bronze

The change I need

March 29th, 2009 | Posted in Newsletter | No Comments
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I miss pie, gravy and chips. It is now a distant and delicious memory from my childhood. I know that change is not only necessary but also desirable and so things move on. Perhaps this is easier to see in art and fashion than in politics but all need to be reinvigorated from time to time by new people and new ideas. The new regime, (as SA government is so often called) when it is elected in April, will hopefully be able to fulfil their election promises and artfully redirect South Africa to more noble and fertile grounds and bring a better life to all. Perhaps that way I will get some of the gravy.

My new work ‘Stand Up’ in cast bronze (Now at Strydom Gallery, George) is a socio-political work and as such is a fairly rare thing for me. I am not inclined to works of art that make such obvious statements, perhaps because I have very limited understanding of politics and even less understanding of politicians. However, every now and again I get swept up with the excitement and the possibility of political and social change and consequently make a work that is related. This work is inspired by the new optimism in America, the recent political events and the possibility of change in the looming election at home.

‘Stand Up’ owes something to the painting ‘Liberty Leading the People’ by Eugène Delacroix and contemplates an earlier revolution, a moment of hope and action in history, which was the civil uprising by the French in July 1830. The work of Eugène Delacroix inspired many subsequent works of art such as the ‘Statue of Liberty’ by the architect Frederic Bartholdi, (’Liberty Enlightening the World’ – its official name). Sentiments surrounding these works may be romantic but they are also noble, patriotic and a call to action. If you, like I, have a suffrage and have somehow missed the gravy, stand up and vote!

Change has also come to my sense of haute couture. I have not been on the cutting edge of fashion for nearly 20 years. However, in 1992 fashion embraced me. Washed out and torn jeans and baggy jerseys became stylish and popular. I was, for once, ahead of my time as that was my mode. This style, known as Grunge, suited my student pocket more than my aesthetic values. Professor Robert Brooks, my mentor, friend and fellow grunger encapsulated much of our fashion sensibilities when he commented on an art work put up for a critique at Rhodes University by saying that it, a shoe sole print on white paper, was “the presence of an absence of a presence”.

This comment may have had educational value in that it got the students thinking, but like so many statements made by the politicians, it also demonstrated to us that you can justify just about anything, including bad art. Generally, I am in the camp of voters who think that people who want to become politicians should be banned from public office as that is evidence enough that they are unfit to hold office. I am not thinking about the politicians’ justifications and I am not expecting them to fulfil their promises. I merely hope that a stronger opposition will be a motivating force for the general good.

Although I will be not be at the opening I will have a presence at the Strydom Gallery in George from 5-30 April in the Nothing New Exhibition which is designed to run in tandem with the Klein Karoo Nasionale Kunstefees (Klein Karoo National Arts Festival).

The title of the exhibition makes me think that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Perhaps for politics this is the case, but not so for my style as fashion has once again adopted me. On the weekends, at least, you will see me wearing my favourite brand of designer clothing. This has little to do with my wife’s ambition to change me. She was trained as a clothing designer and does have a sense of fashion and may have seen her role in our marriage as a style redeemer and me as a suitable candidate for her Pol Pot type of fashion re-education programme.

That re-education plan failed as I get my clothes from my cupboard and get dressed in the dark. The fashion for the day depends on which T-shirt is on the top of the pile. It tends to be the day before yesterday’s one as that was washed and put back on top of the pile. Occasionally someone else’s clothes have turned up in my pile and I have worn my daughter’s T-shirt and my wife’s panties. I would not have noticed except that they were both most uncomfortable.

Change has been foisted upon me by a combination of my wife throwing away the likes of my prized twenty year old Hendrix T-shirt and generous donations from my mate who works for the trendy clothing line, Volcom. The new clothing regime is a victory for my wife and she reminds me of how happy my grandmother was when she persuaded me to wear a safari suit. She told me that I looked very smart which like the politicians promise was a lie as I looked ridiculous. Part of that shopping excursion was a treat at the café where I chose pie, gravy and chips. Like that distant and delicious memory the new apparel gets my vote as it is a change I like.

Life imitates art

November 24th, 2008 | Posted in Newsletter | No Comments
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I am delighted to have sold my work ‘Directions’ to the Oliewenhuis Gallery in Bloemfontein. The value of this transaction is more than just being able to pay the rent. A public collection is a sample of our cultural heritage, an important part of tourism and has an important educational function. This is where works are most likely to be seen, provoke debate and exert an influence. It is also a wonderful feeling that my work is being taken seriously by the cognoscenti of Bloemfontein.

The purchase of ‘Directions’ is a more poignant success if you understand that the past several years have been difficult times for any public gallery in South Africa, as many have not had a purchasing budget. Their valiant efforts have relied on the ‘Friends’, tea rooms, donations and fundraisers for their pittances and are therefore sometimes priced out of the market. By contrast the city councils always seem to be able to afford a party. This underinvestment has seen many of our best works sold to foreign and private collections. At least 50% of my work goes abroad. In addition, there is the cultural and educational loss and now the lack of purchasing power will mean that the public sectors’ 2010 displays will be just that much less exciting.

It is thrilling that I have been approached to take part in the soccer world cup, but no, I am not a soccer player or even a great fan of football – though I once broke my arm playing the beautiful game. There will be an art component to this grand spectacle, and rightly so, and I will be participating. 2010 will be an opportunity for South Africans to show off and market all that this country has to offer, which will include its art. Generally, I think that our art could play a greater role in our tourism industry, especially if you consider that France’s 88 million annual visitors go there primarily for their art. Hopefully, a sincere effort will be made so that art is not seen as alternative entertainment for the soccer widows or as an option for the rainy and no match today days, but as it should be seen: an exciting, dynamic and integral part of South Africa.

My new work ‘Backflip’ (Now at Strydom Gallery) is about being caught unaware and thrown off guard. It is a sand cast bronze on which I have used a patina I have not previously tried. Although the medium of bronze has an authority, the works can be dull and boring, but I am pleased with this work as it is an interesting form with an exciting patina. A good patina is difficult to achieve and I usually have to rework the initial attempt in order to obtain a satisfactory result. I prefer this traditional method of finishing a bronze to the alternatives offered. In this work the overall colour is a purplish brown that has a green and blue lustre to it, something I would not be able to achieve with paint.

In an example of life imitating art this work illustrates what I did when I burnt myself. Part of the process of making bronzes is that I make the equipment I need and so I have been engineering steel boxes for my sand casts. They are welded with a gas welder and although I am a competent welder, my glasses, which I wear under the welding glasses, sometimes steam up and not being able to see properly, I get clumsy. It was at a moment like this that I fumbled. The filler rod cartwheeled into my lap, the molten tip was like a javelin slicing through my pants, through my underpants and seared into my, um, well, err, John Thomas.

The involuntary reaction was a back flip, though it was a lot less controlled and less acrobatic than it appears in my sculpture. I am now a connoisseur of pain and derision. My wife, regardless of my hurt and disfigurement, giggled like a teenage girl and despite my protestation that there was nothing to gain from or humorous about the situation, has refused to take it or me seriously ever since.

Love is in the genes

September 22nd, 2008 | Posted in Newsletter | No Comments
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My wife is away and contrary to the saying that the mice will play when the cat is away, it is all fetch, carry and cook for the children, to and from school, soccer, shopping and ballet. Whilst it is now obvious that I am going to appreciate her a lot more when she returns I am hoping that it will be the same for her. If, and when, she returns from her ceramics conservation courses somewhere in the Langkloof. I have learnt that we are engineered to sniff out a partner who is unlike oneself and thereby strengthening the gene pool. This rings true for our relationship and, like so many couples, we are as different as chalk is from cheese. I am not surprised that books on the subject have titles like ‘Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus’. I also understand that Afrikaans TV personality who called his female partner “Die Engelsman” (The Englishman). It illustrates the genetic joke played on our species. It seems that our partners are by design unlike us and therefore unlikely to be comprehensible to us nor are they likely to be comprehending of us. You could say they are from an entirely different culture and we are bewildered by one another.

In a cross pollination of culture this banana boy is going to Bloemfontein where I am to give a lecture and workshop and it has made me think of my connection with that part of the world. After my (original) father died we traveled from England to a farm called Langdraai, near Petrusberg which is half way between Bloemfontein and Kimberly. It was here that my (step) grandfather was a farmer, he provided a place for us to stay and the family was a support for my bereft mother. It was here that I uttered my first (Afrikaans) word which was “piesang” (banana). Later, after my second father’s demise, my mother returned to the ‘only had one shop’ village of Petrusberg and bought a house, where she intended to raise us. Fortunately, she managed to snare a new husband, they were married in Durban and he whisked us off to another remote village which was Tanga in Tanzania.

Perhaps the thought of going back to Bloemfontein has motivated me to make ‘Langdraai’ which is named after my Oupa’s farm. The name, which literally means long turn, also makes me think of the circuitous routes one travels only to return to ones roots. This work acknowledges a part of me that is connected to the platteland (flatlands or rural areas) a place so different from the hilly, forested and English speaking KwaZulu-Natal. I have a few memories of that place and those times. The images in my mind are of windmills, ice on the dam, chasing springbok in the veld, letting all the water out of the dam so that the fish were swimming between the carrots in the vegetable patch and the neighbours who had their coffin and death clothes permanently laid out on the dining room table, ready for the terminal day.

‘Langdraai’ and another small bronze or two have been cast in my back yard using a simple sand cast. These works are for me technically and aesthetically experimental. They are quickly carved in polystyrene, cast in sand moulds and then reworked. I am looking for an immediacy, expressive distortion, movement, texture and colour that is not often seen in bronze sculptures.

Strange as it may seem, part of my family has migrated from one culture to another. Not by marriage but by the deliberate cultivation of alien culture and as a result I have an Afrikaans cousin. We at the present time have a good historical perspective to understand this a rather strange thing to do. After all if I could, I would choose a culture where I would benefit from a host of cheap shares. Ironically it was easier for my Uncle as there was not an issue with pigmentation as he moved from a first class citizen to the ruling class and it primarily required learning a language. Thinking about it, those Sasol shares could have been a way to improve my Zulu, very quickly. It was however a bit of a cheek as this family came from English settler stock, went to English speaking schools and universities and to boot was also a family who (unsuccessfully) laid claim to the fortune left by the old Bonds of the Bond street in London.

A social advantage and the desire for money easily explain my family’s heritage hopping but do not explain the reason why genetically different people who cannot understand each other get together. My psychologist friends tell me that falling in love is a chemical trick your body plays on you in order to get you to breed. The chemistry must have worked as I remember our romance as intoxicating and I now have two children.

However, I think I am now past the chemical thing and am beginning to appreciate the intelligence of the genetic thing. Being different, my wife can do a lot which I can not. Her work is by its nature fastidious and painstaking whereas mine is creative and inventive. This separation has focused my mind on, and improved my appreciation for my wife, for the things she does differently and better than I do. Today, I will especially miss her editing my letters as I cannot spell, have no idea about punctuation, tenses and split infinitives, whatever they are. Whilst her editing is a painful ordeal my letters are infinitely better for her corrections and observations. It is perhaps a familiar refrain but in our unity and our diversity there is strength.

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