Peter Machlen - The Art Cowboy

Artists often feel that they are a hard-done-by bunch. But they should all thank their lucky stars they’re not a musician in Durban. It’s a sentiment I’ve often quietly expressed to myself as some gifted musical talent gets ignored or derided (usually the former) by an audience more intent on other things. And it was a sentiment that rose to the surface once more at the opening of the KZNSA Member’s Exhibition a few weeks ago where Musa Queen Njoko and her band were performing their radiant brand of afropop as part of the evening’s entertainment. Gallery audiences generally have no problem staying silent for long and dreary speeches (which is not to say that all opening speeches are long and dreary) and I thought they might find it in themselves to at least lower their voices. But no such luck. In Durban, where there is often so much cross-discipinary creativity, audiences often tend to be fairly segmented according to their favoured media. And so no-one bothered listening, instead raising their voices to talk over the gorgeous tunes.
Despite the rudeness to Njoko, the opening was a hugely successful event, emphasising what a wonderful contemporary space the KZNSA is, and moving it slightly closer to my dream cultural centre, London’s ICA, where film mixes with music, art, dance and architecture, all in a beautiful social blend, and with a damn fine bar thrown in. And where people listen to the music.
Local group shows always bring in generous crowds – the presence of all the artists and their mates pretty much guarantees this – but a substantial portion of the crowd at the gallery were there to view one of Andries Botha’s famed wooden elephants, which was spending a few weeks in the KZNSA’s Nivea Gallery before making its way to the lucky person who commissioned it.

Botha’s elephants have achieved something of a legendary status, which is appropriate since their scale, their construction – in fact everything about them – has the ethos and residue of legend. But it’s also because so few people have actually seen them. For many this was a chance to witness something which had hitherto occupied small jpegs and mpegs on the internet. This particular elephant, measuring 2.2metres high, the size of a female adolescent, seemed to me more organic and less structured than the versions I’d seen in cyberspace but perhaps that’s the nature of the real. The public loved them, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen an artist in Durban so beleaguered by people eager to discuss his or her work.
In the moments between, Botha and I discussed briefly the power of this work, how the experience of being in its vicinity was primary in comparison to any kind of intellectual discourse about it. Which led me to thinking about how so much sculpture operates in a different realm to two dimensional art. Because we experience it in fluid space and time – as opposed to the contraction of space and time that defines non-moving flat imagery – the representational aspects of sculpture tends to disappear into the visceral and we stop asking “what does this mean?” Of course, we know that the wooden elephant is a copy of a real elephant, but we ignore that knowledge as we experience this elephant in front of us, as we move around it and our perspective changes. And I think we tend to do the same thing even when sculpture and installation drips with cryptic meaning.

In the months that I have been writing this column, I have devoted a a perhaps disproportionate number of column inches to the work of public artist Doung Jahangeer. And I’ll try to refrain from mentioning him for at least a few months after this. But first I’ve got to pass on the news that Jahangeer’s submission for the large-scale public sculpture outside the refurbished Ellis Park Stadium was successfullly selected from five of Southern Africa’s finest artists. The work, which like Botha’s elephants, maintain the primacy of experience over discourse, will stretch twelve metres into the air and occupy a new pedestrian space between Ellis Park and Jo’burg Stadium. Its simple but structurally complex design includes a giant globe at its centre, through which people will be able to walk , and on top of which a young boy is flying two kites and a young girl is kneeling at a river which flies into the sky. The finished work will no doubt be breathtaking if Jahangeers’ models and sketches are anything to go by, the work’s charm and naked sentiment offering up an antidote to our cynical times.

Finally, I’ve also mentioned Richard Hart recently, referring to his beautiful painting at the Big Woods group show at ArtSpace Durban several months ago. It was Hart’s first showing of one of his paintings in a formal gallery space and the work earned a full page in SAAT. In the months since then, he has been painting prolifically, and later this month he will present his first solo show at whatiftheworld in Cape Town. I’m lucky enough to have seen most of the paintings and just thinking about them puts a broad and
serene smile on my face. Almost movingly surreal, the painting all feature women carrying a variety of animals in the pouches of their
dresses, some of which were designed by much-loved Durban designer Amanda Laird Cherry. If you’re anywhere near Cape Town on the 25th of Feb, don’t miss the unveiling of this fresh new talent.