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Michealangelo’s, The last supper

What we have here, is a classic case of “how are we splitting the bill?”

Being it the first Thursday of April AD 33, all of these boys knew that there would be a mad drinks special at the local watering hole, The Thirsty Hebrew. Sipping on that sweet Noah’s-drift red, planted by the OG vineyard planter Mr. Noah himself, JC’s closest man Simon, or known amongst his friends as Sudzy Ballz, knew that the brew-tang-clan were in for one hell of a piss-up. And although they were all there celebrating JC’s run as the incarnated son of Christianity, Sudzy knew that they were really here for the cheers. James, son of Alphaeus, the young gun amongst the group, yet to spend all his money on the devil’s lettuce AKA Blaze AKA Jerusalem Gold, still cared very deeply for the sacredness of this dinner and offered up to pay his portion of the bill, but claimed he didn’t have enough data to log onto Uber and split the fair back to the confession box.

“Refresh me with some of that red stuff, sustain me with raisin cakes, for I wish to get lit,” said James, the current record holder for stealing bibles out the nunnery. “Pop a bless my guy” responded Jacob. “Boys, boys, my sandals grow heavy, for we need to settle this bill, and all I’m saying is that space in heaven is getting tighter now that I’m going to be opening the gates.”

The clinging of tiny pieces of silver and bronze broke the awkward silence after his speech, as each disciple dug into the bottom of their pockets for shekels, it was as though they were mining deep into the souls of their robes.

“Bible I did not skip service last Sunday, boss! I was just at the back you didn’t see me!” “Cuz going to church makes you a good Jew just as much as standing in a stable makes you a horse!” “Oh, you post bible quotes on community rock? You’re definitely getting into heaven!” The Apostles were shouting over one another, trying to squeeze in as many brownie points as they could before the end of the dinner. “By Jehovah, I swear if you do not shut your…” Cling! Cling! The man of the moment hushed his crowd down. “A Toast” JC spoke over his boys. They all turned to him in silence, “In my time amongst you peasants, many a squad goal has been reached. We’ve given the salty Romans a good run for their jewels, but now I’m afraid, the hour has arrived, and we must settle this bill. And before I ascend the stairway to heaven, I want you to all join me in the recital of our most treasurable verse.” He continued, “And after he made the starts and the earth, on the seventh day he said…” They all joined in, “Let us be lit!”

The crowd went wild as they celebrated their final cheers. As the beer tang clan scurried and spoke amongst themselves, through the spilled wine and soggy bread, progress with the bill was being made. And by the end of the hour, after the poor waiter who had been back and forth several times, praying that one of these drunken sods would mistake a fifty for a hundred, had collected everyone’s part.

In the drunken smelly aftermath of the night, the Thirsty Hebrew cleaned the holy mess. And the night was documented thereafter as The Last Supper.

Leonardo da Vinci

The Last Supper

1495–1498

The Last Supper is a late 15th-century mural painting by Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci.

Image found here: http://mentalfloss.com/article/64372/15-things-you-should-know-about-last-supper

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Tut Task - YoungstaCPT working with Identity

Navigating Identity, within a Post-Colonial, Contemporary South African context. How YoungstaCPT establishes his identity in relation to cultural history and context as a contemporary musician.

Using his music to manipulate identity as a historical and cultural construct, as well as touching on prominent issues within an African context, YoungstaCPT is regarded as one of the most important South African emcees of this generation (youngstacpt: online). As a celebrity, YoungstaCPT makes his opinion clear with regards to cultural identity and the way he feels South African spaces accommodate coloured people. It can be argued that what the rapper feels as though coloured South African people don’t know if they are apart of African National identity. In a Twitter post, he states that “It seems like South Africa doesn’t care about coloured people at all”. In his music video, JVR, the rapper stages a rewrite of the history books.

Whereby he relates his music to a colonial force when he says “A lot of mense hating but that not surprising, their hip hop game is like a country I am colonizing.” He retells a rapped version of the colonizing of the Cape, with lines like “When they landed at the seashore, and they thought the Cape was just a detour, educate yourself read more before they singing your deceased forms”. Whilst rapping, the artist is dressed in sort of Colonial get-up, fused with traditional Muslim pieces of clothing. There are woman in the one shot wearing burqas, YoungstaCPT is wearing what looks like it could be taqiya (the small round cap). All these symbols, contrasted by the lyrics, contribute to a sort of retelling of the story of Jan Van Riebeek, from the perspective of a coloured man.

It is through Youngsta’s voice; in which we reimagine the process of colonization. In Youngsta’s story, the slaves break free from their chains and push the white Captain, who in this case could be Jan Van Riebeek, overboard, who then drowns. This is contrasted by his lyrics, as Youngsta explains how people of colour are having to deal with and overcome the debris of colonization and segregation. Explaining his situation, using lyrics like “At the bottom of a sea-saw, Hoping praying for a beanstalk”.

Given my positionality, it's difficult to comment on what YoungstaCPT might feel with regards to asserting his own identity within South African context and conversation. Being African or South African is already a loaded sort of status that I have not come to fully understand. For example, can you be African if you were born post-nationalist struggle? The term has a history of being used as a somewhat discriminative way to identify all people indigenous to the continent Africa. This categorizes all people in Africa of all different cultures and religions as stripped down to one, a un-individualistic term that does not acknowledge the nuances and abundance of diversity within Africa. Also, can you be African if you are not black? Moving forward, who now holds the power to label people as African? This is a broad question that encompasses a number of pertinent issues within the post-apartheid, contemporary, re-establishment of the term.

If we unpack the term African Nationalism, it can be understood as the desire for unification amongst all African cultures, furthermore, African nationalism wishes to end all means of foreign/colonialist influence and agency over African political, social and economic affairs. So I don’t know how coloured South African’s might feel about being apart of the African Nationalist conversation, if YoungstaCPT, someone that assumes a sort of voice for a group of people, says things like “It seems like South Africa doesn’t care about coloured people at all”.

In conclusion, through YoungstaCPT’s comments on the way coloured people are excluded from South African conversation, and his emphasis on retelling the story of Jan Van Riebeek’s colonization of the Cape, it can be understood that the rapper is trying to bring about consciousness to the fact that he feels as though coloured people are being excluded and their culture is not being celebrated as African or South African.

675 words

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Oh no wait, its actually this one:

Tracey Rose

Ciao Bella, 2001

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Oh and heres that photo

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Mitch Tut - Biennale & some important work I remembered that I had to know because I am an art student and I can't slack off otherwise I won't get good art marks because everyone wants art marks so here we go Mitch this is my tut task or sumfin’ or nofin’

This years Venice Biennale Arte is running with the theme “May You Live in Interesting Times”. The main institutional venue, the Ca’Giustinian, is a gothic style palazzo overlooking the Grand Canal in Venice. As South African artists showing work at this year's Biennale, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Tracey Rose and Mawande Ka Zenzile are all engaging with contentious space, often celebrated and critiqued. With works like Christoph Büchel's, Barca Nostra, displaying a boat that up to 1100 migrants died; the Biennale is a space that facilitates a weirdly open space for a lot of discourse around contemporary issues and concepts like positionality, identity politics, surveillance, and global warming. Interesting times, as described on the Biennale website, “will no doubt include artworks that reflect upon precarious aspects of existence today, including different threats to key traditions, institutions, and relationships of the “post-war order.” But let us acknowledge at the outset that art does not exercise its forces in the domain of politics.”.

This statement sets the tone for what one might expect to deal with when engaging with and making sense of some of the works at the Biennale. Tracey Rose, a multi-disciplinary artist working in performance, photography and video installation, has shown previously at the Biennale in 2001. In Rose’s work, she often inserts her body, but not always herself, into the work of art, intertwining multiple layers of meaning inherent in the world she creates. In her work, Ciao Bella, 2001, a colour triptych projection with audio. In this work, Rose creates her own feminist version of the last supper. She plays all 12 apostles and aims at provoking questions at the way in which history has been written, formed and conceptualized, as what is critiqued as quite a male dominant space in her work. This work embraces an amalgamation of performative and documentary aspects; filming, editing and projecting video all form apart of a sort of visual language in which the artists uses symbols like bunny ears and firearms, as well as giant penis costume accessories.

Shifting to a more informal and less boring tone; Rose seems to embrace a sort of feminist attitude in debunking or critiquing myths and calling out parts hierarchical systems and honestly, I get it, and she does some really emotive and engaging stuff that looks far out enough to sit up there with all that far out stuff all the real Artistes do. But sometimes you look at work that you know is important, and speaks to a whole group of people, that really connect with the work, and you just think to yourself: I am bored and this isn’t tickling any of my aesthetic senses as well as heartstrings. So you move on and make take note of how important the work, and how it has potential to touch the hearts and minds of other people in a very moving way. And then you just think to yourself, I’m bored, this is boring, I want to go see a show that fucks with what art is according to a value system embedded into our ways of seeing. And then you go somewhere to find that.

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Three cultural spaces that hold national identity and bring people together

Cape town stadium. Trench Town (Observatory). National Gallery (Cape Town).

In a search to identify places or symbols that facilitate a space to share national identity within South Africa, one first needs to unpack the nature of national identity within South Africa. South Africa has an extremely rich and nuanced cultural history, as a space that encapsulates an array of different cultures, traditions, religions, and languages it is difficult to pinpoint an area or a space that speaks adequately to all of these cultures. On top of the variety of different cultures in which people identify with, embedded in our history is a system that violently separated cultures from one another. As citizens in 2019, we still feel the debris of violent systematic separation and othering of certain cultures and groups of people. However, growing up in post-apartheid South Africa, one is given the opportunity to become accustom too and familiar with the different cultures within South Africa, and through this understanding of different experiences and ways of living, people are drawn closer and we are given the opportunity to share more of our own journey and lived experience with people that come from traditions and ways of life that are not our own.

In light of the above, looking through an optimistic gaze, there are spaces that start to speak to a wider variety of groups, one of which being Trench Town.

Trench Town is a Caribbean styled pub in Observatory. Observatory is an area that is not exclusive to only one group of people or class. According to online sources, Observatory was one of the few “grey” areas during Apartheid, whereby, it was easier for people of different ethnicities to mix and did not have as much of a rigid policing structure. Observatory is now inhabited by mostly students and bohemian type characters. As someone that has lived there, obz is a space that one couldn’t give any single particular label. Obz is a pretty mixed, lower middle to the upper-middle-class area. Trench towns Caribbean aesthetic makes it difficult for most South Africans to really culturally relate too. I think this is a large part of its all-inclusive charm. It also has weird looking graffiti all over the interior walls. It is a pretty gritty and dirty space, with arguably low hygienic standards, but everyone embraces it. 

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Maurizio Cattelan

Maurizio Cattelan (born 21 September 1960) is an Italian artist. He is known for his satirical sculptures. In his work ERROTIN, LE VRAI LAPIN (1995), he collaborated with a cartoonist to create a costume for his Parisian dealer Emmanuel Perrotin, designed to reflect his ‘playboy’ persona.

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Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster is a French artist, born in 1965 in Strasbourg. Known for her great variety of work, and as a recipient of the 2002 Marcel Duchamp Award. Gonzalez-Foerster is an established and successful contributor to the contemporary art world. Her practice is cross-disciplinary, taking cues from film, literature, architecture, philosophy, writing and critical theory. The artist’s immersive installations involve an array of space orientated mediums mashed together. As described by 303 Gallery, “Gonzalez-Foerster uses the medium of experience as a way to question the essences of objects and the meaning of context. Trafficking in a unique type of psychological collage within works and between them, her varied oeuvre has taken myriad forms, including collected fragments of modernist buildings in Brazil, an autobiographical hanging of 40 years of her own wardrobe, and an immersive light and sound environment meant to evoke the chaos, dread, and wonderment of future lives.” In a more recent work, Gonzalez-Foerster uses elements of live performance and holographic projections that conflate and characterize figures from history, literature and film with their sociological sources and ramifications.

Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, The Daughter of Taoist Here the artist used a set inspired by intimism, a style of painting showing intimate views of domestic interiors using impressionist techniques, to mix Esther Schippers (Owner of the Esther Schippers Gallery in Germany) childhood.

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David new work proposal

David needs to rotate slowly on a plinth, whilst a roll of cling wrap, on a stand next to David, slowly unravels and wraps around him. On top of this, a gold colored spray can needs to spray the cling rap whilst it unravels. David will rotate manually. David will be on a rotating device that an audience member needs to turn themselves, whilst the spray can will have some sort of intricate nosil device that makes spraying it way more fun than usual.

Problems: FUMES… I am trying to figure out how to combat this because it is a problem. Maybe I can find water-based spray paint that doesn’t smell fumy?

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Questions in response to Chris’s tutorial

Who is the adjudicat for pain and suffering of a group of people?

I don’t actually know how to answer this.

Is fine art no longer outside of the mass culture industry?

Mass culture is starting to draw from symbols of fine art (think vapor wave) and art is doing the same to that of culture (think Marco Batsgllini)

Do people own their oppression?

Yes. However, It is not always easy to open people up to the realities other people faced, because often we need the acknowledged of others in order to enforce ownership. Everyone has their own story’s, everyone (no matter where they are from) is entitled to ownership of experience that is true to their reality.

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Questions after watching Remix Manifesto

What happened to the guys that started Nabster?

Napster was founded by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker. On the Forbes 2016 list of the world's billionaires, Parker was ranked #722 with a net worth of US$2.4 billion. 2010 Parker invested US$15 million in Spotify. Parker, who currently serves on Spotify's board, negotiated with Warner and Universal on Spotify's behalf, and in July 2011, Spotify announced its U.S. launch. - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Parker

Who wrote and directed Remix Manifesto, what is their precious work?

Brett Gaylor, the Director, is a Canadian documentary filmmaker. His most recent production is the 2015 web documentary Do Not Track, about internet privacy.

Girl talk, what happened?

“Gregg Michael Gillis (born October 26, 1981), known by the stage name Girl Talk, is an American disc jockey who specializes in mashups and digital sampling.” - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_Talk_(musician)

His music on Apple Music is pretty lame, I think it is a lot more fun to watch him live.

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 Some process shots in making some of my David work

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Homework Task for Bella’s Tutorial

Rachel Whiteread, House (1993).

The work House, is a concrete cast of the inside of a victorian style terrace house, that was based in northeast London. This particular house was apart of a collection of homes that were being demolished by the British Government. Whiteread managed to gain access to the house, which was home to Mr. Sidney Gale, who was evicted by the British government. 

Once cast, the external features of the house were removed, revealing the cast interior. The sculpture brought to light the internal essence of a home. Reminding passers by that this structure once facilitated life, growth and shelter to those that may have lived there before. Although example of government renewal dated back to the early ninteis, this process of demolition, the restructuring of areas and the displacement of people is a current theme in gentrification. 

The image below is a google street view of where the house used to sit. The location now pays no homage to its history, and the park looks very pleasant to be in. There is however, a feeling of injustice in that there is no sentiment to the events of the past. 

Shifting to a more casual and sincere tone: Although gentrification and urban renewal can leave devastating effects on locals realities, it becomes really difficult to not fall in love with the outcome and have a picnic in the park, right? This particular example of gentrification may not necessarily have set former residents into intense trauma or financial detriment (It may very well have, I am not too sure on these facts as there is little info provided online as to where former residents went), however, there are examples in places like Woodstock where people are displaced and moved into low income settlements. The lifestyle they are introduced to, once relocated, traps them in a system of poverty. On the flip side, it creates opportunity for already established people to grow their success and enjoy what might be a safer, cleaner, busier and financially richer area, but how does one navigate these spaces in a way that doesn't perpetuate the problem of displacing other humans and trapping them in a cycle of poverty. 

Woodstock is a much ‘nicer’ area for me to be in now, than it was 5 years ago. I study in Woodstock, I walk in Woodstock, I really enjoy the space in Woodstock and it facilitates people like me more now than it ever has in terms of safety and opportunity, which is an amazing thing for me. However, how do we encourage and act on this urban growth and renewal, without putting entire communities in devastating situations like forcing them to move into a low income settlement which is essentially a shanty town. How do we create spaces that promote inclusivity and give locals opportunity as well as investors? I don't have these answers. But at the least, one could as gentrifier, buy from local stores, know your neighbours, encourage communal harmony and just be conscious of an areas history. 

Realistically though, all of those things I mentioned aren't really going to solve any of the major problems of gentrification. So it's a really difficult and controversial process to critically engage with.  

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Homework Task for Chris’s Tutorial

What do you feel is a positive contribution of the ICTAF to Cape Town?

The ICTAF has helped facilitate the growing marketplace for African based artists to exhibit and sell work. The event has played an arguably fundamental part in creating a commercial African art market space, that buyers can still gain exclusive access too, in terms of getting their hands on art.

What do you think is a possible Negative effect of the ICTAF?

Sometimes “African Art” wants to feel like it is just art. Art made in Africa that deals with being African or African identity is often pigeon holed into the category of African Art. That category or status has positive and negative effects. One of the negative’s being that sometimes an artist doesn't need their art to be deemed as apart of a specific category. They may want their work to be universally categorised instead of being potentially geographically or ethnically categorised.

Kyle Weeks’ work – Vezepame Hembinda

This work is really interesting in light of the conversation around globalization. Here the artist has facilitated an opportunity for Ovambo men to take self portraits. What becomes intriguing is the way these men have interested western fashion with their traditional attire.

Athi-patra Ruga’s sculpture -Approved Model of the New Azania, had a shimmery, gold finish. The work exemplified wealth in that it was an object, that had no physical function (apart from being an artwork), made up of what looked like diamonds, expensive crystals and pendants. This work comments subtly on wealth and populace which are reflected in the gold, shimmery aesthetic and sparkly diamonds. These symbols of opulence have western origin, and diamonds as symbols have a history in Africa and being moved out of Africa.

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Homework Task for Rowans Tutorial

“Through painting, sculpture and installation, Ndzube stages an introduction to his imaginative universe, named Echoes of the First Stories. He states, ‘We begin in the real world and through interaction with the work enter a fabulist tale in progress. I’ve attempted to create the genesis of a cosmology that finds itself in the “uncharted lands and trackless seas” I call the Mine Moon. It emerges from the tradition of magical realism and is expanding to points currently unknown.’” - https://www.stevenson.info/exhibition/3644

Ndzube’s work is atmospheric, transporting viewers into the elaborately crafted  world of the Mine Moon. The tortuous residents of the Mine Moon fill the gallery space and inhibit the walls with paintings and textures. 

Viewers are drawn in at first, to engage with the work in a very uncomplicated way. It appears very easy to appreciate merely the aesthetic of the work on a topical level. However, as mystical and tantalising the purple sunsets and traffic cone limps may appear, they do seems to loose a bit of their intrigue after ones second or third stroll around the gallery. Viewers are urged by an element of mystic in the figures to investigate the essence and presence of the Mungu People as apposed to just their appearance. 

As the viewers slowly start to engaging with the appearance of Mungu People, certain visual keys start to burn into ones consciousness. The repetition of traffic cones amongst the fabrication of the Mungu people, is the first visual key introduced to spectators.

Traffic cones are a recurring symbol in the artists work. Ndzube’s visual language in his most recent show, “Uncharted lands and trackless seas” has been built upon in previous bodies of work. At the forefront of the Mungu people, stands a leader, using a traffic cone as a loud speaker. The symbol of a cone in these works speaks of authority and control. The Mungu people that are in power have access to where cones are placed and how they are used to guide people, this speaks towards bodies of control and power. Any of the mining folk of the Moon Mine subject to the forms of control fall under a working class that seem trapped in the systems of the Mine Moon. 

This becomes a narrative easily comparable to that of capitalist society, and as tempting as it may be to rest ones case upon coming to understand that comparison, what becomes more interesting is the way in which the artist has turned and twisted the colonial history and existence of the Mungu people in a way that pokes critical comments, on the nature of colonialism and systems of labour and power. 

In taking a closer look at the visual keys in Ndzube’s work, his figures have elongated and colourful limbs, often pink hands or feet. These colour combinations as well as the winding and curving body parts has potential to communicate quite humorously, thus enducing an element of critical teasing or “poking fun” at these bodies of power and hegemony. When last might one have seen a public speaker with pink feet and a tongue that extends through and hangs out a loud speaker traffic cone? Although the tortuous and magical surrealist figures are indeed slightly creepy or unsettling, they are strange enough to communicate through at least a touch of humour too. 

In taping into these conversations around colonialism, organising people and power, an exhibition at Goodman Gallery takes a different approach at exploring the past through artworks of the present. “Options” an exhibition by Nolan Oswald Dennis, brings to light the events of the past in a story told and recollected through what they describe as “artwork as prepositions” 

An article on his work reads: “Prepositions are defined as a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations. Combining this definition with the ‘option theory of decolonisation’— summed up by the statement “the world we want is a world in which many worlds exist”— Dennis envisions his work ‘not as a catalyst for the future or reflection on the past, but as a shadow or diagram of the longness of now” - http://www.goodman-gallery.com/exhibitions/973

Dennis’s works appear as memoirs of the past, as the text combined with the objects speak of the nature in which the past was conducted. In absorbing these archives and memories, one is led to an ideal of the future, however, here the artist does not tap as much into an alternate world as Ndzube. Instead, Dennis brings to light the effects of displacement of people, recalling on a reality that exists or existed within our world and not on a fantastical planet called Moon Mine. 

Both exhibitions call into question the nature and effect of colonialism and displacement of people. Aesthetically, they communicate through entirely different visual languages and codes. Dennis’s work is constructed of different visual codes and signifiers to Ndzube’s, however both capture the effects of history on the present.

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Exhibition Title, Pillow talk with david

This small body of work acts as an entry point to a bigger set of ideas and artworks. 

Pillow talk with david encapsulates and documents a conversation I (Nick Sherlock) am having with myself in relation to the way I feel about traditional, classical, Western art. I like to see the work as a sort of debris, or documentation that consolidates the ever long conversation I am having with canonical, traditional art. Michelangelo’s David, is a momentous figure in Western art history. David, viewed through a contemporary lens, speaks past his initial, historical paradigm of Renaissance art, and now touches on questions around masculinity, Western ideology, standards of traditional art and art as a craft or pursuit.I would like for my work to communicate through its various symbols and signs, touching on conversations around western ideology in art, and a quarrel between rejection and eulogy with regards to its traditions. The little Columbus, compressed hieroglyphs of classical culture, can be seen as an entry point to this body of work, and set the tone in moving forward in engaging with these works.

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CAPE TOWN ART FAIR QUESTIONNAIRE

1. In the Woodstock, Blanc gallery space, the sculptures and objects they have on display are very rarely placed on plinths. The galleries objects and sculptures are worked into the space. Whereas at the art-fair, Blanc made use of a number of plinths for work. On top of this, there were only big works, and small portraits, there were no medium sized works and not very many obscurely shaped works, most of them were rectangular and framed. The Stevenson space in Woodstock usually paints their walls a colour that synchronizes the space with the work. At the art fair, the Stevenson space only had white walls. In addition to this, the gallery like to spread their work inside rooms and not across a stage, they divided their area at the art-fair into little cubes with the white room dividers/walls.

2. Three works I really enjoyed: Bad paper Nico Krijno, The Fluid Right Edge 2017, Kyle Weeks – Vezepame Hembinda. Zander Blom – Zebra Butt. Three works I really didn’t enjoy: Kilmany jo liversage, machinika119. Distortion 1 horizontal lines, ihosvanny. Tuirya magadlela, hlinyo ngiphumile kuwe thando.

3. This year, many of the works on the show were paintings or had a painterly quality. There wasn’t a lot of installation work at all, which is not much of a surprise considering the point of showing at the fair is to sell things and installations are not necessarily as easy to flip or sell to a tourist or a collector as a painting or an easily transportable object.

4. There were passageways created between booths and stands. A lot of the spaces were divided with columns and few were made into cubes. I noticed that a lot of the photography galleries tried to make white cube spaces whereas the more contemporary painting galleries had dividers in the cubes.

5. Some of the spaces didn’t use printed labels, one in particular, used pencil writing on the walls as labeling! This didn’t look much like a creative decision, it looked more like a last minute fix. Some works had prices next to them, others you had to request. Most of the spaces hung the work at eye level.

6. The fair was almost split into three main sections, with photography booths, painting and then sculpture/object-based work. With the restaurant section on the one side and the sponsorship sections on the other. It was difficult to zoom out and gain a feel for where the space was going or how the curators wanted us to move across the fair. 

7. Lighting was artificial and bright.

8. A lot of people at the fair had a tourist type look about them, holding cameras and wearing floral button up t-shirts. Prospective buyers or visitors seemed to dress affluently and even sometimes eccentrically, gallerist’s dressed conservatively and formally.

9. Most of the galleries seemed to pull their grandest most extravagant or large- in-scale works out for the fair. It seemed like the galleries tried to push their biggest names out into the fair. Some works on plinths, notably Athi-patra Ruga’s sculpture of a figures bust, titled Approved Model of the New Azania, was almost screaming “buy me”. It had its own solo booth and was placed strategically on the outskirts of the gallery space, close to the pathway, subjecting passers-by to its glamour and extravagance.

10. Athi-patra Ruga’s sculpture, titled, Approved Model of the New Azania, had a shimmery, gold finish. The work exemplified wealth in that it was an object, that had no physical function (apart from being an artwork), made up of what looked like diamonds, expensive crystals and pendants. Although the work may not have actually been made of real diamonds, the piece felt as though it was dripping with fortune and wealth. Something that someone might have in their lounge, just for the sake of having it, and because it looks so expensive.

11. There was a gallery called Retro Africa, a lot of the work they had up at the fair didn’t seem like it was doing “African Art” any justice in that the works on display looked very unskillfully made, they did not display any technical skill. The works looked like something one might pick up on a smaller scale at a trendy curio shop in De Waterkant. As an establishment I am sure Retro Africa don’t uphold this kind of image outside of the fair, it just seemed as though they were really trying to appeal to anyone outside of Africa that wants to own something stereotypically “African looking”, something that says “I spent a holiday in Africa and came back with this generic yet exclusive piece of African art.”

12. Gallerist’s and sales persons were very open to revealing prices to me, I am not sure if it was because they just didn’t take me seriously or if it was because it is a fair, but both galleries I asked were comfortable and approachable with revealing prices.

13. Sponsors were not that pushy with putting their brand in every bodies face. There was a Boschendal wine stand, I imagine this is good marketing for them as tourists will buy their wine at restaurant’s or shops after tasting it at the fair. As for investec, I didn’t see that many logos floating around at the fair. I suppose Investec as a company sounds quite exclusive and serious, art-fairs are considered big budget, exclusive events. Investec as a company seems to uphold that sort of exclusive attitude. I think that there was a lot more sponsorship going on behind the VIP section.

14. CTICC is a great place for conventions I imagine because it is geared for events. It has a large open space, it has all the facilities to facilitate large amounts of people, it is centrally placed in Cape Town, it is next to hotels and restaurants

15. Some of the Kentridge looked older most of the works at the fair.

16. Lea Columbo (25)

17. Solo booths were tailored to suit the style of the artists work on display. For example, in Athi-patra Ruga’s solo booth, the walls around his work were painted a dark tone. As for the way the walls were arranged, they cornered off his work from the rest of What if the Worlds space, also, the lighting may have been a little different and the work was facing outwards towards the pathway/route people were taking around the fair.

18. Jody Paulsen is popping up online and in a VISI publication this year. Bad Paper are also popping up on social media.

19. This year, many of the works on the show had a tactile quality. A lot of what we saw felt like it was created with a sensitivity or a consciousness towards the tactile. In addition to this, what came as no surprise, most all of the work at the show was rectangular in format. With regards to framing, a lot of the prints were in frames that did not speak to the work in some way. However, the Ayanda Mabulu piece had a frame that spoke directly to the semiotics of the work. This was one of the few paintings that used a frame in this way. It also looked like a lot of the work at the show dealt with Afrocentricity and many of the works I took note of dealt with conversations around post vs. the idea of neo-colonialism.

20. The French Gallery, Officine Dellimmagine, because they aren’t based in SA and they deal in Euros but are interested in some South African artists. Then again What if the World would be amazing because they are local and feel progressive in the sense that they embrace new, contemporary work, and their artist all seem to say good things about the gallery.

21. I would not like to work for a gallery if I had to choose I would choose Officine Dellimmagine because it would force me to learn another language really well and I would work in their sales department and travel the world selling their photographic work.

22. If I were to show at the fair I would enjoy creating a booth for independent, student work. I would show only student work and it would only be fun art.