Thinking a-roundmapping sculpture

15 December 2011 - 29 February 2012

2 / 3

John Murray (born 1973) Sunbeam201098,5 x 75 cm (image)

Charcoal, ink and gouache on paper

John Murray (born 1973)Upapa Africana201098,5 x 75 cm (image)

Charcoal, ink and gouache on paper

What about Thinking a-round?

W e live on the tip of a continent which has been an incubator for three-dimensional creativity for generations. Africa’s character is intrinsically influenced by hand crafting objects in the round. Imagine how different an exhibition of sculpture would be by artists from any continent other

than Africa. Thinking a-round developed from the desire to pay tribute to three-dimensional ‘thinkers’ in our country. We hope to pose questions, both to the artists and viewers to the exhibition, about the choices artists make in relation to materials, methods, subject matter, functionality and scale. For the first time sculptures by some of South Africa’s most established sculptors - Conrad Botes, Marco Cianfanelli, Jacques Dhont, Brett Murray, Phillip Rikhotso, Lyndi Sales, Claudette Schreuders and Egon Tania - are displayed under one roof. Alongside pieces by Sydney Kumalo, Edoardo Villa, Edward Zwane, and others (some of whose names we will never know), they provoke each viewer to wonder about, critically and with a sense of celebration, his/her own relationship with our continent. Two drawings by John Murray, Upapa Africana and Sunbeam, embody the spirit of the exhibition. Most of the artists whose work is on exhibition were born during the 1960s and 1970s, and it goes without saying that their work is vital in the debates about South Africa’s recent complicated social history. Making three-dimensional objects is a practice as old as humanity. The language of sculpture is ancient. As a medium of visual communication it crosses cultural differences and history, where language cannot. Think of a visit to any museum, anywhere in the world, and by looking at sculptural pieces, you have ‘communicated’ with three-dimensional thinkers throughout history. Many contemporary sculptors bemoan the demise of the teaching of this language in art colleges today, ironically at a time when there appears to be an increasing interest from art collectors in sculptural objects. The reality is, hopefully, that some artists simply are thinkers in the round, and, the fact that collectors join their conversations means that this ancient language will always be contemporary. Sculptors will continue working with intensive process (such as bronze casting, carving), with the logis-tics presented by their materials (heavy marble, chunks of wood, metal sheets), and the often lengthy time needed to make works by hand. Egon Tania commented: “I was studying a Matisse painting recently, and thought Matisse’s medium would be a far more challenging one in which to work!” indicating his innate ability and drive to work in three dimensions. For many of us Egon’s seems an overwhelmingly complex professional activity.

We would like to thank all the artists and, where they are associated with a gallery, their galler-ies, for supporting us in making Thinking a-round become a reality. Allan Lutge created a table specially for the exhibition. Deon Viljoen has provided a 19th Century calamander cabinet to stand opposite Conrad Botes’s cheeky cupboard to enhance the contrasts on the exhibition. Ian Maree, from Julia Meintjes Fine Art, has been the principle curator and catalogue author for Thinking a-round. Julia Meintjes

John Murray obtained a BA in Fine Arts from Stellenbosch University in 1996. He worked there as a part-time lecturer in screenprinting and life drawing until 2008. He has exhibited at The Bell Roberts Gallery and the Association for Visual Arts in Cape Town (solo shows) and has

participated in group exhibitions in London and Marbella. John Murray’s works often focus on the combination of a diverse selection of subjects (portraits of art students from Stellenbosch University, an empty cigarette packet, toys and animals). The iconography in Upapa Africana and Sunbeam confirms Murray’s ongoing interest the in the relationships of things that tell stories of cultural and racial diversity.

List of artists Conrad BotesMarco CianfanelliJaques DhontSydney KumaloBrett MurrayJohn MurrayPhillip RikhotsoLyndi SalesClaudette SchreudersEgon TaniaCaroline van der Merwe Edoardo VillaEdward Zwane

Furniture by Allan Lutge and Deon Viljoen

4 / 5

Conrad Botes was born in Ladismith, West-ern Cape, and now lives and works in Cape Town. He holds a MA in Fine Arts from

Stellenbosch University and a Diploma in Second Phase Illustration from the Koninklijke Akademie voor Beeldende Kunsten, Den Haag, The Neth-erlands. Botes has exhibited extensively in South Africa (his third solo show was held in 2011 at Stevenson in Cape Town) and abroad. In 2011 his work was represented in Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As an art student at Stellenbosch University in 1992, Botes and fellow student Anton Kannemeyer co-founded the satirical socio-political comic, Bitterkomix, now in its 16th edition. Initially a controversial and taboo publication due to its explicit and abusive content (one issue was the first publication to be banned in post-Apartheid South Africa), Bitterkomix is now commercially available. The publications are aimed at a South African, especially Afrikaans, audience – the artists’s own generation essentially. Through their use of biting irony the artists comment provocatively on the paradoxes of their Calvinistic upbringing during the Apartheid regime. Botes’s work manifests his preoccupation with the role of the Dutch Reformed Church during Apartheid and the “repressive nationalist Christian values that still inform the everyday experience of many Afrikaners.” (Vestergaard pg 35) Botes has helped pioneer a comic and Post-Pop aesthetic in South Africa and has become known for his distinctive flat colour style of applying paint. Combined with this style, his use of historical

Anton Kannemeyer (born 1967)Mr and Mrs Boots200264 x 51 cmSilkscreen on paperImage courtesy of Stevenson Anton Kannemeyer ©

Opposite page:Conrad BotesShoe Cabinet2011127 x 76 x 32 cmOak, reverse glass paint and laminated marine plywood

Conrad Botes(born 1969)

reverse-glass painting techniques results in his images looking artificial. Reverse-glass painting involves the artist painting on one side of a glass sheet and displaying it for viewing from the other side. It is thought that the method was first developed in ancient Rome and China. It was used during the Middle Ages for religious paintings, and flourished with improved glass-making skills and the development of water-based paints in Italy in the late Renaissance. Its popularity spread through Europe and the Middle East, India and Japan, and in the 1800s to America. However, the early 1900s saw a decline in reverse-glass painting, and the technique is used by only a handful of contemporary praction-ers internationally. Thinking a-round features a furniture piece by Botes in the form of a shoe cabinet, for him a large scale piece of carpentry. Functional furniture which engages on a challenging artistic level is an ongoing interest for Botes. Perhaps the belief that Jesus Christ was a carpenter further informs his choice of medium. However, Botes’s cabinet also comments on South Africans’s notions about desire and consumerism. His “anti-authoritarian agenda” (Vestergaard pg 35) is not self-evident in the shoe on the door of cabinet. Botes here displays a height-ened sense of self-consciousness by making himself the subject of critique: the cabinet was possibly influenced by his wife’s growing shoe collection, as illustrated in the teasing 2002 silkscreen of Conrad and his wife, Mr and Mrs Boots, by Anton Kannemeyer.

6 / 7

Marco Cianfanelli was born in Johannes-burg in 1970 and graduated with a dis-tinction in Fine Art from the University

of the Witwatersrand in 1992. He has held six solo exhibitions, one of which was at Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg in 2009. His awards include the ABSA L’Atelier in 2002, which enabled his residency at the Cité des Arts in Paris, and an Ampersand Fellowship, a two month residency in New York in 2009. In 2011 Cianfanelli was selected as one of two artists to represent South Africa amongst 250 artists of Italian origin at the 54th Venice Biennale. Tokara commissioned Cianfanelli to create a sculpture for the main entrance to the winery in 2007, and in 2010 The mind’s vine was installed. Cianfanelli describes the inspiration for the sculp-ture: “Wine is a rich and complex phenomenon that touches on an extensive array of other subjects, which include art and history, religion and mythol-ogy, geography, politics and sociology, science and sensory perception, tradition and modernization. This complexity is the inspiration for The mind’s vine. The four vines that comprise The mind’s vine represent the four senses of sight, smell, taste and mouth-feel, which are inherent in the appreciation of wine. They also represent the four aspects of the winemaking process, namely terroir, fermenta-tion, finishing and maturation. The branches bear thousands of words, creating a visual representation of the mystical complexity of wine, as well as a me-andering documentation of the history and culture of wine. The words in upper case placed among these sentences categorize the spectrum of descriptors that are used in wine appreciation. The enticing struggle to place all the characteristics of a wine could be equated with our struggle in using language as a means of expression, or of the translation of emotion into communication.”

Aggregate I-V2009243 x 28 x 28 cm (largest)Bluegum, paint and laser cut steelAggregate sculptures on the exhibtion courtesy of Goodman

Gallery, Cape Town

Marco Cianfanelli(born 1970)

Visitors walk below the vines and look up into the stainless steel laser-cut branches – getting a sense of standing below a tree full of leaves, which move in and out of focus. The words are not all leg-ible, and Cianfanelli’s description is simply a starting point for deciphering the work on one level. Words have layers of meaning, reminding each viewer of different experiences, and in this way draw our ‘reading’ of the work into the wonder of language, conversation, relationships and the complexities of life. Cianfanelli’s interest in emphasising the interre-latedness of all things as he assembles ‘art of words’ is illustrated in his Aggregate series. In Aggregate I – V he again chose carefully-selected words, this time to describe the five aggregates in Buddhist phenom-enology. The words on each mast speak of anxieties, insecurities, desires and obsessions of contempo-rary life. The Buddhist aggregates: form, feeling, perception, consciousness and formation are the five groups of developmental phenomena which occupy each person in developing a sense of self. Each aggregate contains diverse states of being. One includes volition, isolation, pleasure and euphoria. Another includes apprehension, con-tempt, torment and alarm. However, the Buddha teaches that nothing among them should shape you; that suffering arises when you are distracted by a particular aggregate. On the other hand, suffering is released when you are liberated by a life balanced between the five aggregates. By creating these apparently complex word webs, Marco Cianfanelli encourages viewers to come back to his sculptures again and again, each time solving the puzzles of other layers.

The mind’s vine2007 - 2010372 x 934 x 160 cmLaser cut 4,5mm and 6mm grade 304 stainless steel

8 / 9

2

4

5

1

6

3

7

913

11

12

15

148

10

Making The mind’s vine, from intricate drawings and models to manufacture and installation

10 / 11

30

26

21

22

23

24

28 31

27

29

32

25

20

17

19

18

16

Manufacturing and installation by Argo WeldPhotographs © Marco Cianfanelli and Julia Meintjes Fine Art

12 / 13

Jacques Dhont was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo (then the Belgian Congo) to Belgian parents. The Dhont family immigrated

to South Africa and settled in Somerset West in 1967. After a degree in painting at Stellenbosch University, Jacques embarked on a double major in painting and sculpture at the University of Cape Town, which he completed in 1989. Dhont then moved to the Overberg region, the lush district east of Cape Town beyond the Hotten-tots-Holland mountain range. The move allowed Dhont to work close to nature, particularly because of his choice to live away from human settlements - he stayed in a series of rented farm houses, which, until his occupation, had been standing vacant. In order to create sculptures he sourced his materials from his surroundings. Dhont continues to work mostly in natural media, including wood, bone, bark, marble and stone. It was during this time that Dhont first started experimenting with weaving Black Wattle bark, the technique used for sculpting the figure Home is where the heart is. The Black Wattle, a tree native to Austral-ia, was first brought to South Africa for its commer-cial possibilities, mainly as a source of tannin for the tanning industry. The bark hardens as it dries, and without becoming brittle, remains weather-resistant. Jacques Dhont has become known for this particular technique and material.

Jacques Dhont (born 1959)

Home is where the heart is represents a woman wearing an iron mask in the form of a swallow’s head. She holds two flowers, a poppy behind her back and a protea against her heart. Dhont is commenting on cosmopolitan Europeans who, like swallows, divide their time between Europe and South Africa, their location depending on the season. A number of European swallow species are long-distance migrants to West and South Africa during European winters. By contrast, South African swallows are non-migratory. Dhont’s punch-line, however is hidden in the positioning of the flowers. The protea, South Africa’s national flower, is held against the figure’s heart, suggesting that South Africa is the home they love most, while the poppy, a weed from Flanders, is hidden behind her back. By using this title for the work, Dhont also refers to the idiom it expresses, and which is thought to have first been expressed by Pliny the Elder. Dhont currently lives and works in the isolated Jonkershoek Valley outside Stellenbosch.

Home is where the heart is2010114 x 37 x 37 cm

Black wattle bark, metal and wood

14 / 15

Sculptor and painter, Sydney Kumalo, was born in Sophiatown, Johannesburg. Because non-whites who aspired to become artists

had restricted or no access to formal training in South Africa at the time, community centres became vital nodes of learning. One of the earliest of these was the Polly Street Art Centre in Johannesburg, founded by the Johannesburg City Council and of-fering adult education classes. By 1952 Polly Street had been transformed into an art centre which provided art training, exhibitions and employment for aspiring artists and teachers. From 1952 until 1957 Kumalo studied at the Polly Street Art Centre under director Cecil Skotnes. From 1958 onwards Kumalo served as assistant to Skotnes at the Centre while working under the men-torship of Edoardo Villa (see work on facing page) – “an artistic apprenticeship which crucially honed and shaped his style and sensibility.” (Powell pg 144) Together with Skotnes, Villa, Giuseppe Cattaneo and Cecily Sash, Kumalo became a co-founder of the Amadlozi Group (meaning ‘the spirit of our ancestors’) in 1963 in Johannesburg. The Group was promoted by gallery director Egon Guenther, a German who had settled in Johannesburg, and whose influence in the art world of South Africa has been crucial to the careers of some artists and to the development of important sectors of the art market. Encouraged by Guenther, the Group was character-ised by the exploration and promotion of an African aesthetic in contemporary South African art. “Guen-ther broadened their experience by introducing them to German Expressionism as well as the sculptural traditions of West and Central Africa. He familiar-ised them with the work of Ernst Barlach, Käthe Kollwitz, Gustav Seitz, Willi Baumeister and Rudolf Sharf.” (Miles pg 48) In 1963 and 1964 Guenther curated shows for the Amadlozi group in Rome, Venice, Milan and Florence. Kumalo’s sculpture was

Sydney Kumalo(1935 - 1988)

shown at the Venice Biennale in 1966 and the São Paulo Biennale in 1967. Kumalo’s primary medium for modelling sculp-ture was terracotta. His sculptures were then cast in bronze at the Renzo Vignali Artistic Foundry in Pretoria. Throughout his career he worked closely with the owners, the Gamberini family, who still manage the foundry today. This cast of Man and beast is the fifth of an edition of five. Kumalo’s distinctive texturing of the surfaces of his sculptures is seen in the bronze Man and beast. The subject of horse (animal) and rider is one used by artists through the ages. In more contempo-rary times, artists such as Mario Marini and Pablo Picasso come to mind. In African iconography the horse and rider is often narrative, showing, for example, the arrival of settlers to a region. Carvers from numerous countries placed riders on func-tional items such as staffs or combs (see images to the left). Kumalo would have been aware of both European and African works of this subject matter. He interpreted his subject matter in forms which combined Expressionist and African aesthetics. “In many respects Kumalo thus innovated a genuine contemporary or modern indigenous South African sculpture.” (De Jager pg 110) Many cultural groups in Africa, including Kumalo’s, believe that the human spirit travels to the spirit world, and to communicate with the ancestors, carried by an animal. Kumalo produced a number of sculptures exploring the subject. Unlike the others, this particular Man and beast displays stylised human faces on both the man and the beast, as if they repre-sent dual aspects of the same being.

Edoardo Villa (1915 - 2011)Untitled 197528 x 16,5 x 3,5 cmBronze; 4/6

Sydney KumaloMan and beast197567 x 54 x 33 cm

Bronze on marble base; 5/5Staff with equestrian finial (detail) Yao (?) Mozambique. Ex. Cecilia and Irwin Smiley, unknown private collection

Comb, Chokwe, Zaire/Zambia/ Angola. Ex. William W. Brill, unknown private collection. From the exhibition catalogue: Animals in African Art. Allen. F. Roberts. Published by the Museum for African Art, New York, 1995.Photo: Jerry L. Thompson

16 / 17

The bronze casting process

3 5

7

8

9

1

4 62

10

18 / 19

11 14

16

14

11

12

13 15

16

17

18

Casting at Renzo Vignali Foundry, Pretoria.Photographs © Julia Meintjes Fine Art

20 / 21

Brett Murray studied at the University of Cape Town where he was awarded his Master in Fine Arts degree in 1989. The title of his

graduating exhibition was A Group of Satirical Sculptures Examining Social and Political Paradoxes in the South African Context, which indicates where this controversial artist finds his inspiration. From 1991 to 1994 he established the sculpture department at the University of Stellen-bosch’s Fine Art department, where he also taught for four years. He won the Cape Town Urban Art com-petition in 1998 with a commission for Africa, a 3,5 metre bronze sculpture erected in Cape Town’s city centre. It represents an African totem figure spiked with seven Bart Simpson heads, like a fetish figure. Murray also won, with Stefaans Samcuia, the com-mission to produce an 8 x 30 metre wall sculpture for the foyer of the Cape Town International Convention Centre in 2003. Layered coconut and Rogue I, Murray’s two metal laser-cut wall pieces featured on Thinking a-round were made for his 2009 exhibition at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg. The exhibition was titled Crocodile tears II, refering to the legend that crocodiles cry false tears to tempt their prey. This concept of insincerity and façade is the underlying paradox that Murray invokes in these two works. Murray is known for manipulating iconography from Western mass media (such as Bart Simpson, Richie Rich and Colonel Sanders), recognisable figures from history, and contemporary society’s

Brett Murray (born 1968)

icons, often juxtaposed with animals to expose and criticise society’s foolishness and greed. The stylised faces of an ape and a 19th Century Golliwog rag doll stare from lavish fool’s gold Roccoco wigs, which refer to images of European royalty and portraiture during the Baroque period. The artist transforms images traditionally associated with European colo-nialism and power and attributes these to black African power, poking fun at the current ruling power and social elite and their leadership style at the expense of their fellow countrymen. Murray’s choice of combinations is humorous, while being strangely offensive: in order to be understood and appreciated his sculptures rely on confrontation. As Murray explains: “With my work I hope to critically entertain. Through satirical and tragic reflections on South Africa, I hope to shift people’s perspectives and change people’s minds, indulgent, arrogant and pretentious as this might sound.” The Chokwe mask shown on the facing page is juxtaposed with Murray’s sculptures on Thinking a-round.

Africa 2000330 x 150 x 150 cmBronze

Angolan artist (Chokwe)Mask20th Century38 x 26 x 14 cmWood, leather and cotton

Brett MurrayLayered coconut2008124 x 108 x 9 cmMetal, powder-coating, silverleaf paint and fools goldBoth works on the exhibition courtesy of Goodman Gallery Johannesburg

22 / 23

Phillip Rikhotso, a self-taught sculptor with no formal education, has carved and painted fantastical and folklore animals and people

since 1977, having learned the skills from older men in his family. Born in Mamwita, Limpopo Province, Rikhotso still lives and works in Limpopo, now in Daniel, an isolated village in an arid area between Tzaneen and Giyani. In 1990, a collection of his work was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford for the Art from South Africa exhibi-tion. His winning of the Brett Kebble Award in October 2004 came after years of participating in group exhibitions in South Africa and abroad. Apart from the financial reward, the Award finally endorsed the artistic value of Rikhot-so’s sculptures and created an opportunity for this Shangaan artist to profile his work more effectively. Rikhotso is a prolific carver, sourcing quinine, marula and mopane wood for his sculptures from the area where he lives. He uses hand-made tools such as the adze, chisels and scoops as carving utensils. Inspirations for his mythical creatures are drawn from two points of reference: the material and mod-ern world which Rikhotso observes around him and his interpretations of Shangaan myths and folklore. Rikhotso assimilates these into his subject matter, resulting in final products which are completely

Lice Phillip Rikhotso(born 1945)

Left to right, all carved and painted wood, 2003: Tall man with spotted jacket 65,5 x 14 x 19,5 cmMan in spotted jacket 45,5 x 13,5 x 14,5 cmShy creature with horned teeth 35 x 22,5 x 13 cmBearded man with creature on his back 50 x 24 x 14 cm

Lice Phillip Rikhosto in 2003Photograph © Cathy Coates

imaginative. For example, he may integrate an ani-mal and a human form into one figure or combine features from various animals such the horns of a buck, the back of a crocodile or the beak of a bird in a single character. “The recurring animal imagery in Tsonga myth also speaks of people who metamor-phose from people into animals.” (Coates pg 42)

24 / 25

Lyndi Sales is an internationally-renowned installation artist based in Cape Town. She received both her BA Fine Art (1995)

and MA Fine Art (2000) with distinction from the University of Cape Town. Apart from exhibiting in South Africa at Gallery Momo and The Bell Roberts Gallery she has held solo shows at Galerie Maria Lund in Paris and Toomey Tourell in San Francisco. Sales was selected to participate in the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011 on the South African Pavilion. This exhibition, Desire, showcased her alongside Mary Sibande and Siemon Allen. For the past five years Sales has been working on a series that relates to circumstances surround-ing the controversial Helderberg plane crash on 28 November 1987 in which her father died. The South African Airways Flight 259 was bound for Johannes-burg from the former Chiang Kai-shek International Airport in Taiwan, via Mauritius. The circumstances of the disaster have been the source of much controversy and became a topic of enquiry for South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The most widely accepted theory for the crash is that the aircraft was carrying flamma-ble substances which infringed international air safety regulations. It is suspected that the cause of the crash was a fire, although the cause of the fire remains a mystery. Many believe that the Apartheid government was illegally importing flammable substances related to defence on passenger flights during the time of sanctions and the arms embargo. Dealing with the loss and lack of clarity has been ongoing subject matter for artists, such as Lyndi Sales and Roxandra Dardagan in South Africa, and for others abroad. Sales created 159/259 (the title refers to the 159 fatalities and the South African Airways flight number) for her 2006 exhibition. This exhibition was called 1 in 11 000 000 chances (the chances

Lyndi Sales(born 1973)

of the flight failing to reach its destination were one in eleven million). Sales uses her creative process as a meditative tool to aid the healing process. During a visit to China, she was introduced to the traditions of Chinese kite flying. One such tradition incorporates flying kites at memorial ceremonies - their strings are cut as they fly, releasing the kite into the sky and metaphorically releasing the spirit of the deceased from its earthly life. The 159/259 work is in-tricately made from 159 kites which collectively form a Phoenix rising from its ashes. Here Sales makes a literal analogy between the fire bird rising from ashes and a burning plane. The Phoenix, though, rises into a new life. Sales’s work serves both as memorial to loss and as a beacon for the contemplation of hope. Sales found images of the memorial service that was held in Mauritius after the Helderberg crash. These documented the different ceremonies that were performed, one being the Chinese tradition of burning Jos paper and assembling shrines. Of the 159 passengers, about half were Chinese and Taiwanese. As a result she chose to use Jos paper and fake Chinese money in the making of her kites. This installation exists in an series of three. They have been exhibited in Cape Town, Salzburg, Apeldoorn (The Netherlands), Paris and San Francisco. One is now in the Red Bull permanent art collection in Salzburg.

159/2592006 - 2009300 x 328 x 15 cmPaper, vilene, bamboo, string, wood; 3/3

Detail: 159/259Paper, vilene, bamboo, string, wood

26 / 27

Claudette Schreuders was born in Pretoria. She completed a BA in Fine Arts at the University of Stellenbosch in 1994 and

obtained her MA in Fine Arts from the University of Cape Town in 1997. In 2004 a solo exhibition of Schreuders’s carved sculptures and lithographs toured the United States, entitled The Long Day. It debuted at Arizona State University and, after the United States, was seen at Stevenson and Warren Siebrits galleries in South Africa. Her most recent show, Close, Close, was in April 2011 at The Jack Shainman Gallery in New York and was her fifth solo show at the gallery. She works predominantly in Jacaranda wood, a tree imported from tropical South America to South Africa during colonial times. “On the surface Schreuders’s sculptures don’t seem to be about anything in particular but each work possesses perspectives and insights into an ordinary existence that is utterly socialised.” (Bester pg 26). Schreuders is concerned with personal and social commentaries based on her own experiences as a female, Afrikaans-speaking South African. Her sculptures are intensely autobiographical and, until recently, Schreuders’s carved and painted figures were drawn from people she knows. Looking at her oeuvre is like paging through her journal. “It’s important for me to use my reality - rather than leaving it - when making art.” (Schreuders in Bester pg 29) The figures, through the title of the work or exhibition, reveal fundamental and universal human insecurities and anxieties. They are usually stocky and deadpan, so that their meaning is not com-municated through character, but rather via activity, relationships between the figures or details to their appearance. Although her themes may be universal, personal narrative and story telling are fundamental to the interpretation of her sculptures precisely because they are born out of the apparently insignificant.

Claudette Schreuders (born 1973)

ParadiseUndated31 x 43 cm (image)Lithograph and chine colle on paper

“I think what I’m interested in is telling stories. It’s portraiture, but it’s a vehicle for telling a particu-lar story, or the way in which society makes people who they are, or the group against the individual. As soon as you make a figure, it has an identity, and it’s immediately a white person or a black person. To me, things aren’t that simple in South Africa. Everyone has an identity...It’s interesting for me to look at portraiture as something where you try and make a person with the idea you have of them, and try and bring in abstract elements, like in African art where they say “this is a beautiful person because he [sic] is complete.” So I am interested in making things that are beautiful, and how beauty works.” (Claudette Schreuders 2004) A bird in hand was the first bronze made by Schreuders. The edition was 20 because it was com-missioned by Stellenbosch University (facilitated by Julia Meintjes Fine Art) as a gift for their donors in 2007 - the practicalities of hand-working each of these confirmed her preference to work as a carver, and to cast small editions. The woman holds a bird in a simple open gesture of giving. How is it pos-sible that the bird trusts its perch? Will the bird fly? Although the title automatically refers to the idiom ‘A bird in hand is worth two in the bush’, simultane-ously the work brings to mind images of St Francis of Assisi and African carvings which juxtapose birds and figures rendering of idioms about life. Schreuders considers herself a perfectionist and chooses to work meticulously, which she believes supports her own understanding and the develop-ment of what she wants to express. She begins by making informal drawings of her ideas. Many of her completed sculptures have been depicted in lithographs. Collecting these documents her story as well as her output (see Paradise and The virgin). The practice grew out of her first series of etchings and lithographs which were a record of her favourite sculptures, and now she documents each to keep a record of the pieces which she essentially ‘loses’.

Ghanian artists (Akuaba)Fertility figures20th Century36 x 7,5 x 6 cmWood

Claudette SchreudersBird in hand200738,5 x 15,5 x 17 cmBronze; 15/20

28 / 29

Dutch born Tania moved to South Africa in 1983. In 1989 he completed a National Diploma in Fine Arts specialising in

sculpture at Technikon Pretoria. He has since held numerous solo shows at various galleries in Europe and South Africa, the first here curated by Genneth Harris in Cape Town in 1996. With his European roots, Tania’ s choice of Africa as his home has greatly influenced the way he makes sculpture. Although his primary techniques are based on traditional European wood carving, he acknowledges that he employs the equally skilful craftsmanship learned from African carvers. Another influence on Tania’s subject matter is the precise location of his home and studio. Apart-heid legislation, specifically the Group Areas Act of 1950, enabled the South African state to uproot and remove entire communities and neighbourhoods based on race, such as those of District Six in Cape Town and Sophiatown in Johannesburg. As a result, South Africa’s inner cities were largely cleared of non-white inhabitants. However, a few exceptional communities managed to remain integrated. Egon Tania lives and works in such a suburb: Woodstock, a suburb east of Cape Town. Woodstock is “charac-terised by its strong multi-ethnic and multi-racial nature, and although this identity was continually threatened by the Group Areas Act, removals based on race were never enforced.” (Garside pg 29) Added to this aspect of the region’s history, the reclamation of Woodstock beach to create the Cape Town foreshore resulted in an industrial suburb which lost much of its status and appeal for suburban living. After a period of being considered rundown and crime-ridden, Woodstock is being regenerated (largely by cultural industry) and maintains its cosmopolitan character.

Egon Tania (born 1968)

Sculpture in progress:Where would Woodstock stock wood if Woodstock would stock wood?

Prior to reclamation, Woodstock was a site of disembarkation for goods and people coming to Cape Town by ship. The suburb is also the source of some of Tania’s wood – he wishes he could locate more there, considering its history as a beach and landing place. Tania’s whimsical title for his piece featured on Thinking a-round, Where would Woodstock stock wood if Woodstock would stock wood? communicates this. In combining bits of scrap, drift, plank and log, Tania creates a narrative constructed around a desire to be recognised as a “normal human being” in post-Apartheid South Africa. He com-bines driftwood from Cape Town’s foreshore beach, a cut up Jurgens caravan’s table map, indigenous kameeldoring wood and jacaranda (native to tropical regions of South America) to create a convention-ally attractive, well-proportioned white woman. Tania intends her character and his narrative to be constructed through his materials - the work becomes a response to identity, and questions the ironies of being African. She is not a study of anyone in particular. In her ordinariness, we recognise in the young woman as pretty in a Western aesthetic sense. In this, as in his other sculptures, the artist’s conver-sation about physical beauty, an aspiration inherent in all cultures, continues. Tania has cast bronzes, the most recent for a commission for Cape Town’s Heerengracht. The process of building up a model for casting, even if he applies found materials and carved sections to the model, is very different from his process of accumu-lating sections of wood which he carves away. The materials have different surfaces, grains and colours. The advantage of bronze for an artist is the possibility of casting an edition. Sculptures like Where would Woodstock stock wood if Woodstock would stock wood? are unique pieces - the surfaces display the artist’s actual marks with an immediacy. The bronze casting technique is unable to achieve this. Tania is working towards his next solo show to be held at Tokara Delicatessen later this year.

Image to come

Detail:Where would Woodstock stock wood if Woodstock would stock wood?

Where would Woodstock stock wood if Woodstock would stock wood?(complete, in the artist’s studio)2011100 x 115 x 170 cmJacaranda, kameeldoring, poplar, pine and vine

30 / 31

Tokara WineryCrest of the Helshoogte Pass on the R310 between Stellenbosch and FranschhoekTelephone 021 8085900 | Email art@tokara.com

Managed by Julia Meintjes Fine Art, in the space sponsored by Tokara, Art at Tokara presents work by South African artists. Exhibitions are curated to include a mix of old and new works by established, up-and-coming and ‘unknown’ talents. Works are for sale. Exhibition open: Monday 9h00 – 17h00Tuesday – Saturday 9h00 until after dinner Sunday 9h00 – 15h00 Exhibition and catalogue compiled by Ian Maree and Julia MeintjesBrowse all works on the exhibition at www.juliameintjes.co.zaNot all works on the exhibition are represented in the catalogue.

Photography: Anton KannemeyerIan MareeMike Hall Photography, www.mikehall.co.zaJulia Meintjes Simon O’CallaghanChristl Roger-LundJan Verboom Photography, www.janverboom.comDeon Viljoen

Design: Jan Erasmus, www.cybergraphics.bz

Clockwise from top left: Caroline van der Merwe, 19th century Calamander cabinet, Caesar Mkhize and Thafa Dlamini, Ethiopian artists (three head-rests), Edward Zwane (Hoopoe and Hammerkop), Bongani Peter Shange.

List of references

Bester, R. 2004. Living in Linden in Art South Africa Vol 02 Issue 03 Autumn. pg 24 - 30Coates, K. 2005. Through glass darkly in Art South Africa Vol 03 Issue 03 Autumn. pg 40 - 43Dauskardt, R. 1992. JohannesburgThe Inner City in South African Metropolitan Areas: Contemporary Issues and Forward Strategies. Unpublished Report for the Urban Foundation. JohannesburgDe Jager, E.J. 1992. Fort Hare University Press. Goodwood. Images of Man: Contemporary South African Black Art and Artists. pg 107 - 114Jamal, A. 2004. Through glass darkly in Art South Africa Vol 02 Issue 03 Autumn. pg 41 - 47Garside, J. May 1993. Springer. New York. Inner City Gentrification in South Africa: The Case of Woodstock, Cape Town in Geo Journal, Vol. 30, No. 1, South African Geography and Post-Apartheid Reconstruction. pg 29 - 35Miles, E. 2004. The Ampersand Foundation, Johannesburg. Polly Street: The Story of an Art CentreNicol, M. 1999. Human and Rousseau, Cape Town. “Sydney Kumalo” in They Shaped our Century: The Most Influential South Africans of the Twentieth Century. pg 451Vestergaard, M. 2001. The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences.Who’s Got the Map? The Negotiation of Afrikaner Identities in Post-Apartheid South Africa in Daedalus Why South Africa Matters Vol. 130, No. 1, Winter, 2001

art at tokara presented by

20 / 30