Fine Art: Tracey Murinik
Willie Bester, Louis Jansen van Vuuren and Zwelethu Mthethwa form a rather unexpected and somewhat unlikely trio at the Association for Visual Arts (AVA) in Cape Town this month. They have come together not only to exhibit their own respective works but also to collaborate on a number of pieces which appear on the show. The result is an extensive selection of 99 works attached to every last nook and cranny of the gallery, attesting to some extremely prolific production.
Although their styles are diverse and don’t suggest an obvious compatability, the combination of works is definitely interesting. The shared context of their works manages to highlight some mutual pre-occupations, such as colour, which features significantly in all of their work. But, this new relationship also raises questions and brings into new light many of the subject domains that they engage with.
Through their art Bester, Jansen van Vuuren and Mthethwa interrogate aspects of their lived and known environments; they reflect upon and imagine within their experiences of South Africa, each in quite different ways. As artists whose works have travelled to international venues, many of these images and reflections have served to inform and provide insights into aspects of South Africa for their viewers. Seen in this context together, in Cape Town, it is striking to compare the contradictory accounts of, for example, Bester’s townships and Jansen van Vuuren’s panoramic Cape vistas.
Among the more powerful of Bester’s works on show is a piece entitled Slavery, which will soon travel to France for an exhibition commemorating the abolition of slavery. Bester’s trademark multimedia relief construction, stages a complex array of imagery which infers various types of human enslavement. But he sets up, primarily, two parallel, almost iconic symbols, to represent that subjection in the images of Gore Island, an infamous slave station off the coast of Senegal, and of the South African township under apartheid invasion.
Interspersed among and around these are maps, chains, wired devices, bullets; a panel of faux rock art burnt into wood to form part of the frame. A disturbing row of small, crudely-modelled dolls/dummies, limply suspended and brightly painted, read as a perverse spectrum of apartheid racial classification, labelled accordingly.
Jansen van Vuuren’s sensuously coloured pastel seascapes and House and Leisure- styled still-life interiors are in sharp juxtaposition to Bester’s bleaker exposures, presenting a very different vision of the South African experience: the lighter shift from Khayelitsha to Camps Bay. In many of these works, Africa is inferred, heroically through African masks, and exotically with natural delicacies of fruits and flowers.
A series of Postcard Panoramas, however, seems to promise a more critical view of the ways in which landscape is consumed, casually in motion, as one is led along a sumptuous trail of scenic Cape spots and then stumble fleetingly on to the Cape Flats. But it is the lack of glaring difference in the treatment of these images that feels disturbing, as squatter camps become easily absorbed by the soothing haze of Table Mountain in the background, quickly by-passed with minimal engagement.
Mthethwa’s images portray a deep reflection upon traditional cultural practice faced head-on by the challenges of contemporary living, and are infused with sincere moments of the surreal. The potentency of Mthethwa’s colour is quite exhilarating and transformative. One work, When Angels Came Down, appears to look somewhat ironically at education in rural areas. A trio of awkwardly-balanced angels seem to trip more than fly through the air above a rural school circle, distributing, or accidentally dropping notes down to the earth. The notes, however, are still being written. Another angel stands holding a key, promising salvation. As a separate panel on the side, framed in traditional design, Mthethwa features a young child on its grandmother’s lap, implicity raising questions about its future.
Although the collaborative works on this exhibition seem less successful, the show as a whole offers comprehensive coverage of the “Big Three”.
The exhibition is on at the Association for Visual Art, Metropolitan Gallery, 35 Church Street until January 16