Review of the week
Brenda Atkinson
The art of design in South Africa has blossomed post-1994, nurtured by increased access to international production, and radically influenced by the aesthetics of digital technologies.
You might still detest Simunye or any other of the SABC’s cheesy nation-building strategies, but you have to concede that their brand-building has improved.
Companies like Delapse, Halogen/Fingerprint Films and Clearwater have done for audio- visual what Yfm did for radio – given us something we can appreciate and relate to.
The development of our design nous is also currently highly visible in print media, particularly in advertising and pop cultural production: websites by Ffuel Digital Media and cult-zines by Orange Juice Design are burning rubber with innovative fusions of local and international cultural aesthetics.
Rising Suns, an exhibition of contemporary Japanese and South African poster design currently on at the Sandton Civic Gallery, barely skims the surface of the local design ocean, but offers an interesting opportunity to consider the impact of strong and unique cultural elements on message transmission.
Posters – which always have a theme – are in many ways a perfect vehicle for graphic expression: they are bounded, succinct and focused, and they function to grab attention from passers-by.
There are some beautiful examples of expertise in the medium on the exhibition, which is dominated by the sheer visual power and classical iconography of the Japanese works.
Working around the theme of World Heritage Day, the Japanese designers have predictably used the familiar structural territory of pagodas, trees and hands to suggest a world in crisis. It’s the deployment of these icons that makes the posters striking, although their design sense is distinctively “Japanese”.
Next to these clean lines and stark colour fields, the South African work seems, with a few exceptions, derivative and disappointing. The strength of the local designers compared with their Japanese counterparts is in their assertive mix of contemporary and traditional content, but where that contemporary urge pays lip- service to European design it fails to move.
Works that do succeed at this level are Roanne Sack’s New Neighbours, which pitches African iconography and digital technologies in clean and clever juxtaposition; and Joe Dog’s work for the Pendoring campaign.
Both of these works deal with “heritage” in very different ways, but both mobilise culture and tradition to give substance to the bleeding edge.
Though we might salivate over the pearly surfaces of Wallpaper, or thrill to European websites that revolutionise design, form cannot be imitated without consideration of context.
Trashing the digital fonts and forgetting the standard potential of Flash animation would be a productive exercise, as would going back – quite literally – to the drawing board.
Rising Suns – Contemporary Japanese and South African poster designs is on at the Sandton Civic Gallery in Johannesburg until June 26