Advertising has invaded the quiet confines of a local art gallery. Hazel Friedman notes the reactions to this transgression
RADIO 702 always says it best with sound, right. Er not quite. These days it also says it with sight (and site). In a first for South Africa, it has placed one of its advertising billboards in a gallery.
Emblazoned in white against a traditional black background, the billboard states: WHERE THE COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUS MEET. And it has not only heightened consciousness among traditional gallery-goers, but has raised conservative eyebrows as well.
The billboard forms part of the Hitch-hiker show on at the Generator Art Space in the Newtown Cultural Precinct. This is the first exhibition in South Africa to actively engage with mass communication technology by shoving the tools of the information trade into the gallery space. At the same time, it has transgressed the physical borders of arts, normally an insular galaxy, into the mass-culture of billboards.
Radio 702 has served as more than a token guest of honour. In an authentic, inter- sensory cross-cultural exchange using the principle of audial arousal, the radio station collaborated with artist Joachim Schonfeldt to record familiar everyday sounds packaged in 10 to 15 second slots and played over the air.
“Joachim told us he wanted to break the silence of the gallery and the almost religious reverence associated with art,” explained Radio 702’s marketing manager Jadi de Waal. “Likewise, 702 had to shift its mindset from sound to visuals.”
She adds: “We were briefed by Clive Kellner, the curator of the Hitch-hiker show, to produce a billboard as art in terms of a social statement.
“Our advertising slogans have always made people aware of important issues and radio is far and away South Africa’s most effective communicator.”
The station’s creative director, Shelley Hirsch, subsequently came up with a catch- phrase that would encapsulate 702’s mission station and generate debate around traditional definitions of art and the extent to which the gallery context confers “aesthetic” status on to everyday objects.
But while the presence of an advertising billboard in a gallery is unprecedented in South Africa, in the rest of the West the once sacrosanct boundaries between art and ad have long been blurred.
During the 1980s, for example, the work of Barbara Kruger, Victor Burgin and Jenny Holzer ensured that art became part of the urban landscape. Their truisms – advertising images and text such as PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT and ABUSE OF POWER COMES AS NO SURPRISE – appeared on airport luggage carousels, on signs outside Caesar’s Palace or at Times Square.
The images and medium might have mimicked slick examples of corporate advertising, but the message was unmistakeably a parody and critique of the stereotypes perpetuated by the mass media.
In 1995 South African artist Minette Vari produced a giant-size billboard and positioned it on a busy road just outside the Pretoria Art Museum. It consisted of a black and white image of the spread-legged artist whose features had been altered to a”typically” African shape with the aid of a computer.
Rumour has it that public response was measurable on the Richter Scale.