Archive: Issue No. 68, April 2003

Rise before dawn to catch an early flight to Johannesburg for a briefing session on the new Constitutional Court currently going up on Constitutional Hill, next to the site of the Old Fort prison, Hillbrow. Unique in the world, the Constitutional Court is the highest court in the land, an expression of democracy at its most democratic. Here, eleven judges listen to cases and give rulings according to the new constitution, even parliament and the president must accept the rulings, and all may come and listen to the proceedings. Currently working from buildings nearby, the judges will move into the new court buildings at the end of 2003, in time for the significant year of 2004, which will mark 10 years of democracy.

By 10.15 a.m, around thirty invited artists from around the country have gathered at the entrance to the Old Fort prison. Judge Albie Sachs welcomes us warmly, sketching the history and background of the project. While all artists have been invited to submit proposals for certain open sites and such details as screens, carpeting, even stair edgings, five selected sites in the new buildings have been reserved for limited competitions by invited artists. Albie tells us of a federal court in Boston he visited where there was no art to be seen. "We Americans can't agree on iconography," he is told. "We trust our artists", Albie says now, assuring us that he knows each of us could make a strong and compelling artwork for our selected site. Artworks that are not chosen retain the possibility of being sited elsewhere, perhaps at a later stage.

Senior architect Herbert Prins gives us a tour of the Old Fort prison, now in a state of extreme dilapidation, and describes the appalling conditions under which the prisoners, many of them 'politicals' or pass book offenders, had to survive. Moving on to the construction site, artworks co-ordinator Bongi Dhlomo-Mautloa gives an introduction to the artworks programme.

The aesthetic which has determined the form of the new court buildings is very African - based on the idea of the tree in the village beneath which all may gather to debate and discuss matters of common interest. The support columns in the court foyer lean at angles, like the trees of a forest around which a building has been constructed, and irregular slots in the ceiling will allow dappled splashes of light to move across the floor through the day. Leading up to the foyer from the lower side of the site are the Great African Steps, flanked on one side by the old stone wall of the prison, and with a wheelchair ramp zigzagging across the steps.

The site to which I have been allocated is a small courtyard flanking the library, and my fellow artists in competition for this site are Penny Siopis, Patrick Mautloa, Kay Hassan, Wilma Cruise and Sam Nhlengethwa. Submission date for the concept is April 23 - five weeks hence. The site is so different to what I had imagined it would be, that my original idea falls away completely. It will be back to the drawing board. Immediately in front of the site, is one open to the public to submit a proposal for a fountain. Admirable and democratic as the artworks programme is, the architects and others who will decide on the accepted works will have to be careful that more is not less.

I am flying back to Cape Town tonight, but first I want to make a trip to the Goodman Gallery in Rosebank to see William Kentridge's exhibition. William was one of the artists involved in today's briefing session, listed to make a three dimensional piece at the bottom of the Great African steps, also not a large site. William's work at the Goodman is around the work he did for Confessions of Zeno - the video, etchings, drawings - a remarkable display of power and virtuosity. There are large numbers of people in the gallery. Almost everything has been sold. I am excited by the thought that the next print for the Editions for ArtThrob series will be William's, and can't wait to see what he will do. He told me this morning it will be worked on this week.

Art Night kicks off the Cape Town Festival tonight. Budget cuts have prevented any funding for street performances as in some previous events, but a band is playing on the pedestrian mall outside the Association for Visual Arts, and the crowd sips wine while waiting to enter, one by one, the gallery to view Mark Coetzee's new installation, All our Sons II . Ex Capetonian, now director of the Rubell Collection in Miami, the suave and immaculately dressed Mark is here for the event. Entering the AVA, one finds that the entire gallery is darkened, the single source of light emanating from a tiny monitor behind a jagged cutout. The monitor displays the classified ads announcement of Mark's birth, but as one watches, the words 'bonny son' metamorphasise into 'faggot' or 'bugger' or 'pede' or one of the other derogatory names used to label gay men. Minimal and to the point. Less is more.

Across town, Joao Ferreira is showing work by American artist Lorna Marsh downstairs, and in his new upstairs space, work by Robert Hodgins and others. Curator Emma Bedford and I stroll up Long Street, take in a fashion show with gasmasked models in war protest fashions, and finish at a welcome to the festival party at the Bell Roberts Gallery. I am ejected for not being on the guest list, but Mike van Graan intervenes and I am invited back inside.

The Western Cape launch of VANSA, the Visual Arts Network of South Africa, takes place tonight at the Centre for the Book, part of the Cape Town Festival. As a member of the steering committee, along with the AVA's Estelle Jacobs and BLAK founder Zayd Minty, I am delighted to see that our advance campaign has persuaded almost 100 people to turn up. The function of VANSA will be to act as an organisation which will lobby for the rights of visual art and artists, to provide a voice and conduit through which state, local government and business can communicate.

PANSA (the Performing Arts Network of S.A.) founder member Mike van Graan lays out for the meeting ways in which PANSA has been effective, Sandra Klopper hopes that the new organisation will not founder and come to up a stop, like others have in the past, and Lionel Davis adds his endorsement. An enthusiastic new committee of no less than 16 is elected, to work towards the national launch in July.

Pick up Penny Siopis from the airport. She has been invited to Cape Town by curator Andrew Lamprecht to open the exhibition 'Bruce Gordon' at the SANG tomorrow. Not since one of Beezy Bailey's escapades, and not even then, actually, has an art project had as much publicity as this one. For those who do not read the local and national press or watch television news, Bruce Gordon, owner of popular Long Street bar Jo'burg was sold on auction as the artwork of Ed Young on the Michaelis School of Fine Art auction at the end of last year. Bruce happens to be my husband, and I was in Argentina at the time, and the bidding was opened with a mock phone bid from me of R100. This miserable offer was soon overtaken, and the bids shot skywards, with the hammer falling to socialite and arts organiser Suzy Bell, who then donated her purchase to the SANG. A headline in theWeekend Argus read 'Conceptual husband fetches R52 000'. Since then, Bruce has been tattoed with an accession number and invitations and a catalogue printed.

A packed South African National Gallery audience hears Marilyn Martin describe how the artwork Bruce Gordon pushes the boundaries of conceptual art. Penny Siopis talks of the slippage between life and art that has opened up through this concept, and Bruce himself announces that now he is part of the gallery collection, he envisages a few changes - like turning the Annexe into a venue for poker evenings. In fact, it is interesting how what first seemed perhaps a slight idea has gathered weight over the intervening months through the development and framing of the concept - the tattooing of the accession number, the witty and challenging little catalogue, the endorsement of the SANG in holding a full scale event. Official proceedings concluded with Penny's announcement that "Bruce Gordon now declares himself open".