Brenda AtkinsonOn show in Johannesburg
South Africa is not known for abundant, or even exciting, public art. In fact you’d be hard pressed to find an inspirational public work were you tracking one down, let alone stumble across a few in the course of your day.
Of course, there are those pigeon-perch monuments to political regimes; or the odd abstract sculpture generally positioned so that it has no relation to its context whatsoever. In Sandton, there’s Rodney Place’s innovative fountain design, but other than that it’s a pretty bleak scenario.
tats de Lieux, an exhibition at the Generator Art Space that documents public artworks commissioned by the French Ministry of Culture since 1982, underlines the high points and pitfalls of public creative projects.
Sponsored by the French Institute in South Africa and curated by ministry “inspectors” Christine Marcel and Laurent le Bon, the exhibition is a testament to uniquely French sophistication and a national government that thinks nothing of ploughing 25-million francs a year into the plastic arts, and a further 20-million into public commissions. This means that regional councils have two to four million francs a year to use in the adornment of their public spaces.
The commendable idea behind France’s public commissions is to create a dialogue between national heritage and contemporary concerns. The execution is not always successful or interesting, and the results are frequently controversial.
Marcel defines public art as “art which is free, and immediate; it’s about a move away from museums into greater public proximity. It’s relational art that engages the public.”
The public’s engagement has been known to be less than polite: a few million francs are put aside annually just for the maintenance of works that are disfigured by residents who object to their aesthetic or political implications.
Judging from the documents on the exhibition, there are instances in which people are well within their rights to protest: Richard Serra’s monolithic octagonal metal sculpture outside a Romanesque church in Chagny is nothing less than a sadistic reminder to the good people of the village that they should be punished for their spiritual and cultural history.
Likewise, Fabrice Hybert’s leaking green man offers little more than a dull reminder that we are all doomed to the indiscretions of the body.
And then there’s an odd collaborative venture in a cathedral that must make God’s angels blush.
That said, the works are, importantly, site-specific. In other words, they take into account that the contexts in which they are to be realised have their own inhabitants and their own histories; their own aesthetics and politics; their own world-view.
When these works work, they are impressive enough to help you forget your reservations about the ministry’s agenda. The insertion of works by Barbara Kruger and Mario Merz into urban tram stations is so cunning you want to get on to the next plane to Paris.
Kruger’s signature slogans transform stairways and neon billboards; Merz has planted luminous numbered sections between the tracks; and Gerard Collin-Thiebaut has made miniature artworks of the tickets.
Gathered around these documents with a cluster of other press types, I confess to having felt a little like a barbarian brought to see the light. That I could put down to paranoia.
But I still feel that the exhibition, a costly endeavour without immediately obvious general interest-value, could have been better publicised and more responsibly executed in conjunction with an educative programme.
Could Marcel and Le Bon not have agreed to conduct workshops with local artists, thus enriching this context, instead of offering their own achievements as an enviable fait accompli?
— tats des Lieux: Commande Publique is on show at the Generator Art Space in Newtown, Johannesburg