Absolutely Gordon Froud - Michael Coulson meets up with the Gordon Froud of Gordart

It’s been a busy few months even for a workaholic like Gordon Froud. Not only has he put together not just one, but two, dazzling exhibitions in part-fulfilment of his master’s degree at the University of Johannesburg (where he also teaches); for the second time in two years his gordart gallery has had to move after finding that a landlord’s view of a reasonable rental was incompatible with the earning power of an art gallery.

Mind you, Froud is used to a work schedule that would make most blench. “I come from a poor white background. At one time while I was studying I had five jobs. Nobody told me that sort of thing couldn’t be done. It’s all a question of time management.” And, he admits, a metabolism that requires less sleep than most people.

What he sees as chapter three (“And, I hope, the last”) of gordart’s history entails a move to Johannesburg’s Parkwood art strip. It’s smaller than either of his former premises in Melville, and when I last visited him in Melville he was agonising over which artists he’d scheduled for this year could no longer be accommodated.
Partly as corollaries to this, he
sees two other possible consequences of the move. First, he hopes a smaller gallery with, in effect, fewer shows will be less
time-consuming and allow more opportunity for creating art; secondly, a shift in approach. “I’ve always seen gordart as a developmental gallery,” he says, a philosophy that goes all the way back to the early 1990s when he ran the ICA gallery in Newtown. “Several artists who had their first showings with us have gone on to mainstream galleries. We made the initial investment but others benefited from the resultant higher prices.
“That model is no longer viable. While we’ll always remain a developmental gallery, for financial reasons we need a change in focus. So we’re starting to develop a stable of four or five artists who’ll stay with us after they become established.”

Froud didn’t set out to become a gallerist, or even an artist, though he admits that as a child he was always making things out of everyday objects. The only way he could finance post-matric studies (he matriculated in Germiston in 1981) was by a bursary. The old Transvaal Education Department offered bursaries in maths and art, but insisted he study art – a
subject he took up only in his matric year - where the lack of teachers was greater.
“My parents would have preferred me to become a lawyer or an accountant, but eventually they realised my heart wasn’t in it, and relented.”

Froud trained as a realist sculptor under Peter Schutz at Wits, learning all the traditional techniques. But for five years after he graduated in 1986 he created nothing. “I couldn’t afford traditional materials, but my interest in unusual materials developed, encouraged by the likes of Karel Nel.”

Cups, cutlery, wine glasses, toothpicks and coat hangers, mostly in plastic, all became grist to his mill. He’s proud that his first plastic cup show, in Paris in 2000 during his residency at the Cite des Arts International (later replicated at the African Window, in Pretoria), was one of the first of its kind.

By the time of his master’s shows last year, though, he’d progressed from using literally found objects to being a major buyer of these items.

He sees no conflict in his roles of artist and gallerist. “Up to now I’ve sold my work through other galleries, but that may also change.”
And while he agrees that the art market is in for a difficult year, he doesn’t believe Johannesburg is over-galleried. “We’re continually having to turn away artists who want to exhibit. And on the other side of the picture, we have our own market. We don’t appeal to the millionaires or the corporate market. Our market is the up-and-coming 30- and 40-year-olds, with pockets to match.”

Let’s hope he’s right; if he isn’t, the repercussions will be felt far beyond the art market.