February
Tuesday, February 1
This afternoon's email brought this message from Tracy Gander, long time ArtThrob designer, photographer and curator of the upcoming 'Girls Night Out' about yet another production:
Dear family and friends,
just to let you know our beautiful(of course!!!) baby boy was born @
2am on the 1st of Feb.
Thanks for all your friendship and support.
cheers
t&a
Father Arnold Erasmus took the picture.
Wednesday, February 2
Ed Young brings Berlin based curator Harm Lux round for a studio visit. Harm is planning one of the most ambitious and long running art projects I've ever encountered, working with young artists.
This is just a part of it: "Five teams of five to six people each will travel
for 5 months developing slow, focused and intensive research in each of the five
continents. Each team will cover a continent. At the end of the research trip
the five teams will meet for 21 days to share the "knowledge and experience" gained.
For 12 days the groups will tell each other and collate their stories. This will
be followed by 8 days of analysis, when they will reflect about and question
the stories reported...we will filter and select them during the seminar, followed
by a period of actions that will encourage human respect and sensitivity in the
long run.
"A year after the end of the Oral History session (summer of 2006), the new invited 30 artists (from the five continents) will meet with the original group (artists, researchers). They will meet each other with empty hands, bringing their intellectual knowledge and their sensitivity with them, to work 6 weeks towards a "utopia", giving public talks on their views and starting to work on a improvised new structure. Living together in a new land requires a structure built by all those involved, which will be a collective structure. A structure and a set of rules that everyone can feel comfortable with, where everyone can feel at home."
Wow, what an ambitious project! The funding required is enormous - I wait with interest to see if Harm Lux can make it happen
Thursday, February 3
Have been reading Andy Warhol's diary (Vol 11 - 1981-7) for about two months now, in between other books. He used to wake up every morning and dictate the events of the day before to Pat Hackett over the phone, and after his death, she edited the 1000s of pages of material into two vast volumes. Warhol knew everyone, and was interested in everything, and his diary is funny, bitchy, and illuminating about the different projects he worked on. Because what he said was not for immediate publication, he could be as frank as he liked about his friends - and he always was.
Tuesday, February 8
One of the first shows of the Month of Photography, 'Sweet Nothings', curated by Sanell Aggenbach opens at the Bell Roberts, interrogating notions of romance. A key image is Sanell's piece of a couple on a beach silhouetted against a flaming yellow sunset. Deliberately over the top. Dorothee Kreutzvedlt has been photographing abandoned chairs of the plastic garden variety around Johannesburg - her wall piece combines a black and white photocopy blow up of one of these images with painting.
Friday, February 11
The diary will be a bit brief this month - am concentrating fully on my upcoming show at the Goodman which opens in March and am trying to keep my blinkers.
Tuesday, February 15
And before the show at the Goodman, there is 'Girls Night Out' which opens at Joao Ferreira on the 28th. Work with master digital printer Tony Meintjes today on a series of photographs I took in Egypt, at night, using only available street light. Some of the images are so dark that they come up on the computer screen as solid black rectangles. Tony asks if I'm sure I pressed the shutter, but rather like a photograph in the developing tray, the images begin to show detail only as the process of working with them begins.
Thursday, February 17
A television shoot at the studio today for the Goodman show. Think it will be on Kunskafee on Sunday, March 12. I tell presenter Riaan Badenhorst that now he is in Cape Town he should really go and see David Goldblatt's show at Michael Stevenson, and he tells me a story about David. As an art student, he is shown David's book, In Boksburg and has a flash - a memory of a photographer who briefly appears at a church service in the town he grew up - Boksburg. Paging through the book he finds himself as a small boy, one eye squinting open during prayers to see what the photographer is up to.
Friday, February 18
A picture at the framers catches my eye - a man with a dog against a landscape, with a lot of sea on the other side of the dog. He looks a bit tense. Natale Labia tells me that there was once a woman in the picture - the man's ex-wife - but Natale had been commissioned to find an artist to paint her out of it.
It must be strange to put a painting like that back up on the wall and keep on looking at it, knowing what lies behind the sea.
Sunday, February 27
Help to hang the 'Girls Night Out' show.
Monday, February 28
My monthly copy of Contemporary magazine arrives - and the cover story is on Kendell Geers. The cover pic is the head of ET wrapped in Geers' signature red and white chevron tape. The four page article is written by crfitic Keterina Gregos. It's great to see Kendell getting this kind of major recognition.
The 'Girls Night Out' show opens. Lots of people. Bridget Baker's piece is a standout - the artist has had herself photographed in a fifties style swimsuit, a Castle Queen sash around her, semi strangled by the red ribbon of one of her shoes. apparently about to fall into the sea from the deck of a liner. The staginess of the setup is reinforced by a closer inspection of the sea - a blow up of a piece of embroidery. Apparently the piece is a reworking of her mother's honeymoon experience as shipboard beauty queen.
For more about the show - click through to www.joaoferreiragallery.com/gno
