Durban artist Andrew Verster to show at the National Festival of the Arts at Grahamstown
by Carol Brown
A survey of Andrew Verster's work from 1994 to the present will be shown at the Grahamstown Festival this year. This exhibition entitled 'Past/Present' has been curated by the artist and Carol Brown. The exhibition is to commemorate Verster's 70th year in 2007. The date of the start of democracy was chosen as a milestone as the artist feels that the new freedom in the country opened doors to him to express himself in new ways. It is not always the obvious which is political. It is often said that Matisse was a political artist although he never painted political images - the same could be said of Warhol and Jackson Pollock.
Verster's work demonstrates how the dissolution of cultural barriers enabled him to travel freely to India - a journey which deeply affected his work and led to some of his most lusciously decorative works in jewel-like colours. These works drew on traditions such as mendhi and the many gods in the Indian pantheon. However, as the title of the exhibition suggests, we are always informed by our past and without a past there is no present.
His recent Bodyworks series returned to his earlier explorations of the male figure which have been a leitmotif of his work since the early 70s when his Surfer drawings brought him to public attention. These latest giant figures, which first appeared uncomfortably in the Fragile Paradise series in 1990, have now taken on bold and bright colours. They merge the artists' preoccupation with decorative images in their patterned surfaces. These surfaces reference the contemporary preoccupation with marking the body with tattoos whilst drawing together threads of his previous works. We are reminded of his History series where he brought together ancient images from Indian, Greek and other cultures. The inscriptions upon the brightly coloured bodies give the figures a confidence and timeless power.
He describes his constant return to certain thematics: 'As I have been painting for 40 or more years, since leaving art school in 1960 there have been a number of themes. Some of them spread over longer and shorter periods - a year, two years, and so on. Some I returned to again and again. I think it was Noel Coward who once said that everyone is given just a few ideas and you spend the rest of your life working with them. I find this so. A period (a theme) ends suddenly, and, seemingly for no particular reason. And for a while I have found myself in limbo. And then, as suddenly, I find my way again and it is a change of direction. In retrospect it all makes perfect sense, though at the time it seems to be arbitrary. As in everything that one does, one thing is based on another, cause and effect, action and reaction.'
Part of Verster's interest has always been in art for the public sphere in the wider sense than that of the gallery or museum. Pre-dating the period of the exhibition he designed the banners for the first ANC Conference to be held in South Africa in 1991. This identification with public art also found expression in architectural commissions, stage sets and costume design. He has done numerous public and private commissions, including sculpture and tapestry for the Reserve Bank Durban, art works and decoration for the Durban Hilton, tapestries and a mural in the new ABSA Headquarters, Johannesburg and a tapestry in the ICC Durban. He completed a commission for three tapestries for Rhodes House at Oxford University in England to celebrate the centenary of the death of Cecil Rhodes and the launch of the Mandela Rhodes Foundation. Verster also completed a set of stainless steel screens for the new Metro Mall development in the Newtown redevelopment scheme in Johannesburg and was awarded several commissions for the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg, including the entrance doors, carpets for the chamber and foyer, metal gates and chandeliers as well as the neon work Nine Provinces.
More recently he was one of the finalists chosen for the Sasol Wax awards held at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 2007. His wax paintings were hung like a forest and contained images of markings taken from the figure paintings. The tea-stained quality of the wax drawings gave the impression of ancient parchment which made walking through the installation (which will be shown on the Past/Present exhibition) feel as though one was walking through history.
The exhibition will reference most of his work over the past 14 years and, for the first time in a gallery setting, will show some of his costumes and theatre designs.
The exhibition will open at the Albany Museum in Grahamstown on June 26 and then travel to Port Elizabeth, Bloemfontein, Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban after the festival. The artist will be giving walkabouts during the festival.
