Michaelis Auction tonight at the Centre for African Studies, UCT. Find the Saatchi in you.

Labels: contemporary art, Michaelis

The Michaelis Graduate's Catalogue is available for download, and you can get it here. It's quite a good catalogue as far as these things go, with a pretty, shiny hardcover and a two double page spreads for each graduate. Their were some lines in the catalogue, however, that disturbed me. From Pippa Skotnes', the school's director, preface reads the following:

"Curatorship is alive and well in the city and, indeed, everywhere in the art world, but for the most part it is a pretty meaningless activity that provides 'the curator' with the opportunity to raise money, assemble a collection of works under a heading and, as if there were more to it than that, lay claim to the act as something creative or meaningful. Young artists, (and older ones too, for that matter) often drawn into the game, will produce a piece for such shows, or a mini-installation and caught up by the possibility of catching the eye of a foreign curator or a critic make, in haste, works that are nothing more than one-liners, or witty visual comments on small concerns."

To put it into context, she is speaking about how hard the graduates worked to produce their current work, and how much time and research went into that process, all of which is something I couldn't agree with more. This is a particularly strong body of students who deserve the kudos for their hard work. However, there are several points that she makes that anger me somewhat, and don't show a particularly balanced view of the local art scene or the machinations of the contemporary art world. Firstly, the idea that curatorship is alive and well in the city is a gross overstatement. In fact, I would go so far as to say curatorship is festering under a rock, undernourished and disdained, especially the type of independent curatorship that would be able to breathe fresh air into the industry. All the shows I saw this year either did not have a professional curator or the work was shoddy. Some iniatives have cropped up to train young curators, such as Cape's programme for the new year, Centre for African Studies Young Curator's Workshop, and these should be applauded. To go further and call curating a meaningless and uncreative field is discouraging, until it is recognised as an intellectual and useful force that drives the art world it will continue to fester. Curating is like the Google of the contemporary artworld, a system that organises and presents information. You won't always like what you find, like the way you might dislike porn on the grounds of morality, or blogs as populism, but you can't deny it brings that information out, and you're living in a backwater if you don't use it.

Finally, to think that artists only produce work for these shows to attract a foreign curator, like some slut in an abbreviated dress, is to insult their reasons and love for what they do. And to call that work a one-liner is to misunderstand that sometimes the shorter jokes are funnier. Andrew Putter's recent I'll Love You More is a one liner, but a very very good one.

Labels: 4th Years, Curatorship, Michaelis, Pippa Skotnes

I got asked to write a catalogue essay for the Michaelis 4th years, and then later I got unasked. I love my life.
Nevertheless, I did spend three days looking at all the final exams, which I thought were of exceptionally high quality. Having been freed of writing a formal essay, I want to speak here of my favourite moment of the whole exhibition. (I'm writing about this now, because I get my yearly day off on the day of their official graduation show.) Anyway, I was wandering around, and I came across a room filled with stuff, no name no title. It was a crazy space stuffed full of prints, paintings, broken things, a dried lizard, snake skins, a flowing plant, like this guy had studied four years at art school and then been kidnapped and isolated in a jungle cabin to do his exam. The sadness of all these abandoned objects was moving. As I was walking out I caught sight of a turning record. I walked up to it and followed the wires to a old radio and only when I knelt real close did I hear the faint sound of crackly piano music, the record scratched and warped into a loop. While I was down there I saw in a little red box, a preserved moth. It was very nice.

I'm not too sure why this stuck in my head. But I think after three days of seeing things well made, well communicated, things that moved and cranked and were big ideas, this little moment made me happy, that sometimes the things less well expressed can be better.

ps. On further investigation the piece was by Nicholas Wittenberg

Labels: 4th Years, Michaelis, Nicholas Wittenberg