Making art work and not just artwork
Sarah Badat got a heads up on the official attitude to creative production at Friday’s opening sessions of the Alfa Romeo art talks at the annual Joburg Art Fair
Crowds were gathered outside the main entrance to the Joburg Art Fair well before its 10am opening on Friday morning.
The Alfa Romeo Art Talks, sectioned off within the main exhibition area, opened to a small but excited crowd. The selection of speakers to present over the next three days echo the theme of this year’s fair, Art and Industry, which explores the role of collaboration in creating and developing a thriving South African art market.
The team from David Krut Projects discussed the creative potential for artists who choose to collaborate with printmakers and the success of the resulting works. Artist Kim Berman, head of Artist Proof Studio and Taryn Cohen, director of Artspace, then discussed the role of mentorship programmes in nurturing and developing young talent through collaborations with established artists and galleries.
Mthunzi Ndimande, representative of the Gauteng government, gave a talk that was undoubtedly the highlight of the day. His love for visual art fuels his passion for working with the government to create an enabling environment for the arts to thrive in South Africa. His talk focused on clarifying the processes that dictate the involvement of the government in the arts, at both national and provincial levels. He began by emphasising the value that the government places on developing the local art industry, which he maintains comes under harsh scrutiny when considering service delivery issues that many deem more important in terms of funding allocation.
Ndimande pointed out that at national level, the Departments of Arts and Culture and the Department of Sports and Recreation stand as separate entities, while at provincial level, they are grouped under one department: Sports, Arts, Culture and Recreation. This, Ndimande suggested, leads to discrepancies when executing strategic programmes for each individual discipline.
Another challenge faced by the department at both national and provincial levels is the appointment of employees who have little or often no previous experience, skills or knowledge of the art industry, making it difficult for them to understand and implement policies that cater to an increasingly “sophisticated art audience”.
Developing the business of art
A study commissioned by the Gauteng government, which included a mysterious entity called “creative mapping”, found that 30% to 40% of the infrastructure associated with creative industries (galleries, studios and education facilities) is based in Johannesburg’s northern suburbs, resulting in the population of the greater Gauteng area having limited access to the arts industries. As a result, one of the strategic outcomes for programmes implemented by the Gauteng government is to promote inclusion and social cohesion through visual arts.
Talking about the Joburg Art Fair, Ndimande pointed out that R450 000 was invested by the government in this year’s event. Aligning itself with large-scale industry events is a key objective of the government, which views the events as opportunities for creating employment. Such events encourage access to the arts by stimulating awareness of local creativity.
Value must be placed on assisting artists in developing commercial products across various mediums in order to make art an economically viable industry, said Ndimande.
The artist collaborations presented at the Joburg Art Fair this year echo this belief. Most notably, the collaboration between fabric house St. Leger & Viney and artist Lawrence Lemaoana has resulted in an application of his “Dancers on the Wall” print on T-shirts that are for sale at the fair. Collaborations like this one are of great importance in growing and developing the business of art, a vision which Ndimande says the government is committed to supporting.