African art to buy, sell and be seen with
● Perhaps in search of the next Irma Stern, Gerard
Sekoto or El Anatsui, the cognoscenti both local and from further afield converged at the Cape Town International Convention Centre on Thursday.
This was for the vernissage (that’s artspeak for a private viewing before the doors are open to the public) of this year’s Investec Cape Town Art Fair, which ends today.
Guests are proffered glasses of that ultra-expensive bubbly Perrier-Jouët as they walk in to the hall. One of the first to arrive is Lhola Amira, a Gugulethu-born artist who works in film and video and whose work is on display at the SMAC Gallery stand.
Lhola looks striking in one of her signature head wraps. Draped over her ensemble is a fireengine-red isembatho in a nod to her cultural heritage.
Also alluring, in a gorgeous Marianne Fassler silk shift, is art lover Didi Mogashoa, spotted admiring a photograph by my regular social whirl lensman John Liebenberg, on display at the Afronova Gallery booth.
Elsewhere the crowd — among them cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro of Zapiro fame and dapper French gallerist Emmanuel Perrotin (who founded his first gallery at the tender age of 21 and today has 18 spaces) — are taking in the art while enjoying canapés that include confit duck balls and potato and Gruyère soufflés.
Giovanni Gorno Tempini, the president of Fondazione Fiera Milano, which produces the fair, was looking to add a slew of new purchases to his work by Cameroonian artist Pascal Martin Tayou. He summed up the mood: “Positive vibrations from everyone. That shows that African artists and African art is centre stage.”