As I step into Claudette Schreuders’s lounge, I am immediately drawn to the neat display of objects placed on and suspended above her fireplace. Collectively, these seem to offer a telling portrait of the artist.
There is a colourful drawing by Conrad Botes of two men boxing and also a varied selection of hand-painted vases by the ceramicist Hylton Nel, a West African mask, two of the artist’s own etchings, as well as a small Bitterkomix statuette. Together the collected objects variously describe Schreuders’s various influences and likes. They also offer a portrait of an oddly contained universe inhabited by a small circle of beings.
The point is reiterated as I sit chatting to the artist in her lounge. A Siamese cat strolls laconically into the room, jumps on the couch and finally slumps on my lap. I immediately recognise him — it’s Ben. Not only was he a sculpture in Schreuders’s recent show at the Warren Siebrits gallery, he is also featured in the latest Bitterkomix.
”I just wanted to make work that reflected what I was thinking about, not something that had to be political or self-important,” she explains in her slightly awkward manner, the gaucheness of which could also be interpreted as down-to-earth and devoid of self-importance. I tried to make work about things that preoccupy me every day,” she says, referring generally to the carved jacaranda wood figures that populated her recent show. ”Like my boyfriend [Anton Kannemeyer].”
One of the notoriously ribald Bitterkomix collective, Kannemeyer is both lover and sparring partner, an indispensable part of Schreuders’s art. She acknowledged this with the huge sculptural head entitled The Boyfriend, which presents itself as both an adoring gift and a complex portrait of a particular individual.
The intricacies of this passion are elsewhere articulated in a beautiful lithograph, simply entitled Love Story. This distinctively narrative work presents a host of motifs that recur throughout her printed works, including mermaids and sculpted figures.
That this sore tale of longing first appeared in an issue of Bitterkomix only contributes to the awkward portrayal of private emotions for public consumption. I mention this to Alet Vorster of Melville’s Art on Paper gallery, who offers a useful analogy for understanding the insular, near self-enclosed universe Schreuders’s work inhabits.
Vorster compares the Bitterkomix world to that of London’s Bloomsbury set, that famous grouping of artists and intellectuals whose ranks included the writer Virginia Woolf. The commonalities are, indeed, striking.
As it turns out, Schreuders met Kannemeyer at Stellenbosch, where she studied her undergraduate degree in the early 1990s.
Trained under sculptor Brett Murray, Schreuders posits him as a big influence. ”[Murray] was very encouraging, always pushing me to find what I had to do. He introduced me to colon figures, and also suggested I work in wood.”
Since carving her first wood sculpture in 1994 in Stellenbosch, Schreuders has lived a somewhat peripatetic lifestyle, completing her master’s degree in fine art at the University of Cape Town in 1997 before moving to Pretoria, the town of her birth. Now back in Johannesburg, the wandering has apparently stopped. Schreuders is happily resident in Linden, her iconic post-war suburban house (with its signature green roof) the subject of an etching currently on view at Art on Paper.
I am curious about Schreuders’s interest in the comic-book form. Her sculpture, The Neighbour, is resonant with teasing suggestion and in no small measure reminded me of the cruel tenderness of United States illustrator Chris Ware, author of the highly acclaimed Acme Novelty Library, whose central character is a child-like old man named Jimmy Corrigan.
”I love his work,” she remarks. ”I have all his books. Actually, my neighbour [who is also The Neighbour] always made me think of Jimmy Corrigan because he is so lonely. In many ways, the comic world is more exciting than the contemporary art world. There are so many amazing comics out there that are still a bit underground, not so connected to big business, big galleries and money.”
Now unavoidably a part of this business, Schreuders has already held two solo shows in New York, both at the prestigious Jack Shainman Gallery. In March she is due to show in Phoenix, Arizona, with a show in San Diego planned for later in this year.
The large dollar prices her works now collect have allowed Schreuders to sidestep academia, which is still invariably a port of call for many practising artists.
”[Freedom] is nice,” she says, ”but it’s lonely, too. It’s probably [the reason] I ended up watching my neighbour.”
Claudette Schreuders’s work is currently on show at the Warren Siebrits Modern and Contemporary Art gallery in Parkwood (Tel: 327 0000) and at Art on Paper in Melville (Tel: 726 2234).