‘Disappointing.” It’s scrawled four or five times in the visitor’s book. And it’s true.
The Holland South Africa Line project wanted artists from the two countries to be inspired and influenced by each other and their lands. In July 2000 South African artists went to stay in Amsterdam and in September they exhibited together with their Dutch counterparts in an old warehouse of the Royal Dutch Steamer Company, a venue signifying travel and trade.
In November 2000 a slightly different group flipped the process. Tiong Ang, Paul Bogaers, Clea Daiber, Femke van Heerikhuizen, Judith Krebbekx, Jurgen Meekel and Sandra de Wolf came to Johannesburg. They lived and worked with Bridget Ann Baker, Kevin Brand, Nadja Kim Daehnke, Abrie Fourie, Dorcas Mamabolo and Stephen Maqashela. The South African exhibition opened on December 20 at the Castle, which was chosen for its significance as the fort of the first Dutch settlers.
Most of the Dutch artists indulged in third world rubbernecking. The most graphic example of this is Jurgen Meekel’s video work Wet Paint, which cuts together images of drunken beggars, street fights, children’s graves and even a dead sheep in a gleefully bleak pop-poverty collage.
Clea Daiber’s work is literally a pile of junk. The meaningful arrangement of rubbish should really be left to experts like Tomoko Takahashi and Kay Hassan. Daiber’s notebook is crammed with scrawls and photos of walls, gates and bars, several drawings of a dead man, newspaper clippings about Aids and on one page an inventory of items stolen from her room in Johannesburg.
Sandre de Wolf’s sound piece Fuzzy Logic was one of the better Dutch offerings, but again with sirens, dogs barking, a domestic worker cleaning the house to the strains of The Carpenter’s Hurting Each Other (not coincidentally, I’m sure). The irritation of seeing your home represented so simplistically and negatively and the art isn’t even good! But like words from the mouths of babes, these clumsy, tactless statements have a raw, if facile, truth.
Paul Bogaers decided to concentrate on the landscape instead of the social conditions and has produced a series of thoroughly kitsch bone and driftwood compositions. “Hey, those knots in that tree look just like a face!” Yuk. Tiong Ang from Holland and local boy Abrie Fourie actually collaborated, producing an amusing video called Suit, with Ang in blue and Fourie in orange on the back of a white Nissan.
The two obviously had many intense discussions over Fourie’s Afrikaans heritage this is symbolised by the men wrestling in front of a gloomy Voortrekker monument. Ang and Fourie seem to have reconciled their differences. Comforting when compared to the other visitors’ unfaltering pessimism.
The South Africans’ works were generally more cheerful and less didactic. Kevin Brand’s Tribute to: Blauw W & J is a collection of papier mch “ships”. Organic and festive, they’re patterned as though rearranged from shards of Delft pottery. They seem, however, like unexceptional baby siblings of the delightful big blue Vessel that he floated in the moat five years ago. Wires, tipped with segments of postcards printed with the names of international companies and their profits, stab out from the sidewalls of a small room.
Nadja Kim Daenke’s Globalisation has fairly obvious imagery the landmarks on the cards have been cut away and discarded and all the cities have the worldwide blue sky in common.
Bridget Ann Baker’s piece is the show’s highlight. At least, it was at the opening. Ornate vases laden with flowers zoomed around on motorized bases, colliding and zooting off in different directions to a soundtrack like electronic crickets chatting by James Webb. But the batteries have run down, the blooms have drooped and now there’s only a video to watch.
The work was apparently a reflection of Baker’s feelings returning from a long stay in super-organised Germany to the wonderful calamity and confusion of home. It may be a mess, but we love it.
Holland South Africa Line is on at the Castle, Strand Street, Cape Town, until January 31. For more information Tel: (021) 422 1458