Sam Nhlengethwa paints the city
The city, real and imagined, is the star of Sam Nhlengethwa’s new show, writes Tymon Smith
It’s no surprise that the work I Love Jozi is the one that immediately catches your eye as you walk into the Goodman Gallery in Parkwood, Johannesburg. Created by veteran artist Sam Nhlengethwa as part of his new show, “Joburg Selected”, the work is a massive mixed-media 2m x 6m canvas depicting what at first glance seems to be a recognisable downtown Johannesburg street scene — perhaps showing a view from somewhere in Newtown with people and taxis in the foreground and the recognisable mishmash of architectural styles that make up the city’s ever-changing, historically tinged environment behind.
Look closer, though, and you’ll see that this is a playful and thoughtful reconstruction of elements of the city taken from disparate locations and reimagined through the eyes of the artist to create a vision of the city that’s typically Joburg in feel though not in actuality.
Nhlengethwa’s distinctive collage practice has made a version of the city that draws on his own aesthetic preferences, memories and the history of the city to playfully provide a space that holds within its imaginary street view all the bustle and hustle and crazy juxtapositions that characterise much of the inner-city space.
Many of the other works on show adopt a more traditional representation of actual buildings, but it’s this work — along with a piece titled in tribute to the 64-year-old Nhlengethwa’s artistic heroes Romare Bearden and Ernest Cole — that best demonstrate his well-loved collage methods of mixing elements from various sources to create new visions that combine the familiar with the imagined.
If Nhlengetwa’s 2001 show “Jozi People” was a love letter to the characters and humanity of the city, then “Joburg Selected” is a companion piece that pays homage to the buildings in whose shadow the hustlers and go-getters of Johannesburg ply their trades. Figures appear in many of the works here, but they’re secondary to the buildings — some of which are depicted isolated from their immediate environments in an effort to showcase the aesthetic elements that have led the artist to pay homage to them and provide a historical record of sorts of what the city looks like now that could — considering the ever-present sight of cranes and scaffolds throughout the city — not remain with us for much longer.
Speaking from his home in Benoni filled with jazz vinyls, art, antiques and classic cars, Nhlengethwa says: “It could be that in 10 or 15 years some of the buildings I’ve worked on won’t be around any more so this is a record of those.”
Nhlengethwa was born and raised in Springs. Growing up in the 1970s, he and his friends would “take a train and we would go to American Showroom, Lord’s, John Craig — we all knew those shops. Money was tight but they were understanding and you could buy on layby and there was much excitement when you could pay off your pair of shoes.
“So it started there and we’re talking about the ’70s. We would also go to the movies in Fordsburg and mingle around the Carlton Centre but I never grew up thinking I would be based in Johannesburg as an artist.”
When Nhlengethwa moved to Johannesburg in the ’80s, when he worked for the SABC and honed his craft at the Artist’s Foundation under painter Bill Ainslie, he was already familiar with the city and watched as it began to see a massive influx of people from around SA arriving in the City of Gold, seeking their slice of the pie.
As one of the founders of the legendary Bag Factory in Newtown, where his studio was based for many years, Nhlengethwa also remembers: “Pat Mautloa, Kay Hassan and I used to take walks around the city — on Saturdays we’d go to the fleamarket and go and eat at the Yard of Ale and there would be events at Gramadoela’s, and Kippie’s was just around the corner so there was a lot of activity around there and fortunately my studio was just around the corner so it was so much fun and it inspired me.”
Kippie’s jazz club is paid tribute to in a print that forms part of the show — and jazz has always been at the heart of Nhlengethwa’s practice and life. His brothers were avid collectors of jazz records when he was growing up and it’s a family tradition that the artist has continued — his house is filled with records in every room and a vast collection of vintage but functional record players that mean he’s always able to do what he most enjoys — play jazz on the stereo while making work. The show also includes tributes to Kitchener’s and the nowdefunct Orbit jazz club in Braamfontein in recognition of Nhlengethwa’s experiences of listening to his favourite sounds in these spaces.
Nhlengethwa’s three decades of work may have been heavily inspired by jazz and Johannesburg but it’s also allowed him to travel widely and while there’s no city for him quite like the one that he knows better than his hometown of Springs, he admits a fondness for many other places — Havana, Rotterdam, New York and Vienna.
Whether or not he’ll ever pay the same kind of artistic homage to those cities remains to be seen, but for now he’s content and hopes that those visiting the exhibition will see that “I have fun. Especially when I’m working and jazz is playing. The I Love Jozi piece — I enjoyed it so much that I had to extend it because I could feel the energy and the movement of the city and I said, ‘No. Let me dream,’ and so I made it as big as it is now.”
Judging by the number of people who posed for smiling selfies with the piece at the show’s opening, visitors to the show can see and appreciate the artist’s love of what he does and the city he does it in.