n isolated Prince Albert (no relation to the popular genital piercing), the gallery shows local paintings of flowers and fields dotted among some of the most important critical visual commentary on historical and contemporary South Africa. To get to the town, leave Johannesburg before dawn, drive south along the N1 for about 10 hours and turn left. A short while later, in keeping with the signage of many small Karoo Towns, the settlement marks itself with white stones on a hillside: P-R-I-N-C-E-A-L-B-E-R-T. The sign, like its Hollywood counterpart, provides hints of the drama and intrigue to come.
The Prince Albert Gallery — housed in the Victorian splendour of the Seven Arches building — was established and is still managed by Brent Phillips-White, an ex-Gautenger who has made the gallery his life’s work. Currently on show is David Goldblatt’s Gamkaskloof 1966-1968, Richard John Forbes’s The Quiet Revolution, Derek McKenzie’s local photographic document and the perculiarly post-modern paintings of George Coutouvidis. Not bad for a town in the middle of, what some may term, nowhere.
Without doubt, the key attraction is Goldblatt’s historic series of portraits of the then-residents of Gamkaskloof taken in the 1960s at the height of the entrenchment of the Nationalist small-town mentality. First published in 1975 in the book Some Afrikaners Photographed (the book didn’t sell and was remaindered for R2,50) this work has been recently expanded and republished as Some Afrikaners Revisited.
The photographs show old-stock Afrikaners, cloistered and cut-off in their enclave in the Swartberg Mountains. Goldblatt notes that, at the time, he was “aware that not only were these people Nationalists, strong supporters of the party and its policies, but that many were racist in their very blood … they made no secret of their attitude to blacks, who at best were children in need of guidance and correction, at worst sub-human”. Goldblatt, this year honoured with the Hasselblad Award in recognition of his lifetime achievements, writes that he was “troubled by the contradictory feelings of liking, revulsion and fear that these Afrikaner encounters aroused” and his photographs were in response to “come closer to these lives and probe their meaning”.
The 17 photographs on exhibition provide insight into the historic residents of Gamkaskloof, also known as “The Hell”. This isolated community, 15km from Prince Albert, would only interact with its neighbours once or twice a year. After the road came, notes Goldblatt, the youngsters went to the towns and never came back, increasing The Hell’s isolation. By 1992 all the farmers had left and “the houses became derelict and their orchards and fields overgrown”. (Today, Gamkaskloof is managed as part of the Zwartberg Nature Reserve.)
Photographer Derek McKenzie lives in the old post office in the nearby town of Calitzdorp. In keeping with the mythology of death that surrounds photography, all previous owners of his equipment are now deceased. Andrew Meintjes, killed in Johannesburg a few years ago, invented McKenzie’s Panfield camera. The previous owner of his large-format equipment was killed in a motorcycle accident, while the owner of his lenses was swept out to sea.
Of McKenzie’s work on show in the gallery, one series stands out. Recording the charcoal graffiti of Gustav Roller, a resident of Calitzdorp (the country’s port capital), the photographs give glimpses into the ongoing village sagas. Scandalous accusations of child abuse and homosexuality rub shoulders with messy local party politics and quotations from Albert Camus. In kitchen Dutch, the graffiti and its documentation give indications of the Sodom and Gamorrah lurking in the minds of a local Karoo town plagued by vestiges of the dop system that still lead to the deformed births typical of alcohol foetal syndrome. The night of Richard John Forbes’s exhibition opening, rooikop (red head) Tanya sums up this form of making news: “Everyone knows what’s happened, and if they don’t they make it up.”
Forbes first gained prominence with his miniature theatres for William Kentridge’s The Magic Flute. A building conservationist and restorer, Forbes has recently gained recognition for his giant metal and wood spinning tops and the etchings they make. Conceived as an interactive installation, Forbes invited audience members to spin his tops on copper plates. These are then processed into dry-point etchings. The resulting prints, on show in Prince Albert, are a series of fantastical universes where stars and planets and other heavenly bodies seem to give an indication of the organised and systemic chaos that has given rise to life as we know it.
Also on show at the gallery are the works of Gideon Engelbrecht who says that “Prince Albert chews you up. Then it either spits you out or swallows you in.” As it turns out, the town swallowed Engelbrecht, who now runs Avoova, a company that creates and exports ostrich eggshell mosaic work that is best described as exquisite. Years of chemical and physical experimentation has grown into a small business that now employs 15 people to create indoor and outdoor furniture and homeware that is sold as far afield as Italy.
In a town that is rapidly outgrowing its local population, the paintings of George Coutouvidis seem apt. Coutouvidis, an artist who has made the town his home, combines classic imagery with African contemporary sociopolitics, creating a cartoony post-modernism that goes some way to explain why the town’s property prices are now on par with Johannesburg, putting them way out of the reach of the local community. Now gobbled up by “investors from out of town”, these houses stand empty for 11 months of the year, filled in the 12th month by out-of-towners who arrive with their bags of Woollies goods and are of little or no support to the local industries.
For information on Prince Albert tourism, accommodation and other facilities, visit: www.patourism.co.za, Tel: 023 541 1366 or email: [email protected]