ART PIG: ALEX DODD
The summer is nearly over, but temperatures are close to sizzling on the Joburg art scene in the run up to the second FNB Joburg Art Fair, three solid days and nights of visually driven mingling, oogling, assessment and acquisition, that kicks off on Friday (3 April) at the Sandton Convention Centre. Despite reports of a faltering international art market, FNB has renewed its commitment to the contemporary art scene in Africa, and 26 galleries have signed up to be part of what promises to be a blockbuster showcase of contemporary visual culture. FNB’s backing makes a sweet kind of sense when you figure that the bank’s head of sponsorship is none other than Francois Pienaar. Yes, the very same Francois Pienaar that captained the Springboks in their moment of transcendent World Cup glory back in 1995, and who is now being played by Matt Damon starring opposite Morgan Freeman (as Nelson Mandela) in the Warner Brothers film based on the John Carlin book Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation.
I take succour in the idea that it’s the same dude that helped to bring this nation together through the universal language of sport in ’95 that is now, at an equally tumultuous time in this country’s history, helping to keep us together through the medium of art. Art doesn’t yet have the pulling power of rugby, but I bet that most of those involved in the arts in this country will testify to the bolstering power of creativity in the face of the political cynicism and mean-spiritedness that seems to be engulfing South Africa right now. Personally, I might already have chosen to live elsewhere if it weren’t for the wild inventiveness of this country’s artists and writers. It might be some time (think Salvador Dali’s dripping clocks) before we see an art event receive the same tumultuous support as a game at Loftus Versfeld, but I know that I am not alone in believing that the creative force of this country is even more powerful than a Springbok scrum in lockdown against the All Blacks.
Yet, earlier this year, one or two gallerists did express some anxiety at the Fair’s capacity to pull a significant audience of international buyers and art industry players. Luckily, those concerns were recently allayed with the advent of a watershed collaboration between the Joburg Art Fair and Puma. Creative, a platform that connects the creative world globally. The partnership with the ultra-hip global streetwear brand was forged by none other than Mark Coetzee. Yes, the very same Mark Coetzee who used to run the Mark Coetzee Fine Art Cabinet in Cape Town in the late Nineties. After eight years directing the ultra-prestigious Rubell Family Collection in Miami, Coetzee is now chief curator of Puma.Creative and is based in Nairobi, because of his will to expand the Puma.Creative projects planned in Africa, and focused on the 2010 World Cup.

So what does that mean for the Art Fair? And what does it mean for participating artists? To start with, Puma.Creative will be flying about 60 leading art world operators to Johannesburg to soak up the Art Fair action. On Thursday night, it will be hosting an invitation-only dinner at the plushly revamped Rosebank Hotel to celebrate the launch of the Creative Africa Network and the opening of the Fair. Basically, by my gleaning, this means is that, amid the usual suspects and the freshly curious general public circulating around the stalls of the Fair, there will also be a crew of highly sussed and connected international art world figures, who’ll be checking what they dig and who they might be interested in making big. Hey, best case scenario, this year’s Fair might just offer the same kind of global boost to selected careers as the first and second Johannesburg Biennales.

It’s a pity that all those VIPs missed out on the event I was lucky enough to attend in Soweto last night. Artist/director Sue Pam Grant and composer Xoli Norman’s Guard on Shift, presented by jozi art: lab, was initially presented to great acclaim at the Dance Factory late last year. But this open-air rendition was one of those rare, tingly happenings that confirm my belief in the quirky imaginative genius of this country’s artists. After watching the sun set like a blazing orange ball of fire over the mine dumps and ghettoes of southern Joburg, we arrived at the empty monolithic Walter Sisulu Square of Dedication at nightfall. The event didn’t take place in this grand state-sanctioned monument, but in an unassuming graffiti-spritzed lot around the corner. We arrived on the scene just as the trumpeter blasted his first plaintive notes across the square, infusing a tone of pained jazz into the night. And then the songstresses opened up their chests and sang…

They were dressed as washerwomen and stood on wooden boxes in a maze of security fencing, but they could also have been angels, loosening and cleansing our history of its dark stains. It was a surreal and magical event in which people wandered amidst the ‘high-security’ maze entering the solitary consciousnesses of the security guards who protect our suburbs day in and day out… I would have mourned the fact that something so poignant was experienced by so few, but luckily the event was recorded as part of a documentary film project spearheaded by jozi art: lab’s Indra Wussow and Wonderboy Peters. And there is a possibility of a reprise for the World Cup in 2010. Like the performance of William Kentridge’s 9 Films at the Old Fort on Constitution Hill, these are the moments of tender sublimity that more South Africans deserve to experience.