Vibrant textiles come alive

E-CATALOGUE: 51 LOTS WITH RICH HISTORY TO CHOOSE FROM

Keiskamma project [lots 1 to 9]

Founded in 2000, the Keiskamma Art Project in Hamburg, Eastern Cape, produces exquisite textile works, beadwork and wireworks which provide income and other forms of essential support for many families in the area through its cohesive network of women and youth.

In the 20 years since its launch, the project has created a rich oeuvre of tapestries that allow viewers to enter into the conversations of a community of Xhosa women using art as a medium of expression and healing.

The first in the series, the Keiskamma Tapestry, is a large-scale altarpiece that was inspired by the famous Bayeux tapestry. It records aspects of the history of South Africa, with a focus on the Eastern Cape, over its 120m of length. It now forms part of the Parliament Collection in Cape Town.

Other significant works in the series are the Keiskamma Guernica, a South African reinterpretation of Pablo Picasso’s 1937 Guernica, and the Keiskamma Altarpiece, which takes Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim altarpiece (dating from between 1512 and 1516) as its starting point.

The embroideries are a form of storytelling, symbolic micro-histories through which we are given privileged insight into the life of a community at once fragile and resilient.

Making art through decades of extreme poverty, and the ravages of HIV/Aids and Covid, the Keiskamma artists weave narratives of hope, at once documenting and transcending the harsh conditions in which their intricate tapestries are created.

Rorke’s Dri [lots 10 and 11]

The Evangelical Lutheran Church Art and Craft Centre at Rorke’s Drift was established as a poverty-alleviation initiative in the early ’60s at a small Swedish mission station in KwaZulu-Natal.

Two Swedish art-school graduates, Peder and Ulla Gowenius, began a weaving experiment in early 1962 at Ceza Mission Hospital before moving the venture to what was to be its permanent home at Rorke’s Drift. The Goweniuses started a weaving production studio whose sales of tapestries which also supported the centre’s subsequent ventures, including fine art, ceramics and textile printing, as well as domestic science and bookkeeping.

From 1962 figurative and nonfigurative tapestries were shown on a series of exhibitions in Sweden. Tapestries made by women at Rorke’s Drift were acquired by Swedish institutions, such as Konstfack and the National Museum.

During the period of Swedish stewardship at the Centre, these works represented South Africa on the Venice Biennale in 1970 and the São Paulo Bienal in 1973, and received gold medals in 1968 and 1974 at the International Art and

Craft exhibition in Florence.

To date, most South African writings have focused on the centre’s printmaking, a later venture introduced as part of the Fine Art course to offer opportunities to men, who mostly came from urban townships.

Scholarly attention has yet to be accorded to the rural women and men who wove over a thousand tapestries under the direction of the Swedes.

The narrative of tapestry at the centre’s weavery reflects particular social, political, doctrinal and economic contexts and ideological struggles.

Mapula Embroidery Project [lots 13 to 20]

Mapula, established in 1991, is located in the Winterveld area, north-west of Pretoria.

The formation of Mapula (meaning Mother of Rain) was part of an initiative by Soroptomists International to upgrade the living conditions of people in the Winterveld.

In 1991, Karin Skawran, head of the History of Art and Fine Arts Department at the University of South Afrika (Unisa), convened a meeting with fellow Soroptomist Mimi van der Merwe, and various members of staff at Unisa, as well as Sister Joan of the Sisters of Mercy in the Winterveld. The Sisters of Mercy subsequently identified Emily Maluleke as a person in the Winterveld community who could co-ordinated the collective.

Maluleke, an experienced needleworker, encourages participants to draw motifs – generally printed images rather than from life.

The somewhat experimental works that resulted from this training were purchased by the Soroptomists and the Unisa staff, and these sales encouraged additional people to join the project.

By the end of 1991 the collective had begun to market works in the Magnolia Craft Market in Magnolia Dell, Pretoria, as well as via an NGO outlet, Rural Craft, in Rosebank, Johannesburg.

Fibre Art [lots 21 to 36]

Fibre art is an art form that encompasses a very large range of techniques, materials and approaches that give the fibre artist the possibility of expressing themselves in almost unlimited ways. Work may be composed of numerous different types of fibre in combination with other materials such as paint, dyes, and embellishments such as beads and found objects.

Fibre refers to materials that are made up of continuous filaments or elongated pieces similar to lengths of thread. These include natural fibres (including cotton, hemp, jute, flax, sisal, linen, paper, textile, leaf and seed fibre, spider silk, sinew, cat-gut, wool, hair, cashmere, mohair and angora), metallic fibres (drawn from ductile metals like copper, gold, silver and steel) or synthetic fibres (such as nylon, acrylic, Tyvek etc.).

The endless, exciting fibre possibilities and combinations include basketry, beading, braiding, crochet, embroidery, felting and felt making, fibre knots, knitting, Kumihimo (a traditional Japanese artform of interlaced braids and cords), lace-making and knotting.

The Natalie Knight Collection [lot 37 to 51]

Art gallery owner, collector, curator, researcher, writer and art critic Natalie Knight the Natalie Knight Gallery in Hyde Park (1981–1995), with the opening show Whatever Happened to Pop Art?, which featured works by Warhol, Dine, Hamilton and Hockney.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, Knight carried out field research on Tsonga/Shangaan material culture with the assistance of Billy Makhubele and built a collection of significant artworks, all imbued with their distinctive cultural and spiritual significance, some of which form part of this sale.

Kuba Cloth [lots 53 to 58]

The base of a Kuba cut pile embroidery is a square of plainweave raffia cloth (from the palm tree, genus Raphia). This may be dyed before embroidery begins or the whole cloth may be dyed afterwards. The cloth is sometimes left a natural colour and the whole textile base is covered by pile, and thereby obscured.

The fibres are dyed a range of colours and applied in lines building up blocks of colour to form the distinctive patterns which characterise these cloths.

A basic design is rarely worked out in advance and the pattern is simply created from the memory while embroidering. All embroidery is the work of women, just as all weaving is done by men. – Citizen reporter