Zavick & Ulric's washline fire burns brightly - South African Art Times

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Rip, Stitch, Mix and Burn: Zavick Zaroff Botha and Ulric Roldanus set fire to a washing line piece, entitled “Fresh Laundry”, Llandudno Beach, 21 November 2008 Rip, Stitch, Mix and Burn - Zavick and Ulric Remix Sculpture y David Robert Lewis HEN early 20th Century ritic of psychoanalysis Karl Kraus roclaimed, in his attack against reud and the Austrian school: From now only piracy will be ermitted,” he was merely answerng the terrifying problematic which merican, Ralph Waldo Emerson ad previously delineated: “It s as difficult to appropriate the houghts of others, as it is to nvent,” consequently all forms of ppropriation, whether they be the utright theft of the remix pirate, he anti-hierarchic nomadism of he schizophrenic or the mashup ulture of the hip-hop musician, re all really just comments on the rtistic process we call invention. o be alive in the maelstrom f today’s insanely literary pop ulture, to write about art, is to isk offending highbrow critics ho maintain theory is the sole rerogative of the academic, that ny discourse is invariably that of he Western Canon vs the Other nd all activities, including the ctivity of art should, and can only e, understood from within the ealm of polite bourgeois society, hrough a lens provided by doestic homeland safety security egulations, 2010 soccer stadiums nd a city by-law prohibiting urinaion, belching, farting in public and oxious odours? ake Zavick Zwaroff Botha and lric Roldenaus’ recent collaboraive excursion into the public art rena. A series of washing lines hat have appeared across the ity, from Gugulethu to Thibault quare, The Kramat to Slave onument on Church, echoing he earlier interventions by Garth rasmus and Victor Peterson, ho erected a simple Washing ine over a decade ago, during he 1996 District Six sculpture estival: “The need to remember very detail of what has been lost aunts those who have lost it: the nstinct of the amputee to exercise he absent limb. The urgent desire o re-establish the security of what s known and familiar; of that which eminds you of yourself, and says o others that you exist.”(1) Fresh washing” by the non-existnt, the absent stage like Jan Van chalkwyk’s landscape entitled: For more info and review: http://davidrobertlewis.wordpress.com ‘Kassiesbaai Washing Line’, a poor imitation of an earlier Constable, who no doubt would also have issues with who did the laundry when, and in what order. Servant, worker, waterman, thief. Looking at art through detergent is like examining the proverbial water closet. How much has changed, in power relations and the strength of OMO, since the first troglodyte dreamt up this most laborious of practices and then proceeded to paint and sculpt the end product - forgetting about our rights to a living wage, or the problem of not owning the means of production which in turn produced what we like to refer to as visual art? “In the Netherlands we don’t have laundry lines, says Ulric, over an Amstel at the Obscafe, here I encountered these lines again...” My carefully crafted notes are rendered into meaningless laundry list by a group art exhibition held later at Michael Stevenson, requiring the writer to decipher hieroglyphics, code by Sun Ra. “I have vandalised my work,” offers Zavick who expresses a penchant for quilting and embroidery. Incisions into the cultural landscape of Cape Town that beckon us all to take cognisance of the process of bricolage, elucidated by the grand semiotician Roland Barthes in the Empire of Signs - the artist as revolutionary DIY, an eternally recurring and everpresent ‘nowever’amidst a clusterbomb of found objects or objets trouves. When all one has is a box of lion matches, and an Amstel, a bonfire will do. Rip, Stitch, Mix and Burn, with the type of arson that is required to turn theory of the haphazard, into chance, extraordinary aggregate of molecular love, incendiary performance art, nocturnal emissions of toxic fumes, the nightly annihilation of self practised by practitioners of Butoh and advocates of Zen. I encounter the quilty duvet inspired: “Washing line”, (there can only be one, all of the rest are replicas) strung between two poles on Llandudno beach. Zavicks laundry is caught up in moral exegesis on the joys of igniting the Atlantic sunset with gaseous plumes, offending a bunch of art directors who are trying to shoot a Thomas Cook travel commercial. I am a tourist trapped in a Swedish movie by Russian film director, Andre Tarkovsky, you know the one – Sacrifice – all time best picture & f-ck Ingmar Bergman. Supa’dog’s underpants are now being sacrificed with a long slow burn that is caught on multi-dimensional digital chips and filtered back to those of you who live in the future – Ozzy Osbourne burning a guitar like Jimi Hendrix in a remix scene from Francis Ford Coppolla’s Apocalypse Now -- the attack on bourgois art theory has begun, still we are living in a pastiche of cross-referential excess. What one desires, or needs is 50seconds of WaWaWa, how many WWWashinglines were set on fire? According to Wikipedia Washingline fires have started to catch-on. The fire department is worried. The mayor is no longer taking calls, but wants a ban on laundromat bonfires in place before 2010. With all this laundryline sampling art, what next? A soap commercial from Pears and Mary Quant? Could soap become the next bubble, as highbrow executive art galleries are doomed to reproduce in comic detail the artefacts of the day, (mortgage bonds, class traitors) what could be considered theatre in the round dished up to the well-healed, the sartorial few who live on sushi lunches and demand easily digested, and saleable pap for bread. The only solution lies in a total denial of any form of representation. In the same way it is impossible to identify the water that forms a river because a river can only exist by the grace of its movement. The sphinx has spoken. To the death of art and an ode to its destruction. (1) Emma Bedford and Tracy Murinik Re-membering that place- public projects in District 6. District 6 Public Sculpture Exhibition 1996. [David Robert Lewis has written art reviews for the Cape Times. His involvement in visual arts includes, Gallery Mau Mau, Sub Liberation Underground, Invisible Graffiti, Human Etchings, amongst other things] Nicola Danby, director of Artinsure – former head of BASA; Dr Fred Scott, well-known art collector and speaker at the event; with Gordon Massie, MD of Artinsure who has brought his international expertise to South Africa and partnered with Hollard to deliver specialist insurance for investors in art. Bottem: (left to right) Lee-Ann Dobrescu, Operations Manager of Hollard Insurance Partners; Clive Kellner, head of the Johannesburg Art Gallery and Gordon Massie, MD of Artinsure Art is big business and growing steadily despite financial world crashs There has been an unprecedented growth in the value of art globally and South Africa is keeping pace, said Nicola Danby, director of Artinsure – formerly head of BASA. She was speaking at a recent event held by Artinsure and Hollard in Johannesburg to discuss the ‘value of art in the South African context’ with leaders in the field who gathered to hear art insurance expert, Gordon Massie and well-known collector Dr Fred Scott talk on the subject. “Latest annual figures of global art sales are $25 billion with a 19% increase in value last year, particularly in contemporary pieces created from 1960 onwards,” MD of Artinsure, Gordon Massie, said. He pointed out that the last time the financial world crashed in the 80s the value of art crashed with it. “But this time the development has been different with the art world being bolstered by investors from Middle East Royal Families and BRIC countries: Brazil, Russia, India and China who have been buying high value works in spite of the shaky situation in the financial world.” An example of this, he said, was the fact that Damien Hirst opened his solo show the day after the Lehman Brothers crash and AIG rescue plan and netted himself a profit of $200 million. “Whilst there is evidence of a correction taking place, Art continues to sell as evidenced in recent sales. At a major sale I was at in early November an investor said to me ‘You would not believe there is a credit crunch going on out there!’” Massie says good news for local investors is that well known South African artists are also becoming international brands and the local market is experiencing significant increases in values. As an example, he explained that if a South African investor in art had spent 100 Euros on an Irma Stern work in 1997, today it would be worth 1500 Euros. “As art develops into a truly attractive investment, owners need to be sure that their insurer appreciates the true value of their art works. There have been recent examples where claims were inexpertly handled. For instance in one specific example, a R12 million painting by a well known South African artist was stolen and due to lack of expertise, the insurer offered to replace this premier painting with another painting by the same art ist. The trouble was the intended replacement painting only had a market value of R500 000. Underwriting and evaluating art is a specialist area and collectors need to be sure they are protected effectively against loss by people who understand the art world and true market values.” Massie also demonstrated by using true examples that fire is the biggest risk to artwork followed by accidental damage and then water damage. “Whilst theft is a risk the probability of a theft is lower than these three risks,” Massie said. Photo: Ryszard Kasiewicz Artistic Director of Documenta 13 Announced The curator Carolyn Christov- Bakargiev, and author of the very first monograph on William Kentridge, has been selected as the artistic director of Documenta 13, scheduled for June, 2012, in Kassel, Germany. The CEO of Documenta and the Fridericianum museum, Bernd Leifeld, announced that the supervisory board of Documenta unanimously agreed to her appointment, following a proposal by the international ‘finding’ committee. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev is one of a new generation of international curators and art commentators on the fast track. She is familiar with South African art, mainly through her association with William Kentridge, whose local retrospective of 2004 she co-curated. She has just had a major international success as artistic director of the Sydney Biennale, but is based at the Castello di Rivoli museum of contemporary art in Turin as chief curator. From 1999 to 2001 she was at the PS1 contemporary art centre in New York. Christov-Bakargiev graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pisa, Faculty of letters and philosophy, in 1981. Her master thesis was on the relation between contemporary poetry and painting. Her appointment to the highly-visible, globally-influential post as director of Documenta 13, comes with high kudos. The ‘finding’ committee reads like a who’s-who of the contemporary art world: Joseph Backstein (director, Institute of Contemporary Art, Moscow), Manuel J. Borja-Villel (director Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid), Kathy Halbreich (associate director Museum of Modern Art, New York), Paulo Herkenhoff (formerly director of Museu Nacional Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro), Oscar Ho (Chinese University of Hong Kong), Udo Kittelmann (director Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt), Kasper König (director Museum Ludwig, Köln), Elizabeth Ann Macgregor (director Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney) and Rein Wolfs (artistic director of the Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel).
Michael Coulson From studying grassland sciences in Pietermaritzburg to promoting international art events may not sound a logical career path, but Ross Douglas, whose Artlogic company organises the Johannesburg Art Fair, makes it sound sensible enough. Though he didn’t complete that degree, after switching to philosophy and economics Douglas started his career in ecotourism, first in the Okavango and then Mozambique. When Mozambique’s tourism industry was slow to get back off the ground after the 1993 election, Douglas produced a documentary on the demobilisation of Frelimo and Renamo soldiers. He returned to SA the following year to make documentaries for TV channels like SABC’s 50-50 and National Geographic. When the burgeoning of witless reality TV slashed budgets for more worthy projects, he switched to making commercials and planning the long (and still!) awaited Great SA Film. This too ran up against budgetary constraints, but educated him in the basics of film production. Deciding on another fresh start, he persuaded William Kentridge to adapt his Soho Ekstein videos as an event with 35mm film production and live music. Presentations in New York, London, Berlin and Milan were a huge success, says Douglas, and emboldened their next venture: Kentridge wanted to stage his successful European production of Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute in SA. This required major corporate sponsorship. Douglas says he was turned down by Standard Bank, which was heavily involved in its Picasso & Africa exhibition, but was fortunate enough to bump into Paul Harris of FirstRand and Rand Merchant Bank. Banks were then in great shape and RMB, which had for years sponsored annual Starlight Classics concerts, was looking for further arts sponsorships. Harris as well as being an art collector of note, is also a shareholder in the Everard Read Gallery, so is au fait with both the aesthetic and commercial sides of the art market. In return for branding rights, RMB paid a fee and put up an unsecured interest- free loan. The production ended up costing R11.5m, and Douglas says “It broke even. We managed to pay RMB back in full – though it took time.” But, says Douglas, “One-off projects are a terrible business model. You can’t capitalise on them. So though Flute was a success – it sold out in both Jo’burg and Cape Town – we needed a sustainable business model that we could repeat every year. “We did some research and found that art fairs are popular internationally. An internet search identified 247 worldwide, before we stopped counting. I even went to Delhi to see how the Indian art market, which is estimated at US$750m a year, works. “It took some time for us to come up with a model that would work locally. Thanks to Harris, First National Bank then came on board as the major sponsor, followed by BMW and Telkom.” Douglas is not starry-eyed about why corporates sponsor the arts. “They need success at a number of levels. Sponsorship helps build the brand, in terms of both general awareness and social responsibility, and provides an opportunity for interaction with clients. “But too often in SA delivery doesn’t match up to the promises. The challenge is to keep a contemporary art event going to gain credibility and continuity, and we’re trying to do that.” He admits that times are hard, but is confident that the 2009 fair will build on this year’s. “There’s no doubt that we’ve grown the market. Six months after the event, one leading Cape Town gallery told us that 70% of his business was coming from people he’d met at the fair.” But he’s not resting on his laurels. As the Art Fair settles down, it should no longer demand all his time. He’s built up a great data base, and is looking for other ways to exploit it. Nor has he dropped his interest in ecology: his other passion is global warming, and with his partner Cobi Labuschagne he’s started Greenlogic, which he wants to become as important in the local green space as Artlogic is in art. Ross Douglas Ross Douglas
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Zavick & Ulric's washline fire burns brightly - South African Art Times

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