An arch to encompass art, artifice and the artificial
Ten years ago, I wrote a Johannesburg tourism puff piece in which I extolled the virtues of Melrose Arch as a development that — given enough foot traffic over time — could become the kind of high-end, pedestrianorientated outdoor space that the city so desperately needs: somewhere that, though it targets an affluent clientele, is accessible and integrated into the wider urban fabric.
That take hasn’t aged well. An area that you approach by car through a secured entrance is unlikely to qualify as flâneur friendly; moreover, part of the appeal of Melrose Arch to its tenants and patrons is precisely that it is separated from the rest of Johannesburg, like an artificial island floating alongside the M1 motorway.
Still, it’s less kitsch than Montecasino and has more class (and fresh air) than the city’s hundreds of shopping malls. It has space, and sleek lines and good restaurants. This week I walked along its fabricated high street for the first time in a few years, and you know what? It was great. Blue skies, hot sun, pretty people. Je ne regrette rien.
In springtime there is an additional reason to visit Melrose Arch: it is the main hub of SculptX, touted as “Africa’s largest sculpture fair”. Founded by Craig Marks of Melrose Gallery in 2017, SculptX is back after an enforced hiatus in 2020. The work of almost 100 artists is displayed across multiple indoor and outdoor sites, at Melrose Arch and Sandton City’s Diamond Walk (until October 24).
The effect of so many pieces exhibited alongside one another is simultaneously disorienting and invigorating, allowing the viewer both to guzzle the visual feast of the whole and to savour the details of each sculpture. There is a lot to take in, and the range in material, size and style is remarkable. There are works in bronze, wood, steel, cement, resin and plastic; many of them also incorporate found objects. Large-scale pieces sit alongside miniatures.
Most impressive, however, is the compression or coalescing of diverse artistic imaginations, intentions and methods.
Willie Bester’s political statements about warfare and poverty stand out, complemented by rather than clashing with lyrical celebrations of the human form and witty or satirical responses to the quirks and weaknesses of our species. Cobus Haupt’s stern and self-important Men Who Built The Church stare out at Louis Chanu’s funky young woman, who strikes a pose and shoots back: Zip It.
If Carol Cauldwell’s fatherand-son stargazing toads and Francois Coertze’s dancing elephants are at one end of the anthropomorphic spectrum, Jacques Dhont’s fantastical creatures are human-animal hybrids of a different (and more troubling) order altogether. The sense of loss and longing in Sandro Trapani’s Tragodia series and the torment of Elizabeth Balcomb’s characters is offset by the intimacy of James Cook’s Soul Mates, the placidness and poise of Cecilia Wilmot Ballam’s dynamic subjects, the impenetrable inner life of Anton Smit’s figures and masks, and equally inscrutable heads of Siyabulela Ndodana.
Though there are notable exceptions such as Gerald Chukwuma’s carved wood panels and Esther Mahlangu’s iconic Ndebele motifs, along with other wall-mounted pieces
one of the pleasures of SculptX is the way in which the works displayed occupy their exhibition space, either in the gallery or on the street. They demand that the viewer circles them, considers them from different angles, steps away, returns, asks new questions, observes new subtleties.
This is one of the great pleasures of sculpture. Traditionally, this threedimensional mode has entailed finding, extracting and refining an essence a form or figure hidden within the material: a wooden bough, a block of marble, a”mound of clay (the “lost wax of a bronze inverts this process). But much contemporary practice subverts the notion of “innate” beauty or form by assembling sculptures from found items, manufacturing rather than distilling aesthetic qualities.
Bester’s sculptures are prominent examples though they often explicitly resist aestheticising, seeking instead to lay bare the brute mechanics of oppression.
Other artists do, however, repurpose the detritus of the everyday into something lovely: consider Theophelus Rikhotso’s broken spade, or Mandy Johnston’s plastic straws.
Art and the artificial are etymologically and conceptually inextricable. Artifice may characterise Melrose Arch, but this is ultimately no barrier to beauty as SculptX aptly demonstrates.