Thinking a-round
mapping sculpture
15 December 2011 - 29 February 2012
What about Thinking a-round?
W
J
ohn 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.
John Murray (born 1973)
Upapa Africana
2010
98,5 x 75 cm (image)
Charcoal, ink and gouache on paper
John Murray (born 1973)
Sunbeam
2010
98,5 x 75 cm (image)
Charcoal, ink and gouache on paper
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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 logistics 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 galleries, 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
List of artists
Conrad Botes
Marco Cianfanelli
Jaques Dhont
Sydney Kumalo
Brett Murray
John Murray
Phillip Rikhotso
Lyndi Sales
Claudette Schreuders
Egon Tania
Caroline van der Merwe
Edoardo Villa
Edward Zwane
Furniture by Allan Lutge
and Deon Viljoen
Conrad Botes
C
onrad Botes was born in Ladismith, Western Cape, and now lives and works in Cape
(born 1969)
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 Netherlands. 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
Anton Kannemeyer (born 1967) Kannemeyer co-founded the satirical socio-political
comic, Bitterkomix, now in its 16th edition. Initially
Mr and Mrs Boots
a controversial and taboo publication due to its
2002
explicit and abusive content (one issue was the first
64 x 51 cm
publication to be banned in post-Apartheid South
Silkscreen on paper
Africa), Bitterkomix is now commercially available.
Image courtesy of Stevenson
The publications are aimed at a South African,
Anton Kannemeyer ©
especially Afrikaans, audience – the artists’s own
generation essentially. Through their use of biting
Opposite page:
irony the artists comment provocatively on the
Conrad Botes
paradoxes of their Calvinistic upbringing during
Shoe Cabinet
the Apartheid regime. Botes’s work manifests his
2011
preoccupation with the role of the Dutch Reformed
127 x 76 x 32 cm
Church during Apartheid and the “repressive
Oak, reverse glass paint and
nationalist Christian values that still inform the
laminated marine plywood
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
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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 practioners 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 heightened 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.
Marco Cianfanelli
(born 1970)
Aggregate I-V
2009
243 x 28 x 28 cm (largest)
Bluegum, paint and laser cut steel
Aggregate sculptures on the
exhibtion courtesy of Goodman
Gallery, Cape Town
M
arco Cianfanelli was born in Johannesburg in 1970 and graduated with a distinction 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 sculpture: “Wine is a rich and complex phenomenon
that touches on an extensive array of other subjects,
which include art and history, religion and mythology, 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, fermentation, finishing and maturation. The branches bear
thousands of words, creating a visual representation
of the mystical complexity of wine, as well as a meandering 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.”
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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 legible, 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 interrelatedness 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 phenomenology. The words on each mast speak of anxieties,
insecurities, desires and obsessions of contemporary 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, contempt, 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 vine
2007 - 2010
372 x 934 x 160 cm
Laser cut 4,5mm and 6mm
grade 304 stainless steel
Making The mind’s vine, from intricate drawings and models to manufacture and installation
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Manufacturing and installation by Argo Weld
Photographs © Marco Cianfanelli and Julia
Meintjes Fine Art
Jacques Dhont
(born 1959)
J
acques 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 Hottentots-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 Australia, was first brought to South Africa for its commercial 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.
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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 is
2010
114 x 37 x 37 cm
Black wattle bark, metal and wood
Sydney Kumalo
(1935 - 1988)
Staff 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
S
culptor 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 offering 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 mentorship 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 characterised by the exploration and promotion of an African
aesthetic in contemporary South African art. “Guenther broadened their experience by introducing them
to German Expressionism as well as the sculptural
traditions of West and Central Africa. He familiarised 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
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shown at the Venice Biennale in 1966 and the São
Paulo Biennale in 1967.
Kumalo’s primary medium for modelling sculpture 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 contemporary 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 functional 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 represent dual aspects of the same being.
Edoardo Villa (1915 - 2011)
Untitled
1975
28 x 16,5 x 3,5 cm
Bronze; 4/6
Sydney Kumalo
Man and beast
1975
67 x 54 x 33 cm
Bronze on marble base; 5/5
The bronze casting process
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Casting at Renzo Vignali Foundry, Pretoria.
Photographs © Julia Meintjes Fine Art
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Brett Murray
(born 1968)
Africa
2000
330 x 150 x 150 cm
Bronze
B
rett 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 Stellenbosch’s Fine Art department, where he also taught for
four years. He won the Cape Town Urban Art competition 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 commission 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
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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 colonialism 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.
Angolan artist (Chokwe)
Mask
20th Century
38 x 26 x 14 cm
Wood, leather and cotton
Brett Murray
Layered coconut
2008
124 x 108 x 9 cm
Metal, powder-coating, silverleaf
paint and fools gold
Both works on the exhibition courtesy
of Goodman Gallery Johannesburg
Lice Phillip Rikhotso
(born 1945)
Lice Phillip Rikhosto in 2003
Photograph © Cathy Coates
P
hillip 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 exhibition. 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 Rikhotso’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 modern 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
imaginative. For example, he may integrate an animal 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 metamorphose from people into animals.” (Coates pg 42)
Left to right, all carved and painted wood, 2003:
Tall man with spotted jacket 65,5 x 14 x 19,5 cm
Man in spotted jacket 45,5 x 13,5 x 14,5 cm
Shy creature with horned teeth 35 x 22,5 x 13 cm
Bearded man with creature on his back 50 x 24 x 14 cm
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Lyndi Sales
(born 1973)
Detail:
159/259
Paper, vilene, bamboo, string, wood
L
yndi 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 surrounding the controversial Helderberg plane crash on 28
November 1987 in which her father died. The South
African Airways Flight 259 was bound for Johannesburg 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 flammable 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
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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 intricately 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.
159/259
2006 - 2009
300 x 328 x 15 cm
Paper, vilene, bamboo, string, wood; 3/3
Claudette Schreuders
(born 1973)
Paradise
Undated
31 x 43 cm (image)
Lithograph and chine colle on paper
C
laudette 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 communicated 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.
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“I think what I’m interested in is telling stories.
It’s portraiture, but it’s a vehicle for telling a particular 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 commissioned 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 possible 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’, simultaneously 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 development 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 figures
20th Century
36 x 7,5 x 6 cm
Wood
Claudette Schreuders
Bird in hand
2007
38,5 x 15,5 x 17 cm
Bronze; 15/20
Egon Tania
(born 1968)
Sculpture in progress:
Where would Woodstock stock
wood if Woodstock would stock
wood?
D
utch 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. Apartheid 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 “characterised 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.
28 / 29
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 combines 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 conventionally 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 conversation 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 accumulating 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)
2011
100 x 115 x 170 cm
Jacaranda, kameeldoring, poplar, pine
and vine
Tokara Winery
Crest of the Helshoogte Pass on the R310 between
Stellenbosch and Franschhoek
Telephone 021 8085900 | Email [email protected]
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.
art at tokara presented by
Exhibition open:
Monday 9h00 – 17h00
Tuesday – Saturday 9h00 until after dinner
Sunday 9h00 – 15h00
Exhibition and catalogue compiled by Ian Maree
and Julia Meintjes
Browse all works on the exhibition at
www.juliameintjes.co.za
Not all works on the exhibition are represented in
the catalogue.
Photography:
Anton Kannemeyer
Ian Maree
Mike Hall Photography, www.mikehall.co.za
Julia Meintjes
Simon O’Callaghan
Christl Roger-Lund
Jan Verboom Photography, www.janverboom.com
Deon Viljoen
Design:
Jan Erasmus, www.cybergraphics.bz
30 / 31
Clockwise from top left: Caroline van der Merwe,
19th century Calamander cabinet, Caesar Mkhize
and Thafa Dlamini, Ethiopian artists (three headrests), 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 - 30
Coates, K. 2005. Through glass darkly in Art South
Africa Vol 03 Issue 03 Autumn. pg 40 - 43
Dauskardt, R. 1992. JohannesburgThe Inner City in
South African Metropolitan Areas: Contemporary
Issues and Forward Strategies. Unpublished Report
for the Urban Foundation. Johannesburg
De Jager, E.J. 1992. Fort Hare University Press.
Goodwood. Images of Man: Contemporary South
African Black Art and Artists. pg 107 - 114
Jamal, A. 2004. Through glass darkly in Art South
Africa Vol 02 Issue 03 Autumn. pg 41 - 47
Garside, 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 - 35
Miles, E. 2004. The Ampersand Foundation,
Johannesburg. Polly Street: The Story of an Art
Centre
Nicol, M. 1999. Human and Rousseau, Cape Town.
“Sydney Kumalo” in They Shaped our Century:
The Most Influential South Africans of the
Twentieth Century. pg 451
Vestergaard, 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
20 / 30