Wavescape
Art Board
Catalogue
2012
Introduction
The Wavescape Art Board Project has
been raising awareness and funds for ocean
related charities since 2005. Each year, we
invite artists to turn 10 signature surfboards
into works of art for an exhibition that ends
with an auction.
The Cape Town leg of the Project takes place in the City Bowl
in early December, and has been hosted by various contemporary art galleries, cafes and studio spaces over the years.
In September 2012, the Project launched in New York.
The main beneficiaries of the Project include the NSRI,
Shark Spotters and the Isiqalo Foundation.
Contributing artists include Conrad Botha, Beezy Bailey, Wim
Botha, Guy Tillim, Brett Murray, Conn Bertish, Justin Fiske,
Roger Ballen, Peter Eastman, Richard Scott, Gabby Raaff, ND
Mazin, Richard Hart, Anton Kannemeyer, Peter van Straten, Kim
Longhurst, Scott Robertson, Zapiro, Chip Snaddon, Mr Fuzzy
Slipperz, Varenka Paschke, and Osnat de Villiers.
These and many other artists have kindly donated their time
and talent to make the project the success that it is.
The Project is run by the Wavescape Surf Festival which
curates film, music and art events in South Africa, Reunion and
North America. The presenting sponsor in 2012 is Pick n Pay,
with support from Jack Black Beer, Save Our Seas Foundation
and Billabong.
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Art Board
Project 2012
The Artists
Guy Tillim
Peter van Straaten
Kim Longhurst & Scott Robertson
Wim Botha
One Love Studio & Isiqalo
Mr Fuzzy Slipperz
Brett Murray
Manuela Gray
Simon Berndt
Roger Ballen
The Boards
A John Whitmore surfboard forms the inspiration for the shape
used in 2012 shape. The vintage board was discovered in the
roof of shaper Dave van Ginkel's Kommetjie studio.
Affectionately known to South Africans as “Oom”, Whitmore
spent the better part of his life pioneering surfing, Hobie Cat
sailing, and bodyboarding on the southern tip of Africa from
the 1950s to the beginning of the 1990s. He is often referred to
as the father of surfing in South Africa.
The board shape comes from a time between the long and
short board eras when surfing was moving from the old to the
new. The shape measures 7ft 4" long and 23.5" wide with a 6"
handmade clear dolphin fin, and is shaped by Dave van Ginkel.
The Venue
The new Superette in the Woodstock Exchange, at 66 Albert
Road in Woodstock. The exhibition runs from 28 November to
5 December. The Auction evening is on 5 December and starts
at 8pm. If you would like to attend the auction please email
[email protected].
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Brett
Murray
Brett Murray remains one of South Africa’s
most renowned artists. Working mainly
with steel and mixed media sculpture, but
adept in any medium, Murray aims to
critically entertain through his work, which
often includes pop-culture imagery he
skillfully manipulates towards satire and
the subversive.
He is famously remembered this year for the controversial
Spear incident that captured media attention around the
world. Wavescape surf art fans may remember his 2006
work featuring a naked Bart Simpson with an erection, and
the words “I Love Africa!” Murray’s work has been exhibited
extensively in South Africa and abroad.
Murray is a full time artist and lives in Cape Town with his
wife Sanell Aggenbach and baby daughter, Lola.
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Guy
Tillim
Many critics regard Tillim as one of South
Africa’s most successful photographers.
As a press photographer he covered many conflicts while
working with Reuters between 1986 and 1988; Agence
France Presse in 1993 and 1994, and the Afrapix collective
until 1990.
Tillim has received many awards including the 2004
Daimler Chrysler Award for South African photography, the
Leica Oskar Barnack Award in 2005 and the first Robert
Gardner Fellowship in Photography from the Peabody
Museum at Harvard University in 2006.
His photographic series have been exhibited at some of the
world’s most prestigious spaces, including the Foundation
Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris; Museu Serralves in Porto;
FOAM_Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam; the Museum of
Contemporary Photography in Chicago in 2011 and the Tate
Modern.
The image on Tillim’s board was taken during his crossing
of the South Pacific in 2011 and forms part of his Second
Life body of work.
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Wim
Botha
“Cape Town-based artist Wim Botha is
more like a mad scientist than a sculptor.
He revives materials that were stale in their
connotations, visually latent from overexposure, glanced over but rarely seen. He
chops and hacks at them without regard
for their previous purpose, yet still manages
to honour the medium in his own way.”
Huffington Post
"My works are a process of distillations," Wim explains.
"They attempt to reduce all-encompassing ideas and
universal factors down to their core idea."
Botha has received many prestigious awards and his work
has been featured internationally in solo and group
exhibitions.
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Peter
van Straaten
Undeterred by an acute sensitivity to irony,
Peter van Straaten has been trying for 25
years to perfect his response to the enormity
and disarming absurdity of being human.
His only wish is to be left alone for another forty years to
continue this impossible task.
Thus far his quest has led to incidental participation in 50
group exhibitions and spawned 18 solo exhibitions, most
recently at the Irma Stern Museum, and at the Everard
Read Gallery, Cape Town.
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Roger
Ballen
Roger Ballen is a veteran photographer who
was born in New York City 62 years ago.
His collaboration in several of Die Antword’s
videos involving his paintings and sculpture
have gained him broad exposure globally.
In his early years, he documented small dorps or villages of
rural South Africa, moving on in the late 1980s and early
1990s to their inhabitants. By the mid 1990s his subjects
began to act where previously his pictures, however
troubling, fell firmly into the category of documentary
photography, his work then moved into the realms of
fiction. His fifth book ‘Outland’ produced by Phaidon Press
in 2001 was the result. In 2005, Phaidon press produced its
second book by the artist, entitled ‘Shadow Chamber’.
Ballen’s recent work enters into a new realm where images
are painterly and sculptural in ways not immediately associated with photographs.
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Mr Fuzzy
Slipperz
Lisolomzi Pikoli - otherwise known as
Mr Fuzzy Slipperz - is an independent
illustrator and artist from South Africa
currently residing in Johannesburg.
His works explore ideas around both the dream state and
outer body experiences through the theme Fantastical
Realism. His characters usually take the center stage in his
pieces and are guided by free forms, lines, shape, mark
making and pattern work – all of which contribute to the
prevailing story and theme behind his work. The characters
are representations of future African people; weary and
impatient with the new world.
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Simon
Berndt
Simon Berndt is the creative force behind
One Horse Town Illustration, a studio that has
won several prestigious accolades.
These include best stand at the 2009 Design Indaba Expo
and being nominated for Loeries in 2009 and 2010 for the
work they did for Saatchi and Saatchi on the “Travel with
Wordsworth” in-store campaign for Wordsworth Books and
the “Two Sides to every story” campaign for Cape Times
through Lowe Bull. The previous campaign was also a 2010
Cannes finalist.
After completing an honours in Graphic design at CPUT he
launched One Horse Town in 2009. He continues to deliver
his signature striking graphic illustration for a range of
clients, creatives and exhibitions both at home and abroad.
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Kim
Longhurst
(side 1)
Kim Longhurst believes that craft is next
to godliness. She is a mama, designer,
illustrator, painter, embroiderer, gardener,
purveyor of all things beautiful (and kitsch),
partner to Scott Robertson.
Her work has progressed from a shoe shine poster,
the side of a bus, an underground zine, packaging, posters,
t-shirts and book covers to publication in Martin Dawber’s
Big Book of Fashion. Kim has taken part in collaborative
exhibitions, curated an exhibition of seven of Durban’s top
illustrators and made a curious little solo show, more
cabinet of curiosities than traditional fine art.
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Scott
Robertson
(side 2)
Scott Robertson (a.k.a Dirty Sanchez)
combines a love of all things glamorous and
filthy (he calls it DirtyGlamourotica) with a
dedication to the purest principles of design.
Scott’s illustrations have appeared in diverse publications
ranging from i-Jusi, One Small Seed, SL, IdN and the
Design Indaba Magazine to the Leurzers Archive.
He has ridden the corporate bus, exhibited amoral
canvases, customised shoes and skate decks, been the
mysterious figurehead of a street wear label and is
presently developing a range of limited edition toys.
Always subversive, sometimes scandalous, never soft.
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One Love Studio
and Isiqalo
The One Love Studio from Muizenberg,
Cape Town, have collaborated with children
from Masiphumelele to create an art board
for the exhibition.
The unique workshop aims to boost consciousness through
art, such as photography, painting drawing and stencil
work. Their work in 2011 was admired by Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, and fetched R17,000 at the auction.
Proceeds of their work goes to the Waves For Change HIV
awareness programme, a project through the Isiqalo
Foundation that uses surfing to help disadvantaged youth.
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Manuela
Gray
Manuela Gray is perhaps South Africa’s
best-known and most sought-after tattoo
artist. Born in Jozi, Manuela moved to
Cape Town over 20 years ago where her
love of surfing and all things sea-like has
kept her ever since.
Throughout her career, Manuela has been a trailblazer in
raising the appreciation of tattoo art in the public eye.
In addition, her dedication to her craft has played a huge
role in elevating the artistry of many tattooists in South
Africa. She is the creator of the Cape Tattoo Expo, an
annual international festival which draws some of the
world’s best tattoo artists to our shores. And many of the
country’s best artists have learned their trade under her
watchful eye.
It is perhaps the contradictory nature of tattooing that has
kept her so devoted for so many years. To dedicate all of
one’s energy and focus creating such permanent art pieces,
only to have to let them go when they’re completed - this
appeals to Manuela’s Zen sensibilities (and, not incidentally,
her own contradictory nature). Manuela lives in Kalk Bay
with her husband Allan and her completely awesome 11
year-old daughter Tallulah.
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The Family
Board
Conn Bertish and Ross Frylinck have
collaborated on a project with the van Ginkel
and Whitmore families to see if a chain of
trust can extend across ocean, cultures
and continents.
Dave van Ginkel's precious, vintage 7,6" Whitmore
surfboard will be given to an unsuspecting recipient at the
Auction to surf, document and then share.
The Family Board needs to be back in Cape Town on 1
December 2013. A portrait of Oom John Whitmore will be
auctioned to raise funds towards documenting the project.
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Ways of
Seeing the
Surfboard-As-Art
Maybe it evokes the ‘dream’ of surfing, the expression of an “embodied experience
with an addictive tendency which may connect with a seemingly endless search
for some form of mythical perfection…” (2006, 1).
By Glen Thompson
Surfboard as Art
The annual Wavescape Art Board Exhibition and Charity Auction offers a space to
reflect on how the surfboard finds new meaning as a canvas. The purpose of the
board shifts to what artist and surfer Murray Walding calls the “surfboard-as-art”
(Raye and Strassburger 2011: 79) and throws up some intriguing ways of seeing art
in the act of surfing, and from the board itself.
A surfboard is also a cultural object infused with aesthetic and historical meaning.
The shape of the boards at this year’s exhibition draws inspiration from a surf
board shaped by John Whitmore in the 1960s, a time when the “shortboard
revolution” was stirring. It was a time, as recorded in Donald Paarman’s autobiog
raphy (2008), when surfers identified with the countercultural movements of the
time, and the “soul surfer” ethos resisted attempts to turn surfing into sport.
Surf art or surfboard art?
There is a difference. Surf art, as Andy Mason, cartoonist, author and surfer says is
“the art of attempting to capture the ocean in motion” (2011). It doesn’t matter on
what canvas. Surf history writer Matt Warshaw sees “surf art, then and now, has
never defined a particular school or style; it’s used instead as a catchall for any
kind of art associated with surfing” (2003: 572).
Surfboard art turns the surfboard into an artwork. However, American artist and
surfer Trina Packard says: “hanging it on a wall makes no sense. The best part about
art on a surfboard is that you can carry it around and use it. It’s not limited to a
gallery setting – the board becomes a transportable piece that is perceived in a
variety of ways” (Raye and Strassburger 2011: 120).
When you fuse the surfboard, which is art already through its shape, with artistic
expression, you take it from a dynamic and fluid ocean space and turn it into a
static object in a gallery. Looking on it as art is all very well, but somehow, because
it’s a surfboard, we get a vision that moves along a spectrum from the realistic to
the surreal. Perhaps it evokes the viewer’s experience of surfing, or ocean waves,
or the hyper-mediated consumption of the surfing lifestyle.
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The surfboard-as-art movement is a recent phenomenon. At a 2000 exhibition
at the Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts in San Francisco, Peter Schroff’s displayed
his Pink Whale, a cultural critique of surfing and American popular culture - “an
all-in-one deluxe surfboard loaded with a Schiltz beer tap, TV, palm fronds, and
chrome exhaust pipes” (Warshaw 2003: 572). Yet, it was the 2002 Laguna Art
Museum exhibit entitled “Surf Culture: The Art History of Surfing”, curated by
Bolton Colbert, that established surf art within the wider surf heritage market.
The dates correspond with local interest in the Wavescape Art Board project, which
started in 2005. To date, the auction, including the 2012 New York component, has
raised almost R1 million for three ocean related non-profit organisations. This shows
a growing local demand for surfboard artworks by our artists, some of whom,
such as 2012 contributors Brett Murray and Guy Tillim, have high public profiles.
In reflecting on my experience and observations of the auctions over the years,
there is now cultural capital to be gained in owning one of the boards’ on display
at the Wavescape Surf Art Exhibition.
This may be viewed askance by some, “it’s still a surfboard and it has to be surfed”
(Walding in Raye and Strassburger 2011, 79). I have done this on occasion and
surfed the Mak1 surfboard from the 2008 exhibition. It now stands in a corner of
my living room, the wax still on it, a merging of all three aspects of surf, board, art.
References
Ford, Nick and David Brown, Surfing and Social Theory: Experience, Embodiment and Narrative of the
Dream Glide. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.
Mason, Andy. Email interview by the author, 5 May 2011.
Paarman, Donald. Lunatic Surfer or Destiny: An autobiography of a Springbok…whaaat! Wilderness: Donald
Paarman, 2008.
Raye, Robynne and Michael Strassburger. Inside the World of Board Graphics: Skate, Surf, Snow. Beverly, MA:
Rockport, 2011.
Warshaw, Matt. The Encyclopedia of Surfing. Orlando: Harcourt, 2003.
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Credits
The Festival thanks the contributing
artists, Mark Sampson, Glen Thompson,
Conn Bertish, Fuel Design, Justin Fiske,
Sue Cooper, Prime Art, Jonx Pillemer, Steve
McDonald, Superette, our sponsors and
media partners, and the surfing community
of Cape Town.
Curation
Shani Judes, Ross Frylinck, Steve Pike
Graphic Design
Fuel Design
Illustration
Studio Muti
Photography
Jonx Pillemer
Essay
Glen Thompson
Contact details
wavescapefestival.com
[email protected]
+27 (0)84 6222 400
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