Bubblegum Club

Author: Chris Soal

  • 1.1 – create platforms over galleries

    1.1 – create platforms over galleries

    A few days ago American art critic and recent-Pulitzer Prize Winner Jerry Saltz published an article criticising the current art fair structure, the domination of mega-galleries, and highlighting the necessity for emerging, more “edgy” galleries. (So basically everything wrong with the art world). It’s good to know that these issues are being addressed on that level, but this isn’t a new critique. Having now introduced this debate, I’m not going to launch into a lengthy criticism ending with a passionate plea for change, but rather look at but one example of an arts platform doing things a little differently.

    1.1 not only occupies a dynamic and category-evading space within the art world, but its inception was unconventional as well. Starting out of Deborah Joyce Holman’s studio, 1.1 began as an exhibition by Roberto Ronzani in October 2015. When asked about what inspired its conception, Deborah stated, “In the beginning, we were very interested in offering the space for very young artists, who in some way or another seemed to work with Social Media, or who we came across through Instagram, and who don’t necessarily situate themselves in the context of contemporary art, for example: a residency we did with Soto. Gang, a tattoo artist, or the Launch of three new Zines published by Popup Press. We always also put a strong emphasis on the space’s fluidity. It is important to define ourselves through the activities rather than formulating a very restrictive concept.”

    ‘Trust’ (2018) by Gala Vincensini, installation view. Photography by Gina Folly

    1.1 is different from a typical gallery structure as all their funding comes through grants and public institutions. This flexibility according to Deborah is counted as one of the space’s strengths, “as with 1.1 not depending on the art market and funding through sales, we have more liberty in our choice of artists, and in the media we show.” The idea that 1.1 functions more as a platform helps “to distance ourselves from the idea that all our activities happen in the exhibition space in Basel. The exhibitions are one very present part of our output, but it is not the only one. We also engage in the field of music, and organise concerts and other events in collaboration with venues across Switzerland and a few throughout Europe.”

    As a platform, 1.1 places an emphasis on engaging young people in the arts, making it accessible to a broad public who may not have much knowledge of the arts. Deborah claims, “This can be very challenging, as it forces us to really look at how and where we promote events, shows, and where we aim for visibility of the space as itself. We use Instagram very heavily, as a sort of alternative exhibition space. This means, prior to exhibitions, the artists are free to use them as a residency, and it obviously allows to reach a whole other audience than those that are based in Basel and surroundings.” Funding is always another challenge that requires year by year evaluation.

    ‘Baby Bar’ by Claire van Lubeek, installation view. Photography by James Bantone

    As a platform with a passion for engaging new voices, Deborah and Tuula Rasmussen (who joined 1.1 recently) are always looking out for emerging artists with it being “a very intuitive process. It’s about keeping our eyes open, on Instagram and in more traditional ways, like through blogs, openings, our surroundings, etc. It has also happened a couple times that we were sent a portfolio or a recommendation and everything worked out to offer them a platform to show.”

    It’s exciting that new art spaces are (seemingly) always opening up, but unfortunately it’s the case that while they begin as a challenge to existing institutions, inevitably they become institutions themselves. And so it was encouraging to hear from Deborah, as we ended off our email interview correspondence, that, “1.1 is in steady movement, and always changing, so we’re continuously re-evaluating everything and hoping to constantly adjust our values to the needs and demands of the artists, musicians and the public.”

    ‘Money Cyant Fool Them Again’ (2017) by Ashley Holmes, installation view. Photography by James Bantone
  • Multimedia artist Ruth Angel Edwards on tracing and revealing the “sub” in culture.

    Multimedia artist Ruth Angel Edwards on tracing and revealing the “sub” in culture.

    Ruth Angel Edwards is a multimedia artist whose work explores the communication of ideology through pop culture, drawing from mainstream and subcultural youth movements both past and present. Within these, she looks at the ways audio and visual content are used to manipulate an audience and to disseminate information. This is especially apparent in her exhibition High Life/Petrification shown at the À CÔTÉ DU 69, which marked the end of her residency in Los Angeles, CA. In this exhibition, social detritus collected from the location reveals a mythologised Venice Beach as a “ritual site of pilgrimage, a space where diverse subcultural histories continue to make it a mecca for fans of alternative histories as well as touristic voyeurs.”

    Feminism, gender, collectivity and commodification are recurring themes. In particular, this brings to mind Edwards’ exhibition Enema Salvatore, held in Turin at the end of another art residency, showing new work at the Almanac Inn. The work questions the binary structures of western culture, the duality of good and bad. A cycle of ingestion, consumption, digestion, purification – and then finally – release, all explored through and within her own female body, whilst drawing external parallels to the “wellness/feel good” food industry. Hedonism, spectacle and rebellion are deconstructed and re-formed to create communicative and insightful immersive works.

    Edwards has been expanding on these themes in her most recent exhibition Wheel of the Year! EFFLUENT PROFUNDAL ZONE! commissioned by the Bonington Gallery as the first exhibition of 2018. An immersive installation invited the viewer to consider the inescapable cycles of waste and decay, a by-product of all our consumption, personal or material. Drawing clever parallels between overlapping ecologies – “from the futile pursuit of personal purification and ‘clean living’ to the increasingly rapid turnover of cultural content in the media and popular consciousness, to the wider perspective of the waste which is polluting our oceans, and threatening our very existence”– Edward’s makes the observation that the only difference is that of differing scale, and utilises art’s ability to evoke empathy and re-orient our often very narrow-minded subjectivities.

    Using video, audio, sculpture, performance and printed media, subcultures and social debris are historicised, tracing their trajectories and examining the wider socio-economic environments which give rise to them. Edwards traces the complex symbiotic relationship between the underground and the mainstream, while exposing their failures and flaws as well as any under-celebrated histories and latent positive potential. Edwards continues to explore personal cycles of consumption and waste, natural functions that are transformed and inescapably politicised as they connect with global capitalist economies.

    Ruth Angel Edwards studied Fine Art at Central Saint Martins and currently lives and works in London. Her work has been exhibited in the UK and internationally at Arcadia Missa Auto Italia South East, Tate Modern (London), FACT, Royal Standard (Liverpool), Human Resources, (Los Angeles) and MEYOHAS Gallery, (New York).

    Be sure to check out her website to see more of her work.

  • Growth fuelled by partnerships and collaborations – Gallery One11

    Growth fuelled by partnerships and collaborations – Gallery One11

    Interdisciplinary practices within the arts, and even society in general, is one of the symptoms of post-modernism, pushing back at a modernist agenda which prioritised and celebrated specialisation and efficiency in the aim of industry and progress, therefore resulting in reductionism and fragmentation. (Artist, Makoto Fujimura’s writings on this have primarily shaped my thoughts on this condition) This means that, within the arts, roles were specialised and artists were to focus on art, and leave the business to the gallerists and dealers. And for some artists this was convenient and beneficial, but it could not be a system which works for everyone.

    Restone Maambo in studio

    Artist-led initiatives operating in the commercial gallery circuit therefore offer one exciting alternative model to the status quo. Gallery One11, which opened up in September 2017, is one such venture. A partnership between artist and curator Megan Theunissen, and business entrepreneur and director Marita Schneider, their aims are to align a strong business model with a sensitivity to well curated exhibitions and a more collaborative approach with the represented artists. Megan told me that the focus of Gallery One11 is to “encourage collaboration between artists, host constructive dialogue and allow for artists to remain engaged, and for information to be accessible for all whom enter our premises.” Megan also felt that her background in painting was an asset to her current position, although she did admit to having a small bias towards exhibiting painting. Discussing the position such a venture occupies in the industry, Megan claims there is room for more, stating that “Artist-led hubs can be successfully modelled further in SA if more people paid attention to them; many individuals that I know in this regard are intelligent curators pushing limitations and I hope more hubs will develop.”

    Installation view: Gideon Appah (December 2017)

    Ambitious in its inception, Megan and Marita have a vision for the gallery. They hope “to see Gallery One11 flourish into a platform that is outspoken and, with time, hopefully people will come to recognize the space for its great curation in Cape Town.” Their vision extends beyond their own space, acknowledging that “it’s important to initiate and develop, and [that] more like-minded individuals are needed to grow our local infrastructures. Collaboration is vital so we welcome as much of it as possible.” Upcoming shows include artists Brandon Boyd, Felix Leband and Louis De Villiers, along with a group exhibition opening on the 14th of March, titled ‘Don’t Have Sex : Exploring Sexuality, Censorship, Gender in Art.’

    Diversity is essential for a system to flourish, and my hope is that others will embrace the challenge to carve out different spaces and create new platforms where there were none before, weaving new dynamic strands into the cultural fabric of South Africa.

    Installation view: Senzeni Marasela & Guto Bussab (October 2017)

  • A Permanent Creation Off the Cuff

    The Centre for the Less Good Idea  is a multifaceted platform, with curated seasonal projects twice annually. In addition to this they have an interspersion of events referred to as ‘For Once’ – a finished project which is exhibited or performed to the public – or ‘Off The Cuff’ – an impromptu or work-in-progress endeavour which is also exhibited or performed to the public but with a sense that what is happening is very much process.

    It was helpful therefore, that the collaborative performance piece ‘Permanent creation‘ by artists Snyder Morena Martin and Eduardo Cachucho, was listed as an Off the Cuff performance, which gave it a flexibility to be interpreted in the light of process. I came in with as few expectations as I could, which was helpful too as there were few points of entry into the work (except for a FB event blurb outlining the aims of the performance and the artists’ bios, which I only allowed myself to read after being in the space for over an hour.) And to be honest, it took a while for me, as a viewer, to be drawn into the work; it didn’t seem as if the actions of the artists were typically performative (intended to entertain or create a spectacle), and the narrative which was “presented” was opaque at best. What did begin to happen, after I had turned off my phone and attempted to bring my mind to rest in the present, was that I began to notice things. I looked.

    Credit here, needs to be given to a member of the audience who changed my perception of the performance dramatically. A very young girl from the audience, had escaped the clutches of her parents and began picking up bits of paper lying around the space, and mimicking the action of the artists by dropping them from the balcony up the stairs, watching it spiral through the air downwards. This child’s unpretentious and unselfconscious engagement with the space and the performance stopped my questioning and critique, and suddenly I simply began to enjoy the moment.

    I noticed how communication was played out through the relationship between the two artists; there were language barriers (Snyder is from Columbia and Cachucho from South Africa, they met on residency in Sao Paulo) and choosing to communicate in English provided some interesting slippages, allowing for humour to be used as a device of potential critique. There was an innovative use of live recorded sound which was relayed through speakers in the space on a loop, creating a rather meditative chant. Coupled with incense, burnt near the end of the performance, the meditative chant began to suggest a spiritual dimension to the actions unfolding before us. The performance, which I viewed as a metaphor for artistic studio practice at large, became liturgical, embedded with meaning and significance, even though most of the actions presented to us were entirely mundane.

    As good art challenges our thinking, it often challenges it in ways we had not expected (forgive the redundancy there), and this performance did challenge me; it challenged my Joburg-city mindset which was going at 120km/h. It forced me to slow down and consider; to look with the eyes of a child, and to see.

  • Gavin Krastin – The embodiment of unveiling

    Gavin Krastin’s name has been popping up in art circles for some time now, and is often accompanied by shocking titles, graphic images, or sensational writing in an attempt to translate a performance into a written text. However, through conversation with the artist about his practice, it quickly became apparent that a critical and considered project was underway, and that elements of horror and shock were used as formal conceptual devices in service of this project.

    If being an artist wasn’t risking enough, venturing into performance certainly is. Despite bemoaning and often calling out the existing structures for not providing enough support for performance artists; not taking enough risks “due to the dreaded F word: funding,” Krastin has not let this hold him back. He challenges not only artists, but “curators, funders, festivals and programmers too, who too often expect artists to take risks but take little risk themselves, or in some instances turn their back on you when your risk doesn’t quite turn out as planned (no doubt reducing one’s art to a purely monetary value and an exercise in branding).” His work is bold, and his practice is creative, finding ways to sustain himself and his projects despite the obstacles.

    ‘Omnomnom’ performance photographed by Sarah Schafer

    He has been teaching and working at universities (UCT and Rhodes) for the past 6 years as a para-academic, or as he referred to himself, tongue-in-cheek, as “an academic wet nurse.” He has been teaching artists in the theatre-making, contemporary performance and movement studies arenas. Facing the struggles of working in an institution head-on, Krastin’s pedagogical approach, much like in his art practice, is to “stir curiosity and entice a playing field of questioning,” with the risks of such “stirrings” being vital to embarking on “radical embodied research.” Teaching is not simply a side-job, but rather Krastin considers the aspects that comprise his practice as “largely inseparable; as if his arts practice, teaching, research, facilitation and curation create an asymmetrical web of sticky intersecting trajectories, and thus the critiques of whiteness at university level continue to influence him and his socially-engaged work.”

    While directing is something in his repertoire, when it comes to his own performances Krastin uses his own body, as he cannot “expect someone else to endure” what he imagines. He uses his body as a means to “occupy, subvert and challenge notions of presentation and representation (which almost act as an incubator of historical trauma).” The performances are grotesque because the body is grotesque and shocking, but has been hidden behind “constructed compartments, boarders and adornments such as culture, religion, politics, language, names and epistemologies in order to contain, control, conceal and rationalise our human messiness.” He views his artistic project as one that “unveils such structures, embodying a body for what it is – a network of organs in extremity and oppression, but desiring production.” This minor revolt against the status quo is one that arises from a place of surprising vulnerability, humility and courage.

    ‘Pig Headed’ performance photographed by Sarah Schafer

    Krastin is ambitious and involved in many projects: He is assisting in an upcoming choreographic work authored by Alan Parker and Gerard Bester with the Dance Umbrella in March. He is also curating a group show of performance art in Cape Town, called ‘Arcade’, by young and/or recent Capetonian graduates – a venture which is sponsored by the National Arts Council and the Theatre Arts Admin Collective, resulting in paid artists – “because one can’t pay the rent with experience alone.” Currently Krastin even has some “performance detritus, or relics and used paraphernalia,” from his performance Pig Headed on display as part of a group exhibition called Provenance: A Performance Art Object Exhibition at Defibrillator Gallery in Chicago. A feature at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, festivals and gallery shows around the country and a creative research residency in Switzerland – it’ll be hard to miss this enigmatic artist in 2018.

    ‘Epoxy’ performance photographed by Owen Murray

  • Nick Mulgrew on writing, publishing and unearthing literary gems

    Buckle up, we’re getting meta about writing here – this is an article where a writer writes about writing and the reality of being a writer, taking time to reflect on the state of the writing industry within South Africa. In an attempt to engage the issues that young writers, wanting to start their own publishing companies or wanting to self-publish, face, we turned to an individual who has been navigating the terrain for some time now.

    Nick Mulgrew is a writer, and due to feeling that “the publishing industry was failing both writers and readers” he began to initiate projects and form publishing avenues for others like himself. For, “how can I flourish if the publishing industry and our country’s reading culture aren’t?” These projects include Prufrock Magazine, where Nick is now the fiction editor and designer; uHlanga, an award-winning poetry press, where Nick is founder and publisher, and publishing the bestselling collection, ‘Collective Amnesia‘ by Koleka Putuma.

    The result of these endeavours has been to help unearth writers and launch their careers at Prufrock; writers such as Simone Haysom and Lidudumalingani, some of whose first literary work appeared in the magazine. uHlanga has managed to bring poetry into the mainstream again, bringing poetry into places where poetry usually hasn’t been considered of much importance. Koleka’s book, which was named one of City Press’s Books of the Year, was one of the main catalysts for that.

    In terms of managing both a business and a career as a writer, Nick offered some very practical advice, saying, “The secret is being productive, not busy. I divide my working day in two, roughly. In the morning, I work on one project, then I go to gym or have lunch or run my errands or whatever, and in the afternoon and evening I work on another.”

    An already accomplished author, Nick’s own writing has to do with “deconstructing and looking at South Africa’s dysfunctional society, especially in the ways it is riven by racism, sexism, homophobia and so on. That’s not to say my work is always serious in tone. ‘Stations‘ is a book that deals primarily with the everyday ways in which people make negative impacts on their lives and the lives of other people; ‘The First Law of Sadness‘ has to do with larger events: catastrophes, spectacle, grand moments. Some people might say those descriptions sound boring, which they are in contrast to the subjects I write about – like pornography, making biltong out of roadkill, tattoo removal – but those are the underlying mechanics that give life to the entertainment and the emotion.”

    Nick’s passion and commitment to his craft were immediately picked up through our correspondence. He sharpens his craft through practice. I quote: “If you want to get good at rapping, you rap. If you want to get good at painting, you paint. Writing is no different: I hone my writing by writing. I don’t take cues from other writers, but I’m always influenced by my reading.”

    Ending off, Nick had some words of wisdom for local emerging writers; “I wouldn’t say that they should just read, because what you read matters just as much as whether you read. You should read as much local writing as possible, because it’s impossible to make an impact on your literary community if you’re not listening to what artists around you are producing and engaging with.”

  • Custom Conversations

    Popping up on numerous creative radars, Dada Khanyisa aka The Mighty Whale is propelling herself forward in the South African creative industry. A recent graduate from Michaelis School of Fine Art, the multi-faceted artist has already begun showing her sculptural paintings on big stages such as the FNB Art Fair in 2017 with Stevenson Gallery. The creative outputs are varied; from fine art to reconstructed custom sneakers, to tattoos, to murals (if you’re in Joburg peep the mural just completed at Constitutional Hill). Seemingly, at the centre of all these activities is a formal language that reflects the youth and street culture of young black South Africans. This formal language has it’s influences no doubt, but it’s clear that hours on hours of work have gone into refining Dada’s style. As her website states; “I paint as much as I sculpt and draw twice as much as I illustrate digitally.”

    Image courtesy of Dada Khanyisa

    A recent venture is a custom kicks project aptly titled ‘Conversations.’ An extension of Dada’s vast project of reconstructing sneakers to create custom kicks, this project focuses on reconstructed Converse sneakers and plays on the title to suggest it being open ended and not limited simply to a single narrative. A video made in collaboration with Chris Kets, Chawezi and Stiff Pap went public on Facebook, celebrating the artform of custom sneakers, and highlighting Cape Town’s rich house party scene, which serves as an inspiration for some of Dada’s paintings.

    Image courtesy of Dada Khanyisa

    The combination of fine art and fashion is nothing new, yet with Dada’s work it seems to take a fresh approach. Perhaps this is due to the particular narratives which gain exposure and are fore-fronted through her work, and perhaps it’s simply the vibrant and exciting ways in which the designs are executed and characters rendered? Either way, I’ll be taking 2018 to save for a pair of her custom kicks to treat myself with next Christmas.

    Watch the video here:

  • Seeds of possibility planted at Victoria Yards

    The inner city of Johannesburg has had an interesting history over the last 25 years. In the changes that took place around 1994, many whites and white owned businesses moved out of the city centre, fleeing to suburbs and business districts such as Sandton which seemed to promise “safety and security.” Whilst the government implemented various policies in attempt to make continuing business in the CBD a favourable option for large companies, apart from the banks, most companies and residents relocated. (An interesting meditation on the current situation and ramification of these events can be seen in Simon Gush’s video artwork “Sunday Light” (2013)

    With changes in management and buildings not being maintained as they once were, many areas began to gain an air of notoriety as conditions began to detriorate. However, as the economic philosopher’s Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello’s The New Spirit of Capitalism  expressed, capitalism has no program, no social or political project beyond producing, circulating and accumulating capital. This implies that capitalism has to absorb and integrate the social and political projects that criticise it as if they were its own programmes. This theory is played out brilliantly in the examples of gentrification that we see in Johannesburg; the very areas that had a bad-for-business stigma are the areas which are becoming business hubs in their own right. Braamfontein, Newtown, Maboneng – these are exciting cultural and economic hubs which are establishing themselves as go-to-places within the city. And whilst not without their problems (simply type “Gentrification in Johannesburg” in on Google and see what pops up) these areas are clearly generating substantial revenue for the companies and individuals behind the ventures, and so it’s no surprise to see the model’s being adopted and implemented elsewhere.

    Victoria Yards in Lorentzville is one such venture. Situated with New Doornfontein and Troyeville as its neighbors, the industrial space which boasts an impressive 30,000m² of space is showing promise to grow into a community of cultural and economic promise. Still in its infancy with much development promised on the horizon, Victoria Yards has already shown some of it’s promise in hosting the 2017 Joburg Fringe. Similarly, there are a number of creative enterprises such as Nandos’ head office across the road, and the Art Eye Gallery space in Ellis House which are in the area. And as all projects of gentrification go, artists are at the center. Setting trends and drawing in tourists with their creativity, artist studios are popping up all around Victoria Yards. There is great potential for these studios to allow for artist communities to emerge. Head developer Brian Green has placed great emphasis on community involvement and engagement, initiating projects such as craft based, skill-sharing workshops, and community farming gardens. But as with all things, time will tell whether these ideals manifest in reality. At the moment however, there is at least some exciting alternatives to the now-commonplace Maboneng and Newtown, if one is looking for options within inner-city Joburg.

    Graphic Lorenzville Map
    SYLVIA MCKEOWN

    See the Victoria Yards promotional video for more information:

  • JOHANNESBURG. MADE IN CHINA

    In the hustle and bustle of a metropolis like Johannesburg, it makes sense that there’s way more going on than one might expect. Partly to blame perhaps is the overbearing presence of the monstrously modernist buildings that make up the CBD, or perhaps it’s the city’s disjointedness stemming from Apartheid days which separated and segregated suburbs and communities from each other?Whatever the cause, so often we forget that Johannesburg is an African city above all else, and that Africa often has its own ingenious way of going about things.

    In the ninth instalment in the series Wake Up, This is Joburg, a ten-book series of Johannesburg stories published by Fourthwall Books, photographer Mark Lewis and writer Tanya Zack open a window on the bustling and booming world of professional shoppers and traders operating out of Johannesburg’s inner city. The “shopping district” is referred to simply as “Jeppe,” by the shopkeepers and shoppers, with Jeppe Street forming the backbone of the movement route.

    The story that unfolds is one of ingenuity and innovation that shouts “Africa” in all its boldness. The shoppers at the centre of the story are mostly women, who brave long distances, threats to their security, and language barriers, to trade and shop for clothing which they then transport back home to sell to their customers. In some instances these women operate as an equivalent to a multi-national corporation in the way that their orders come from far and wide and so do their suppliers. Facebook adverts are placed and Whatsapp orders are taken before a trip, after which the women will make the lengthy bus-trip down from Zambia, Angola, Mozambique, and other countries, and after arriving in Joburg, will spend a day “sourcing”, collecting various prices and then returning once the decision has been made on what to buy. The items are then wrapped and transported back to their hometowns. Face-to-face customer contact is essential for sales, as is face-to-face contact with the products. It is vital for business that the quality of the fashion products is tested in person before making a purchase.

    Despite an estimated ten billion rand being spent by cross-border shoppers a year in the inner city (the equivalent to the annual turnover of two Sandton City shopping centres), there is much that is cause for concern. The security threats that these women face are worse than in other African cities, such as Dar es Salaam or Gaborone, and many of these threats come from the “metros,” the Johannesburg Metro Police so nicknamed by the shoppers. The metro’s are also raiding Shopkeepers, who have since responded with roller shutter doors which can rapidly seal off a building should the “hushed” signal ripple through Jeppe when JMPD cars stop. Furthermore, Dubai, China and Tanzania are proving to be viable alternatives for cross-border shoppers, with some items being cheaper and the environment being less threatening.

    Johannesburg. Made in China is an enthralling read, one that enters into narratives that have not been as publicised as they deserve, and also one that ends with a warning, an urge to take stock of the moment and make Joburg the city that it could be. With cross-border shopping being an incredible revenue stream into the city, the challenge posed by the book is one that should make city officials sit up and take notice.

     

  • The tension between the private and the personal

    Łukasz Horbów is a 22 year-old performer and multidisciplinary artist from Poland. His works, which can be accessed through his tumblr blog, are an exploration of his own body. He begins with pictures of his own body, taking grainy, black and white photos into which he cuts and draws, also using the photographs as objects themselves which can be moved around and reassembled as a form of collage. He defines his project as an attempt to form a “harmonious whole.”

    The question at the centre of this work is whether this is merely a formal device to create pretty pictures with body parts, or whether there is a critical value to this mode of practice. With the body being a central theme in art through the ages, in contemporary art it is specifically contested, particularly in the realms of representations of bodies by artists. This then plays into the socio-political realms where questions around bodies being policed by others and notions of beauty have an impact on the values and prejudices that a society holds. Despite the body being a highly contested issue, and perhaps because of that, contemporary artists continue to engage with this. However navigating these tricky terrains means that one has to create strategies for dealing with the various issues that arise as a result. In Horbów’s work for example, a strategy at play is to use his own body in addressing these issues.

    Speaking on his choice to do so, he says, “I refer to my body as something alien, not harmonious with me. I don’t create unity with him, but instead treat my body in my works and in life as a tool, a medium by which I can create something.” Perhaps there is a desire for transcendence at play as well, a desire to surpass the limits of humanness, something that has plagued humans since the beginning. To this end Horbów expresses that his desire is “to find things / forms that I had not previously been able to give and that my body did not have before.”

    Whilst this strategy may allow him to enter into the realm of body politics in contemporary art, a new challenge arises; that of the private versus the personal. By these terms I mean the private to mean that which is relational only to you, and the personal to mean that which can be related to by others. Therefore, the challenge facing Horbów’s work is whether his notions of the body, and of a “harmonious whole,” can be shared and explored by others in a way that they can relate to.

  • Interwoven Narratives in the work of Alexis Peskine

    Alexis Peskine is an internationally renowned artist attracting a lot of attention for his incredible large-scale portraits of powerful black figures intricately rendered by hammering nails into wooden boards (what has now been coined as acupainture). Coming from a mixed heritage, he uses his art to make comments on identity and race within a global context. His use of nails has been linked to that on the Minkisi “power figures” of the Congo basin. But beyond cultural references, the tension embedded in the nail as an object that both has the possibility to build and destroy places the figures depicted in a similar state of tension. The very tension of an object forcefully inserted into another allows for the very aesthetically and formally pleasing work to become charged with meaning and possibility. Themes of immigration and the tensions of growing up mixed-race in a somewhat homogeneous society such as France have begun to permeate his practice as Peskine draws a wide range of different mediums and materials into his body of work.

    Image from ‘The Raft of Medusa’

    The much acclaimed exhibition of work titled ‘The Raft of Medusa’, shown at Dak’Art ‘16 showed a new and exciting direction in Peskine’s practice. The multimedia installation featured video, sound, photography, as well as paintings on three dimensional objects (a carriage and a canoe) in his signature acupainture style. There were exciting moments that emerged which began to bridge fashion and art, specifically in Peskine’s use of the now globalised Ghana Must Go bags as a carrier for meaning. Figures clad in high-fashion-like assemblages of these bags wander the beach, stare far off into the distance or pose as the hawkers selling key-ring versions of famous landmarks to the tourists of Europe. Addressing themes of globalisation and colonialism through these carefully constructed images has allowed Peskine not only to highlight social issues, but to challenge the narratives constructed around these issues. The figures he depicts are strong individuals, and just as the Eiffel Tower looms behind the figure in the image so the challenges of inequality and racism still loom large, and are impossible to ignore. However, the presence of these issues does not detract from the strength of the individuals facing them.

    Image from ‘The Raft of Medusa’

    There is an elevation taking place through Peskine’s work, both in the use of materiality, and in the figures he portrays. Especially powerful is the aforementioned image from the ‘Raft of Medusa’ series (referencing the historically famous painting by Gericault), positing the figure in a number of different registers for the viewer to read. Just as the Ghana Must Go bag interweaves different coloured strands, so a street-vendor selling curios, a kingly figure adorned with a crown of gold and holding a sceptre, a mighty warrior, and a Christ-like figure, are interwoven to give us insight to the complex visual language at play in Alexis Peskine’s work.

    Carriage from ‘The Raft of Medusa’

  • Kyra Papé – Between Seduction and Sickness

    Bulbous and sickly-looking forms installed at The Point of Order during the Situation exhibition in 2016 both enticed and disgusted viewers. Having encountered the work of emerging artist, Kyra Papé for a while within the Joburg art scene, I decided it was time to have a chat and try to get a deeper understanding of a studio process which puts her as the artist at  a rather serious health risk.

    Could you elaborate on your use of sugar as a material/medium that fuels your practice?

    My initial engagement with sugar was a rather intuitive response while making. I was busy making a sculpture in the kitchen, using a blowtorch, and I decided to grab the pot of sugar. It has been a part of my process since. Its complexity in meaning in my practice however has developed considerably over the years.  Sugar, as a material, embodies a deeply personal and vulnerable corporeal relationship that I have with food. At the root of it all I have an extremely sensitive body with numerous allergies and intolerances. My very first allergy was and remains to this day, lactose, the sugar found in milk. Over the years, my body’s increasingly become more vulnerable to other materials, namely: sugar – (Lactose, fructose and sucrose), dairy, gluten and sulphonamides. Sugar abjects me, my relationship with it is violent and aggressive yet, I am obsessed with it. I am fascinated by it as a material in all its facets and continuously explore its alien existence with my body on a daily basis.

    ‘ISL01’ 2017 by Kyra Papé

    As an artist working with sugar, once the work has been made and is exhibited outside of yourself, what sort of contexts are you placing the works in and what sort of titles are given to them? I’m trying to get an understanding of what sort of inroads you give to a viewer to understand your work within the broader context of culture and society, apart from the particular narrative you have personally with sugar?

    The main inroad I use is through installation and the relation of the works physically to the viewer.  I allow the viewer to touch my sculptures. I find their disturbance of the clean white spaces quite intriguing. As my sculptures are messy and sticky, often an unwanted aspect in a gallery space, I find them to be absorbing of people’s need to touch in a ‘no touching’ space. The sensorial aspect of the sugar in my odd creations invites the viewer into the space of the work however remains repulsive to them simultaneously. The viewer’s own embodiment prompts a push and pull with the forms through the uncanny relation between themselves and the forms.

    To be a ‘child’ again, desperate to touch this ‘thing’ that you are told you are not allowed to but are now actually allowed to, draws me in as a maker into understanding the role of material. While the works are rooted in a complex personal embodiment, sugar is a material understood cross-culturally to carry meaning in varied contexts, although I never overtly state that the works are sugar, it is always in the labelling of the works. Essentially I am through my own personal avenue of exploration, inviting the viewer to experience and explore the complexity of sugar, nevertheless it is their individual experiences of the sculptures and prints that carry the most nuanced meaning for me.

    ‘Untitled (Conversation)’ 2016 by Kyra Papé

    What has your research component in your Master’s focused on and how has that had an impact on your studio practice? 

    My masters focuses on material in relation to sculpture and printmaking. I am engaging with the validity of the use of an autobiographical and auto-ethnographical approach as a means of research through the production of a creative body of work. I am also exploring the role of the material, the object and the thing, and how their existences challenge boundaries. I have situated my focus on the process of making less. It is vital for me that the sugars impermanence leaves the sculptures in states of flux, never really being complete. The research component of my work has challenged me to be more critical of my own presence in the making and to claim the personal as a necessary avenue in why I do what I do. Vulnerability is not so easily faced and the theoretical process in relation to the work has allowed me as a maker to explore on a deeper level the nuances of my making.

    What do you see the relationship between drawing and sculpture to be in your own practice and what sort of role do your drawings have?

    The drawings are a fairly new exploration in my practice and I am still engaging with their role in terms of my sculptures. Practically, they are exploring further the behaviour of ink and sugar when the boundaries are disturbed that I have been engaging with. The main pull for me at the moment however is the alien-like quality of the forms. I am intrigued by how their delicacy invites the viewer intimately into the drawing, yet maintains a peculiarity.