There’s more to art competitions than giving the winner a cheque for a one-off work, writes Brenda Atkinson
This year’s FNB Vita Art Prize event was afflicted by a terrible politeness that not even Steven Cohen’s Miss FNB Vita sash and alarmingly assertive eyelashes could alleviate.
Everybody cheered when Jo Ractliffe went up to receive her R20 000 prize, and the honour of winning a competition considered by many in the art world as the most prestigious affirmation of its kind in South Africa. Nobody trashed the artists or the judges’ decision and, undoubtedly, nobody rushed off to write a letter of protest to First National Bank.
The anticlimax of the event was obviously heightened by the residual thrill of last year’s controversial choice: although Cohen’s bare-cheeked forays might have made FNB and Vita wish they were sponsoring the Watercolour Society, media coverage of the event was unprecedented. People might have gasped that Cohen could camp past Kentridge to take the prize, but the event and its publicity were electric.
Of course controversy alone does not make a competition interesting or good, but the FNB Vita Art Prize is part of an arena of arts sponsorship that, despite the vote of confidence its growth suggests, might be failing to achieve broadly useful support of contemporary visual art. The recent FNB Vita award event happily lacked bitchy backstabbing, but it also lacked energetic debate and a sense of important new directions.
The number of prominently sponsored art competitions currently doing the rounds in South Africa’s visual arts world is encouraging. Also encouraging are the attempts being made by their organisers to up the stakes and prestige they need to succeed, albeit more as corporate marketing exercises than as socially responsible paybacks.
This year, after 14 years of low-key investment “showcased” through an exhibition held annually in Pietersburg, the former Volkskas Atelier Award resurfaced in Pretoria at the African Window Museum as the Absa Atelier, looking mercifully more swan than ugly duckling. This year the Absa Group gave the award a cash boost that took its total worth to R100 000, alongside the long-standing and unique offer of a three- to six-month studio residency in Paris for the winner.
Yet although Absa upped the loot and the exhibition venue in the hope of attracting “the highest quality entries in the long history of the event”, this year’s show was marked by a large amount of appalling contemporary work – the kind that makes corporates wonder why artists should be allowed to live in the first place. Kempton Park – Tembisa delivered similarly mediocre goods, although both competitions yielded the odd gem.
The point here is that, if these competitions are to achieve meaningful social and cultural goals, as well as the marketing kudos desired and required by their sponsors, they have to be more than annual one-offs with dwindling attendance figures and increasingly impoverished entry standards.
If FNB Vita is widely perceived as the most credible of the lot, it’s because the gallery and sponsors have proactively strategised to maximise impact through focus and profile. When the award re- launched two years ago, it did so by aligning itself with London’s mega-hyped Turner Awards and adopted part of the Turner screening methodology. The practitioners who have made it into the final exhibitions are judged on a body of work that is situated more broadly than in South Africa alone, and only exceptional newcomers are considered for inclusion.
By comparison, Absa, Kempton Park-Tembisa and Sasol New Signatures invite artists to submit a single work, resulting in quality that could politely be called uneven. Not all national art competitions have to function like the FNB Vita, and those that don’t still give young unknown producers a platform for public attention. But all – including Vita – have to reassess the long- term value of their contribution to contemporary art.
In the first place, corporate sponsors need to understand that “contemporary art” is unpredictable and sometimes shocking, and that this energy itself can be used as a charismatic asset for the events themselves.
Secondly, the organisers, artists and sponsors have to “add value” to these events by creating the conditions under which they are most likely to succeed for everyone concerned. Sponsors need to see artists as professionals who cannot live on bread alone, and artists need to engage with the broader public – including the private sector – to educate and shift attitudes about art. If galleries suffer from lack of traffic, these exhibitions will become redundant within their broader social context.
FNB Vita and Absa are leading the pack where these kinds of initiatives are concerned. In 2000, the FNB Vita Art Prize will include published educational material that will be sponsored and distributed as a learning tool for students. In October this year, Absa will celebrate the opening of its new headquarters with a retrospective exhibition of work by all the Atelier winners in the last 14 years. Absa currently also films the Atelier award events and distributes the tape to its branches nationally, resulting in productive, and often provocative, internal debate.
Finally, media – including television – need to come to the party in terms of ongoing coverage that informs, educates and excites: an article once a year on each event is pathetic, as are articles that describe and profile without getting into the critical meat of what the works mean. Critics should be looking at trends and analysing them so that these works come to cultural life, rather than languishing in echoing venues as an indifferent public goes on with its shopping.
KATHRYN SMITH
Winner: Sasol New Signatures
Prize: R10 000
Day Job: Various, all art-related
`I have a sneaky feeling none of them are really taken seriously by the media – where are the double-page spreads on this year’s Atelier winner? To fully invade public consciousness, winners should be announced on the evening news. This will help create a cult of the personality so desperately needed in this country (Egoli stars don’t count), more mileage for the sponsor and recognition for the artists. As snotty as it sounds, the location of most of the major competitions in Pretoria creates an aura of provincialism which I think is partly responsible for their lack of prestige. And yes, prestige is an integral part of it – why the fuck have a competition in the first place? And for those out there who have `problems’ with the notion and procedure of `judging’ art, don’t enter and then complain. Competitions serve a particular purpose.”
BRADLEY HAMMOND
Winner: Kempton Park – Tembisa 1999
Prize: R10 000
Day job: Video editing and production
`Winning Kempton Park gave me a lot of space and support, as well as the sense that I’m not producing in a vacuum. It’s given me the confidence to carry on. I would like to make a living by producing art, and I hope to merge my video interests with my artistic work. I’ll enter competitions again – Atelier in particular because it would be great to go to Paris. But I think the Vita has the most value because it’s focused and based on a show, not a single work, and the final exhibition is always interesting.”
JO RACTLIFFE
Winner: FNB Vita Art Prize 1999
Prize: R20 000
Day job: Fine Art lecturer
`Competitions are problematic because of the exclusivity they perpetuate, but I believe it’s important to have the Vita because it moves South Africa in line with international trends. The competition should offer money beyond the prize, to curate a show where a lot more people could benefit. Arts sponsorship should be coming from all sectors because the cultural development of a country is critical, and South African culture in the 1980s was a means of expressing national identities. Art can’t achieve that kind of solidarity in a moment, but can develop a reflective space in which we interact with each other, across disciplines and research areas, and on national, community, or personal terms.”
RYAN ARENSON
Winner: ABSA Atelier 1999
Prize: R60 000 and a studio residency in Paris
Day job: Artist and Masters student in Fine Art
`I show very occasionally because it takes me so long to produce the work, and this acknowledgement gives me a certain amount of confidence. I did feel the effects of not being considered for the FNB Vita which historically stands out as the most important. The Vita money isn’t enough though and I don’t think sponsors seriously consider the time, effort and money it takes to produce work. The winner should get enough money to produce a show for the following year, so that there’s a process and a result; so that the artist can give something back to the sponsors and the public. Winning should lead to more than just another CV entry.”