Shortcutsby Katharine Jacobs
David Goldblatt at Michael Stevenson
'I was asking myself how it was possible to be so apparently normal, moral, upright - which almost all those citizens were - in such an appallingly abnormal, immoral, bizarre situation?'
(Goldblatt 2002:online)
Goldblatt revisited his negatives for 'In Boksburg' at Michael Stevenson in February, reprinting the work from 1979 to 1980 and recontextualising the prints with several new colour photographs of the area. At first, the prospect of old work being recycled in this manner elicited a groan from me. Perusing the work however, turned out to be surprisingly rewarding.
Re-printed today, Goldblatt's images are a tour-de-force of irony; the hypocrisy of many members of this society who upheld Christian values within their own community, yet violently excluded all people of colour from their activities, painfully humorous.
Women with dated hairstyles and outfits are Preparing to serve dinner at the Rugby Dance in the Town Hall (1979/80), the Drama Workshop continues their activities unabashed in a Rehearsal of the Drama Workshop of 'The Importance of Being Earnest'(1979/80), and a girl demurely plays the piano for her mother in the drawing room in A girl and her mother at home(1979/80). All, like Nero perhaps, play the fiddle even as Rome burns; all signs of the bloody raging of apartheid swept under the carpet.
The 2009 photographs of Boksburg show some obvious reversals; a white man begs at a traffic light, a black family are featured on a housing development billboard. However, the presence of a Casspir, guarding the Gateway to Ville de Fleur townhouse complex, Sunward Park 3 points to the subtly different challenges facing integration today; the justification for exclusion having shifted from race to class.
The images are also interesting in terms of the hilariously exaggerated gender stereotypes they capture. The girls in Saturday morning at the Hypermarket: Miss Lovely Legs Competition (1979/80) make a wonderful counterpoint to the tiny, terrified boy being trained in masculinity in Before the fight: amateur boxing at the town hall (1979/80). Perhaps we have made some progress, after all!
Images courtesy Michael Stevenson and the artist
Michael Stevenson Gallery
Buchanan Building, 160 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock
Tel: (021) 462 1500
Fax: (021) 462 1501
www.michaelstevenson.com
Hours: Mon - Fri 9am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 1pm
'Printing Money' at SA Print Gallery
New addition to the Woodstock gallery district, SA Print Gallery is a significantly smaller space than the other Woodstock warehouse spaces; a narrow sliver of a gallery facing Michael Stevenson's vast space across the raod. The title of the opening show - on the eve of the financial crisis - is humorous, the gallery declaring its debut on the South African art market with 'tongue-firmly-in-cheek', as the press release declares.
The works on show however, do not appear to conform to the theme particularly well; Sam Nhlengethwa's Tribute to Marlene Dumas and Tribute to William Kentridge are perhaps the only two works could be seen to concern the value of art. Tribute to Marlene Dumas is a gem, though, Dumas' diaphanous watercolour's translating particularly well into Nhlengethwa's sensitive eight colour lithograph. Diane Victor's technically accomplished etching, After Eden is also impressive, tucked away though it is at the rear of the gallery.
Also encouraging is the gallery's support of new, young artists. Marks, Groenewald and Glenday are all from 2008's crop of Michaelis graduates, and the work of other recent graduates Rowan Smith, Georgina Gratrix and Ali Aschman is also featured.
Although there is little conceptual dialog between works, there are some fun visual connections going on in their arrangement. Avant Car Guard's circular flow diagram with triangle of intersecting concerns, Painting 1 (2007), mirrors the swirling rings of Lyndi Sales' Spirograph E (2008) to the left, and the pyramidal format of Nicola Glenday's pigeon-themed Untitled (Triangular Stamp) (2008) to the right. The rings of Niklas Wittenburg's record print, The Roaring Twenties add a fourth voice to the circle/triangle theme which begins form a conversation of its own.
Images courtesy SA Print Gallery and the artists.
SA Print Gallery
107 Sir Lowry Road, Woodstock
Tel: (021) 462 6851
Email: jessica@printgallery.co.za
www.printgallery.co.za
Hours: Tue - Fri 9:30am - 5pm, Sat 10am - 2pm
Richard Hart at Whatiftheworld
It's a peculiar theme to explore: Hart's 'Kind Pockets' had me baffled for a few minutes. After ascertaining that the entire exhibition really does consist of beautiful young girls carrying baby animals in clothing custom-designed by Amanda Laird Cherry, I am not sure what to do with myself.
Youth god, Thunder god, and the war of teenage dreams (2007), is a large-scale painting of a levitating nymphet with graceful, and phallic swan neck protruding from the pocket at her groin. The image seems to want to tie the myth of Leda's rape by the swan, to adolescent daydreaming, and goldfish. The Poetic Truth's of High School Journal Keepers (2009) meanwhile, boasts a thoroughly cute baby elephant strapped into a back pouch of a teenage girl in her poster-plastered bedroom.
The work is reminiscent of a trend among contemporary Japanese women artists which Ivan Vartanian identifies in his survey of the subject, Drop Dead Cute. Hart, however, is conspicuously not a woman, and his work therefore reads as a little exploitative and essentialist. The scent of irony, if it is here at all, is rather faint. The baby animals are very cute though.
Images courtesy Whatiftheworld/Gallery and the artist
Whatiftheworld / Gallery
1st Floor Albert Hall, 208 Albert Road, Woodstock
Tel: (021) 448 1438
Email: info@whatiftheworld.com
www.whatiftheworld.com
Hours: Tue - Fri 10am - 4pm, Sat 10am - 3pm
