Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
A carwash for people, water-free, of course
Bold, interactive exhibits at Cape Town Art Fair
A WATER-FREE human carwash, a jumping castle for one, a creature emitting purple bodies and a woven world of pipe cleaners. This is what you can expect from the Unframed section of the Cape Town Art Fair today and tomorrow at the CTICC.
The works do not have frames, and are mostly interactive pieces fairgoers can touch and even walk through.
This is the first time the annual art fair has presented the programme, which features the work of 2013 Standard Bank Young Artist Award- winner Mary Sibande.
The organisers describe the four pieces as large, museum-quality sculptures and installations.
“These works are heavily interactive and site specific, as they do not fit into the confines of an art fair booth,” they said in a statement.
The four artists who created the works for Unframed are Sibande from Gallery MOMO, Liza Grobler from Everard Read/Circa, Michael Linders and Katharien de Villiers from SMITH gallery.
Sibande created a character emitting purple forms, riding four wooden rocking horses. It is said to resemble herself, as opposed to the domestic worker character, Sophie, synonymous with her art.
This character resembles the figure in her 2014 work The Purple Shall Govern, seen at the Iziko South African National Gallery.
In it, the character is seen in a dual-type dance with Sophie ( based on her grandmother Mercia), who appears to be dying.
Grobler created an inter- active woven installation of purples and blues, partly with pipe cleaners. In the middle is a circular blue “stage”.
Grobler said: “When you stand in the middle, you become the focal point of the exhibition.”
Passers-by nervously look at De Villiers’ The Carwash: A Declaration of the Independence of the Imagination and the Rights of Man to His Own Madness, wondering whether they can walk through the wh i r r i n g sponges of the piece. After all, it is art, but can you touch it? The only instruction is that you take off your shoes.
De Villiers is quite keen for people to walk through and experience the carwash.
“I was at the Brussels Art Fair, where I found 40 000 people consuming art… I thought, what do you do for an art fair? You put 40 000 people through a carwash,” she said.
She used insulation foam to create the effect of bubbles, and blue rubber stress balls to represent soap.
“With Unframed, suddenly there is space, it is not art hung on a wall, and being at the art fair legitimises the work.”
King of My Castle is the work of Linders, a one-man jumping castle that may leave one feeling a little dishevelled.
The intention is to experience narcissism and self-importance, bouncing about on your own in middle of an art fair. The gallery explains that it is a comment on the “millennial self-involved culture”.
“While jumping, you don’t have control of how you look, this then creates a spectacle for the onlooker... Michael Linders’s intention for creating this work for the Cape Town Art Fair was to create an absurd and joyful experience of jump- ing on a jumping castle within the context of the serious art world,” it said in a statement.
For tickets, see www.cape- townartfair.co.za/book-tickets/ or Computicket. The fair is open from 11am to 7pm today and tomorrow.