By lunchtime on Saturday the Joburg Art Fair was in full swing, with a queue of visitors snaking out of the doors and the exhibition floor bustling with art scene regulars and first time gallery-goers alike. The official attendance figures for the fair will only be released next week, but according to director of the fair, Ross Douglas, close to 10 000 people have visited the fair this weekend. Last year the final count was about 6 000.
Because Johannesburg lacks a major annual or biennial art event that has purchase with a wide sector of the public, the fair seems to have stepped into this role, and hence draws an audience that varies widely in its familiarity with contemporary South African art. No doubt this has much to do with the profile and accessibility of the venue, the Sandton Convention Centre, but it may also be a function of the connotations of the word ‘fair” in a South African context. The ‘fair”, the ‘market” and the ‘expo” do not discriminate between consumers beyond broadly curtailing a market by specialising or grouping the products put on sale. The fair provides the untutored consumer with an opportunity to window shop, to explore his or her taste in a particular field and to ask questions with the option of disappearing into the crowd should any of these steps prove overwhelming or intimidating. For many of this year’s visitors, the Joburg Art Fair has been their first glimpse into the local contemporary art scene. Of course, this means that sales figures will not proportionally track attendance figures, but as long as newcomers haven’t been frightened away, the sort of exposure the fair gives to local art will contribute to developing a more commercially viable art industry.
According to a number of curators at both commercial and special project stands, audience engagement with artworks has been notably higher this year than it was last year. People are asking questions about works or styles of art-making that are unfamiliar to them, and Alexandra Dodd’s guided tours of the fair on Saturday were attended in droves.
Saturday’s throngs did expose two facilities which are wanting at the fair: a food outlet that offers something more palatable and convenient than the airline style pay-by-weight fare at the Convention Centre’s Rendezvous Café, and a child-friendly area. More than a few toddlers were rapped over sticky knuckles for touching the designer furniture at the Southern Guild booth. Maybe for next year Michael MacGarry could come out with an edition of plastic AK-47’s?