Goodman Gallery Cape

This article first appeared in THE WEEKENDER March 2007 View online here Over the last forty years, Johannesburg’s Goodman Gallery has become an important site for many South African artists. Ten years ago the gallery moved to new premises in Melville and marked the event with an exhibition entitled “Lift Off”, showcasing the work of some of the best-known artists in the country. Now there is second Goodman Gallery, in Cape Town, and another “Lift Off” exhibition has been arranged to celebrate its inauguration. One could be forgiven for assuming that the launch of the Goodman Gallery Cape was carefully planned for 2007 to coincide with this anniversary year. Speaking at the opening of her latest venture, however, the redoubtable Linda Givon admitted that her main motivation for expanding the Goodman enterprise was boredom: at age 70, she found she wasn’t quite ready for retirement, and “missed her gallery too much”. Whatever the reason, the art scene in Cape Town will no doubt be rejuvenated by her efforts. Givon also emphasised the gallery’s location in Woodstock, an area on the outskirts of the city bowl that – depending on who you ask – is either dirty and dangerous or upcoming and up-to-date. The gallery is housed in what used to be an industrial building; architect Jeremy Rose’s renovation of the space provides a single window, which looks out not only to Table Mountain and Devil’s Peak, but also to the vacant land and scattered houses that indicate the symbolically saturated District Six. Yet the expressed hope of this being a kind of “people’s gallery”, where the poor and destitute can walk in off the street and (presumably while mingling with rich collectors, savvy connoisseurs or well-heeled tourists) experience that intangible phenomenon known as “transcendence”, is at best naïve and at worst disingenuous. Art does not have to be a bourgeois luxury, but certain manifestations of it are, and one of these is an exhibition opening in which the works are on sale for hundreds of thousands of rands. This is not a criticism of the gallery itself, but simply an acknowledgement of a dilemma confronted by all artists – and the South African art world in particular. It is a difficulty hinted at in Sam Nhlengethwa’s Sold Out, a canvas triptych depicting a scene from an art gallery; one of the largest works on display in the current exhibition, it faces the entrance, teasing the visitor and (during the opening function in particular) acting as an ironic mirror to its surroundings. The Goodman Gallery prides itself on a history of exhibiting socially and politically conscious artworks, and a number of the artists in “Lift Off” voice messages of protest. Willie Bester’s Long Walk to Freedom presents and manipulates iconic images of the struggle while at the same time offering glancing critiques of apartheid-era hypocrisy – Gary Player is quoted as saying, “No non-white nurses my children and there are few South Africans who allow it”, while a fettered Bible turns “Die Heilige Woord van God” into a shackle (there is also a metal chain holding the keys to a prison cell; the images of captivity resonate with Penny Siopis’ Mercy, in which that soft word is written out with the hard links of a blood-red chain, jerking back the head of an enslaved figure). The meaning behind Bester’s Trojan Horse is more subtle, perhaps even abstruse, but this sculpture – which takes centre stage on the gallery floor – cannot fail to impress with its sheer size and the frozen mechanical power of its manifold welded metal parts. Less ambiguous is Sue Williamson’s Pass the parcel, Jacob, in which newspaper clippings about the Zuma rape case are “unwrapped”, expressing indignation at the actions of the former deputy president (although the installation is also, unwittingly perhaps, a wry comment on the frenzied media coverage of the trial). Norman Catherine’s fiberglass statue, Red Bull Gives You Zooma, endorses Williamson’s condemnation: a bull with an oversized multi-coloured phallus, devilish horns and a genital-shaped restraining mask over its nose stands on two legs, has a male torso, wears the boots and feathered cape / wings of a comic-book hero, and beams a lascivious smile at the viewer. This anthropomorphism is echoed in other works on show, such as William Kentridge’s Bird Catching series, in which human silhouettes in various postures merge with stalking cats and flying birds to create dynamic scenes that are at times comical, but can also be nightmarish. Images in which the bodies of men and women are somehow distorted predominate other artists’ selections. The blurred figures in Robert Hodgins’ oil paintings are anything but threatening – even the military men evoke a sense of pity. Kendell Geers’ contribution, on the other hand, is typically discomforting: his La Sainte Vierge 57 has a woman apparently masturbating with a dagger, with the words LANGUAGE-SEX-VIOLENCE making the theme obvious, while La Sainte Vierge 55 seems to have a foot fetish. A highlight of the show, as expected, is David Goldblatt’s photographs, which present exquisite contrasts. One, in muted black-and-white, foregrounds an elderly woman in an informal settlement watering a small garden, nurturing life; in the background, a hillside cemetery insists on death; incongruously, a mosque crowns the horizon. Another, in bright colours, sets the luscious curves of the models on Wonderbra adverts against the neat, perpendicular lines of the Sandton CBD, reminding us that these are two sides of the same commercial coin.

 

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