When we think of curatorship, we think about the inside of the gallery: the floor plan, the way a work is hung. It all affects our perception, and a curator is conscious of that. But what about the location of the gallery, and how you get there? This is a gripe I have with city-galleries. Their location bears no relation to the art. Zeitz, for example, markets itself as a contemporary African art museum, but it’s located in the Waterfront, surrounded by yachts and banks. What’s African about that?
Art is a business, as much as we wish it otherwise. So, I don’t expect Zeitz to have done anything different. But, when I view an exhibition like When We See Us (currently exhibiting), I wonder, what effect does geography have on art? Would my perceptions not change if the museum were located closer to the taxi rank? And if I had taken a Golden Arrow bus to get there? If the rooftop restaurant served R30 shisanyama and not R300 olives?
I brought this idea to my long-time friend, Jaymie, proposing that we road-trip to the Prince Albert Gallery in the Karoo. The near five-hour drive would lead us past the dorpies, padstals, and windpomps which are the subjects of so much Karoo art. A family acquaintance, Gerrie van Tonder, was exhibiting in the town gallery and had a half-renovated house we could stay in.
Gerrie’s paintings capture the loneliness of the landscape. He daubs the canvas, layering an image into being. Whilst his images are reminiscent of Matisse’s Southern Landscapes, Gerrie’s brush obscures, whereas Matisse’s reveals. Buildings, objects, and people emerge indistinctly, featureless but for where the light catches them. Many of these indefinite figures are people he knows but, in painting them as he has, he’s left them in a nostalgic haze. Looking at his paintings feels like paging through a photo album. We see faces and outlines whose familiarity has grown faint. Often, they stand in doorways, observers of rust and clay-coloured landscapes.
Doorways, silhouettes and silence are staples of Karoo art. It’s about finding the barebones of life, stripping away all things superfluous. A windowpane hanging off its hinges, a dried bush, a roofless shack. Humble subjects for a humble way of living.
Much of the art is literal, which is not to say that it lacks meaning. Life in the Karoo is about what’s there because those are the things that have endured. The windmill is significant because it keeps the farm going. The kerk brings the community together. And, in a desolate landscape, these objects are significant landmarks. So, in representing the literal, artists speak to the nature of Karoo life. It’s about the little that is there.
Gerrie Van Tonder, Sunday Morning, 2021. Photo by the author.
We arrived in Prince Albert in the late afternoon. The sky had been overcast from Worcester, and the gloom seemed to have affected the town. The shops were closed, and the main street deserted. Our lodgings did not improve the mood. I had been forewarned that Gerrie’s house was more of a construction site, but part of me had imagined a dusty cottage, with furnishings and soft lighting, a few paint pots lying here and there. The reality was decrepit. Basins without taps, lights without bulbs, walls without paint, floors without tiles. For furniture, there was a table, four chairs, a single cupboard, empty, and a stained mattress. In the kitchen we found an ancient gas bottle, and some blackened tea cups. The electricity meter read “R-Eco.” We never did find a way to turn the power on.
After a rough night’s sleep, we made our way into town to see Gerrie’s exhibition. A mural of two elephants, blue and purple, makes The Prince Albert Gallery unmissable. In the foyer, we met Brent, the owner, and Rachel, his three-legged-dog. Brent explained that the gallery had started out as a collective of six artists who, over the years, had gone their separate ways. Now it was just him.
Brent took us through the foyer into a spacious two-story hall. The gallery had been an old cinema complex, which he had redone. White wooden partitions divided the room into sections, and a mezzanine looked out over the ground floor. It was busy, as smaller galleries often are, but the high ceiling kept it from being claustrophobic.
“I try to represent local artists, from Prince Albert and the surrounds,” Brent explained. “Most of them take the Karoo as their subject matter, in some shape or form.” He directed our attention towards some colourful looking aloes. “Those are by Joshua Miles. Reduction lino cuts. From a distance they look like photos.”
“Do you also represent photographers?” I asked.
“Yes. There’s another room at the back. And on the top floor there’s a photographic series of proteas and fynbos painted with UV light.”
Brent led us past a metal goat, and into one of the partitions. Amongst the many paintings hung a cross section of wood, with a soap bar glued on.
“This is curious,” I said, hoping Brent would elaborate on the wooden enigma.
“Not all of our art is conceptual,” he replied. “Most of our clients are first time buyers, visiting Prince Albert for the weekend. They come here to browse, and if a work catches their eye, they take it home.”
“Tell us about those,” I indicated towards a trio of landscapes with blistered surfaces. They showed a familiar scrubland, punctuated by an erratic medley of fine lines. Yellow, brown and grey streaks gave the image a slightly toxic look.
Sue Hoppe, That Karoo Feeling, 2022. Photo by the author.
“That’s Sue Hoppe. It’s photo-encaustic. She’s taken a photograph, placed it against a board, and layered it with a combination of wax and ink.” He patted the surface of the image, “The wax is soft now, but give it five years and the whole thing will harden.”
The images showed a combination of bushes or fences, and the toxic colour scheme had a hypnotic effect. I recalled the feeling of watching telephone poles from a car window, or staring at the endless wire fences which partition the landscape.
“Sue often incorporates found objects into her work. There’s a road nearby called Skaapies Einde, and she walks along it looking for scrap pieces of fencing to add to the work.”
“It’s like a Karoo fairytale. Like a dark fantasy,” I said.
“I think she’s asking what happens if you follow the fence. We see so many of them in the landscape, but we never actually turn down those dust roads and explore what goes on in these nowhere places.”
Gerrie’s section was familiar. A woman seated at a table, facing away. A teacup. An empty chair. The most arresting was a small child seated by a doorway. I recognised him as “Oom Doks,” Gerrie’s brother. Gerrie had traded me a different image of Doks for a couch, and here again I recognised his naughty looking face. He was slouching on the front stoep. A hardness in his expression. A stoutgat.
This hardness was a theme across several other artists. Two portraits by Cobus van Bosch showed a pair of defiant looking young girls. The images were based on newspaper clippings of Boer War POWs, and where Doks had a roguish spark about him, these girls looked gaunt, vacant.
We completed our tour in the photography section. Amongst a few emotionally strained images of a local sparrow (deceased), there was a series of boys playing rugby. In one, they run across a sandy field, whilst their coach, a boer, sits on a tire, watching. Another shows them in a huddle, beneath a set of rickety posts.
The Karoo dictum: “We’re content, with less.”
Cobus Van Bosch, Boerwar Portraits, 2015. Photo by the author.
