Controversial businessman Brett Kebble has set up an arts award named after himself that, even in its first year, is attracting criticism from disgruntled entrants. The Brett Kebble Art Awards have been accused of maltreating art and artists while endeavoring to set up what they’ve punted as the highest valued award in the country.
And this week a student from Unisa’s fine art department expressed irritation at the fact that the university removed an artwork from its website that its spokesperson claims had disturbed university staff.
The Brett Kebble Art Awards will be announced in Cape Town on September 30. Works in six categories will be awarded R30 000 each and an overall winner will receive R100 000. The publicity and hype around the award has led to submissions from across the country. On July 28 the organisers circulated a press release proudly stating that their email and fax systems had been overwhelmed by 1 100 entries.
But while the organisers have celebrated their debut things have not gone so smoothly for at least two major artists who made submissions. Firstly the Mail & Guardian received a call from Bloemfontein-based sculptor Jacques Fuller, somewhat peeved at the system employed by the awards.
The entry form required that artists submit digital or photographic images of their work, upon which a short list would be based. Fuller, who works in metal submitted a work more than two metres high. The sculpture, titled The Politician, is a work in brass of a chained ape shouting into a loud hailer out of which a swarm of bees emerge.
Fuller claims that the awards’ organisers originally sent a representative, Bernice Claassen, to the Free State to encourage him among others to enter. In keeping with the rules he submitted an image of the work after which he was invited to send the actual work to Cape Town. Fuller took four days to pack the work, which he transported to Cape Town at an expense to the awards of R4 000. Fuller claims that the work was rejected without the organisers bothering to unpack it.
Fuller says he then called Claassen’s dad, the public relations person for Kebble himself.
“It was such a fight between him and me on the telephone — he called me an extortionist and a blackmailer. Finally the crate was opened and they sent it back.”
On September 16 the awards producer, David Barritt, mailed the M&G to confirm that Fuller’s work was not part of the 167 pieces selected for entry and that they had paid for his work to be returned.
At the same time Johannesburg based painter Wayne Barker, who recently held a solo exhibition in Cannes, claimed that his work Digital Mindscapes had been damaged in transit. Barker claims that he too was requested to send his work to Cape Town for judging, and that the moving company Globeflight transported his two metre painting with a “piece of machinery” that he believes tore the canvas. Globeflight has denied damaging the work.
But because the work was damaged, the organisers deemed it unsuitable for entry. Barker has valued his work at R40 000. The organisers and Globeflight are conducting an investigation into the incident to fathom how the damage occurred and they have engaged the services of prominent Cape Town restorer Peter Spence at their expense.
Another submission, by veteran all-rounder Norman Catherine, was also damaged during transportation. But Catherine has reported that the damage was too small to complain about.
Meanwhile, at Unisa’s main campus in Pretoria, a digital image of a baby, torn then sewn together, has proved too shocking for university staff. The untitled work is by fourth year student Sarahni Prins. Prins works at a shelter for HIV-positive children in Rustenburg where she took the images for her series which is included in the exhibition Plug-Ins currently showing at the Aardklop festival in Potchefstroom.
The exhibition of experimental media art by the institution’s visual art and multimedia students is curated by Kai Lossgott and enjoys pride of place on the Unisa website. According to the university’s spokesperson Doreen Gough the distorted image of the child proved more disturbing to staff than the suggestion that the baby in question may have been HIV-positive. Lossgott says: “This is the reality, [the work reflects] how millions of children are treated every day. But people don’t want to see it.” But an anonymous employee of the university, who would not be named, told the M&G, “Aids orphans should not be used as rehabilitation instruments by adults.”