1,202,500

£326,500

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AFRICAN CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY AT AUCTIONS WORDS ROMINA PROVENZI

Research and acquisitions of contemporary African art are the new trend in the international contemporary art scene. Museums, fairs and galleries are all strengthening capacity in this art niche. London has become an art hub for this market and shows of African art are now abundant: in October 2013 the new fair, 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair was launched, and contemporary African artists are included in numerous museum shows. In February 2013, the Tate Modern, the leading museum of contemporary art in London, presented two exhibitions of major contemporary African artists: the Ibrahim El Salahi: a Visionary Modernist and a series of Meshac Gaba’s installations grouped under the title, The Museum of Contemporary African Art. African contemporary art is also well sold at auction houses and private galleries.

In the vast production of contemporary African art, photography is the section of the market that received substantial attention from collectors and dealers. According to Ed Cross, an African art specialist from The Auction Room, it provides an accessible way to connect to African art and it is of immediate understanding to a broad audience. The market has also other explanations for the success of photography over other forms of art: African photography can be affordable, is probably undervalued, but can also be very exclusive. Works of young and mid-career African artists are still relatively cheap and therefore worthwhile to arts enthusiasts and investors. However, works of well-established African photographers can be pricey and their value has held on well throughout the years. Compared to other contemporary art markets, the African art market is segmented across three main tiers. The first tier is represented by top-end artists such as

Malick Sidibé, Gideon Mendel, and Okhai Ojeikere who are well established and whose works are highly valued. The second level is represented by artists whose profiles are maturing and prices are on the rise, like Raphael Leonce Agbodjelou, and Mario Macilau.

Finally, the third tier is represented by other young, dynamic artists that are not so established but show potential, such as Uche JamesIroha and Francois-Xavier Gbre’ to mention a few names. Often, even members of the low-end of the market often have works exposed in international exhibitions and their profiles are on the rise.

Buying photography at auctions can be involving and novel players need to know well the rules of the game to be successful. The bidding process is not straightforward, it has specific rules and costs, and it involves finding out the exact place and time of the offerings.

Bidding can be done in person in the sales room after registration or on the phone through an auction house representative. An increasing number of sales are held online as well and simply require online registration before the bidding starts. In the bidding room, bids start low, and the auctioneer subsequently calls out higher prices. When the item is hammered down, it means that no bidders are willing to offer a higher price and the final purchasing price had been reached. However, if the bidding does not reach the secret reserve price agreed between the auction house and the seller, the work will remain unsold. Consequently, the work might be taken off the market or auctioned again at a later date. For every auction, a pre-sale catalogue is published with information on each work coming up for sale as the title, the artist, the size of the work, and the low and the high pre-sale price estimate. The estimate price doesn’t include the buyers’ premium, which consists

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Lot 156, Malick Sidibé, (b. 1935), Les Vrais Lycéennes, Bal Fin d’Année, Lycée de Filles, 1966 Selections from The Baio Collection of Photography, New York, Rockefeller Plaza, April 15, 2010, Sale 2407

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Mário Macilau, (b. Mozambique, 1984 ), A Young Girl With Toy, 2011

of an additional fee generally twenty percent of the hammer price excluding VAT. Therefore, it is very sensible that the buyer have clear ideas on which works he intends to acquire and how much higher he intends to bid before entering the auction. One important aspect of the market of contemporary photography is that once a project is completed, the printed photographs should be numbered. In general practice, photographs are issued on a limited number and in different sizes. The smaller the number, the better the value.

£2,000. Other significant results were reached for the work entitled, Hercule Africain (1970) by Malick Sidibé from Mali that sold for £2,233 and had an estimate of £ 2,000; however, his work entitled Boxeurs en demonstration (1965) sold for £1,880 despite having an initial sale estimate of £2,000. Finally the work, A Young Girl With Toy (2011) by Mario Macilau from Mozambique sold for £1,310 and had an estimate of £1,000. The Auction Room will be holding an auction of African Contemporary Photography on 28 May, 2014.

At present, works of contemporary African photographers are usually included in large sales of photography or contemporary African art. It is still relatively rare to find a specific sale dedicated to African contemporary photography, exceptions include the newly founded, ‘The Auction Room’, an online auction house based in London. The Auction Room also devotes one auction per year to contemporary African artworks, and it is typically offered in October, which is the prominent month for contemporary art in London due to the numerous fairs, auctions and openings of important museum exhibitions. Sales from their latest auction in October were impressive and virtually all the photographs were sold approximately 20% above their initial estimates. For example, the artwork entitled, A woman recovers building materials from her shack that had been burnt down the previous day (1986) by Gideon Mendel from South Africa was sold for £2,350 and had an estimate of

Confirmation of the rising prices of contemporary African art sales are from other market players. For instance, 8Paddle, a newly founded online auction house based in New York, included two works by Malick Sidibé entitled, Portrait Studio and Dansez le twist in the online auction, House Sale on 31 October, 2013. They were sold within minutes of the bidding. Finally, contemporary African art also attracts non-profit auctions, as the one entitled, Articulate organized by the charity, Dramatic Need at the Victoria Miro gallery in London in November 2013. At the auction, a work by Mario Macilau entitled, Taking a Shower (2012) received the highest number of bids, another clear sign on how African art appeals to a broad audience of art enthusiasts.

Christie’s, the well-established British auction house also offers works by the top African photographers as part of larger sales. In

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Gideon Mendel, (b. South Africa, 1959), A woman recovers building materials from her shack that had been burnt down the previous day, 1986 Est: £2,000 - £3,000

October 2012, Christie’s Paris held the sale, Rendez-vous Interieurs contemporains that included work by well-established African artist, Malick Sidibé entitled, Le deux amis (1971) that sold for €3,250 and had a starting estimate of € 2,500. Another interesting sale was the Selections from the Baio Collection of Photography held at Christie’s New York in April 2010, which included a Malick Sidibé work entitled, Les Vrais Lyceennes, Bal Fin d’Annee, Lycee de Filles (1966) that sold for $2,500 and had an estimate of $2,000. The success of African art at international auctions is relatively recent. In November 2002, Christie’s Paris included Les Nouveaux Circoncis by Malick Sidibé in the sale, Photographies and sold for €1,880 despite having an initial estimate of €2,000. Finally, Bonhams holds in May every year a sale called, Africa Now, which did include some photography works that sold well above the initial estimate. Regional auction houses are also operating directly on the territory as in the case of Arthouse Contemporary in Nigeria.

Not all the auction houses are engaged with contemporary African art. For instance, Sotheby’s is among those auction houses that are not offering works of contemporary photography art yet, but we shouldn’t be surprised if they will catch up with it in the near future.

Despite its upward trend and favourable market estimates, African contemporary art is still a niche market that is not able to fetch the prices of other contemporary artworks in photography. Apparently

some African artists working with photography are still wary of having their works sold at auctions, but things are fast changing and audacious collectors are snatching very good works at reasonable prices, benefitting from a market that is still easily accessible.

It is still relatively rare to find a specific sale dedicated to African contemporary art, exceptions include the newly founded ‘The Auction Room’, an online auction house based in London.

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PORTRAIT OF A GALLERY: JOACHIM MELCHERS, GALLERY OWNER AND PUBLISHER WORDS DANIELA ROTH, TRANSLATION GRETA DUNN

Joachim Melchers receives his visitors in the new gallery premises in downtown Aachen. Art at ARTCO is presented in spacious, multifaceted, airy and light surroundings: painting, sculpture, installation art, photography. Melchers is known far beyond Germany’s borders as a gallery owner specializing in contemporary African art – and contemporary African art is booming.

Melchers becomes specific; his main emphasis is on contemporary African art, but he does not represent any “Africa labels”. His artists represent international contemporary art from India to Holland.

These artists come mainly from the diaspora. This is what is so special about this gallery– the scope of its content.

“How do the artists deal with being caught between two stools?” is a question that interests Joachim Melchers. This is because he has observed that it is not until they are in Europe that the artists really take a look at Africa, and really enter into an exchange with both areas of life. “Due to this marked clash, the works – the expression of the pictures – is strong, an expression that moves me. They don’t have to be pretty, but they show strength and depict the struggle that the artist continually engages in.”

A “struggle”, a confrontation, a connection or a mixture of diverse cultural influences runs like a scarlet thread through all these artists’ works whether sculpture, painting or installation. Traditional African art follows a particular design – as does European art. The preeminent question is: Is something happening here or not? This is the primary criterion for the selection for the gallery’s programme. In a cumulative effect, Joachim Melchers has often met “West to West” artists through others. Most of them have their origins in West Africa and have travelled to the “West”; as did EL Loko who studied with Joseph Beuys. With an African-Togolese background, he is the most famous African-German artist. Another example is Owusu-

Ankomah from Ghana who lives in Bremen and works with symbols from his homeland and from Europe. “This is where two worlds collide”, says Melchers. Godfried Donkor, also from Ghana, and living in London, reflects the historic connections between Africa and Europe in his art. Manuela Sambo, an artist with Angolan roots living in Berlin, spans the arc between the old European masters and African masks; she uses models from the history of European art.

Joachim Melchers manages the gallery together with his wife, Jutta and colleague, Arthur Ewert. Melchers had his beginnings in the music industry. He worked for an international music company before setting up for himself in 1984, when he founded printing companies, which he sold to an American media company several years ago. In the print shops, there were exhibition areas for art where Melchers showed EL Loko, for instance. “He infected me with the Africa virus twenty-five years ago”, says Melchers. “He was the first artist I bought works from. That was when I began to collect: I caught the art virus and the Africa virus and fell in love with the continent itself.” Melchers has supported various projects, among them the European-African Inspiration, collecting funds through customers and suppliers. In 2003, he decided to turn his “hobby” into a profession. Together with Jutta, who is a successful art photographer, he founded ARTCO – an art agency which managed the artists, then developed into an art gallery. Melchers, his wife and Arthur Ewert, who has been with the company for the last four years, are the decision makers. In addition, he hires freelance help for the administration. Joachim Melchers manages the “three pillars”; exhibitions in the gallery; collaboration with other galleries, art associations and museums; and art fairs. Arthur Ewert’s area of responsibility is the set-up of the exhibitions; that of Jutta, the photography, international photography exhibitions and the design of the books, which is another important area. Supplemental to the gallery, ARTCO publishes art books and artists’ monographs, roughly

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Joachim Melchers, copyright Jutta Melchers

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The market is there – and it is not only made up of large collectors. It is the gallery owner’s task to continue to develop these markets, to tap them. I have a product and I have to ensure it is sold. showing works by EL Loko, Ransome Stanley, Owusu-Ankomah, Manuela Sambo and Godfried Donkor.

In Germany, there are not very many large-scale collectors of contemporary art and therefore, not many collectors of contemporary African art. However, there are a considerable number of collectors of ancient African art. This group is just beginning to develop an interest in enlarging their collections with contemporary art. “The market is there – and it is not only made up of large collectors. It is the gallery owner’s task to continue to develop these markets, to tap them. I have a product and I have to ensure it is sold. The artists expect me to put butter on their bread.” This, in Melchers’ view, is how artists are established: via good galleries, good museums, good exhibitions, and good auction results. “The gallery owner has to have a good network in place, with contacts to the institutions”.

Jutta Melchers, copyright Marco Rosse

six to eight a year. Among them also, publications on artists who are not represented in the gallery. “That is, pure publishing work in order to promote art. We do not only bring out exhibition catalogues, but in the monographs on the artists, we show specific phases of work.

This can, of course, be concurrent with an exhibition.” The books therefore, are a documentary of the work of the artists; they serve to embed them in the context of art and are lively and easy to read.

After all, art is to be shared and sold.

Currently ARTCO has two premises: Herzogenrath and – since September 2013, Aachen. Both in the border triangle of Germany, Belgium and Holland, where Brussels, Liège and Paris, Maastricht and London are just around the corner, as are Cologne and Frankfurt. In Aachen, Melchers has already motivated two or three collectors to buy “Africans”. As with Africa also, “Art is always the main subject”.

Altogether there are eight to ten of their own exhibitions, plus – in 2014 – between two and three art fairs a year. Joachim Melchers describes his collaboration with other galleries and exhibitions in other venues as extraordinary: “We pull out all the stops.” Having Travelled Far took place in 2013 at the Omenka Gallery in Lagos,

There was a time when it was important to show African artists in an African context – the message of the exhibition, Africa Remix in 2004. Was, there is such a thing as contemporary African art? In Germany, African art was for many years regarded as inseparable from the context of the society as a whole – art shown together with cooking pots and woven carpets. “This was due to lack of knowledge” says Melchers. Today, the artists have arrived; namely in the art museums, institutions, biennials or the dOCUMENTA. “This is thanks to the efforts of the artists and dealers or gallery owners.

The gallery owners undertook the constructive work and artists such as EL Loko have always struggled for their emancipation, even at times refusing to exhibit. This happened elsewhere, for instance, in the United States. In France and England, it was easier due to the historic and economic context. In Belgium also, Africa is not as exotic as it is for the Germans, who are acquainted with her briefly from their holidays in Kenya with the Robinson Club. Now we have reached the point where Africans are losing their Africa label. But they are not losing their identity! The label has an external effect, now the individual artists are at the forefront. The cultural and geographical context is becoming less important as the artists assert themselves on the international, global scene.”

The emancipation of the artists also takes place from the viewers’ perspective. Good art has an effect. It is only at the second step one asks after the artist. Who made this?

Joachim Melchers doesn’t think much of the “curator” as a

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ARTCO Gallery space, Aachen, copyright Jutta Melchers

profession. “At a fair everyone is a curator. This doesn’t mean a thing. There are half-a-dozen good African curators. The main thing is to know good art and to know the artists.” In this collaboration between artists, gallery owners and museums – purchases by museums are extremely important! – works of contemporary African art must be established in the realms of art history. Melchers has supplied works to the Bremer Städtischen Galerie, to Dak’Art in Senegal, the biennial in Dakar and the fairs in South Africa such as the Jo’burg Art Fair and the fair in Cape Town, which is taking place for the second time. “Ultimately, we are bringing the artists back, via our international activities, back to Africa.”

He was the first artist I bought works from. That was when I began to collect: I caught the art virus and the Africa virus and fell in love with the continent itself.

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ZEGNA: THE ART Courtesy of Zegna

LIFESTYLE LIFESTYLE

T OF CLOTHING WORDS NANA OCRAN ‘If you build it, they will come’. This well-worn phrase can pretty much apply to any kind of edifice or physical landscape, but in the context of luxury boutiques, the new Ermenegildo Zegna outlet in Nigeria is the focal point.

The luxury Italian menswear brand launched its first West African flagship store in Victoria Island, Lagos, at the tail end of 2013.

This opening saw a requisite red carpet celebration, with guests from Zegna’s Milan HQ rubbing shoulders with elite invitees including; socialite and Globe Motors Executive, Nkiru Anumudu, fashionista, Bola Balogun, media doyenne, Mo Abudu and airline guru, Richard Akerele.

It was a sterling occasion, and a pioneering one in terms of creating a landmark affair to highlight the fact that Nigeria, or Lagos at least, is on its way to becoming a luxury hotspot. Zegna isn’t alone in offering elite merchandise on West African soil. Regarding fashion items, available brands include Versace, Dolce & Gabbana, Polo, Cartier and Rolex; all heavyweight acquisitions that can be found in multi-brand outlets within the country – but as far as having a stand alone shop – Zegna is the first.

LIFESTYLE

Courtesy of Zegna

Courtesy of Zegna

The Akin Adesola Street store joins Zegna’s international stable of boutiques, with venue numbers now hovering somewhere around the 560 mark in a global map that includes Europe, Asia and the United States. With the Zegna group’s top of the range Couture suit collection featuring complete pieces in the undeniably upscale region of US$2,300-US$6,500, there’s a clear indication of the type of quality and the market segment that the Zegna brand is aimed at. However, aside from the potential feel good factor of acquiring high-end and exquisitely structured garment pieces, there’s something else that’s tied to the heritage aspect of the Zegna name that’s far deeper and far more aesthetically tuned. It’s the company’s quintessential fusion of Italian style and classic fashion philosophy that the sartorial Lagosian is ultimately buying into when he or she enters a Zegna boutique.

then, the expansion of venues has developed in line with a growth of products that includes textiles, ties, shirts, knitwear, accessories, fragrances and sportswear. Although there’s also a concessionary Agnona line of womenswear, the Zegna brand falls very much into the classic world of impeccable men’s tailoring. Even this whistle stop history points to the fact that the pioneering founder was something of a maestro; an artistic conductor, orchestrating an enterprising movement in stylish men’s fashion that has forged twenty-first century partnerships with equally high-end labels – Gucci, Tom Ford and Yves Saint Laurent, whose suits have all been manufactured by Zegna. Also, a 2011 licensing agreement with the US Estée Lauder Companies Inc., gives the world famous skin and personal care giant, exclusive global rights to market fragrances and to develop new cosmetics under the Ermenegildo Zegna group’s brands.

For a fuller picture, it’s worth taking a retrospective stroll through the company’s early history. It was back in 1910 that the founder, Ermenegildo Zegna first made his name as a producer of high quality wool for suits. By 1968, his sons Aldo and Angelo had transformed this family business into one that included made-to-measure pieces.

Factories in Italy, Spain and Switzerland were the main hubs of activity, but it wasn’t until 1980 that a boutique store was eventually opened in Paris, just before another was established in Milan. Since

That’s not a bad union for Zegna, which started life by offering good quality, but general wool production from a factory base in Trivero – a commune in northern Italy. Although, even at the Zegna company’s early twentieth century inception, there was a strongly held philosophy of identifying and sticking to specific ideals of enterprise, these being long-term goals, control by the family (to keep their goals in place) and the employment of rigorous governance. The last

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LIFESTYLE founder of The Sartorialist magazine, Scott Schuman. He chose Los Angeles as an ideal backdrop for a video and fashion shoot that showcases seven Spring/Summer Zegna portraits for 2014.

The history and ‘look’ of Zegna merchandise begs the question, who exactly is the ‘Zegna’ man? It’s an interesting thought as the majority of the group’s advertising campaigns feature the familiarly bearded, lounge-like, slimline male models familiar to any Euro catwalk or magazine spread. Even a decade ago, the idiosyncratically featured, Oscar-winning character actor, Adrian Brody was the face of Zegna for two seasons. Each global region will have its campaign vibe, so it would be interesting to see if and how the preppy-cum-hipster Zegna image will translate to Victoria Island shoppers.

But, the Zegna man could be pretty much any individual who’s taken by refined, made-to-measure tailoring, whereby an existing Zegna pattern will be modified to fit the wearer. Similar, but different to the British bespoke tradition, in which a brand new and specifically cut pattern will be created and sculpted to fit the nuanced body shape of one individual, with different stages of suit fittings sometimes numbering upwards of five visits, along with multi selections from the ‘library’ of fabrics on offer.

Still, bespoke can often be a catch-all word for hand crafted suits made from high quality fabrics – although there are limits to the choice of buttons, linings and pocket style or lapel widths in the made-to-measure palette. Alternatively, a bespoke clothier who cuts the cloth and does the needlework will usually allow for limitless options. In either case, treading a line between made-to-measure and bespoke is obviously enticing for those who have the type of finances to comfortably match the quality of the product, without wincing.

Courtesy of Zegna

element surely has links with the Zegna group’s specific ethics around wool production. The bond between farm and fashion was further realised by the 2002 launch of the Ermenegildo Zegna Vellus Aureum Trophy for wool that’s 13.9 micron and finer, which to the uninitiated means that the textile is of the high quality standard of the ultra-fine merino fleece that Zegna is famed for using in its clothing.

Still, these measures are very much a part of the company’s laws and processes. Another dimension to the art of clothing is surely the more salubrious element of what could be referred to as the men’s movement in fashion. Even the Zegna website takes a playful look at this phenomenon, with links to style-oriented blogs that detail the ways in which the Zegna world of muted grey or darker suits, check shirts, tricolour patterned sweaters, rubber-soled lace-up shoes and leather attaché cases can or should be stylishly worn. “Go tieless (or) take a leaf from David Lynch’s book and keep the top button of your shirt done up” is one sage piece of ensemble advice, as is the fact that “patterned suiting is very of the moment, and looks just as good worn head to toe, or broken up with more casual elements.” Zegna’s aesthetic credentials are taken a step further with another section of the website that features a selection of beautifully interpretative images of its Couture collection by blogger, photographer and

Bearing these factors in mind, the multi layers of creative design activity, business savvy and social responsibility are key to the Zegna brand identity, and the company’s artistic side is obvious. In 2008, the specifically visual arts-based, All’Aperto (Outdoors) project was launched as part of the Zegna Foundation series. Curated by family member, Andrea Zegna and Milan-based writer and curator, Barbara Casavecchia, the vision is to make contemporary art and its values accessible to a broad audience and to consistently support site-specific, permanent artwork that’s significantly been created in the Trivero area where the Zegna company first started. By working with established international artists, the project’s mission is to address issues that directly relate to the community, the town and its inhabitants.

All this may seem like a labyrinthine, or off-tangent way at looking at the arrival of Zegna on West African soil, but it’s interesting to consider the stories behind this particular heritage brand when it comes to its ability to move through different markets. Yes, the prices may seem steep for off-the-hanger or made-to-measure suits – despite the workmanship or calibre of fabric that may have gone into them. Similar views could also be levelled at the company’s high-end fragrances or accessories that may, to some, seem indistinguishable from, or just as stylish as that of many other brands. However, more than simply buying into a well-known Italian name, it’s the added factor of having a back story of culture, family integrity and artfully symphonic business strategies that most likely make the experience of browsing the shelves of a Lagos-located (or any other) Zegna boutique that little bit more seductive.

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DESTINATION LAGOS WORDS NANA OCRAN

A total city, tailor made for adventure.

–Odia Ofeimun

Courtesy of Kelechi Amadi-Obi

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LIFESTYLE

The scribe and social commentator, Odia Ofeimun has said a lot of other things too, but there’s no arguing with his description of West Africa’s most vibrant metropolis. Many others have had even more romantic notions of the city, whether their opinions are based on being there, or perceptions of Lagos from afar. “Hard where you expect it to be soft, soft and graceful where you thought it was all hardness” comes from writer Teju Cole, while “ … a megacity of ten million people and more, who are busy taking over the world” was part of the introductory narrative from the BBC’s provocative Welcome to Lagos documentary, which aired back in 2010. A potent city, Lagos constantly courts a strong reaction from anyone who experiences it, and this is generally down to the dynamic vibe and rhythm that’s created by its art, culture, and even its social politics.

The last few years have seen an upscale in international interest in Africa’s urban areas, and Lagos has lately become a buzzword for luxury in a way that’s set to grow. A so-called ‘hotspot’ for elite international brands, this former Nigerian capital is set to develop as a shopping destination for well-heeled Nigerians (and nonNigerians) who may, over the next few years, start to turn their gaze away from Europe and the United States when it comes to some of their shopping habits. It’s a changing landscape in which this city is taking small bites of what some might view as the more extravagant approach to consumerism. This attitude also extends to accommodation. The options of where to stay in Lagos have blossomed over the last few years, with multi-starred hotel choices gaining more and more ground. This destination guide provides an overview. A few selections of the best of the city’s arts, culture, lifestyle, shopping and leisure options are highlighted to provide

Installation view: LagosPhoto

something for those travelling to Lagos’ various areas, from the Island to the Mainland or to the commercial hub of Victoria Island or residential Ikoyi.

Art and Culture

We trust with such a strong history of art, literature and various levels of invention and innovation, Lagos (and in fact, Nigeria in general), should have far more art-related spaces. Lagos is the undeniable nerve centre of creative expression and in terms of contemporary visual art, the city is leading the way in terms of key galleries that are worth visiting. In Ikoyi, the Nimbus Gallery is located above its partner venue, the Bogobiri Guest House on Maitama Sule Street, behind Falomo Shopping Centre. The gallery has artworks from Nigerian and other African artists on sale, or simply available to view – and the space also offers art valuation, advisory and auctioneering services. Down the street, the African Artists’ Foundation on Raymond Njoku Street, Ikoyi has a labyrinth of art rooms festooned with the works of Pan-African and other international artists. AAF is also the Head Quarters of the monthlong, LagosPhoto Festival, which takes place every October. The National Art Competition is also an annual AAF initiative. With numerous strings to its bow, the Omenka Gallery on Ikoyi Crescent in Ikoyi hosts exhibitions in fine art and photography, and importantly, has a permanent collection of work by the late artist, Ben Enwonwu.

A dedicated foundation uses education and public debate to increase the global perception and appreciation of contemporary African art.

Terra Kulture in Victoria Island is a gallery space, a theatre venue and a sometime auction house. Contemporary African art and culture is at the heart of its numerous programmes, which also include Nigerian language workshops. On the Mainland in Yaba, the Centre for Contemporary Art on McEwen Street, highlights the work of national and international artists, often exhibiting experimental work through diverse themes. The Video Art Network (VAN Lagos) is also housed here, and is a dynamic project that showcases sound art

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LIFESTYLE

Courtesy of Gian Maria Soglia

and moving image from a range of artists.

Shopping

Although the number of malls in Lagos can’t compete with those in other megacities, mall culture tends to rule when it comes to mass, or one-stop shopping habits. It’s fair to say that not everyone has the inclination (or finances) to go for the high-end shopping centre option, but in the context of specifically discerning travellers to Lagos, we’re looking at the exclusive end of things, in line with much of the international column inches that are being devoted to the city’s modest, but growing potential as a luxury shopping destination. Hugo Boss launched its flagship store in early 2013. It joins Puma and Lacoste amongst many other commercial venues at The Palms in Lekki. Italian luxury fashion house, Ermenegildo Zegna (See feature p.72 ), on Akin Adesola Street in Victoria Island opened a boutique store, a short walk away from a Porsche dealership.

Could this activity be the early stages of Lagos’ version of London’s Bond Street?

There’s also talk of Prada coming to Lagos in 2014, having already entered Africa via a store in Angola and two in Morocco – one for men and one for women. Polo Luxury in Victoria Island is another exclusive store that has a second Lagos-based boutique inside The Palms, as well as an outlet in Ghana. Offering multi brands including Cartier, Rolex, Gucci, Jimmy Choo and Dolce & Gabbana, it’s an enterprise that’s really leading the way in offering high-end products at home in West Africa. A big thumbs up also goes for the MAC Cosmetics store that opened in Ikeja City Mall in February 2013.

Also, Temple Muse in Victoria Island is a pioneering favourite that has consistently championed luxury homeware, gifts, fashion and accessories produced by Nigerian and international designers.

Outdoors and Leisure

For a general respite from the regular push and pull of the city, Lagos does have a decent number of indoor or outdoor spaces that offer an alternative type of rhythm. Beach

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life may not have a full Miami-style kick to it, but the shorelines beyond the city can be good out of town getaways. Kamp Ikare is an enticing resort on a stretch of Lagos coast near Ikare village. Only accessible by boat, it has a main communal beach house and six duplex cabins located around a pool, a few metres from the sea. La Campagne Tropicana is a 65-acre resort with multiple bars, a freshwater lake, a mangrove forest and an expansive stretch of sandy beach.

Ibeshe Beach has a spa, tennis and volleyball courts. There’s a children’s corner and gorgeous views of Lagos Lagoon. Lekki and Alpha Beaches along Lekki-Epe Expressway, reasonably close to the city centre. Both beaches have palm frond shelters for hire.

They are peaceful retreats that can be wonderfully isolated at certain times of the year. For relaxing indoors, the Clear Essence California Spa and Wellness Resort on Alexander Road in Ikoyi have treatments for men and women, including hot or cold facials and de-stressing massages. There are private rooms for pampering sessions, and a

LIFESTYLE

Courtesy of Kelechi Amadi-Obi

peaceful garden retreat, which is something that can be hard to find in this bustling city.

And so, as a vibrant and energetic metropolis, Lagos with its aural and visual cacophony of sights and sounds will leave a memorable imprint long after a visit is over. Even though it’s a city that’s definitely not built for the faint-hearted, it has its quiet retreats, it’s cultural high spots and a fine choice of high level and home from home options to entice all those who want to experience a taste of indulgence – West African style – when they spend time in the city.

Hotels

There’s been a surge in high-end accommodation choices in Lagos over the last few years. Starting with one of the newest venues, The Intercontinental on Kofo Abayomi Street in Victoria Island has been touted as Nigeria’s first 5-star, luxury hotel. It opened its doors in September 2013. Complete with bright and spacious deluxe rooms, a ‘Grand African ballroom’, 24/7 business areas and wonderful panoramic views of the Gulf of Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean, it’s a welcome addition to the city’s accommodation options. The

swanky terrace restaurant at the Radisson Blu Hotel on Ozumba Mbadiwe Avenue in Victoria Island is a huge draw for many of the city’s visitors. It’s a well-chosen site for weddings and parties and the hotel itself is an undeniably big attraction with its 170 rooms designed in ‘urban’ or ‘ocean’ styles. From standard to terrace and presidential suites, Radisson does 5-star with aplomb. Over in Ikoyi, the Westfoster Harbour Hotel on Oyinkan Abayomi Drive in Ikoyi offers a certain kind of romance in its waterside residences.

High ceilings and Victorian era décor are typical of the hotel’s 15 rooms, which are sized as studio or en suite one or two-bedroom apartments. An available butler service is a good indication of the high-end level of facilities on offer. Luxury and boutique also goes hand-in-hand at The Wheatbaker on Onitolo Road in Ikoyi, a residentially-located venue, where facilities include a spa (which should be up and running this year), the Saraya Deli, a grill room for prime steaks, free outdoor parking, a pool, and even an on call doctor – although hopefully, this is a service that isn’t much used.

Located close to the Palms Shopping Mall, Kuramo Beach and Ikoyi Golf Club, The Wheatbaker’s a good spot for experiencing other parts of Lagos.

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LIFESTYLE

NECTAR OF THE GODS Tuscan and Piedmontese wines deservedly have disciples, but top Valpolicella is also drawing aficionados. – Anthony Barne

Italy has 4,000 native grape varieties and twice as many attitudes to wine-making so, in this country of consummate individuality, clusters of well-managed, actively promoted vineyards are most likely to capture international attention. Foremost among these is Piedmont with its big-hitting Nebbiolo reds from Barolo and Barbaresco. Of the producers here, Angelo Gaja could certainly claim to be the most recognisable name globally, not just because of critical acclaim, but also due to his efforts in marketing his wines. However, rather than promoting the names Barolo and Barbaresco, he is now labelling many of his wines as ‘Langhe’, the regional category for the area.

There is a good selection of Gaja and other Piedmontese wines in our sales along with big names from Tuscany, Italy’s other preeminent region. Here the focus is not so much on the DOCs of Chianti, Brunello and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano but on ‘Super-Tuscan’ wines, brands that stand on their own merits on the international market. The stronghold of these is the coastal area of Maremma and most take top-quality Cabernet Sauvignon as their inspiration, often in a Bordeaux-style blend with Merlot, although some incorporate the traditional grape of Tuscany-Sangiovese.

Sassicaia was the wine that first defined the concept of SuperTuscans, and it is still one of the most sought-after, but Piero and Lodovico Antinori have had praise heaped on them from all corners of the globe for their Ornellaia, Solaia and Masseto.

being lost by the process.

Amarone’s story starts with a sweet version, still produced, called Recioto. This wine has form, having been mentioned in a letter written in the 5th century by, of all people, a civilized Goth. It wasn’t until 1936 that the wine began to be fermented out fully – possibly by mistake, in the first instance. Amarone has supplanted Recioto as the Veneto’s tribute to the gods and the wines of two of its greatest exponents, Romano Dal Forno and the late Giuseppe Quintarelli, are offered at our sale, with Quintarelli 1993 estimated at £1,400-1,600 per dozen bottles and Romano 1996 at £600 for six.

Anthony Barne MW is UK Head of Wine.

Below: Giuseppe Quintarelli Valpolicella Classico Superiore, Vigneto di Monte Cà Paletta 1995 and Valpolicella Classico Superiore, Vigneto di Monte Cà Paletta 1994

Tuscany and Piedmont are really the business end of Italian wines at auction but there is a devoted following for top producers of Valpolicella, a red wine from the Veneto, west of Venice and on the edge of Lake Garda. The traditional style of this wine, made from Rondinella, Molinara and Corvina grapes, is a light, supple style of quaffing wine, although producers such as Allegrini have done much to change this image. The apotheosis of Valpolicella is an especially rich, dry wine with a raisiny flavour and velvety texture that comes in the form of Amarone della Valpolicella. This wine is produced by leaving selected bunches on the traditional Valpolicella vines until they reach a high degree of sugar ripeness in late October. These are then dried, either on straw mats in the traditional way or in drying rooms, which helps avert the onset of noble rot, prized in most sweet wines but unsuitable for an Amarone. The bunches are specially selected since the tannins and acidity of the grapes have to be in perfect harmony with the fruit, otherwise the concentration of components brought on by desiccation will highlight any discrepancies, something between 30-40 per cent of the volume

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COLUMNS

I always thought

good photos were

like good jokes. If you have to explain it, it just isn’t

that good.

Anonymous

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COLUMNS - ARTTACTIC

CONFIDENCE IN THE INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY MARKET REACHES AN ALL-TIME HIGH WORDS ANDERS PETTERSON

ArtTactic速 Modern & Contemporary Indicators vs Economic Indicator 100.0

ArtTactic*

90.0 80.0 70.0 60.0 50.0 40.0 30.0

Economy

20.0

Modern Photography

10.0

Contemporary Photography

Mar 11

Oct 11

May 12

Oct 12

According to the latest ArtTactic Photography Market Confidence Survey published in December 2013, the overall confidence in the international Modern and Contemporary Photography market, increased by 7% in the last 6 months. The Indicator currently stands at 75 (a reading above 50 implies that there is more positive market sentiment than negative). After a 38% jump in the Confidence Indicator between November 2011 and May 2012, the market confidence has risen by 9% in the last 12 months, signalling a continued positive outlook among the experts in the international Modern and Contemporary Photography market.

A more positive outlook for the economy resulted in a 40% jump in

Apr 13

Dec 13

the Economic Indicator from 51 to 71 (signalling a much more bullish sentiment for the economy), and was the main driver behind the recent increase in confidence for the Photography market.

Experts expect the market to continue to go up in the next 6 months In terms of market direction for Modern Photography, the outlook remains the same as 6 months ago. 57% of the experts believe the Modern Photography market will go up (versus 92% in November 2012), a further 43% think it will be flat or no change (versus 8% in November 2012). None of the experts believe the market will fall

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COLUMNS - ARTTACTIC

$45

ArtTactic*

$40 $35 $30 $25 $20 $15 $10 $5

Modern

Contemporary

Vintage

African Photography Outlook

The positive market sentiment is also likely to benefit the African photography market, which is already gaining international curator and collector interest, especially as photographer Edson Chagas from Angola won the prestigious Golden Lion Prize at the Venice Biennale in 2013. Malick Sidibé, a Malian photographer, who noted for his black-and-white studies of popular culture in the 1960s in Bamako, won the same prize in 2007.

However, the auction prices for many of the top African photographers are still low compared to many of its international peers. Photographs by Malick Sidibé, typically sell for less than $5,000 at auction. Other artists such as the internationally renowned South-African photographer, David Goldblatt recently sold Selected Images from the Transported of KwaNdebele (1983/84) – a set of eight photographs for $42,000 through Phillips in New York, an auction record for the artist.

It is likely the price gap between the African and international photography market will narrow on the back of the recent surge in interest and demand for African art both by domestic and international buyers.

Modern Photography Market Confidence Ranking December 2013 Rank Dec 13

Artist Name

Confidence Indicator

1

William Egglosion

91.2

2

Irvin Penn

90.9

3

Edward Weston

90.2

4

Richard Avedon

89.7

5

Bill Brandt

89.3

6

Henri Cartier Bresson

88.9

7

Josef Sudok

87.1

8

Man Ray

84.1

9

Daine Arbus

83.3

10

Paul Strand

81.3

Anders Petterson is a leading authority on art market research, with particular focus on the global contemporary art market. He is the founder and Managing Director of ArtTactic (www.arttactic.com) , a London-based art market research and advisory company set-up in 2001.

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2nd Half 2013

1st Half 2013

2nd Half 2012

1st Half 2012

2nd Half 2011

1st Half 2011

2nd Half 2010

1st Half 2010

2nd Half 2009

1st Half 2009

2nd Half 2008

1st Half 2008

2nd Half 2007

1st Half 2007

$2nd Half 2006

The international Photography auction market has gone from strength to strength since the downturn in 2009. The total auction sales of photography for Phillips, Sotheby’s and Christie’s came in at $50.7 million in 2013, up 36% from 2012. The increase in sales was largely driven by the Modern Photography market, which saw sales increase by 22% from $18.7 million to $23 million. The Vintage Photography market saw a 125% increase from $7.3 million to $16.4 million in the same period. Contemporary Photography sales remained unchanged at $11.2 million between 2012 and 2013, and accounted for 22% of the overall sales of photography.

(Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips)

1st Half 2006

Photography Auction Sales up 36% in 2013

ArtTactic® Photography Auction Sales (USD) 2006 - Nov 2013

Millions

in the next 6 months. For the Contemporary Photography market, the outlook has improved from April 2013, with 41% (up from 33%) of the experts expecting the market to go up in the next 6 months.

COLUMNS - ASK THE CURATOR

ASK THE CURATOR WORDS BOMI ODUFUNADE

This issue, Omenka commences a regular Q&A column checking in with the art world’s leading independent and museum curators around the world. We discover what they are up to, their favourite artists and what role the ‘curator’ plays in the artistic process.

Name: Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi. Occupation: Artist, Art Historian, and Curator of African Art at the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College City: Hanover, United States.

OM: Complete the sentence. A curator...

Is a work of art that is constantly re-imagined.

OM: Who’s your favourite living artist?

The Chinese artist, Xu Bing.

OM: Describe a typical day in your life as a curator.

It is Tuesday, I wake up at 4 or 5 am; I do some writing and plan the day while I take my morning coffee. I am at the office at 7:59am and I attend the staff meeting at 8:30am. I spend the rest of the day working through objects and curatorial ideas, responding to emails, making phone calls, writing, and doing some reading.

OM: What project are you working on now?

Dak’Art Biennial and two exhibitions at the Hood Museum; The Art of Weapons focusing on traditional African weapons and Feedback: Art and Africa in the 1980s, which will include works produced in the 1980s and commissioned works by contemporary African artists.

OM: The five items you need to curate a show?

A strong idea, critically-engaging artworks or artists, a deserving space, a committed team, and resources.

OM: What under-appreciated artist do you think people should know about?

The Dominican artist, Tam Joseph.

OM: What art do you wish you owned?

The not-so-recent painting series, a re-interpretation of uli motifs, by Nigerian artist, Joseph Eze. OM: Name your favourite 20th century artistic movement and why?

The Black British Arts Movement in the 1980s. In addition to its specific British politics, it reflected the long durée and breadth of global Black cultural politics of visibility.

OM: Create your own ‘manifesto’ in one sentence.

I do not want to change the world. It smacks of arrogance and may be an illusion to think that way. I want to perform my perfunctory

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COLUMNS - ASK THE CURATOR

Portrait of Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi, copyright Caleb Kenna 2013

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COLUMNS - ASK THE CURATOR

Evolving Perspectives: Highlights from the African Art Collection ongoing in the Hood’s Gutman Gallery

function as an actor on the world stage, but to also claim the agency in performing that function to better understand myself so that I can understand my neighbour better.

OM: What exhibition or biennale, past or present, would you like to have curated?

The European Manifesta is an interesting proposition. I have some ideas on how to rethink Europe in relation to the rest of the world.

Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi trained as a sculptor at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, and earned a B.A. in Fine and Applied Arts.

He received a postgraduate diploma in Museum and Heritage

Studies from the University of Western Cape, South Africa, and a PhD in Art History from Emory University, Atlanta, United States.

He is a recipient of several academic fellowships, scholarships, and artists’ awards, including the Smithsonian Institution’s Pre-Doctoral Fellowship and the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation Fellowship.

He has curated exhibitions in Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and the United States.

Dak’Art Biennale runs from 9 May to 8 June 2014 in Senegal and Feedback: Art and Africa in the 1980s will commence in the Fall of 2015 at Hood Museum, Dartmouth College.

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COLUMNS - LETTER TO THE EDITOR

LETTER TO THE EDITOR Dear Oliver, I have been busy since we met at the Jo’burg Art Fair. I may have mentioned that I had participated in two photography festivals in China this year. My most urgent, post-art fair priority was to consolidate these trips. I needed to follow up on all my correspondence and do my festival post mortem. I find these sessions quite useful - I list all the pros and the cons of each festival I attend. Being an owner-run gallery, I use these notes to guide me when I need to consider similar invitations. The notes also keep my dream alive of hosting a photography festival in Cape Town. By the way, Roger Ballen’s first exhibition in China opened at Pingyao International Photography Festival in September. I was the associate curator, Lian Zhiping took care of the finer curatorial details, and Roger delivered a great illustrated lecture. It was good to spend time with him, I seldom have that opportunity as he lives in Johannesburg and I live in Cape Town.

A month after the Jo’burg Art Fair, my gallery participated in the inaugural Cape Town Art Fair. Boy, oh boy I am not spilling the beans on this one. Oliver, if you have not been to Cape Town yet, then you can catch the second edition of this art fair, along with the now world famous Design Indaba and all the celebrations around Cape Town’s status as World Capital of Design, next February. I am working on presenting my best ever group exhibition along with every other gallery in Cape Town. Let me know if you are going to be here. I will need to make the restaurant reservations as soon as possible; and if you do not mind, please can we split these bills? All dinners will be on me when I see you next in Jo’burg.

Installation view: Karlien de viller

After we had started our correspondence, I realised that I know nothing about the art scene in Lagos. In actual fact, I must confess that I know very little about the art scene in Africa in general. I know about the African stereotype, I know about the bureaucratic hassles and the red tape. I also know about the artists, the agencies and the collectives trying to make Africa their base; to stop the commute between the America and Europe in search of fame and fortune.

I also know about the institutionalized biennales and film festivals, and each year, I eagerly read about new festivals taking place on the continent.

I discovered Africa in the pages of the French-produced magazine called Revue Noir. It was 1994 and I was working at the South African National Gallery. The Director, Marilyn Martin often contributed articles to the magazine. I did all her picture research. It was during this time that I developed an interest in photography. My contact at Revue Noir was N’gone Fall, and after exchanging emails for many years, we finally met in Cape Town in 1999. We are still in

contact, and N’Gone’s name always pops up in conversations about Africa (like now). Do you know this beautifully printed, tabloid size publication that I am talking about? Was it ever distributed in Nigeria? I cannot remember when, but Revue Noir ran into a spot of financial trouble and the magazine was reduced in size, and the paper changed from luxuriously glossy to matt. I had a little panic attack, not because the magazine changed, but when I realised that the publication and its existence was dependent on whoever was in power in France. It also depended on how much these new incumbents were prepared to spend on culture, especially on a publication featuring the art produced in the former colonies. I still have all the music CD’s that were sold with each copy, but all my magazines were loaned to friends for research and never returned; it was a great loss.

Have I told you that my gallery is twelve years old this year! I am quite proud of that, actually. Just to give you some perspective, back in 2001, there were only a hand full of galleries that hosted what one could honestly call critical exhibitions. The Goodman Gallery under the guidance of Linda Givon, Joao Ferreira and my own gallery, The Photographers Gallery za. I decided to open my own gallery in June 2001. I found the premises in July and was ready to move in by September. Yes, September 2001, when we all thought the world was coming to an end. It seemed like a huge risk to open a gallery at that time, but a year later, our currency dropped to as little as 19 Rands to the Pound. Cape Town was crowded with foreign

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COLUMNS - LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Jan Smith, Dali 44, 2013, black and white photographic print

holidaymakers and they were ready to spend their money on art.

I have hosted many exhibitions, all of which I have enjoyed, except for two. And then there are two exhibitions, which I remember with great fondness including Guy Tillim’s Child Soldiers Sierra Leone opened in 2002; an exhibition of only ten blackand-white photographs, hand-printed by Tillim and shown alongside pages from his diary. My gallery was barely one year old when I hosted this show. It was a brave decision, up until that moment it was not customary to show reportage in the gallery environment. It was a powerful and engaging exhibition, and it received critical success in the media. I was so excited that I booked a ticket to Johannesburg – home of the corporate art collection. I made appointments with all the curators at all the museums and corporations. One by one, they turned me down. The exhibition was a huge success in Cape Town, I sold sixteen prints. But I could not sell a single print in Johannesburg. Sometimes when I land at OR

Tambo Airport, I remember those heady days of my early career, when I was filled with enthusiasm, drive and ambition – and naivety! I also sometimes wonder when and if those same curators ever kicked themselves for not buying a Tillim when his prices were low. Not everyone can see potential, I guess.

My other favourite exhibition was by Nicola Grobler entitled, The Enigma Machine, hosted in 2004 at my current premises at Shortmarket Street. This was Grobler’s graduation exhibition for her Master’s Degree. She re-worked the function of ordinary kitchen utensils and appliances, and the gallery was filled with recognizable sounds and machines, all performing very different functions. Loads of people walked into the gallery assuming it was a secondhand shop. Once inside they apologized when they discovered it was a gallery. Do you have the same issues in Lagos? Some visitors often feel totally uncomfortable when they walk into a gallery space. I am trying to change that by encouraging the kids

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from a local primary school to come and visit the gallery whenever they feel like it. I have been doing it since 2006. The same kids sometimes bring me drawings, and towards the end of each year, I frame the best ones and send them back to the school for an exhibition.

I am sure that you agree that audience development is critical, and should be the government’s primary concern. It is after all, the key to building a sustainable industry.

I sometimes get the impression that the entire industry in South Africa is driven by the commercial gallery sector. It is a huge crisis, as we need the museum infrastructure to carry out its mandate of preservation, conservation and education.

But this is entirely a different issue, which I will write you about next time.

Warm wishes from Cape Town, South Africa Heidi Erdmann

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secret about a secret, the more it tells you, the less A picture is a

you know.

Diane Arbus

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FRIEZE, FRIEZE MASTERS, 1:54, ART BASEL MIAMI, FIAC AND OUTSIDER ART FAIR WORDS BOMI ODUFUNADE

Installation view: Derrick Adam & Omar Ba, Galerie Anne de Villepoix, FIAC 2013

The month of October is the beginning of the non-stop merrygo-round of the international art fairs commencing with Frieze in Regents Park in London. Described commonly as ‘Frieze Week’, for seven days, London is gripped by ‘art mania’ with more than a dozen museum and gallery openings; an over-saturation of satellite fairs: PAD (Pavilion of Art and Design), Moniker, Sunday, Multiplied, Moving Image and 1:54, to name a few and not to mention the contemporary art auctions held by Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Phillips.

Now in its 11th year, the fair hosted some 152 exhibitors, representing 30 countries. With the ever-changing global market, Frieze has largely remained eurocentric, though for the first time, two South African galleries, Goodman and Stevenson took part.

That said, a number of African and African American artists being shown at the fair enjoyed notable sales. Hauser & Wirth (London, New York and Zurich) placed Mark Bradford’s, A Woman With a bit of Colour (2013) for $725,000. Algerian Adel Abdessemed’s gold-plated brass at David Zwirner (New York and London) found a home priced at $850,000. At White Cube, the London gallery sold the 2013 abstract Brown Roofing Exercise with High Road by

the Chicago-based painter, Theaster Gates for $125,000, while the Tate thanks to the Outset /Frieze Art Fair Fund acquired artist, Terry Adkins’, Muffled Drums from Darkwater (2003) for its collection from New York’s Salon 94.

In contrast, Frieze Masters, now in its second year, stole all the charm and uniqueness, once awarded to its older counterpart across the park. With its small and exquisite selection of galleries offering Old Masters and Modern Classics, it attracted many new visitors and collectors. South Africa’s Goodman Gallery presented intriguing works produced in the 1980s and 90s by artist, Willem Boshoff, while Frittelli Arte Comtemporanea of Florence chose to display an ornamental installation by a Beninese artist, Georges Adéagbo for its solo booth. The fair demonstrated the continued strength of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s market as Vedovi Gallery (Brussels) sold the wunderkid artist’s late word-accented canvas, Harlem Paper, from 1987 in acrylic, oil stick, and paper collage for an asking price of about $5 million.

The inaugural 1:54 fair focusing on contemporary African art

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quality show bringing together The Map Paintings from 1967-1971 by the eminent and under-recognised British-Guyanese artist, Frank Bowling OBE RA, while Mayfair’s Thomas Dane Gallery showed new works by British-Jamaican painter, Hurvin Anderson.

Other notable exhibitions included Painting the Hot, a show of graphic style paintings by the talented Cameroonian, Boris Nzebo at Jack Bell Gallery and Tiwani Contemporary presented I Always Face You, Even When it Seems Otherwise, an exhibition of paintings, ceramics and film by two rising stars, New York-based, Nigerian artist, Njideka Akunyili and African American, Simone Leigh, which all sold out on opening week.

Njideka Akunyili, Predecessors, 2013, copyright the artist

opened early in the week, featuring 17 exhibitors in Somerset House’s West Wing and drawing together over 70 artists from across the continent and the African diaspora.

The event appealed to plenty of collectors, curators and museum directors; many booths sold well from London-based, Jack Bell Gallery placing 17 pieces priced from $1,800 to $16,000, ARtLabAfrica (Nairobi) sold out of a number of works on paper by Tripoli-based Zimbabwean artist, Virginia Chihota and Brescia-based dealer, A Palazzo shifted more than 10 limited-edition photographs priced at $7,000 by Angola’s Edson Chagas, who won the Golden Lion for his nation’s pavilion at Venice Biennale in June. Galerie Mikael Andersen (Berlin and Copenhagen) produced a refined booth showing a display of exhilarating works on paper and paintings by the late and revered South African artist, Ernest Mancoba.

The fair made a commendable effort in addressing a growth market that has been largely ignored by the major international art fairs but there was a shortage in the breadth of artists working across the

continent. Painting, photography and some sculpture were well represented, but again, the fair failed to highlight many artists now engaging in innovative contemporary and conceptual practices or experimenting with new media and film. Only five galleries from Africa took part and none from South Africa or the North African countries of Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Egypt, all rich in talented and established artists working locally and internationally.

What Frieze and 1:54 fair lacked in amplitude, the city made up with a spectacular lineup of solo exhibitions by a stellar ensemble of African, African American and Caribbean artists taking place throughout the capital. Kehinde Wiley in his first solo show in the UK continued his World Stage tour tackling Jamaica, and exhibited a number of aristocratic portraits at Stephen Friedman Gallery; Mark Bradford proved a delight with his second exhibition with White Cube in Bermondsey and the illustrious Kara Walker confirmed her brilliance with a retrospective at Camden Arts Centre. Hales Gallery put on a museum

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The following week saw collectors, gallerists, curators, critics and visitors head to the 40th edition of FIAC, the contemporary art fair in Paris, which takes place at Le Grand Palais with 184 galleries from 25 countries. On show was an ever-rolling cast of established artists and a new school of emerging talent. The fair’s only African gallery, Goodman (South Africa) showed a group of varying works by blue-chip artists, Kendell Geers, David Goldblatt and William Kentridge alongside younger talents with photographs by Mikhael Subotzky to paintings by Zimbabwean, Misheck Masamvu.

A strong number of artists from Africa and the diaspora were represented. At Galerie Anne de Villepoix (Paris), corrugated paper works by Senegalese artist, Omar Ba were paired with Cubist-like collages by African American Derrick Adams. Barbara Gladstone (New York) almost sold out of a suite of ten new works priced at $45,000

by Kenyan artist, Wangechi Mutu, whose retrospective, A Fantastic Journey recently opened to critical acclaim at the Brooklyn Museum. Galerie Daniel Templon (Paris) showed a stately portrait, Abed Al Ashe and Chaled El Awari (2011) by African American painter, Kehinde Wiley from his World Stage: Israel series. Two monumental paintings by the artist were on view across the city in the blockbuster exhibition, Masculine/ Masculine: The Nude Male in Art from 1800 to the Present Day at the Musée d’Orsay. The best stand of the fair went to the enigmatic dealer, Nathalie Obadia whose Paris-based gallery displayed a series of elegant works by a star trio of African American female artists, Mickalene Thomas, Lorna Simpson and Brenna Youngblood, all snapped up by various buyers.

REPORTS - REVIEWS Elsewhere in the city, Galerie Michel Rein mounted a compelling duo show and debut solo exhibitions with conceptual artist, Abigail Deville and photographer, LaToya Ruby Frazier. Deville’s work entitled, Invisible Men: Beyond the Veil saw the artist construct a sprawling sculptural installation in the upstairs gallery space. Frazier’s sequence of black-and-white photographs and video work, The Notion of Family (2002-present) on the ground floor retraced her ongoing dialogue of using social documentary and portraiture of herself and her family against the ever-changing sociological and economic landscape of the United States. The week rounded off with Moroccan artist, Latifa Echakhch, known for her sculptural installations, which explore themes of nationality, religion and history, winning the Prix Marcel Duchamp 2013, France’s most prestigious

contemporary art prize.

Led by the success of James Brett’s roving eccentric Museum of Everything, Massimiliano Gioni’s The Encyclopedic Palace at last year’s Venice Biennale and The Alternative Guide to the Universe exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in London, the growing international interest in Outsider Art continues. Under the new direction of noted dealer Andrew Edlin, New York’s Outsider Art Fair premiered in Paris for its inaugural show housed in Hotel Le A in the eighth arrondissement.

Assembling 25 of the best galleries specialising in this market, the fair proved successful with its debut effort due to its eclectic offerings of works and affordable price range. Dealer, Karen Lennox (Chicago) showed a rare and untitled work by ‘self-taught’ master, Bill Traylor

Misheck Masamvu, Democratic Arrow, 2013, courtesy of the artist and Goodman Gallery

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REPORTS - REVIEWS priced at $95,000. The obscure paintings of Herve Bohnert were a particular highlight priced from $4,000 and displayed at J.P.Ritsch-Fisch Galerie (Strasbourg). The numerical scribblings of Melvin Way stole the show at Gallery at Hai (New York), with prices ranging from $3,000-$5,000.

The ‘art buying’ season ended with the king of all fairs, Art Basel Miami in December.

Featuring 258 leading international galleries from across 31 countries, the show confirmed its positioning as the leading art fair of the Americas. The quality of works exhibited was matched with a vibrantly diverse line-up of artists from Africa and the diaspora. Stevenson Gallery (South Africa) sold two paintings, Endothelin (2013) and Thoba (2013) by Johannesburg-based artist, Nicholas Hlobo priced at $48,000 and Beninese artist, Meschac Gaba created an installation of military-style army caps covered in a variety of national flags to mark his joining the New York powerhouse gallery, Tanya Bonadkar. Jack Shainman gallery (New York) exhibited a strong display of paintings, sculpture and photography from renowned artists, among them, El Anatsui, Kerry James Marshall, Toyin Odutola, Hank Willis Thomas and including this year’s MacArthur awardwinning, Carrie Mae Weems. In January 2014, the Guggenheim will present Three Decades of Photography and Video, Weem’s first major New York museum retrospective devoted to the socially motivated artist.

For its booth, Alexander Gray Associates (New York) presented a magical display with Processing Abstraction, 1960–2013, an exhibition focusing on process and materialbased abstraction, pairing historic and recent work by its gallery artists, Heidi Bucher, Melvin Edwards, Harmony Hammond, Hassan Sharif, including a rare painting Gamma Group I (1975) from the 1970s period by the formidable Jack Whitten.

For its second consecutive year, the satellite fair, Untitled proved the place to discover emerging and mid-career artists challenging the position once held by the NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance) art fair. Located on South Beach, the fair helmed by ingenious curator, Omar Lopez-Chahoud presented more than 90 galleries and not-for-profit art spaces from 20 countries. Many booths reported steady sales and interests throughout the week. Hales Gallery from London dedicated a solo booth of paintings to British-Guyanese, Hew Locke, who

Ernest Mancoba, detail: Untitled, 1976-88, ink and oil pastel on paper, copyright the artist

unveiled his show-stopping installation, For Those in Peril on the Sea, involving 70 model ships suspended from the ceiling of a gallery, at the newly opened Pérez Art Museum in Miami. Vigo Gallery (London) chose to showcase the minimalist paintings

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of Somalian artist, Ayan Farah, selling all the works priced from $2,000 to $9,800, and Costa Rica’s De La Cruz projects did well with a collection of ravishing abstract works

by New York-born, Dominican Republican artist, Kenny Rivero with prices from $7,000.

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CHOICES

11th Edition of Frieze Art Fair London 2013 WORDS INÊS VALLE

Nilbar Güres, Below Elsewhere’s Palmtrees, 2012, Gallery Rampa, Frieze London 2013. Copyright Inês Valle

According to recent reports, most £1m properties for sale in London’s city centre are being acquired by non-UK people, especially from Russia or from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)1, and the 11th edition of Frieze Art Fair may be seen as a reflex of this new fashionable upsurge in investment by foreign people in the city of London. Walking through Frieze’s aisles, we perceive that the majority of its roaming people are not only excited to see well-known international art and to do good business but also come here to flaunt their new fortunes. The current world economic crisis is not perceptible in this environment; here capitalism is totally alight and blooming. The exorbitant £50 entrance tickets were sold-out right on the first day and the main attractions were the shallow, extravagant and overpriced artworks.

Some of the art works which people were inevitably drawn to, interacted with, or totally attracted to as if they were in an amusement park, were Rob Pruitt’s Safety Cones (After Richard Serra) installation displayed at the main entrance with its fluorescent

humanoid and 23 orange traffic cones – a perfect scenario to pose for a picture in the middle of those baffling cones; Jennifer Rubell’s Portrait of the Artist (2013), presented in the Gagosian Gallery, which featured a giant white pregnant woman with an open womb that could be penetrated by people for a quick photo, as long as they removed their shoes after waiting on the long queue; the huge spiral plexiglas corridor by American artist, Dan Graham at the Lisson Gallery; and the biggest price tag of them all, Jeff Koons’ balloon sculptures guarded by security-guards that almost look like they were part of the installation, a totally accidental satire of absurdity in excess.

Long queues formed around art objects that satisfied an immediate hedonism of delight, with colours, fun, joy or amusement – experiences that made people travel to the most fantastic world of pure emptiness. What does a colourful cat inside a sock or a huge pregnant hollow woman truly contribute to our understanding of society? Is this not a satire of pure stupidity of this crazy, lazy and

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Meshac Gaba, Le Monde en Miniature et la Mode en Miniature, 2008; Meshac Gaba, Voyages 2012; Robin Rhode, Carry-on; Stevenson Gallery, Frieze London 2013 Copyright Inês Valle

empty vacuum that we live in?

the transcontinental legacy of Rosa Luxemburg, whom this collective believes to be crucial to the understanding of the world.

Art fairs might be considered all the same; bursting shiny things, that make us wonder why gallerists bothered to drag some of these things in the first place, but fortunately, within this luridness we always find some new and refreshing substances emerging on the aisles!

This year, we found a bigger representation of non-Western art, with highlights from Turkey and South Africa. Within the 30 participating countries, we also found galleries based in Brazil, China, Hungary, India, Korea and Mexico, widening an art market’s perspective by displaying names usually outside the Western routine.

Nevertheless, the representation of non-Western galleries is still a minority. Interestingly, this minority also represents a majority if we take into consideration the fact that the general issues exposed by the artists brought by these galleries have a stronger socio-political component than the ones from mainstream galleries. This isn’t a weird or unexpected fact. The art world is increasingly becoming more global and international and ‘the current political art, with its extensive attention to easily transferable concerns such as regional conflict, consumer culture and environmental and labour politics, is the perfect form of a globally recognisable, exchangeable art culture’.2 From Asia, represented by Project 88, we have the projects of two Indians art collectives; The Otolith Group with the video essay, People to be Resembling (2012) that investigates the methodologies of the post-free jazz; and the Raqs Media Collective with the series, Forthcoming Titles (2012) constituted by nine framed jacket cover designs and one empty black frame, which somehow investigates

In the Frame Frieze area, a section dedicated to solo artist presentations and open to galleries with less than 8 years of existence, the Japanese gallery, Aoyama Meguro Art Gallery presented the well-known artist, Koki Tanaka with project, Precarious Tasks #7: Try to keep conscious about a specific social issue, in this case ‘anti-nuke,’ as long as possible, while you are wearing yellow colour (2013), which is a documental installation of a social art project that the artist has developed with a group of people in Los Angeles about the anti-nuke protests that have been happening every Friday in front of the Prime Minister’s residence in Tokyo since the 2011 nuclear disaster in Fukushima.

The presence of artists from the Middle East was also noticeable.

The Turkish, Gallery Rampa included in Frieze highlight galleries’ list, brought artists, Nilbar Güres and Erinç Seymen, who have been building a strong body of work over these past years. Güres belongs to a strong generation of women artists emerging within the Turkish contemporary art scene, and reveals in her practice a strong feminist discourse by exploring issues such as social gender inter-connected with female identity, the role of women in society and particularly the re-construction of the image of Muslim women in the Western world. On the other hand, Seymen is a young, Turkish artist already known in Portugal with his participation in the exhibition An Atlas of Events, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in 2007. At Frieze, he exhibited the project, Sketches for a Paradise: Fear No Evil (2013) that uses exotic images cut from an old encyclopaedia to reflect on colonization, transforming and re-imagining the colonization process,

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REPORTS - REVIEWS which can be seen as an attempt to demystify existing cultural assumptions.

The London gallery, Anthony Reynolds also brought some Middle Eastern artists such as the Palestinian, Emily Jacir and the Lebanese, Walid Raad. Jacir’s work, Untitled (Fragment from Ex Libris) (20102012) consists of photographs captured with her own mobile phone during regular visits to the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem. The images are of books looted in 1948 from Palestinian homes, libraries, and institutions, which were later catalogued at the Jewish National Library under the designation ‘A .P.’ (Abandoned Property). This strong body of work raises questions about repatriation and restitution of Palestinian property that are still unanswered. Raad’s most important work shown at Frieze was Hostage: The Bachar Polaroids: Plates: (Cat. A) Bachar Photographs 001-021 (2011), an installation constituted from twenty Polaroid photographs about the ten-year captivity of Souheil Bachar in Lebanon, in which his body and face were always erased.

There were only two African-based art galleries in this Frieze London; Goodman Gallery and Stevenson both from South Africa.

They represented an extensive and remarkable set of artists, African and non-African, such as Alfredo Jaar, David WQ, Ghada Amer, Kendell Geers, Mikhael Subotzky, Meschac Gaba, Nicholas Hlobo, Robin Rhode, Sam Nhlengethwa, Viviane Sassen and William Kentridge. From these we can highlight the huge wall installation, Le Monde en Miniature et la Mode en Miniature (2008) and Voyages

(2012) both by the Beninese artist, Meschac Gaba that dominated Stevenson’s gallery stand. The first was idealized to be part of a collective exhibition that eventually never took place and has the shape of a ‘shop display’ with children’s clothes made in Benin, in which disturbing phrases are embroidered - “zenophobie”, “violence” or “terrorist”. With this, Gaba points out the “quiet reminder of phenomena in our society that turns children into vulnerable victims”3 but also their value or role within global economies. The latter, Voyages, is an extension of the projects Gaba started when he was invited to participate in the We Face Forward exhibition in Manchester last year, and can be seen as opposed to Ensemble, presented in Manchester. On one hand, Ensemble presents a symbol of unity using a starburst flag made up of all West Africa’s flags along with the Union Jack. On the other, Voyages uses only flags of countries or organizations that are a worldwide representation of influence, power and control, namely the European Union, United Nations, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), African Union or even the Vatican. Each flag is individually wrapped into bundles and displayed as a pilgrim’s stick, which the artist metaphorically considers “as the defensive object of the contemporary traveller – the passport”.4 I can also make reference to the work, Silence Noise of Zimbabwean artist, Kudzanai Chiurai, that approaches some of the most pertinent issues of Post-colonial Africa such as the violence that exists today, the displacement of African people and black empowerment; or even to the powerful image of Mikhael Subotzky, Tactical Unit

Rubell, Portrait of the Artist, 2013; Stephen Friedman Gallery, Frieze London 2013, copyright Inês Valle

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Rob Pruitt, Safety Cones (After Richard Serra), 2013. Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Frieze London 2013 Copyright Inês Valle

(2007) taken in Johannesburg that exposes the lifestyle of fear felt by most people in South Africa. A photograph mounted in a smashed glass, portraits an impacting and spontaneous moment revealing the vexed notion of security in this territory. This is one of the persisting issues explored in Subotzky’s art practice since 2004, that has also been focusing themes such as crime, social marginalization or even punishment institutions. In Alfredo Jaar’s video work, Kigali we observe a couple’s grief while visiting Kigali Genocide Centre in Rwanda. This centre is built on top of a burial place of more than 250,000 people and since its inauguration in 2004, has received more than 100,000 visitors from people all over the world5. In this almost three-minute video, a couple is filmed from a long distance and from their backs, but we can still easily perceive their feelings, their respect and their mutual support. It is undoubtedly a tremendous video that is an acknowledgement and a tribute to the genocide’s victims.

Some Western art galleries have also chosen to present works from contemporary African artists or projects correlated with this continent; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery from New York presented Meshac Gaba’s works, La traversée et Le Capitaine (2010) and United Nations- Souvenir Palace (2010). The latter is an installation composed of a child’s table painted with the UN logo along with six child’s chairs, each one painted with a distinct flag namely; Britain, France, Germany, South Africa, Brazil and Egypt, in which the last three are part of a proposal for the next reformation of the UN Security Council. Herald St. Gallery presented Made in Africa, Assembled in China (2013) by Yugoslavian artist, Djordje Ozbolt that may be seen as a satire about globalization and the incongruence of African

objects as fashionable home-décor ornaments.

The interest and representation of contemporary African art have been increasing in these past years, not only in landmark world art events but also the emergence of African art related galleries, such as London-based Jack Bell Gallery, Tiwani Contemporary, October and GAFRART. Also, coinciding with Frieze Art Fair was the first African art fair in the UK, the 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair presented at the Somerset House, which brought on these crazy days, a refreshing and much more financially accessible range of artworks to London. With the Pavilion of Angola’s win of the Golden Lion at the 2013 Venice Biennale, and more recently the appointment of Okwui Enwezor as Director of the Visual Arts Sector of the 56th edition of this Biennale, there are no doubts about the increase in visibility, recognition and relevance of African art and of its players on the global art market.

Notes 1 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/houseprices/10363567/Half-of-centralLondons-1m-plus-homes-go-to-non-UK-buyers.html 2 Charlesworth, J.J., Global vs Local, in Art Review - Power eats the soul, November 2013, volume 65, number 8.

3 Meschac Gaba, Exhibition Catalogue Le Monde, Published by Stevenson, South Africa, 2013.

4 Idem.

5 www.kigalimemorialcentre.org/

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SPOT LIGHTING THE SANLAM FOOD WINE DESIGN FAIR 2013 WORDS IJEOMA LOREN UCHE-OKEKE

Copyright Mike Turner

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FEATURES

The Sanlam FoodWineDesign Fair 2013 edition was held at its usual location on the roof top of the Hyde Park Corner an upmarket boutique mall in the Hyde Park suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa. Managed by Artlogic, the founders and organisers of the highly successful FNB Joburg Art Fair, the Sanlam FoodWineDesign Fair is in its 4th year and has become an important event on the Johannesburg calendar. According to the curator of the fair, Artlogic’s Roberta Cocci, what differentiates the fair from other similar offerings on the Joburg social calendar is that visitors can have a social and shopping experience.

The fair has gained considerable followership over the years. Cocci notes that the roof top location constrains the number of exhibitors that can participate in the fair, therefore the selection process is very stringent and only the best art is showcased. Sanlam has been on board from inception, becoming naming rights sponsors in the second year. Sanlam promotes entrepreneurship and the fair gives budding South African brands and businesses a platform to showcase their products and services. The fair is exclusive in a good way; it’s a luxurious experience, good furniture, great views and great stuff. Omenka magazine spotlights two exhibitors, who are proudly South African brands dealing in very different products and services; the Johannesburg-based Malee Natural Science, a growing business that has exhibited at the fair since its inception and Genandal Hand Weavers, branded as the Kraal Gallery, a first time exhibitor from the Western Cape. Alexander Daniels (Managing Director, The Kraal Gallery) and Zeze Oriakhi-Sao (Founder/CEO, Malee Natural Science) speak passionately about the work they do and future aspirations for their businesses.

Copyright Mike Turner

I understand that Genadendal Hand Weavers started as a community-based project?

I went through a series of initially selecting candidates; the right people who were willing to take a step and branch out and learn something new, upgrade their skill and empower themselves. And once we got the core weaving group right, we enlisted 72 ladies from the community of Genadendal in the Overberg, trained and encouraged them, and within 12 months they were producing export-marketable products – almost as independent businesses. Genadendal Hand Weavers trades as The Kraal Gallery. We opened our flagship store in Stellenbosch and a main producing area in Somerset West, and then opened the working gallery in Greyton to the public.We’ve been exporting but this is the first time we’ve come to Johannesburg. The response in Johannesburg so far has been fantastic.

Yes, the DTI spotted the export potential of the product and have assisted since the beginning of last year. They have sent us to a couple of shows, the most important in Milan last December. We exhibited at the Beckman’s Handcrafted Show in Chicago in July, which raised our profile considerably.

We’ve been to Munich, Germany as well.

So they’ve assisted in getting us on that platform. Our main requirement now is producing, as currently the demand is outstripping the supply. We can train more ladies. We want to train 250 in Genadendal but we obviously need the finance to do that. We also want to teach them financial literacy, micro-finance and how to run an SME. Currently, we are looking for a big brother who can take us under their social corporate development and support us with resources to allow us focus on what we are doing right now.

the DTI for the opportunity so we are not going to complain.

How did you get involved with the fair, were you sponsored by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI)?

What has the experience been like so far?

Fantastic! The response from Johannesburg has been phenomenal. We are grateful to

And how have you achieved that, do you have design input from your weavers?

Yes, we have input from our weavers. Like

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What line of products do you stock?

Rugs are our main product and focus because people need rugs in their homes.

They serve a functional purpose. But we took it beyond that as being in a creative space; created other things. Our wild baskets have been our best sellers but we’ve developed new products like deck-chairs and iPad cases. The crème de la crème of what we do are the tapestries, some of which have been put in the London Museum of Art, and in offices in New York skyscrapers.

Each tapestry has a story behind it and a connection with its weaver, with the art of the craft of weaving behind it. Weaving has been around for centuries but to keep it updated and modern, requires a lot of creative work and that’s what we try to do.

FEATURES

with our rugs range, we have the Pilani range and it’s freestyle weaving. We give our weavers free reign. But when clients have particular requests, we have to tailor designs to suit their specific needs. Sometimes in the tapestry line, we need to get more involved; it would either be myself or my father. We have two artists, one is in-house and then we have a part-time artist as well. We’ve also sometimes done some collaborations with famous artists like, Catherine Paynter who lives in Greyton and Leon de Bliquy, on one of his exhibitions, and translated 2 of his works into tapestry format. We would really like to get more into the interior design market, which is huge as the products continue to evolve, clients sometimes lead us to create new products. The market also does that but sometimes you have a fresh idea straight off the bat. Like what you see here at the fair, this is our cotton range.

We’ve turned into hand-woven rugs and baskets what would nornally have been a by-product. We also spin merino and wool –

that’s a different kind of product. It depends on what people want.

In terms of marketing your products, what platforms do you use?

We have our main shop points; we also have an online presence, though it doesn’t seem to have as much impact as seeing the products in their physicality. It’s because these are very tactile products. People also like to see how they are done, which is a major draw card. They enjoy interacting with our weavers in-store. All our stores are working ‘studios’. For example, at our Stellenbosch store, we’ve got 8 ladies and about 25 ladies in Sommerset West, and out in Greyton another 30. So people can come in, meet the weavers, enjoy what is going on and place their orders or purchase what is on display.

Are your weavers predominantly female or are there any male weavers?

Yes. Though we have 2 men, they’re basically

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the only two men in a woman’s world but I think it balances itself out quite nicely.

You have the women with their emotional ups and downs and then the men seem to settle the dynamic; it’s really nice, we have a really great bunch of creative people that are their own bosses. I’m trying to generate this concept to the point where people are free standing and their own bosses, and trying to replicate that throughout the rural communities of South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa for that matter. It is a job-creation model that works and you don’t necessarily have to use weaving, it could be woodwork or iron-mongering.

We use weaving because we come from a background of years of weaving.

So your background is in weaving?

My earliest memory is at 6 years old running around on bales of wool with swords made out of warping sticks, chasing my brothers or being chased by them! That was my earliest memory. My dad has always been in the

FEATURES won the Premier’s Social Enterprise of the Year Award, presented by the Western Cape Premier, Helen Zille. We were given recognition based on the work we are doing in Greyton and the Genadendal Weavers. Alan Winde, Minister of Economic Development co-presented the award to us. He spots brands and companies that are export-marketable and that have products that are unique, fresh and new – with a vision of employment behind them.

Zeze Oriakhi-Sao (Founder/CEO Malee) Courtesy of Malee Natural Science

textile field and he had a little weaving studio on Loop Street in Cape Town called Cape Tapestry Weavers. That’s where we basically grew up, playing and falling in love with fabric and cotton and wool and soft materials that got turned into wonderful rugs and tapestries.

Will you be back for the Sanlam FoodWineDesign Fair in 2014?

I would love to. And the way it’s going, yes!!! I love the fact that there is a huge appreciation for the creativity of our group. That’s really blossoming now, so I really love that.

What are the next steps for Genadendal Hand Weavers and Kraal Gallery?

We will definitely be at the Design Indaba in Cape Town again next year. And another thing we are working towards is the New York Gift Fair in 2014.

You have featured in design fairs in Europe and the United States, have you exhibited or sold in the United Kingdom?

We haven’t done much there but we do have a few individual clients and boutique stores that will purchase products now and again but nothing really major in the UK. But I think we do very well in terms of reviews from clients coming into our stores in the Western Cape. This year, we

How did Malee get involved in the Sanlam FoodWineDesign Fair, I believe you are one of the fair’s foundation exhibitors?

I think I was approached by one of the guys at Artlogic, who said they were doing this fair and in its first year, they wanted small businesses in South Africa that were emerging as new talents. They asked if I would be keen. At the time I hadn’t really done a fair. I was quite fresh, so I thought I’ll give it a go. I did and it was manic. I think I had grossly underestimated what a fair was like so I just had myself a casual when I went out for lunch and stuff. I had the most intense 4 days and at the end of it my husband , Nana would come to help me. My sister came from Brisbane and she ended up working for the 4 days. I remember screaming 1 wash, 1 hand cream!! It just got so crazy! I learned to make it a lot less stressful, now I know to have 3 members of staff at the stand because when it does get busy, it gets quite busy. Yeah that’s how I started.

Malee has been exhibiting at the fair since inception and this is its 4th year now, how has it contributed to visibility?

I think what’s nice is that it gives businesses like mine visibility outside of where we operate normally. So it affords us the opportunity to forge long, lasting business relationships with a diverse audience.

For instance, I’ve met people in various industries and sectors, those who in design shops or stalls and people who work in the hospitality industry and own or run spas and luxury lodges, who say “Oh my God, I’ve been looking for products like yours!”

I’ve met consumers or audiences who you wouldn’t have met otherwise, like people from Pretoria. So I thoroughly enjoy it. I think its 4 days of fun with lots of good food and amazing people.

How did Malee get started?

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Oh my goodness!! I moved from London to South Africa in 2009. It was during the early days of the recession and pretty much, no one was hiring. South Africa was not quite sure whether the recession was hitting hard or not and I was a foreigner who had two degrees and in quite a specialist area. My first degree was in Informatics and a second degree in International Business, so I think it was quite restrictive. People didn’t really want to hire outside of their comfort zone. I always had an idea and I thought, well it was taking me 3 months to 4 months so in the meantime while I’m still job hunting, why don’t I give it a try. So I literally started calling the South African Cosmetology Society and saying “Hi I’m thinking of starting a business, can you put me in touch with the best formulators in the country?” You know you must be registered with the society and the first woman I spoke to, thought I was absolutely bonkers because she was like “Have you done this before?” I was like no, but this is what I would like to do.

You know you don’t realise how crazy people think you are till 2 years later. In hindsight, I realised that I had no clue. I was green but I was eager. I think everyone who has known me from the beginning of my career with Malee always says my enthusiasm for the business was infectious.

So I necessarily didn’t come up with the best tools of knowing how the business works but I had enthusiasm for days. I was passionate about it and knew exactly what I wanted. I just needed to know how to do it.

In terms of starting and running Malee in South Africa, how do you find the business environment?

The South African business landscape is quite interesting in the sense that as a foreigner in certain industries, you have to learn the lay of the land. Coming from London and from a very professional, rigid environment– a more structured environment like the United Kingdom. I never had a business there so you don’t know. I think the business landscape/ structure in South Africa is mature for big conglomerates but not for small businesses like mine. So I literally had to configure my structure the way I wanted it, whether it’s sourcing my suppliers and my production because there was no one to service small businesses like mine.

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Hand woven baskets, courtesy of The Kraal Gallery 2013

So yeah, but I think once you understand it, and once you find your position in the industry, you immediately start to draw the right kind of customers that you’d like. You start to eventually draw in the right staff but like everything with a brand, you have to prove yourself for people to flock to you.

So it’s a lot of hard work in the beginning because I think the industry is so underserviced for smaller businesses. But again it’s a great platform where you can do business, because you know structurally as a country there’s electricity–things that are concerns in other African countries, so you have to create your own structures.

What are the next steps for Malee in terms of growing your market?

At the moment, there’s been a lot of interest from the rest of Africa. I think I have a strong, burning desire to have a presence in Nigeria, which is my home country and in the rest of the world. So I think the next steps for us are really focusing on scaling the

business up and learning about new markets, partnering with people who know their markets and bringing the brand to a wider audience. Currently, there is a tiny amount of people doing what we are doing and I think it’s high time Africa gets representation in the cosmetic industry on a global scale.

I am hoping that as Malee we are able to do that. We are hoping to have a launch in Europe next year, and we’ll have a big push around that and then follow with the United States. I’m hoping that somewhere in the mix, other African countries come into play. I think in general, we are of a new generation now, where I’d like to think that we are appreciating what emanates from us and that we are of value in the global context.

I also think we’ve moved from what was defined for us as Africans to evolving our own authentic brands and creating brands that are unique, celebrate our diversity and tell the African story.

You allude to qualities like innovation

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and creativity in talking about your products and how have they evolved since inception?

Well, the fragrances are blended from natural elements and they tell a uniquely African story– smells that as Africans we are used to being around but sometimes don’t take notice of. So when you move away from the motherland, so to speak, you end up having nostalgic feelings about going out into the bush, the smell of rain in the fields, or when it’s really hot, the smell of your mother’s garden in the late afternoon.

So basically a lot of these flowers, a lot of those sensual oils create fragrances that tell these stories. In a way, my expression of the things I miss sensory-wise when I didn’t live on the continent. We use only natural, active ingredients in all our products like mineral oils and silicones so it’s for all sensory skin types. For me, I guess I’m looking to tell a sensory story that people can have a connection to, whether you are African or not. Yeah, just an African approach to life.

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JOHN FLEETWOOD: THE MARKET PHOTO WORKSHOP WORDS IJEOMA LOREN UCHE-OKEKE

The Market Photo Workshop (MPW) was founded by reknowned photographer David Goldblatt in the late 80’s. As an institution, it has contributed significantly to positioning contemporary photography in South Africa. It continues to build a solid reputation that extends beyond the borders of South Africa to other parts of the African continent and internationally. John Fleetwood, the Head of the Market Photo Workshop shares with us an in depth insight into the key milestones that have shaped this small but very significant institution.

A lot has been written and verbalised about the history of the Market Photo Workshop, I would like to focus on what you consider to be the key defining moments that have shaped the direction of the school?

The history of the Photo Workshop is important and it gives an incredibly important overview and understanding of how the Photo Workshop comes to feed off itself. I think a lot of the time, people over emphasize the history as opposed to what we are currently doing. The two are linked but have shifted. I mean you said it yourself when you asked what are the defining moments in contemporary photography. Those are more interesting aspects to challenge. I think the history is probably known, it was set-up by David Goldblatt in 1989 at the stage of the state of emergency in South Africa and as a historical context that gives you an understanding of how the Photo Workshop or its essence has come together. But the state of emergency was one thing, much more important perhaps was the state of apartheid. Even though it was a heightened political stage, I think the infiltration of how we look at images, how they are perceived, to whom they belong to, and whose got rights to photograph whom,were the much deeper questions that I think David Goldblatt had in mind when he set-up the Photo Workshop.

It’s those questions that we are particularly interested in.

Over the years, we’ve had such wonderful photographers that have come to the fore and brought those issues together, perhaps not in a direct way but in an indirect one. It is interesting that in many ways, the Photo Workshop hasn’t got an official voice. Its voice consists of the many voices of our students that come to the fore and create this multiplicity of ideas. The Photo Workshop gave a

space to young photographers to express themselves freely in the context of historical restrictions around the freedom of speech, but much more than that, it was the restrictions of culture that were hung over the heads of people. It was so important for us to break the self-censorship, people had accepted and with that create peer understanding. It gave a lot of our photographers greater ease to express themselves. So by looking at that trajectory, we are at a very particular moment where again, there are questions around freedom of speech, and how the state wants to govern and control information. It is like a circle in many ways for the photographers and also for the Photo Workshop as early as in 1989 when it was set-up to protect issues around human rights and freedom of expression. We can review the socio- economic conditions of people and again wonder what has shifted. I think that it’s quite alarming if you are a South African twenty years into a democracy and the photographs we are dealing with remain in many ways very similar.

For me, personally there are plenty of defining moments but the first one came in 2003 when we did an exhibition titled Urban Life, which involved 13 photographers. In that group was Nontsikelelo ‘Lolo’ Veleko, Zanele Muholi, Oupa Nkosi, Musa Rapuleng, and Sipho Futshane. It was a group of people that had very particular ideas around who they were and how they saw themselves within society. A lot of them felt they belonged to a sub-culture, not to a heterogeneous or homogenous kind of society. It was Lolo who felt very strongly about the way she wanted to express herself and talk about herself. She felt that there was almost no space for her to do that. The society saw young blacks as people who wanted to dress in colourful clothes and be authentic but didn’t understand the struggle

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Self portrait John Fleetwood, copyright Joe van Rooyen

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FEATURES and wanted to celebrate by breaking something that was not linked to the reality of the world. Lolo felt very strongly about that and I think that she gave a lot of people the courage to understand that even though your work might look more appealing, its public value and the meaning can be as serious. I think a lot of people mistook her work perhaps for fashion pictures, when in fact she was making commentary. That was a very important exhibition; it was part of 13 solo shows of artists showing one after the other at the Johannesburg Art Gallery.

It was the most incredible collection of untested terrain, where at that stage there was a race issue around representation and young photographers being given space in gallery set-ups. So to have 13 young photographers showing in Johannesburg Art Gallery, work that was not expected from black photographers, I think gave a very particular space for the Photo Workshop. It also gave a sense of expression and political clout internally, not so much externally.

It gave people a kind of confidence and trust in themselves that the work is valuable. That confidence is something that has been very critical and important.

There are several other defining moments.

The next one is the set-up of the PhotoJournalism and Documentary Photography course ‘PDP’ in 2005 with the help of Getty Images. It was really defining in the sense that it started a year course, when previously we were looking at shorter or part-time courses. But then we understood that to really build photography courses, you need constant engagement, you need depth, you need to understand the politics of representation a little bit better, you need to engage with your peers and you need to talk about it. I think it was really defining in the sense that it started to build this incredible selection of possible projects that was linked to the PDP, got people into the news, and suddenly the Photo Workshop in terms of its ability to

Copyright Euridice Kala

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create photography as an employment shifted quite dramatically because people were able to go into the industry with real knowledge and skills. So it was such an incredible, important programme for us but we realised very soon that the training and classroom and non-formal education that we offered at the Photo Workshop had limitations and needed to be supported by a secondary layer of training.

The secondary layer of training was another defining moment for us because we started with projects like Back and Forth, in 2007 and Closed Constructions, a project around hostels in 2008. These projects took the students outside the formalised class practice and created a project where they planned on multiple levels and layers.

So it was a kind of peer-training, learning from your peers and being inspired. It was a very important aspect because the Back and Forth project looked at cross-border traders that were moving from the big cities

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From the series Second Transition, 2012, copyright Thabiso Sekgala

in Southern Africa, coming to Johannesburg to trade and going back to their cities of origin. But then a particular focus was on the vulnerability to HIV. They often found that the way to pass the legal restrictions of crossing borders was to use a series of other strategies and one of them, sexual favours. It made these cross-border traders particularly women very vulnerable to HIV. So we photographed the project in South Africa with the South African photographers and then the non-South African photographers continued to photograph in the neighbouring countries. I think that project became a defining moment for the Photo Workshop. It gave us a sense of a large-scale project that had value on both sides. On one hand it built portfolios for those photographers, on the other hand, it created images that the International Migration Organisation, our partner at that stage used as advocacy material.

Other defining moments were the start of mentorships at the Photo Workshop, which was typically a year-long process,

where a photographer would work with a mentor he had selected with the help of the Photo Workshop towards producing a body of work in one year. Perhaps the importance of such a photographer is not understood but after 8 years, you have 8 bodies of work and you start to look back at who those photographers were and how they have been able to engage with the world, and where they are now as photographers. Then you are able to start tallying the importance of the workshop.

Was this the first project outside of the SA borders with other Southern African countries?

No it wasn’t. When I first came to the Photo Workshop in 2002, there were a few projects that looked at the townships and the region. I can’t remember exactly when our first project was, I think it might have been in 2003 in Maputo, Mozambique.

The first round, we took a small group of people to Mozambique and the second round in 2005, we took 15 students

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through for 2 weeks. So that was the first time. Our first interest was also to locate photography in South Africa. You know South Africa has a very strong tradition of photography – ‘struggle photography’, and how it was used like in witnessing democracy or witnessing human rights. I think that history has been really important. But what was lacking was that it was not communicated and we were interested. There was great under-development of photography in the region, so in places like Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe where previously there was a very strong polytechnic training, nothing was happening. What was interesting about Mozambique was that even though there was very little photography, there was a school of photography, which operated for a number of years under the directorship of Ricardo Rangel, a very important photographer in the country. It was maintained and there was a constant flow of photographers that came out of the school. For us, that was immediately interesting. Looking at the economic under-development of Mozambique with a strong, rich history in photography that had developed and was very particular, not large scale. It was very small, very insulated in many ways but it was there, it was existing and there were photographers that one could exchange and share with. This was very inspiring and we immediately wanted to engage with that. But then through that process, we also realised as you know that for the rest of the continent there was probably very little influence and very little development around photography.

I began to understand how under-developed the continent is economically but much worse than that, the under-development of photography specifically against the very rich cultural possibilities that Africa posed, and the visual-ness and the traditions of what is happening on the continent. At that stage there was a very particular problem of the inaccessibility of photography, so you had a lot of Western photographers creating these images of misery around what Africa really looked like. It was this misappropriation and mis-representation of identity that really struck me, so our immediate interest was to recruit more students from the region to train them through PDP, our documentary photography programme. I think quite successfully, we were able to bring in photographers from as far as Kenya. That has later grown to include

FEATURES students from elsewhere in the world. But I think it’s quite a landmark to suddenly understand that there is an African school of photography that is able to cater for a larger continent. For me that was really important that we can train photographers that can go back to their countries of origin and multiply the kind of possibilities.

Revising the Back and Forth project, the history of Johannesburg is also one of crossing the border just by living in Johannesburg. I think there has been very large shifts in who Johannesburgers are, where they come from, the influence they bring, and how that integrates into a larger South Africa. Especially as the Photo Workshop is based in the city centre, you are immediately dealing with an international population; Ethiopian, Somalian, Nigerian, Pakistani, Zimbabwean, and the Congolese. So these influences became very important for us. Typically our students are township-based and travel every day to come to the city of Johannesburg. It’s really interesting for us that we send them out into the city and they suddenly realise how Johannesburg has shifted. I suppose the voice of immigration became very strong in the Photo Workshop as it became increasingly important that Africa is in flux.

A much more important and recent project that gives you a sense of the shift in photography is the Social Landscape project.

It looks at land and the social landscape of land, through photography, and imagined land and the imaged land. So we started off with the Social Landscape project but it’s also about the relationship of photography with land. We were particularly interested in the very interesting history of what photography has done to document and witness land. There was a long history of dispossession of the tools of documentation.

Looking at the socio-economic political state of South Africa, black South Africans didn’t have access to cameras so they were never able to really photograph their land.

They were also deposed from their land, which makes it more complicated. So when ‘struggle photography’ started, interestingly there was an immediate possibility that people could be photographed, that actions could be photographed, and that land became the background to this secondary layer but was really never photographed in the first instance. We were interested in recreating an archive that was not that of the colonials but one of visibility, one of young, black South Africans and all photographers being able to photograph the land. We called the project, Show us our Land. It was a project where we asked all South Africans to forward photographs through social media using cell phones and to develop a new archive of land, one that was photographed by South Africans.

So it was an incredibly important project

Copyright of Cedric Nunn

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for us and I think it probably lacked depth in many ways because it was a one-time project. However, it gives us a certain mechanism in the Photo Workshop to think around photography in different ways.

Linked to that was Transition, which was a project that brought 6 prominent South African and 6 prominent French photographers together to do a project on landscapes. From South Africa, it was Santu Mofokeng, Pieter Hugo, Jo Ractliffe, Zanele Muholi and Thabiso Sekgala both alumni of the Photo Workshop, and Cedric Nunn.

On the French side, there were a number of really important photographers like Alain Willuame, and Patrick Tourneboeuf, who had the ability to look at the country. It was a collaboration between the Market Photo Workshop and the Rencontres d’Arles.

I think that there are several other different defining moments and many of them had to do with staff coming to the Photo Workshop and people building careers at the workshop and developing identities. There are also a number of people that were very influential for the Photo Workshop. One of them is Tswaledi Thobejane, he is the resources manager and joined the Photo Workshop in 1999. He’s been here for many years and in many ways, he is the backbone administratively of the cameras and resources. There is also Patricia Kyungu-Mati, a Kenyan citizen, who has been here for many years. This is particularly interesting because at the stage she was employed, it was just the beginning, where I think there were still major questions around how a non-South African can come in to administer and operate. There were a lot of other key people working at the Photo Workshop that shifted the understanding like Lester Adams, Molemo Moiloa, Bandile Gumbi, and Ingrid Masondo. There have been so many important staff members at the Photo Workshop that brought in particular skills, particular consciousness and a particular, I suppose beauty to the Photo Workshop. The other group of people that have been key to the sustainability of the Photo Workshop have been the advisory board of the workshop. People who have spent an enormous amount of time and energy helping to establish it.

People like Cedric Nunn, Peter McKenzie, Jo Ractliffe - the current chair, and Rory Bester, who played a very important role

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Road Worker on R61, between Cradock and Graaf-Reinet. , Tendance Floue, 2012, copyright Alain Willaume Quenton

in helping us to develop a clear strategy for our public programmes and growth.

Then very importantly there’s been David Goldblatt. He is in many ways such an important person for photography in South Africa. I think the general public seldom realise how important he is, particularly for the Photo Workshop with the amount of time he spent here giving attention and leadership. So defining moments are the key people who have given attention as well as support to the market Photo Workshop.

Your students have obviously had an impact on MPW. How have they contributed to the profile of the Photo Workshop?

They have very much been a contributor to the Market Photo Workshop. In fact, the only way that it can ever be successful is by its photographers. That is why people like Nontsikelelo Veleko, Zanele Muholi, Musa Nxumalo, Bonile Bam and Sabelo Mlangeni have been really critical. And before then, people like Jodi Bieber and Themba

Hadebe, who in many ways created such an important voice for photographers of the country have given credibility to the Photo Workshop. Without our students, we would not be a school, and be in operation. I think there is an on-going process or awareness that to set-up a space for photographers is a hard job, and 50 percent or more of that job is done by the photographers.

We are facilitators; as an institution we facilitate learning, we facilitate processes of photography but it is the photographers who create the content and images. That awareness is deeply entrenched in the Photo Workshop. There is nothing more rewarding than a young student coming in and eventually becoming a photographer, or even if not, studying and continuing with their careers. Many years later, you may hear about a young photographer who has made it. I think that is so rewarding to be a part of. We are very fortunate that there are a number of very strong photographers from the Market Photo Workshop who have entered the international market and

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get their opinions respected. People like Mark Magagane, who has been showing a number of bodies of work, and has been invited to several different shows. And of course there is Zanele Muholi who has won the Prince Claus and has become an honorary professor at the Bremen University. She has also won the Freedom of Expression Award. The list of what she’s won is really incredible. Before that was a very defining moment when Jodi Bieber won the World Press Award. I think it was in 2010 with the picture of Bibi Aisha, the Muslim woman whose nose was cut off. As an alumni of the Photo Workshop that was an incredible moment for us if you consider our size and the budget we have. But I think that it’s much deeper than that because sometimes the success of the Photo Workshop is not measured by our top international photographers. One would often measure it by, perhaps, the person that wouldn’t by conditions around them, have the opportunity but then created the opportunity for themselves.

FEATURES It might not be the best international opportunity but it’s the personal shift that brings self-acknowledgement and people realising that they know something and can do something in this world. That sense of self-worth is very important for the school, for the community and for the country. I think it’s also very important for photography because it brings these images into play that we otherwise wouldn’t see.

What is the ratio of your student population, do you have more blacks than whites or is it balancing out now?

Well, one has to be very specific because when David Goldblatt set-up the Photo Workshop, he was very clear it was not a school for black people but for any person.

It was open to anyone and in the context of Johannesburg at that moment. This was unique because there were so many schools and universities that did not encourage black people to come in. They were very explicit in indicating this. I think that Goldblatt’s concern was there was an audience of young black people who were interested in photography but didn’t have a space to go. David Goldblatt always tells the story that when the Photo Workshop at first advertised, they were running courses at reasonable prices. There were many white people coming from the white, financially independent northern suburbs, though that was not really the intention. However, it got sorted out very quickly by the fact that it was based in Newtown, and had a very particular set of staff that kind of opened things up. So it was a non-racial school and even in the first group of students that came in, like Jodi Bieber, there were white people. There have always been white students at the Market Photo Workshop but a particular kind of white student, typically who had dealt with the questions around race at the time, and understood that it was a non-racial institution. For me, that is interesting and important.

How was David Goldblatt able to run a multiracial establishment under the apartheid regime?

I think part of the advantage was that it was a workshop and that it was nonformal education so that it didn’t need to go through formal educational bodies and authorities for acceptance. Part of the charm of the Photo Workshop is that it remained a non-formal training environment. It is not a university; there is a certificate but

it is not accredited to any South African qualifications authority. As it happens, the certificate means a hell of a lot. So if you go to a newspaper in Johannesburg and you show a Market Photo Workshop certificate, you stand a very good chance of being accepted way above somebody with qualifications from a South African national qualification body. The reputation of the Photo Workshop supersedes the questions or urges around accreditation.

In a very uncertain accredited field, we had always felt that the quality of training internally is of much more value. If we can manage relevance and quality internally, our students will be competitive. The dynamic of the Photo Workshop is that it’s never stable and that is part of its strengths.

We constantly have new assessors, new evaluators, new trainers, new photographers that come in and have a cumulative effect and a changing understanding of what photography is. There is no this is the rule in photography. There is an on-going challenge to perceptions, which is sometimes problematic because standards need to also settle. But there are definitely certain aspects of training that have settled and we have been very blessed with a group of trainers that are interested in the world and do research. I think that’s actually important given the lack of real support towards them, institutionally that we can offer. So the question around Goldblatt and the students–we have about 130 to140 students in a year and out of that, 90 percent of the students are black. For me, that is important because it shows that the Photo Workshop is still a non-racial institution, where anybody can come to study photography and feel safe and protected, and that opinions are valued and heard. What we’ve found in the last few years is that a lot of the students that come from universities and have completed their Bachelors in Art or Fine Arts will choose after their studies at university to come to do a year course at the Photo Workshop, because they feel it’s a much more practical application that gives them much more depth. This is really important because again that gives credibility even though we don’t have an accredited certificate. When somebody from a university comes to an informal institution, it must have some value, and I think our students recognise that.

The Photo Workshop is seen as innovative, breaking boundaries and addressing

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Copyright Lerato Maduna

issues. In your experience is it the only model of this kind on the continent?

I think it is the only model of its kind as a photography institution that runs ongoing courses and sustained itself for more than 2 to 3 decades. That speaks to the depth of the challenges that we have on the continent. It also speaks to an international economy. There is no shortage of international photographers on the continent, so why is there then such a shortage of photography training? For me it’s a beautiful question because it talks about old colonial strategy of acknowledging but disempowering the continent. The continent is acknowledged, “Oh great photographers” but training is never empowered. The funding never reaches training institutions in sustainable ways so that they become developed. Art and training institutions are very dependent on key individuals and

FEATURES arts and culture institutions. The immediate future looks bleak; we are struggling to sustain funding. But that said, we are very much still operating and I think that the interest for me is that we’ve got the energy to rethink what we are doing. But then I think much more interesting for us in terms of the future, is to reposition ourselves and think around photography in different ways. Next year, we’ve got a series of very important kinds of meetings, where we will reconfigure the mission and vision of the Market Photo Workshop and our objectives in terms of what our structures are and how we operate in line with our move to a new premises in 2015. We will be moving to Mary Fitzgerald Square, which is the most important cultural precinct in Johannesburg and possibly in South Africa.

It will give us a central space and it will give us a square right in front of us, a public square, where I think we will be able to engage in a much more public way than we have done. This is something extraordinary and we are really looking forward to that.

Apart from that, we’ll have a library, and it will be an auditorium, which we have here but a much bigger space. The auditorium will be much larger and it will also have bigger training as well as working spaces.

And then very importantly, it will have storage space. We are very excited about what happens in the next few years. I think it’s going to be the most important defining years of the Photo Workshop because I think it will reposition who we are. staff members that are able to sustain that kind of energy and have got the vision to draw on. I think that these people need to be supported and understood.

I think there are also huge interests in bringing festivals to Africa, but how will these festivals operate without proper training?

I’m quite concerned about that and it feels to me as if festivals and the idea of bringing any international reputation to places sometimes overrides those individuals that can really make shifts in society and that have the vision and the energy to build training institutions that have localised importance.

For me, there is one festival of photography that is quite interesting, which is the Addis Photo Festival. It has the intention of training and localising photography in Ethiopia in particular. I understand that there’s a certain marker of achievement, which is not a scale, it’s the engagement and for me that’s quite

successful. There are other festivals on the continent that are probably interested in scale and quantity rather than quality. Those festivals lack content and in particular lack local content, and in many ways for me as an individual, lack legitimacy. Then there is the Bamako Biennale, which I think is such an important biennale which has given such an important focus and understanding to photography on the continent. It has made such a change and shift. It’s very important to know that they are now again planning and will be operational in 2014. So I’m very relieved that it is continuing and we will continue to support it as much as we can.

What is on the horizon in the future for MPW? I think funding is the most important question around the future and is probably the same for all training institutions and

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Do you receive any funding from government?

Since 2004, we have received funding from the Department of Arts and Culture. The building we will be moving into is also a grant from the department. I think we are very fortunate that the Department of Arts and Culture realises and acknowledges the importance of what the Photo Workshop does and in context of a larger national shift in photography. It’s time for photography and internationally it has grown as a major force. I think what is interesting about photography is that it has a vernacular that deals with reality and also the mundane.

For us as a training institution, it is an ideal stage to introduce our students to the real world and the research opportunities of being and thinking about photography.

Photography is about thinking not just about seeing and it’s that thinking part that is increasingly more acknowledged.

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PEER CONVERSATION JUDE ANOGWIH AND ADEJOKE TUGBIYELE

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JA: Tell me a bit about you. Who is this maverick, Adejoke Tugbiyele?

AT: Ha! Maverick? I guess I’ll accept the term if being a maverick means viewing my art as a catalyst for change. I am a daughter of Nigerian parents, born in Brooklyn, New York (when Brooklyn was still a little rough around the edges) and raised in Lagos, Nigeria for seven years, during Babangida’s military dictatorship. My ancestors hail from Igbajo - the land of the brave in Osun State, just a few miles away from the Osun Shrine. Although neither of my parents are visual artists, I’d like to believe the creativity that runs through my veins is a combination of traditional Yoruba artistic practice mixed with contemporary influences. I was also trained as an architect, and so my love for design and/or space tends to come through in my work, both formally and conceptually.

In the past, I have used the term, ‘three skins’ to describe my interests - the body, architecture, and the environment. All three are systematically connected to each other in ways we often ignore more than we should. Finally, I am also a woman who loves women.

Now I am breaking my own rules of self-categorization, but I do so for the sake of activism, which is so badly needed within Nigeria’s queer community.

JA: Pragmatically, you have conveniently and consciously experimented with performance, video art and sculpture in your work. I understand you do bits of photography and drawing aside being a rebel with a definite cause. How does it feel to take charge and create change?

AT: The main thing I believe I am taking charge of, is my life. All else seems to be falling into place when one does so. Yes, my practice has become increasingly multi-disciplinary over time. On one hand, in my creative process, I haven’t found it healthy to restrict myself to one medium. It could also be that I get bored very easily. On the other hand, I think it is extremely important to show consistency and continuity when using different mediums.

For example, in my video art work, you will find the same materials being used in my sculpture and mixed media work. Objects such as the traditional broom, African fabrics and re-purposed metal strainers become animated and charged in the video. So essentially, I don’t find any conflict materially in my increasingly multidisciplinary practice.

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Mosquito Organist.Still 002

JA: Lagos is a an eccentric city. Do you see this city supporting you (inspiration, material, et al) to engage with it? Do you have specific ideas of what you want your fellowship and stay in Eko to reflect?

AT: Eccentric is putting it lightly! I am so inspired by the hustle-bustle and industrious nature of this city. Amidst nightmarish traffic, loud generators, and the smell of diesel everywhere, Lagosians keep on going. People always find a reason and method to make each other laugh.

It’s as if that gesture is a pure necessity for getting through the day without going crazy. I’ve learned quickly in my first two months of Fulbright fellowship work, that sometimes one needs a driver and other times, one better hop on a keke-maruwa–a local tricycle to get from point a to b. My work here has been rather experimental in nature. This process is clearly coming through, materially in my new body of work. I have been very much inspired by the fashion-sense of the queer community, which blends native fabric with Western designs and motifs while simultaneously deconstructing traditional notions of gender. By attending gay parties, LGBT

film screenings and other events, I am able to observe and ask questions about their struggles amidst the impending federal antigay bill, as well as the existential realities of being queer in Nigeria. All these will be reflected in my new works.

a very short period of time.

JA: You talked about change and selfcategorisation and you seemingly sounded tense. What is it about your art you think can serve as a catalyst for the desired change you and I envisage in Nigeria?

AT: Sure. The exhibition at the Jewish Museum of New York is called Sights and Sounds: Global Film and Video and runs through 2016. The museum’s interior was renovated specifically to showcase innovative video projects from around the globe.

My experimental film, AfroOdyssey III was selected among just a handful of video artists from Nigeria. AfroOdyssey III is the third of a longer-planned series that uses costume, performance, light and sound to explore the cross-section of spirituality and sexuality in Africa and its diaspora. As one of the twenty-five curators selected from around the world, you are in part responsible for its exposure, and I thank you.

AT: My art deliberately chooses to speak to issues that are still taboo in many parts of Nigeria. It also critiques the political machine using a range of mediums, but particularly film or video art– a medium that is very well known in Nollywood circles but has not yet gained wide usage within Nigeria’s art scene. Generating conversation or debate on topics like homosexuality can enlighten those who get little to no information on the subject other than the dogma preached by right-wing, fundamentalist religious institutions. And as you already know as a co-founder of Video Art Network, Lagos, film has the capacity to reach an extremely large audience within

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JA: Indeed film does travel very far.

Tell me about your nomination in the extended film program at The Jewish Museum of New York.

JA: Having interacted, visited and seen most art exhibitions and programs in Lagos, do you see any possibility of artists providing through their work positive learning and aesthetic experiences in the

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midst of our society, based on corruption, oppression and exploitation?

AT: There is an amazing lack of political expression among many young artists in Nigeria. There is so much that needs to be said, yet it seems many young artists are not saying much to critique widespread corruption and oppression, as you rightly put it. In fact, a few artists that I have spoken to in Lagos about my critique of laws against the queer community have been discouraging, warning of the dangers of speaking out. I was very surprised to hear such words coming from them. I mean, if artists don’t choose to speak up, who will? If visiting foreigners decided to travel blindly through Lagos only to open their eyes at gallery exhibitions, they would think absolutely nothing was wrong with Nigeria. Meanwhile, the international airport based in Lagos, the country’s economic hub, is a complete disgrace. A large number of people live in the squalor of slums, highly visible as one travels across Third Mainland Bridge. State vehicles like buses and taxi’s look like ticking timebombs, and people risk their lives riding them everyday simply to go from their homes to work and back. Rich pastors have the nerve to buy personal private jets using the tithes of the hungry, ignorant masses and show the jets off as abundant blessings from the Lord. It’s all quite sickening to watch. I sometimes wonder if this is what it felt like to live in Europe’s Middles Ages, except we are in the twenty-first century!

So to answer your question, yes, I see immense possibilities for artists to speak to these issues in their work.

Although neither of my parents are visual artists, I’d like to believe the creativity that runs through my veins is a combination of traditional Yoruba artistic practice mixed with contemporary influences. all embrace the principles I mention above.

The tools we use to execute our ideas are simply different. Another important book is Carl Jung’s, Man and His Symbols, which deals more with our primal, subconscious need for meaning. It explores the ways we rationalize apparent symbols with those that appear in dreams to create meaning.

Within the various traditional cultures of

JA: What are your guiding principles?

AT: I must remain true to who I am and what I believe in at all times. Once I don’t, I cease being an artist or human and I become a slave. Creativity is not really about “the brush and the canvas.” It’s about problem-solving. Problem-solving can be done in the spirit of being honest and authentic, having courage and conviction, and speaking those truths that others know deep down inside, but are too afraid to say. John Dewey’s book entitled, Art as Experience sheds light on what art truly is. A visual artist can be an artist, but so can the chef, the politician, the writer, the school teacher and the doctor. They can

Mosquito Net Entrapment 2.Still 004

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Nigeria, people historically knew these things and practiced them. Europe was heavily influenced by African arts, traditions and philosophies. However, through slavery, colonialism and the introduction of Western religion, we lost our way. But we can return by combining our best practices from then with those of now, to pave the path towards a more enlightened future.

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LONDON, ART 14 LONDON SETTING NEW HEIGHTS Following the success of the inaugural Art13 London, the second edition of the fair, Art14 London sponsored by Citi Private Bank Bank,will willtake takeplace place from 28 Feb – 2 March 2014, at Olympia Grand Hall. Last year’s fair saw the inclusion of a Private Museum Summit complemented by two high profile public panel discussions entitled, The China Moment and The Global Rise of the Private Museum, which considered the role of collecting, the rise of private museums, and emerging centres of art production.Omenka caught up with fair director, Stephanie Dieckvoss to discuss her role and what to expect at this year’s fair.

Copyright Art Fair London Ltd

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FEATURES risen exponentially is the awareness of the fair internationally, which is truly amazing.

While before the first edition it was still an unknown entity, I now hear from such different parts of the world that people are talking about the fair and planning on visiting, which of course is strong encouragement.

We also have already many requests about information about exhibiting in 2015, so this is a great marker of the fair’s reputation and position it has built in only one year.

Stephanie Dieckvoss, Fair Director Photo by Ossi Jalkanen Copyright Art Fairs London Ltd.

OM: What is your role as fair director and what kind of audience are you catering for at the Art 14 London?

My role is very much about the content of the fair, which includes all projects, initiatives, galleries, collectors, press engagements, and its general strategy and vision. But the brunt of the work of course, is carried out by the wonderful team working with me, as well as by the fair owners who are actively engaged and always have very inspiring ideas, such as the Food 4 Art project. I believe that every art fair has to cater to different tiers of audiences. You need to root a fair in the local art scene and to engage local visitors and collectors. At the same time, it is vital for a global art fair such as ours, that we have serious and established, as well as aspiring international collectors attending the fair. I am personally also very keen to bring artists, curators and critics to the fair, who are important to create a platform for art discourse and opportunities that only develop from engaging with different groups of people.

OM: The fair is entering its second year.

How would you describe its growth, not just in terms of the number of galleries participating, but also its reputation outside the UK? The fair has grown organically in size and we are very happy about its current size and range of galleries. What has in my opinion

OM: What criteria did you set for selecting the participating galleries at this year’s edition, and what should we expect?

The galleries in the main section are selected by an international curatorial committee, who select galleries based on the merit of their stand proposals. Obviously, I work hard on ensuring the applications are interesting and the goal for this year was to increase the global spread and to engage more galleries from parts such as Africa or Latin America.

So visitors can expect galleries from 42 countries, which is wonderful and should make for a very diverse and intriguing array of works that can be seen. We also have dedicated curatorial advisors for our young gallery sections, London First and Emerge, which this year consists of 16 galleries

each, that will present an exciting range of upcoming art from across the globe in sometimes very ambitious presentations.

OM: What is your focus this year and how will you measure the fair’s overall success?

My focus for this year is to establish the international reputation of this year’s fair and to ensure its recognition among galleries, collectors, and curators and the public. The educational aspects of the fair are also very important to me personally and I worked hard to ensure not only a very strong talks programme but also to develop partnerships with interesting institutions and non-profit partners. We also devised a much more coherent collector strategy and hope that many collectors will come to the fair and ensure that galleries’ participation in Art14 is a viable and also sustainable undertaking.

It is hard to measure the success of an art fair.

Many do so by visitor numbers, others by press coverage, or by attending curators. For me, the success is given, if galleries have had a good fair, have made sales and established contact with important clients. Galleries are our main clients and if they are happy – so am I. OM: Art Dubai has established an initiative

XIAO Jiang, Storage, 2011, oil on canvas, 50×60cm, courtesy of Vanguard Gallery

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Yan Lei, Landing-Shanghai C, 210 x 300, acrylic on canvas, 2007, courtesy of Tang Contemporary Art | Bangkok, Hong Kong, Beijing

called Marker to promote emerging art scenes like Africa and Asia while ensuring their participation in global art events. Do you have similar platforms in place, or are there plans to establish any?

This year, we are pleased to be welcoming galleries from all of the continents, from regions including Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and the United States. Over the years, I have observed a range of the above mentioned initiatives and they are interesting and admirable. However, my focus is not to single out specific areas but to treat global art production and its representation equally, and also ensure that participation is sustainable and can become part of a long term strategy for a gallery. I find the exposure of a certain area at a fair for one year is often a one off, and doesn’t give the results I would hope for. Our support is very much directed to young galleries; we offer subsidized rates to

galleries who are either in London for the first time or showing emerging artists in 1-2 artist shows, which is always a risk. However, I am very keen to develop strategies that ensure that galleries from any part of the world can find ways to finance participation at a fair in London and I am currently looking into ways to incorporate this into the fair’s strategy for the future.

OM: There has been much criticism that art fairs promote the commodification of art. In your view, does the art fair model inhibit contemporary art discourse?

In the end, most art fairs are commercial entities and as such cannot reverse trend in the contemporary art world. Art fairs have been successful for a while as they offer visitors the chance to see a lot of art in one place in a short amount of time, often with an exciting associated entertainment programme. This is how collectors currently

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want to experience art, be it at an art fair or a biennial. I don’t think we can undo this. What we can do at an art fair is allow galleries that try to promote artists, to do so in the best possible and engaging environment. An environment that presents art beyond the limits of a stand, such as the works on show as part of the performance programme and the Art14 projects, and that stimulates a critical discourse as our talks programme hopes to do. My personal stand to deal with this intrinsic question of the value of art oscillating between the commercial and the symbolic, is to strive for integrity and quality in what we do, especially in a commercial undertaking.

OM: Who is the London art collector and what is your target audience?

There is not a single type of collector in London. No one believes now that 15 years ago collecting contemporary art had

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Paresh Maity, Duality, 2011, mixed media on board, 150 x 140cm, courtesy of Sumukha Gallery

not been widespread here; traditionally, collecting in the UK has been more concerned with older art and antiques. However, this has dramatically changed. London has the most serious and engaged collectors imaginable with a new generation of younger collectors starting to collect and be interested art. Above all, London is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world as reflected in the collecting audiences, which are our target.

Art14 London’s USP is its global outlook. Through this it has a very unique positioning and as such; we feel it is incredibly important what we do.

While there are a larger number of art fairs, as well as other exhibitions of art in the world, there are also more collectors than ever and the desire for art still grows. We present many galleries that have never had a chance to show in London before, and do so in an international discourse, which specialized art fairs focusing on a single region can’t achieve.

OM: London is home to a number of art fairs including Frieze, and the recently established 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair. How does Art 14 establish its identity in relation to these, as well as the growing number of fairs all over the world?

OM: Art 14 London like the Cape Town Art Fair runs from February 27 to March 2. What effect does major concurrent art events have on Art 14?

Sadly, it is a sign of the times that there are always concurrent events.

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Tyeb Mehta, Untitled, 1973, oil on canvas, 112.5 x 88.7.5cm, courtesy of Delhi Art Gallery

There are some galleries of course there, I would have liked to have exhibit at Art14. Also the Marrakech Bienniale is in the same week as the fair – you will always have overlaps and with our global remit, any art event across the world of course has an impact. In the end it is up to visitors, as well as galleries to decide what their goals and their interests are and make a choice where to go.

OM: What do you think is responsible for the growing global interest in contemporary African art, and do you think art from the continent enjoys adequate representation at your fair?

I would have loved to have more representation from Africa at the fair and I will work very hard to hopefully have more galleries

from more parts of Africa in future editions of the fair. Finance is the biggest issue, as well as awareness, I guess. I think the growing interest for contemporary art out of Africa has various sources; from the art world’s drive to always discover the next thing, to the rising importance of Africa as a global business partner, to potentially historically founded reasons to integrate – very belatedly - Africa in the global arena. I believe that this year’s representation of African galleries, as well as galleries from other parts showing African art is truly exciting, and that we will see wonderful works, sculptures, installations, performances at the fair – it is definitely not exhaustive!

Art 14 London is sponsored by Citi Private Bank and takes place from 28 February to 2 March 2014 at Olympia Grand Hall in London.

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CAPE TOWN ART FAIR’S RISING PROFILE Presently in its second year and close on the heels of the successful Joburg Art Fair now in its 8th edition, The Cape Town Art Fair organized by the Fiera Milano Group is oversubscribed and welcomes a number of newcomers to the existing gallery participants. Omenka talks to Louis Cashmore, fair director and Andrew Lamprecht, curator, on the fair’s fastrising profile and the possibility of staging more fairs in other parts of Africa.

OM: What is your role as fair director?

My role is to ensure that the Cape Town Art Fair is a sustainable platform for buyers and sellers to engage with one another, creating an entire contemporary art experience of an international standard.

OM: What kind of audience are you catering for at the Cape Town Art Fair?

Collectors, art lovers, curious visitors and the youth who have a passion for art – we welcome them to come and experience the excitement and dynamism of this unique world.

OM: What were the biggest challenges you had to overcome to get Cape Town Art Fair off the ground and what strategies have you adopted in sustaining it so far?

The South African art market is complex and we have had to face several challenges to show a balanced representation of local art while still paying attention to the international scene, particularly art from the rest of the African continent. We have tried to be inclusive and consulatative while at the same time maintaining the highest standards.

OM: You recently changed your logo and redesigned your website. How has this affected your audience?

The new ‘look’ is designed to enhance visibility and access. This is one way we hope to broaden our audience.

OM: What is new at this year’s fair?

This year’s art fair focuses on quality. In fact, it is slightly smaller in scale that the 2013 fair but we have a more focused and carefully selected group of galleries and artists. The major trend will be towards showing work that firmly positions Africa as a place of innovation in the creative spheres.

OM: What were the highlights of last year’s

Installation view: Christopher Moller Gallery

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Installation view: BRUNDYN+

fair?

Wanted Business Day magazine presented an installation of new video works, curated by Gary Cotterell, by some of SA’s most exciting contemporary artists namely; Mikhael Subotzky, Haroon Gunn-Salie, Barend de Wet, Khanyisile Mgongwe, Kudzanai Chiurai and Cameron Platter. Cape Town curator and critic, Andrew Lamprecht curated the featured artist space. Land and environmental artist, Strijdom Van Der Merwe was commissioned to make a site-specific work for the fair.

OM: In your opinion was it successful?

Yes, galleries reported high sales of over 10million Rand and in publicity throughout magazines, TV and radio.

OM: What is your focus this year and how will you measure the fair’s overall success?

Our focus this year was most definitely to create an art fair that could stand proudly alongside art fairs around the world. Cape Town is an international city and home to many of the country’s leading contemporary artists, curators and galleries. This is very evident in what we are presenting at the Cape Town Art Fair this year. How will we measure the fair’s overall success – sales I’m afraid is what

it comes down to. We have the finest galleries under one roof and now we need to ensure that they do good business.

OM: How would you describe the South African art collector?

There is no one type of collector. There are people from all sorts of backgrounds and with varying budgets. Nevertheless, the South African collector, on the whole, is concerned with quality above all else. There are comparatively few pure speculative investors, South Africans tend to buy art they love and they can live with in their environment, be it personal or corporate.

OM: How do you see the rising phenomenon of art fairs all over the world? Andrew, in your opinion, what are the roles of art fairs?

Art fairs should show what is at the cutting edge and what the defining trends are. A visit to a major art fair should leave the visitor with a clear picture of what is the current “state of the game” in the art sphere.

OM: There has been much criticism that art fairs promote the commodification of art. What is your view on this?

This is always a danger when commercial interests over-ride all other

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South Africa is now established as a significant locus for contemporary art production. Nevertheless, there is still scope for growth, expansion and greater exposure globally.

Town Art Fair were already committed to Art 14. This year with Cape Town being the World Design Capital, we thought it very important that the Cape Town Art Fair, ran at the same time as Design Indaba and Southern Guild, following Miami’s very successful template of creating a week, which is a celebration of art and design in the city.

OM: Andrew, what makes the Cape Town Art Fair different from other art fairs and how does it establish its identity in relation to other African art fairs? Especially the well-known Joburg Art Fair presently in its 8th year.

Cape Town is ideally suited for an art fair being a port city with great potential to attract visitors generally. We hope that we may contribute broadly to the growing interest in African art by staging the fair in Cape Town to attract visitors who may be inclined to spend some time in the “Mother City” beyond the art fair. The identity is still developing but at present we are keen to be known for quality and breath of scope in a managable location.

concerns. At this year’s Cape Town Art Fair, special attention has been paid to projects and other non-commercial ventures. In addition, the galleries selected will be encouraged to see their participation in the context of a bigger project– the promotion of local creativity.

OM: Location is a critical issue in creating a successful art fair.

Location in this sense does not only mean geographical, but architectural. How did you decide on the location for the fair?

I believe that the historical V&A Waterfront is a perfect home for Cape Town’s art fair as it does truly represent the beautiful city that is playing host to the fair. Art is also a very sensory sector and the environment in which this fair takes place, contributes to its success.

With sweeping views of the ocean and table mountain, depending on which large window of the venue you are standing in front of, made this venue an excellent choice.

OM: Art 14 London like the Cape Town Art Fair runs from February 27 to March 2. What effect does major concurrent art events have on Cape Town Art Fair?

The international calendar is as you are aware, jam packed. The fact that Art 14 London is running concurrently is definitely not ideal as a number of international galleries who wanted to exhibit at Cape

OM:The Fiera Milano Group organizes the Cape Town Art Fair.

Are there any plans to stage any more fairs in other parts of Africa? Fiera Milano Africa is the African wing of the experienced global exhibition experts Fieramilano, organisers of MiArt Italy, and Art International Istanbul. We definitely have plans to launch more fairs in the years to come, once Cape Town Art Fair is firmly established on the international exhibition calendar.

OM: How would you describe South African art and what is its place internationally?

South Africa is now established as a significant locus for contemporary art production. Nevertheless, there is still scope for growth, expansion and greater exposure, globally.

OM: Andrew what is the response of the South African government to art and how can other African countries engage art as a tool in creating lasting social and economic value?

While there have been challenges in terms of censorship there is also a definite support for art and culture as evinced by greater support of South African representation at international biennales and the like.

This is an area to watch and we all need to promote local art and be watchdogs for incursions on freedom of expression. In some ways, the educational role of the Cape Town Art Fair has this at its heart; to make our art more widely known and to show what is possible.

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The Mother City’s budding reputation as a global art hub, captured in its title of W orld Design Capital 2014, makes this the perfect environment to bring together the nation’s high concentration of world-class galleries and showcase the breadth and depth of local talent in an exquisite setting. Collectors, critics and casual visitors are invited to rub shoulders, enjoy a glass of wine and marvel at the inspiring work on display by emerging and established South African art-world stars. CTAF presents both an unmissable highlight on the country’s creative calendar and a unique commercial opportunity .

28 FEB - 2 MAR 2014 | DOCK ROAD |

Opening times: 10am – 8pm daily (Sunday 2 March until 6pm) www.artfaircapetown.co.za @CTArtfair

Book now at Computicket (tickets also available at the door) For more information, contact: (021) 702-2280 or art@fieramilano.co.za OMENKA MAGAZINE VOLUME 1 ISSUE 2

Global Energy Group (GEC) is an Africa focused independent Energy Resources Corporation. GEC operates with a mission to explore, harness and produce a variety of energy resources in a sustainable manner that enhances the wealth of our host nations and the quality of life of the people.

GEC as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility over the past two decades, actively supports and promotes arts, culture and people initiatives in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa. GEC aims to nurture, sustain and showcase the best of Africa’s immense creative energy with a special focus on the visual arts, dance, drama, and theatre.

+234 84 235 326

mdo@globalenergyco.com

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