Spier Contemporary calling! - August 21, 2009

Good news for all, and I mean all, you artists out there. Spier Contemporary 2010 is calling for submissions for their biennial show in March 2010, taking place this year in the City Hall, Cape Town and moving on to Johannesburg and Durban. You can enter up to five items and the cut-off date is 30 October. You need to be 21 but no professional training is required and the entry process is by e-mail. Check the website www.spiercontemporary2010.co.za for the details.

Spier intends that the works be for sale (if the artist so wishes) and takes no commission; AND they give you R4 000 for each work selected for exhibition by their curatorial team, whether or not you are a prize-winner. So where are the drawbacks? Well, there were 2500 entries last year and only around 100 could be selected. Just a couple of months to go. Let’s have a good representation from Hermanus, art destination of the Western Cape.

Contrasts

Bellini is opening tomorrow at 18h30 with a trio of artists showing landcapes - Louis Ströh van der Walt, Elizabeth Miller-Vermeulen and Stellenbosch-based Vernon Swart, whose work “Franschhoek Vineyard” is illustrated.

Vernon Swart - Franschhoek Vineyard, 60cm x 40cm, Mixed media

This innovative gallery is on the move and an announcement may be made at the exhibition. While the regular patrons of Willie’s Cappuccino-Bar may miss the salty tang in the air, I am told their proposed new premises are bang in the centre of our gallery route.

Comings and goings

Since ArtsPage started nearly three years ago, I have had to add artspace after artspace to my database, and delete only two. This is really good and I encourage our galleries to byt vas and make the necessary adjustments to hold on through the winter. A leading gallery in Cape Town, Bell Roberts, closed its doors last month and in Johannesburg another long-established gallery has done likewise. But our mayor’s succinct comment at the opening of Gallery La Marey was straightforward: I did not make notes, the opening was far too buzzing for that, but essentially he said “Those businesses which deliver service will flourish – the ones who do not do so will disappear.”

The passage through from High Street to Chilli Pepper has been officially named “High Street Close.” It is home to a new gallery showcasing the works of Deidre Winer. More about this international arts person soon.

Johans Borman Gallery

Emphasis on this page is on local gallery news but Borman was a leading gallerist in Onrus for a good few years so it is appropriate to offer congratulations on his 10-20 Exhibition in Cape Town. He is celebrating twenty years in the art business, ten of them in Cape Town at his Upper Buitengracht Street gallery.

One of his protégées, Hennie Niemann Jnr, achieved a remarkable price for a recently-executed small portrait sold at Stephan Welz/Sotheby’s August auction in Johannesburg. The work, estimated at R12-16 000 must have been fiercely contested as the successful bidder paid nearly four times the top estimate. At the same sale, an attractive study in oils “Lisianthus in a Glass Vase” by well-known local arts personality Louis van Heerden was sold for R31 000.

Galerie Gregoire

At the gallery in Main Road, Onrus are some fifty works on loan to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Gregoire Boonzaier. Gregoire is indeed an icon who by his talent and prolific output won a special place on the living room walls and in the hearts of many. He was co-founder of the New Group together with Terence McCaw and Walter Battiss in 1938, breaking new ground in a conservative and parochial SA art scene. His long life and the fact that he remained creative until the end has meant that his works often appear at auction and new generations of artlovers get to hang a Gregoire of their own.

The exhibition has been arranged around themes and the display of drawings paired with linocuts enables a comparison of technique and mood to be made. Clearly not all of his themes can be shown but there is more than enough to delight. ArtsPage joins the artist’s son in expressing appreciation to owners who have made available choice works for this show which runs till 31 December.

Tretchi orchid

Another icon, South African by adoption, was Vladimir Tretchikoff. It appears that the work billed in the catalogue for the much-publicised Brett Kebble art auction as “Lost Orchid” was indeed not the original but may still have been by the artist. The buyer might need a bit more assurance than that to go through with the R3million sale.

Keep you news coming to me at niblos@telkomsa.net

Festivals near and far - August 7, 2009

Kalfiefees is in full swing this week-end, mostly theatre but lots of music and the visual arts, too. The Missions House Gallery in De Villiers Street, Onrus, is staying open till 18h00 each evening and is offering theatre guests a glass of sherry if they pop in before the evening performances. What’s to see? Well, among others, crisp new works in acrylics by Sharon Welman - intriguing compositions of shells; Di Johnson Ackerman’s closely-observed farmsteads and weathered timber piers; and if you are lucky, a portrait or two by popular Onrus-resident Hennie Niemann, Jnr.

Grahamstown Festival

Art also features strongly at Grahamstown each July. I have not been for several years but I asked Rodney Anderson, known for his passion for cinema, to comment on his trip last month.

“Although the primary magnet for our visits to Grahamstown National Arts Festival is the fine Film Festival curated by Trevor Steel-Taylor, we always visit as many of the fine art and sculpture exhibitions as we can within the time constraints.

Highlights in fine art were for me Jennifer Ord’s exhibition entitled “Obelisks and Epitaphs” a showing of mixed media works by the “hand maid / crone” ( her words). Her work, besides its complexity and innovation, shows great artistic craftsmanship with care in detail and great subtlety. The pieces included two-dimensional constructs and large sculptures and were produced in association with the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University.

White bulls by Jennifer Ord

Nicholas Hlobo

The Standard Bank young artist awardee Nicholas Hlobo’s installation of strange large black rubber / lace and ribbon blobs grouped like odd black monsters in a dim red lighted room reminded me of bizarre creatures from an Ed Wood science fiction movie of the Fifties. They obviously were not to everyone’s taste despite his unique vision. [Hlobo’s show at Michael Stevenson Gallery in Woodstock has just ended. He has also been seen at the Tate Modern in London and featured on the front page of last week’s Sunday Times Review– a name to watch. PC]

Johan Badenhorst exhibited two- and three-dimensional works depicting swallows and hawks etc., in exuberant reds against grey back ground which caught my fancy.

The collection of modern Shona stone sculptures from three sculptors at the Provost impressed. Their unusual contemporary themes and an outstanding choice of indigenous stone with textures, striations and forms set them well apart from the usual repetitive tourist concepts.

Graham Jones’s sculptures, principally of animal heads mounted on modified tall wooden plant stands, drew attention to his angst regarding the industrial animal husbandry that is driven by the human consumption of meat. (This theme, interestingly, also appeared in the film The Lives of Animals by Alex Harvey .UK 2002) With animal heads of wood, stone, found objects with mixed media colourisation he created stark and poignantly-beautiful sculpture forms.

Maureen Quin

On the way home via Alexandria we had the pleasure of visiting the impressive sculpture garden and studio at the home of one of South Africa’s most talented sculptors, Maureen Quin. Some of the works, like “The Hunt,” were also part of a series that has taken a decade or more to complete. Mrs Quin was friendly, warm and forthcoming and offered us a personal insight into the themes and the artistic visions which gave rise to the many wonderful bronze sculptures and art pieces on view. See www.quin-art.co.za.” [Walker Bay Gallery has some of her works. PC]

Great to have this first-hand account of Rodney and Ebeline’s visit to our most important arts festival.

SNIPPETS

• Rossouw Modern’s satellite at Greyton is showing scenes in oils of Greyton by our Hermanus artist Annemarie Du Plooy. “In nature, when sunlight is added, the way colours change – it’s amazing!” says Annemarie.
Annemarie Du Plooy - Greyton Doorscape, oils

• Pierre Rossouw (no relation) has recently joined Rossouw Modern and will be on duty (with his own paintbrush in hand) at Greyton. And Elsie Minnaar is back, just for an hour or so each day, after her gruesome car accident. Major surgery has not dimmed her spirit and it is good to see her around again.

• If you are going to see the flowers up Nieuwoudtville way, do not miss “Flowerscapes 2009!” a show by Dale and son Mel Elliott with over 100 paintings celebrating nature’s colours. At Die Smidswinkel Restaurant till 12 September. The Elliotts hold regular workshops at their Villiersdorp art complex.

• Gallerey La Marey was declared officially open on Wednesday evening at their glossy Marine Square venue.

• News and views always welcome at niblos@telkomsa.net