And now the Fordsburg Artists’ Studios, popularly known as the Bag Factory, has been awarded this year’s Arts & Culture Trust Best Practice Project of the Year.
Stifling in summer and chilly in winter, with all the appropriate quirks and idiosyncrasies typical of old buildings, the Fordsburg Artists Studios, comprising 18 studios and a gallery, has managed to establish its position as an internationally-renowned constant in a shifting cultural landscape. Other spaces in Johannesburg are floundering and are being forced to re-evaluate their operating strategies, but the Bag Factory recently turned 10.
Global networking and identifying points of creative connection and exchange across different communities define the artist’s collective, which began with the activities of the Triangle Arts Trust founded by Sir Anthony Caro and Robert Loder.
Originally confined to the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada, the network, fuelled by artists’ workshops and the establishing of a charitable trust in the UK, expanded to include more than 15 countries worldwide. About 1 800 artists have participated in this growing network, which now boasts three studio facilities: the pilot Bag Factory project, London’s Gasworks Studios and Greatmore Studios in Cape Town.
While South African artists are benefiting immensely from greater exposure on the global art scene, the local art scene is becoming increasingly less about paying lip service to the great secular cathedrals of art (museums and high-end galleries that are fighting for audiences) and more about engaging with street-level opportunities and artist-led support structures.
The Bag Factory is home to core resident luminaries Kay Hassan, Sam Nhlengethwa, Joachim Schonfeldt, Pat Mautloa, Ben Arnold and David Koloane. Dominic Tshabangu, Rookeya Gardee, Stephen Maqashela, Bongi Bengu, Tamar Mason, Verna Jooste and Paul Emmanuel are currently full-time residents. Three additional studios house visiting residents for a period of about three months, who are then “married” with other institutions and projects ranging from universities to community projects to facilitate workshops.
Koloane and coordinator Koulla Xinisteris are often asked whether such an initiative can be self-sustaining to the point of gathering real capital to allow them to realise plans for renovations, further facilities and so on. The answer is an emphatic “no!” Realistically speaking, the market is simply not big enough.
But while the studios have experienced an uncertain destiny, they have never been in real danger of closing, thanks to a list of (mostly international) sponsors in the form of embassies and trusts, as well as individuals sponsoring studio rental costs for artists.
The project has enjoyed support for some years from the Arts & Culture Trust of the President as well as the MTN Art Institute and Business Arts South Africa among others, but realising active, visible and sustainable links between art and business is still very irregular.
As a unit, the Bag Factory houses tangible skills and services that can benefit both the professional and educational art communities at large.
The Artists’ Press operates from the complex, providing professional artist’s printing facilities managed by master printer Mark Atwood. Printmaker Paul Emmanuel offers design and layout services.
Koloane and Xinisteris are aware of the need to make further facilities available to the public, including a planned photographic darkroom that could begin to generate revenue while filling a huge need for the artists who work there.
A “free space” is under construction, to be used for workshops, seminars and events by both Bag Factory stakeholders and members of the public, taking this pressure off the gallery area to establish a full-time exhibitions programme.
With the residual insecurities around space and access created by old political and ideological structures still a reality, the establishment of the Bag Factory counteracts this. Attention is finally being paid to the protracted Newtown regeneration project. Koloane is convinced that the role of the Bag Factory is becoming increasingly more important, offering guidance and nuts-and-bolts advice to other initiatives like Cross Path Culture.
“Our presence here, and that we have been here for so long, is significant for that very reason. It’s about foresight, being located in this precinct.”
An exhibition by resident Canadian performance artist Mara Verna, who also features prominently on the Joubert Park Public Art Project, opens on Wednesday October 17 at 6pm. In the next few weeks Magadalene Odundo (Kenya/UK), Marie-Angie Bordas (Brazil) and Veronique Tadjo (Ivory Coast) will move in.