Missing beer tent hurts fest vibe
Vibe also dampened by absence of beer tent
ADROP in foot traffic has left a hole in many traders’ pockets and some performers and stall-holders at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown are reconsidering the bookings they had planned for next year.
It also does not help that a muddle over a liquor licence left the festival without its favourite beer tent.
On the other hand, the full house signs have been going up at many performances – amid rave reviews – which augurs well for final ticket sale tallies.
But quiet streets, abundant parking and a perceptible lack of the festival buzz were just some of the telling signs that this year’s festival was not attracting the same crowds as in the past.
Village Green director Selina White said it was difficult to pin the drop in visitors on any specific factor, but the coming weekend should see more feet through the gate.
“In the past the first weekend of the festival was always the busier one, but this year we caught the school holidays on the second week, so hopefully the coming weekend will see the festival filling up again,” she said.
White said tough economic times, and the Kirkwood Wildsfees coinciding with their first weekend should also be taken into account.
A mix-up with applications for a liquor licence left the festival without a beer tent, an aspect White thinks dealt the festival vibe a huge blow.
“The liquor board usually required applications for a licence 40 days in advance,” she said.
“However, it seems the regulations were changed to 40 working days, and we missed the deadline by two days.
“Every effort was made to rectify the situation, but the liquor board would not budge.
“The beer tent was not necessarily a huge drawcard, but it added to the festival feel.”
Dr Stef the Hypnotist, a regular face at the fest, said he could see a drop in his ticket sales too, and was working hard to punt his shows for the remainder of the event.
“Usually people are queuing out of the door to buy tickets to the shows, but this year even the ticket office is quieter,” he said.
“We hope to see more people come through for the second half of the festival, but as things stand now, it’s really not looking great.”
In the corner of her quiet stall, Evaline Ngendo said her African crafts were not selling as well as in previous years.
“I have been coming to Grahamstown for 10 years, and I have never struggled like I am struggling this year,” she said.
“I came all the way from Cape Town and now business is so slow.
“I might skip it next year if things don’t pick up.”
Sculptor Fanuel Mutemajango also travelled from Cape Town, and this was the first time he had tried selling his metal artworks at a festival.
“But this festival is not what I had hoped,” he said.
“In fact, if this is what all
‘ We hope to see more people come for the second half of the festival
festivals look like, I might never travel with my goods again. I will stick to art markets in Cape Town.”
On the other hand, Rhodes University students Tyler Naumann and Simone Soutter, both 22, said they had attended a number of performances over the last few days, and many were well-attended, even sold out.
Artist Laura-Kate said she had sold more of her sketches than she had anticipated.
“Foot traffic is definitely down but for some reason my sales are up.”
CURATED and eloquently explained by Emma van der Merwe of the Everard Read galleries, Beth Diane Armstrong’s art exhibition in perpetuum consists of two massive steel sculptures outside the Monument and a room of metal sculptures and drawings inside in the main gallery.
At a most helpful art walkabout, Van der Merwe outlined how Armstrong played with the monumental and the intimate, big and not big, perhaps making a molecule huge and next to it, something small, yet complex.
Even the shadows the works cast on the gallery walls are carefully planned to be subtle yet cohesive for this exhibition and Van der Merwe strongly recommends viewing the outdoor sculptures at dawn or dusk to see the full effect. The artist also gave her perspective on the creative process. Sculpting such large works takes physical as well as mental and artistic effort and, for example, in the larger works, one beam might need several men to lift it.
Time is another factor and Armstrong said although she might weld a piece in the relatively short space of 10 days it took far longer to conceptualise and design.
“It took a year and a half to create this work,” she said, gesturing to one of the larger pieces. “Behind every work you see here is weeks, months and sometimes years of calculating.”
Armstrong completed her MA in sculpture under Maureen de Jager at Rhodes
University in 2010, which is when she took up welding. The octopus-like sculpture – which actually references a seahorse – for example contains 6 500 individual welds which had to be precisely measured.
“I measure every angle for a weld. I have to explode chaos and then reign in order to create the work,” Armstrong said. This process of push and pull, and of taking a fleeting feeling and transforming it into a more permanent work of art, is what led to the name of the exhibition– in perpetuum.
It suggests something ongoing and everlasting. Take an intricate metal tree, for example, which starts as a loose spool of wire.
“Then I order and structure it and get the wire into its form, and that’s before I can start weaving it. I’ve been making trees for a number of years,” she said, outlining the difference between a rhizome and a tap root in different pieces and their meaning to her. For her, trees act as a symbol of rootedness yet so much of her work is full of air.
This echoes her interests and how she embeds these into her art: “I’ve been fascinated by the fractal system and chaos theory ever since I can remember,” Armstrong says. “I have an intuitive feeling of where I am going but my mom is a maths teacher and she helps.”
It’s sounds pretty abstract but she hopes to boil it down to how you feel when you view her work. “It’s about feelings, my sculptures invite you to relate and it is all about personal space. I invite you to come into my show. Here is my process, it’s very tied into me as an individual and an artist, being in the world, in perpetuum.”
Like a photographer, she is consciously playing with light. In this case it is not to capture an image on film – although in perpetuum does include a video with a lovely interplay of light and colour – but to cast shadows and angles in relief through a combination of solid shapes and empty space. The effect is that the whole is more than the sum of its elements. And, after all, isn’t that what art is?
ý in perpetuum is on at the Monument until Sunday. Entrance is free to all the festival art exhibitions.