/ 30 March 2009

Designed with art in mind

Staff Photographer
Staff Photographer

In recent years the world’s major art fairs — Frieze in London, Basel in Switzerland, the Armory Show in New York — have begun to converge their schedules with major design fairs taking place in the same city.

Last October while the darlings of the art world thronged the aisles of Frieze in Regents Park, Design Art London, a comparatively small showcase of designer furniture, drew the overflow across Soho to Berkeley Square.

This was Design Art London’s debut and, as many visitors remarked, if it had not been for its coinciding with Frieze, it might have all but slipped under the radar of the media and spenders.

Although South Africa lacks the critical mass of avid art and design consumers that Europe has, we have no shortage of art and design products up for sale. Having spotted the opportunity that lay in pooling local markets for these products, Ross Douglas, director of the Joburg Art Fair, and Trevyn McGowan, founder of designer goods export company Source, have joined forces to bring an exhibition of top local furniture design to this year’s art fair.

As one of the fair’s “Special Projects”, McGowan will curate Southern Guild, a collection of 50 pieces of new designer furniture fresh out of the studios of 36 local designers. Some of the featured designers and design firms are Marchand van Tonder and Ronel Jordaan — both hits at this year’s Design Indaba — Tonic, Strangelove, Frauke Stegman (the aviphile responsible for the restaurant Birds in Cape Town) and Liam Mooney of Whatiftheworld/Design Studio.

A handful of the designers McGowan has selected for the project are better known as fine artists. Conrad Botes, Guy du Toit and Albert Redelinghuys take to the jigsaw for a change, a move that touches on a concern certainly to be raised by purists: is someone trying to dupe us into thinking design and art are the same thing?

McGowan says: “What I think a piece of art is is something that makes you feel something emotionally, that makes you think about what you perceive and makes you experience it on a number of levels. I’m not really sure where the term ‘design’ fits, particularly in relation to some of the works that we’re showing in Southern Guild. The only major difference [between design and art] is that design is functional as well. At this point I think these pieces hold their own in an art environment.”

Since founding Source 10 years ago McGowan has supplied South African designer products to major luxury goods retailers around the world, including Liberty, the Conran Shop and Urban Outfitters, and, according to McGowan, the demand for South African design abroad is on the up.

“South Africa is seen as a very diff[erent] destination with products that are handmade, once-off and art-based. Internationally there’s a real move away from mass-produced generic products — even they have a name and belong to a recognised brand,” she says. “People want to feel more human about the products they buy. They want to feel there’s a background and a history. As a worldwide trend people are looking for something a little more comforting and homely, something that has a story behind it, something that’s a little quirky and has an organic feel. South African design isn’t swept along by trends and so it can offer people these things.”

Details and highlights

  • The Joburg Art Fair takes place at the Sandton Convention Centre, Exhibition Hall 2, from April 3 to 5. Day tickets cost R100 and exhibitor details are available on www.joburgartfair.co.za. Tel: 011 482 4459.
  • Jane Alexander is the featured artist for the 2009 Joburg Art Fair. Her installation, Security (2006), originally commissioned for the 27th Sao Paulo Biennale, will be shown in Johannesburg for the first time on the art fair exhibition floor.
  • The Special Projects are a series of non-commercial curatorial projects commissioned specially for the art fair. Projects to look out for are Tumelo Mosaka’s video screening room, Here and Now, Trevyn MacGowan’s Southern Guild collection of South African furniture design and the Joubert Park Project’s live web broadcast sale performance at the Drill Hall.
  • BMW sponsors this year’s Art Talks, a lecture series that will take place in a glass box auditorium designed by Hugh Fraser. International and local speakers include curator Alfons Hug, art historian Agnes Wegner, Peter Hermann of Galerie Peter Hermann in Berlin and local artists Zander Blom, Lawrence Lemoana and Nandipha Mntambo (detail from Ukungenisa above).
  • Don’t miss the Absolut Art Party on Friday April 3, which will take place in the art fair exhibition space.
  • Boekehuis bookshop will sell books about art, design and local culture at the art fair. On April 3 at 4pm attend a book signing by photographer Roger Ballen of his new edition, titled Boarding House, and on April 4 architect Clive Chipkin will sign his new book, Johannesburg in Transition: Architecture and Society 1950.
  • Also part of the Special Projects, Internet Art and the Global South, is an online exhibition of international internet art curated by Tegan Bristow, a staff member in the digital arts division of the Wits school of arts. This exhibition can be viewed remotely or on computers installed in the exhibition space. — Anthea Buys