Lauren Shantall
A B-grade Barbie-rella babe in a yellow polka dot rubber bikini steps s on to the stage. Armed with a hairdryer-cum-ray gun she begins to blow up a flaccid yellow blob while the soundtrack blares a kooky, surreal mix of Plan Nine From Outer Space meets Mars Attack on an operating table. As Larry the Inflating Sculpture hardens rapidly in response, ardent shoppers drop their Hilton Weiner hampers, their Stuttafords specials and their jaws.
It’s performance art, doll, courtesy of the arts and entertainment week held by Cape Town’s shopping wonderland. A week that also saw Barend de Wet and Peet Pienaar perform The Sewing Machine and Jacques Dhon’t’s sculptures gracing the ground floor. Proponents of the art-should-not-be-relegated-to-the-elitist-
realm-of-galleries school will be well pleased with the efforts of Joao Ferreira Fine Art and the mall management to take art to the people.
Question is, do the people really want to give up their place in the MacDonald’s queue in exchange for a highly ironic comment on consumer kitsch and the nature of art? It seems they do, judging by the very large crowd that gathered to watch. Despite the fact that performance art adds a certain glamour to the hallowed halls of materialism, it’s still pretty progressive that the centre is prepared to challenge its consumers – albeit with a performance that works because it can, unfortunately, also be accessed as a sanitised spectacle – a gawk-fest.