by Robert Sloon

When I went to Spier Contemporary in Cape Town last year (it opens at JAG tonight), only one work has stuck with me, and I think with almost everyone else who saw it. Andrew Putter’s Secretly I Will Love You More is a video based on a painting, a classic Dutchy woman, middle-class and stern, who tenderly sings a Khoikhoi lullaby. The backstory is that of Maria Della Quellerie (Boet Van Riebeeck’s wife), who adopted a Khoikhoi girl. It has been seen and spoken about as a beautiful and delicate work, without polemic, about transcending race and prejudice through love. However, tender as the love of a mother is, it is also a role of power, stewardship and control. Maria is the colonial mother, exchanging a troubled but often two-sided love with her adopted child, while she fulfils her own desires. Her needs are far more creepy: she needs the exoticism of the foreign to normalise herself. By placing someone else as different and other, she makes herself superior, and justifies the power structures, and thereby her whole cultural identity, right down to that prim little bow. She needs the exotic more than she is willing to let on. This is why it is a secret love. Obviously, this incident takes place at the beginning of the colonial project, she is not aware of the destructive power of the new relationship she is developing. This is why she will love her more.
In an era of post-colonialism, or neo-colonialism, where financial control of ex-colonial nations has replaced political control, Maria is still gazing over us, softly singing her lullaby.
I found these two conflicting meanings of the work playing through my mind, as I thought about the commerce of art inherent to an art fair. Is the purchasing of black art by mostly white buyers from mostly white galleries a search for exoticism, and is that exoticism becoming crystallised by the acceptance of money into the bargain? (Curiously, one of the few black owned galleries, Gallery Momo, was showing work by Johannes Phokela, which makes a concerted effort to exoticize white culture. I hope it sold well.) Or is the purchasing a love that transcends race and prejudice? Or just an investment, a smart one considering that the art market is fluctuating less than many others? Does holding the fair in Africa negate the neo-colonial aspect?
I’m not trying to make anyone paranoid about their motives for buying art, or even, god forbid, discourage them. Indeed, as an artist I secretly need your exotic money. But rather I want to encourage the idea of fair trade, like we have in the coffee industry. Fair trade, to me, is about being knowledgeable of what your capital is doing. Not just buying what you like, but what is good too.

Labels: andrew putter, Joburg art fair

Amid the floods of criticism and plain common or garden rain currently pelting the Spier Contemporary show, I'd like to pay tribute to one piece which caught me off guard and very gently blew me away. It looked like a projection of a turgid brown 17^th century portrait, and then the mouth opened and very softly it began to sing.

Although the piece subsequently won a prize and has been the talk of the town, I am pleased that I discovered it afresh with no introduction, and was able to be touched by it so directly. We know by now that the work is about Maria Delle Quellerie singing a lullaby to Krotoa, her adopted Khoikhoi child. Apparently many artists have made work around this story, which makes it even more of an achievement that Andrew Putter managed to reconvey it with such impact.

The work is also satisfyingly thorough and consistent in its conception and its relevance for our society which is still riddled with racial tension. As the stolid portrait, replete with the stereotypes it conveys, is interrupted by the small movements of the mouth and the infinitely fragile tenderness of the singing, so the 'counter-tale' of the anomalous relationship of these two historic characters is one of enthrallment and affection which differs from the stereotypes of racist antipathy that burden our society.

As the strain and tension of being South African continue to hurt us every day, I would like to thank everyone who was involved in this project for the moment of gentleness they have created.

Labels: andrew putter, Krotoa, Spier Contemporary

I went to the latest offering from the Bowling Club (that collective that is holding "cultural events" once a month), this one hosted and presented by Andrew Putter, and I was blown away. It was a lecture on the science, culture and history of smells, along with a box of samples (some pleasant, some very, very mean). I think it's quite well known that smell has a direct link to memory and emotion, but I never before realized the breadth and depth of the industry that exploits that. And I guess that makes for a very good lecture, both interesting and illuminating. Keep your eyes open for more offerings from the collective.

Labels: 20 Smells, andrew putter, Bowling Club, review