AN AFRICAN REVOLUTION
As the international design community turns its long overdue attention to the African continent, Trevyn McGowan, founder and CEO of The Guild Group, tells us why the South African design scene is on the ascendant.
A look at South Africa’s burgeoning art scene
In South Africa, craft is ancient, but design is young. The country has been attracting global attention for its culture and design scene, particularly with the launch last year of the worldclass Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa designed by British architect Thomas Heatherwick. Located in Cape Town’s historic grain silo on the waterfront, it is the biggest public art space to open on the continent for more than a century. Along with the beach city’s thriving design and gallery scene and annual art fair, it is putting the spotlight on South African design, in disciplines spanning from furniture to ceramics.
The Woodstock Design District in particular, a suburb located between Table Mountain and the harbour, has become a key cultural hub. Once a farming hamlet that developed into a lively multicultural suburb in the 1800s, before turning into an industrial area in the early 1900s that led to a mix of Victorian row houses, semi-detached townhouses, factories and warehouses, Woodstock has the highest concentration of design stores and art galleries in the country. Over the past decade, the cheap rentals for unusual spaces, proximity to the city and high crime rate in Johannesburg have enticed creatives to move to the area. Today, it is filled with shops, showrooms, eateries, design studios and high-end contemporary art galleries like Stevenson, Blank Projects, SMAC and
Goodman Gallery. The design landscape may be more widespread now, but Cape Town remains extremely vibrant.
Southern Guild, the continent’s most renowned design gallery, has been instrumental in boosting world-class, locally made, limited-edition design and is credited with giving South African design a voice. The gallery, founded in 2008 by Trevyn and Julian McGowan in Woodstock, became the first African gallery to participate in Design Miami in 2011, organised the Guild Design Fair in Cape Town – the first international design fair in Africa – presenting international galleries in 2014 and 2015, and was the first to be featured at Christie’s London’s annual design auction in 2015. Through The Guild Group, the husband-and-wife duo have also established a sustainable creative and commercial infrastructure in South Africa, and its platforms cover practically all aspects needed to build a credible, flourishing design industry.
Dr Thomas Girst, Head of BMW Group Cultural Engagement, which is a partner of Southern Guild, says, “It is important as a global company with 30 locations alone for our plants worldwide that we engage the local culture. We want to be at the forefront of cultural development, as we are with our core product in terms of leadership when it comes to technology and digitalisation.” global perceptions of South African design? In 2008, we realised that we were meeting these extraordinary talents whose work didn’t fit into the retail supply chain model – they were too big or too expensive. My husband has a theatre design background
and I had an architectural and interiors practice in London, so we were aware of the global landscape and that this was work that we hadn’t seen before anywhere. We launched Southern Guild to propel designers to explore areas that they were at the edges of, to assist and mentor them, and provide a forum for them to push themselves further than they had before. We have done a lot of different programmes from commercial, upliftment and high-level gallery work, where we are trying to educate the global world about what South African design is, educate the industry about where it sits within the global conversation, assist designers to achieve levels of excellence and real perfection of execution.
When did the global design community take an interest in South Africa?
For a good 10 years at a retail level, the visionary stores were anticipating and starting to look, but I think it’s a movement that has just gotten stronger and stronger from fashion influences to art. As a gallery, we saw the shift happening, from a collectible design perspective, probably around five years ago. People needed to see it because it was so unusual and specific. We were turned down by Design Miami the first time we applied; they said the jury didn’t understand our mandate because it was all this disparate work and they couldn’t see the common thread. As soon as we did the first show, everybody got it. I think that now in Basel, we saw a real shift, again in people understanding that we’re telling a different story. Our designers are pushing the boundaries all the time.
What are the defining characteristics of South African design?
How personal it is. For example, there’s a piece at The Salon by fashion designer Rich Mnisi. His clothes are very three dimensional, structured and almost architectural. He’s made this incredible chaise, so unusual in shape. It’s his grandmother’s tears and it’s a homage to the women in his life. Then the fact that it’s all handmade, that there is this rawness and energy to it, but it’s refined at the same time, so you have this duality. And there’s also a lot of humour and almost whimsy in it.You’ll see somebody kind of changed when they interact with the work: they’ll look at a bench, look again, then start to smile and there’s this twist. It’s received information that is familiar somewhere and yet very strange at the same time.
Who are some of the most exciting contemporary South African designers?
Our top designers are Porky Hefer, Xandre Kriel, Andile Dyalvane, Atang Tshikare,
Dokter and Misses, Justine Mahoney, Madoda Fani, Adam Birch, David Krynauw, John Vogel and Gregor Jenkin because each of them works in completely their own way with their own materials. Everybody has got their own viewpoint; there’s no overlap.
Is design a way for South Africa to overcome its history of segregation and division to become a force for integration?
Without a shadow of a doubt. We’ve done a huge amount of development in the industry: 75 per cent of the homeware that is exported around the world goes through our company. Even as an industry, design and art came at the same time, so it was very much an upsurge with the money that is brought into the country and the skills upliftment through training because of demand. When we do 10 40-foot containers of baskets, the women who live rurally whose children have gone to the cities looking for work are called back to help with these huge orders, and they’re seeing the old-fashioned skill that their grannies did as something that is wanted by a young, hip chick in New York, and they feel there’s a relevance to that skill. So you’re preserving skills, you’re bringing income, you’re creating work. The Haas Sisters go back to their homes in the townships and they’re rock stars who have been to New York and met Beyoncé. This is really lifechanging for these women. It shows an opportunity for a different kind of career, where people weren’t looking at that before. Designers like Atang Tshikare that youngsters are looking up to as heroes, it’s inspiring and it helps people push themselves further.