Contemporary South African Art
- The Gencor Collection

Wayne Barker
Transit Culture 1990
Oil and found object on canvas
118 x 127cm

Joachim Schönfeldt

Untitled (Tribute to Durant) 1994
Oil paint on carved wood panel
76.5 x 78cm

A section of the atrium in the
Gencor building in Johannesburg,
showing works in the wire made
as a special commission for
Gencor by Walter Oltmann

CONTEMPORARY SOUTH AFRICAN ART - THE GENCOR COLLECTION
Kendell Geers (ed.) 1997. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers. 168 pages R120.00 at good bookstores.

Patron collectors amass large corporate collections of original art and artifact. Attesting foremost to wealth, and secondly to executive taste, these acquisitions seldom face scrutiny from a broad critical public, tending only to grace the walls of their castles. Corridors reflect conglomerations of vapid visual musak, functioning merely to massage corporate colonnades into invisible zones and interfered with only by a pin-striped suit. Meanwhile, the well-heeled art dealer is kept in the framing business.

But if, like Gencor, you are serious about collecting, forcefully evident when reading and paging through the illustrations in this book, you do three things. Before you accumulate the ccobjects, collect the best consultant whose industry is art - Kendell Geers, conceptual artist, critic, networker. Then, analyse why you need to collect and lastly add mediation in the form of a small yet dynamic committee. Done!

Geers enticed Brian Gilbertson, Gencor's chair, to allow him to modestly collect artworks epitomising transformation. The central theme of the collection reflects "the transition from the old South Africa to the new". A great success, and Gencor and Geers continued further, to publish Contemporary South African Art: the Gencor Collection.

Collections accumulate credibility when spoken and written about. Clever Kendell knows this. He collected writers Lesley Spiro (candid one-time acting director Johannesburg Art Gallery), Mark Pencharz (architect), Elizabeth Rankin (gentle and consummate art historian), Okwui Enwezor (hot hot property), Colin Richards (footnote heavy-weight), Elza Miles (deep thinker), Julia Charlton (deep feeler), Olu Oguibe (afro-neo-theorist), Marilyn Martin (the other collector) and Ashraf Jamal (voice-over artist) to expand.

The visual collection has coherence, the essays perhaps not. Eccentric in scope and overall quality, they sometimes struggle to escape the editor's apologia that "each writer was free to develop their themes". A minor quibble in a time of "transition", nevertheless anyone collecting well-illustrated books on contemporary South African art needs this one.

Art in South Africa:
the future present
the cover showing,
Integration Programme: man with TV
by Jane Alexander

Clive van den Berg
The Mine Dump Project 1995

Patrick Mautloa
Metamorphosis Wall 1995
Acrylic on canvas, metal and wood
1650 x 1220 cm

One of the distinctive features of South African art has been the prevalence of socio-political concerns in a country where many other forms of comment or opposition were circumscribed. The extent to which artists today remain governed by this imperative or claim new liberties to explore more personal issues is the question articulated by the authors of Art in South Africa: The Future Present. Are there major shifts in South African art? What are the new concerns? How are these being worked through?

Sue Williamson and Ashraf Jamal attempt to address these questions through consideration of the work of 40 contemporary artists in brief chapters on each. The intention or "curatorial guideline", as Jamal puts it, "has been to consider artists who express durable questions". Undoubtedly, some will quibble with their selection but, on the whole, it is fair and courageous, despite some surprising omissions. The major names are there, including artists who have made a name for themselves internationally, such as Jane Alexander, William Kentridge, Patrick Mautloa and Willie Bester. Also included are the young (and not so young) turks who are still establishing their reputations - artists like Jo Ractliffe, Brett Murray and Moshekwa Langa.

The most striking feature of the book is its handsome production and design with excellent illustrations lavishly produced in full colour - a rare visual treat. Not only are local works increasingly leaving the country for foreign markets but many of the illustrations document installations or performance-based works which even the most ardent followers of local trends will not have been able to witness. Amongst the most breathtakingly beautiful of these must surely be Clive van der Berg's fire drawings on mine dumps in Johannesburg and his message to the Archangel Gabriel written in fire on a Durban beach. Also featured are works from some of the most challenging exhibitions to date which include 'Scurvy' and 'Fault Lines: Inquiries into Truth and Reconciliation' both staged at the Cape Town Castle as well as exhibitions which formed part of the Johannesburg Biennale in 1995.

The writing style is informal and accessible, if somewhat florid in parts. Often, artists are allowed to speak for themselves which, on the whole, affords the reader invaluable insights into the artist's concerns and working methods. This book will undoubtedly provide insights into contemporary South African art and whet appetites for more.

Printmaking in a Transforming South Africa:
the cover, showing a print by
Malcolm Payne

William Zulu
Peace Now! (1993)
linocut

This fine publication was produced to function both as catalogue to accompany the exhibition of the same name (which opened at the Grahamstown Festival and can be viewed at the Johannesburg Art Gallery until the middle of this month) and as its title indicates, a guide to the depth and range of printmaking processes - including lino-cutting, etching, lithography, screenprinting, computer-generated prints in this country. To research the book, Hobbs and Rankin travelled around the country with a laptop interviewing artists on their life-long involvement in printmaking, and exactly how each print selected for the exhibition was made. This information is extended by an informed discussion on the conceptual background of each print. No guesswork here.

There may be no printmaking studios in this country with the resources to handle an outsize screenprints in 97 colours like the Frank Stella screenprint recently on show at the Goodman, but the master printers and studios we do have - Malcolm Christian in Natal, Jonathan Comerford in Cape Town for instance, are dedicated to their pursuits, and in the last ten years, as Hobbs and Rankin demonstrate, printmaking has come into its own as not only an affordable way to collect art, but one with its own quite unique qualities. The reader is rewarded by an in-depth study of the subject written in a bright, informative style.

Sue Williamson
Sue Williamson is a Cape Town artist and the editor of this website.

Kevin Brand
19 Boys Running 1988
Wood, polystyrene, paper and paint
Average height: 160 cm

This long-awaited catalogue, produced in conjunction with the exhibition which filled seven out of ten rooms at the SA National Gallery from December 1996 to March 1997, is an essential document for anybody interested in South African contemporary art. It is a text which finally records the vast legacy of works which have been accumulated by the SANG over the past decade, an era notorious for its profound social and political abuses, but also notable for its radical transformations. The catalogue maps not only the artists' responses to their environments, but also confronts questions of the SANG's collecting policies and the transformations within this institution over the past decade.

What has been produced, then, in the form of this catalogue, is of use to art enthusiasts, cultural historians, and researchers alike. It is pleasing aesthetically, comprising over sixty colour plates, and many other high quality black and white reproductions of the works. This document also includes comprehensive information about the artists, with 231 biographies and details about nearly 1000 artworks.

Tracy Munnik

Tracy Munnik is a free lance curator and writer on art.