by Linda Stupart
A Report From the Floor

Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art. – Andy Warhol
A few days before I flew up to Johannesburg a fairly distraught friend of mine informed me that her gallerist was upping their commission to 50% for the Joburg Art Fair, almost 15% more than their standard as a very young Cape Town gallery. “And,” she continued, “they don’t want to raise the prices of my paintings too much because they were quite high already” ( high being approximately R4 000) leaving the artist with barely enough to cover her flight, accomadation and expenses to even attend the fair. This is not to demonise the gallery neccesarily, certainly Cape Town’s Whatiftheworld… is, as William Wells, director of the Townhouse Gallery of Contemporary Art, put it: “investing in their artists.”
This stand in particular is one that seems on the surface to be almost in antithesis to the general feeling of an art fair, or any fair – that is to make money. While the majority of galleries have made a conscious (and obvious) decision to bring desirable, sellable work, Whatiftheworld has chosen to fill half of their stall with a non-sellable installation by Julia Clark, from her Hypocrit’s Lament which was on show at Joao Ferreira last year. This risk is on some levels laudable of course, the bravery inherent in showing an unsellable work, as well as Rowan Smith’s fabulous and commercially un-viable Dot Matrix Loop, suggests that this gallery is prepared to take big risks in promoting their major artists. It does occur to me, however, that the rest of the gaellery’s stable is paying for Whatiftheworld…’s big favourites.
Mr Ferreira seemed more pragmatic view on money and the art fair. With experience at a number of international art fairs, he calls Joburg Art Fair “very hard,” discussing how most international art fairs fly gallerists and their work up to the venue, cover their accomadation and so on, and that the galleries from Cape Town particularly have had to lay out an huge amount of money for this venture. Salivating at their bits for months now, many of the Cape Town gallerists and dealers get hugely excited at the mere thought of a real art market. Although with the advent of big galleries like Goodman Cape the market has improved in the Mother City, the money is still firmly rooted in Joburg and galleries from the rest of South Africa are desperate to make contact with some of Johannesburg’s big collectors.
Of course, Joao says, the idea is to sell at an art fair and with luscious easily consumable prints and fun-sized paintings ranging from R 3 500 – R180 000, and featuring one of the hottest young contemporaries around, Bridget Baker, he should be fine. According to Joao, the organisers felt he should be able to turn one million rands with a stall the size of his. He aims to break even.
One of the hopes expressed by many at the art fair, and stated as an outright prediction by some, is that contemporary South African art prices are going to be raised across the board as a direct result of the Joburg Art Fair – with South Africa finally starting to take cognisence of the current international boom in the contemporary art market. One gallery who has already seen this interest in art from the continent is the October Gallery from London. “Africa’s hot,” gallery director, Chili Hawes, tells me in a Paris Hilton-esque fashion, “there’s no doubt about it” . Specialising in contemporary West African art in a city where the idea of a contemporary Africa is only now really taking hold, the October Gallery is host to some giants of the continent. When asked about their prices for the art fair Hawes tells me they are in line with international prices, and “hopes” that there is a market for these works here in South Africa.
From the other end of the continent, the Townhouse Gallery in Cairo, comes to the fair as a sponsored invited guest. The director of this not-for-profit gallery, William Wells, spoke of the import of the art fair not only as a commercial venture, but also asa a way of gaining South African interest in artists from up North. When discussing our poor art market, Wells insisted that the South African maket is considerably bigger than theirs, saying “ We’ve spent the last three years just trying to get people to look at contemporary art!” I assured him we empathise.
Wells also re-iterated the importance of an African art market in a space where all the major buyers, artworks and often artists end up overseas. In particular he defined a problem that is perhaps particular to North Africa where the influx of contemporary art auctions and big money interest in the Middle East has meant that a lot of Egyptian artists are selling their work through auction at three times the price they could fetch through their local galleries, galleries that are “the lifeline of the artist”. Big money, but no show.
Finally I walked past Art On Paper, a Johannesburg gallery that on the whole seemed a lot calmer than the general fray. I overheard someone looking at a Conrad Botes print, saying, typically “hold on to that one, it will be worth something one day, one day soon”. It turns out, in fact, that Art on Paper have been dealing in Conrad Botes for the last eight years – selling his hand printed etchings for about R 200 eight years ago. Now his works at Art on Paper are gong for (what seems a very reasonable) R 8 000, making a lot of young collectors very happy.
Looking across the way at Michael Stevenson, I wondered how much Botes’ installation would go for there. The Joburg Art Fair allows a platform where, for the first time, one can make both national and international market comparisons and hope that when it’s all over, South Africa may come out on top. Remembering always, to quote Robert Hughes, “A fair price is the highest one a collector can be induced to pay.”

* Afterword: I finally managed to speak to Justin and Cameron, the directors of whatiftheworld late last night, after considerable interest in their artists, particularly Rowan Smith, and pretty good sales. In response to my question as to why take the risk of putting non-sellable work in their space, Justin replied “Not everyone is only interested in money, Linda. We also like the art.”

Labels: Joburg art fair