Archive: Issue No. 72, August 2003

'I am a verrry happy man," says Moshekwa Langa, on camera, laughing lengthily. It is an opening shot of the film Andrew Lamprecht and Ed Young made in Venice on the current Biennale, and it is this week's lunchtime lecture at Michaelis. Interviews with director Francesco Bonami, and artists like Australian Patricia Puccinini, sliding shots of artwork, including a visual tour of the interior of the red, green and black British pavilion, background this year to the stunning artwork of Chris Ofili....Impossible to capture the whole crazy art circus in a 30 minute film, but it's a lively and insightful sampling. Would like to see it again.

Tonight is the culmination of months of designing, planning, constructing and carpeting ... the sculpturally sumptuously sinuous l/b's lounge, an upstairs extension of Jo'burg Bar on Long Street opens its doors for the first time. For its history and future plans, read all about it in news. Designed by Swiss artist duo Daniel Baumann and Sabina Lang, it's a wonderful new media art and gathering space in the city, and here to celebrate its opening tonight are the National Gallery's Marilyn Martin and Emma Bedford, Yasmin Colley from the cultural desk of the City Council, Pro Helvetia's Mirjam Asmal and Janine Dreyer, Sophie Perryer from Art South Africa and many others.

One of the best projects the SANG has undertaken has been FRESH, spearheaded by Emma Bedford. It all began some years ago when painter Marlene Dumas, now widely considered a Dutch artist though her training was at Michaelis, won a large cash prize for her work from the Prince Claus Fund - and offered it to Emma to spend on something special. Thus was FRESH born. The programme consisted of two week residencies at the SANG for a series of young artists, which allowed them the freedom to initiate some extraordinary new bodies of work, and culminated in a catalogue for each, now packaged as a set. The artists concerned were Moshekwa Langa, Dorothee Kreutzveldt, Berni Searle, Senzeni Marasela, Robin Rhode, Tracey Rose and Usha Seejarim. Today marks the launch of the completed catalogue set, and Marlene Dumas is here from Holland for the occasion. It is also her 50th birthday and a Dutch friend has ordered up a praise singer to vociferously list her accomplishments - a performance which seems to leave an astonished Marlene somewhere between laughter and embarassment.

My turn to give a lunch time lecture at Michaelis. There's one of those nasty non-communication problems between my G4 and the Michaelis video projector which does not allow me to show the DVD films of Better Lives, but instead displays my 'To Do' lists from the Stickies on the desktop of my computer on the lecture theatre screen for all to read. Technology, why are you always so fickle?

Ex Calvin Klein model/photographer Josie Borain launches her book Josie You and Me at the Bell Roberts tonight. On the opening page, she asks what more perfect piece of jewellery a model could always wear around her neck than a Leica .. and in the following pages, her behind-the-scenes black and white photos of herself, Linda Evangelista, Cindy Crawford et al evoke the superheated world of the New York model. Party planner supremo Suzy Bell has organised the whole event, veteran magazine editor Jane Raphaely is the opening speaker, and I don't think there's ever been a bigger crowd crammed inside the gallery. Suzy is not only a killer organiser, she always looks amazing in her collection of designer/thrift shop clothes. On top of that, she spends her evening going round making sure no one misses out on anything, and is having the best time they can.

After yesterday's lecture, Jesus Macarena Avila and photographer Pat Ward Williams, visiting artists at Greatmore Studio, the Cape Town equivalent of Johannesburg's Bag Factory, invited me to a party tonight at the house in Observatory, where the visiting artists live. Macarena-Avila is heading back to his hometown of Chicago, so this is a farewell event, Four artists can live here at any one time, commuting through to work in the studios two suburbs along in Woodstock. A roaring fire in the open plan kitchen at the back and unlimited glasses of good red wine leads to some intense conversation. Painter John Murray is here, and tells me he has been awarded a residency at the Thami Mnyele studio in Amsterdam - a programme which has now been going since 1995.

I was largely responsible for selecting the very first resident of the programme that year, who shall be nameless. She reportedly fell in with a junkie, gave all her residency money to him for drugs, so had nothing for art materials or even food, then told the organisers she didn't want to come back to South Africa at the end of the residency term. Only after I finally got her on the phone at 3 a,m, one morning and told her that if she didn't get on the plane, she would ruin the programme for everyone else for ever because of the visa problem did she agree to return. So I'm glad to hear the programme is still operating.

After years in the old Methodist Church buildings in Woodstock, the Community Arts Project has a new home in the much more industrial and therefore contemporary looking Sacks Futeran Building in Buitenkant Street. Today an engaging film entitled Voicing the Abstract features interviews and working shots of Ernestine White, Trish Lovemore and Thembeka Qangule, three young Cape Town based artists working with non-figurative and abstract art. Each artist is clearly committed to her path. Produced by Swedish curator Stina Edblom and artist / filmmaker Vuyile Voyiya, the film raises questions about difficulties in the reception of abstract art by galleries and art audiences, and the preconceptions that exist around the kind of work those audiences imagine black women artists should be making. White and Lovemore are present, and take questions after the showing.

Photographer Pat Ward Williams comes out to New Crossroads with me - written and photographic material on old community residents is being gathered for a series of commemorative street sign boards. Visit her studio at Greatmore afterwards - and am impressed with the simplicity of a developing tray she has made to process large scale prints. Two tires at each corner support a sheet of cardboard. Cardboard rolls along the four sides of the sheet form a rim. Clear plastic sheeting covers this, cut away in one corner so a bucket can stand underneath for drainage. Brilliant! Strongly printed examples of Pat's outsize portrait prints made in this ingenious tray hang on the walls, looking as if they were processed in the most sophisticated of labs. Next year may see Pat return to Cape Town for a teaching stint.