Ryan Arenson in baby yellow’s apartment

Artist Ryan Arenson dreams in one colour – baby yellow, but produces work in many. For the past two years he has been immersed in creating a six-year-old boy called Baby Yellow, an alter ego conceived on an iPad who since has taken on an unexpectedly rich digital life, drawing, writing books, playing in a band, creating music and enacting all manner of fantasies while he blurs the line between childhood exploration and adult subject matter. Baby Yellow lives in Arenson’s Johannesburg apartment. He inhabits the space as if he owns it… His framed prints cover the walls, the cuttings from his hand-printed books are balled into a jar, Japanese tchotchkes signifying his love of Tai Chi occupy the surfaces. At the window side stands a shrine to him, a mobile gallery filled with the books that tell the story of his life. In another life it was a popcorn machine at a Rabie Road junkshop. Arenson came across it, and in his trembling excitement at discovering what he had only imagined might be the perfect display case for his artistic wares, he offered the surprised shop owner more money than he’d asked for.

baby yellow’s mobile gallery

The glass cabinet’s sides fold out to reveal a series of linocuts. Atop it is perched an iPad. Where the popcorn would have once enticingly spilled a series of Baby Yellow books, each page printed and cut by hand on Japanese rice paper are cloth-bound and enclosed by twirled strings, the toggle for each is a miniature black rubber ninja – actually a USB containing the e-book versions.

Arenson is a full time artist, and a performer, or as he tells it, with this work – a “high class hawker”. He is consumed by line work, intricate patterns and the process of narrative, and inspired by the landscapes, colours and woodblocks of South African master, JH Pierneef. He studied art at the then Johannesburg Art Foundation, completing a Fine Arts degree at Wits. His first solo exhibition was in 1998 and the recognition of his work earned him the highly prestigious Absa L’Atelier Award and a residency in Paris.

geometry of baby yellow

The nine books of Baby Yellow began November 6 two years ago as drawings on an iPad. A crisp memory because it was Arenson’s birthday and the iPad was his gift to himself. “Previously I was doing very detailed line work and engraving. I felt I needed a drawing style that was freer, less self-conscious, less skilled.”

Drawing challenges many artists. “It’s a vulnerable process – almost like writing a journal,” he says. While discussing his inhibitions about drawing freely someone asked “how old I felt emotionally when I drew.” He says: “Being traditionally a painter and printmaker the emotions were those of almost a six-year-old. My hands didn’t express what I felt or what I saw and it was frustrating.” His confidante challenged him to draw like that six-year-old child. “I got an iPad to return emails and for the web. I couldn’t cope anymore… I was too behind technologically.” Then his Apple username was ryantechnophobe. “I had been doing some geometric type of drawing and I wondered whether I could work with that on the device”.

With research Arenson found an application called Brushes, used by artist David Hockney whose exhibition Fleurs Fraiches, had broken new ground in Paris a month earlier. Hockney told BBC World Service’s Colin Grant that the digital tools for making art were extraordinary. “You know sometimes I get so carried away, I wipe my fingers at the end thinking that I’ve got paint on them,” he said.

baby yellow details – plus the artist wearing those amazing shoes by @MariaPodesta

Arenson was deeply influenced by this, but first had to overcome his own bias about computer art. “I’d always thought the computer does a lot of the craft for you. With Brushes there is no cut and paste, no quick fixes. Everything is done with your finger. It felt more like a school chalkboard for me than a computer. It’s not trying to give you special effects. You draw with pixels – little dots – and make lines. Where you are privileged as an artist is that it’s not messy and your color palette is heaven.”

As his intrigue in the aesthetics of drawing grew, his technique refined and his interest in pursuing this line of drawing deepened leading him to create more than 200 drawings. The more he drew, the process consumed him, leading him to seek digital answers to how an artist could possibly retain the integrity of his work throughout the artistic process, from creating to publishing, printing and packaging his artworks. The process involved eschewing the traditional path to the gallery and the work stands as a manifesto of the artist’s right to own his own work. Talking about the gallery system’s power, Arenson says: “I don’t think it communicates to or represents what art is about or what stories people need to be hearing.”

From the simplicity of a little Tai Chi stick-man, Arenson’s narrative became more complex, more personal, more layered. “I felt like I was a bit lost in a forest on a journey and then arrived at the end with nine little books telling me how I was and who I was.” The books bring together all the drawings in a developing sequence. Arenson published them digitally in Apple’s iBooks store as e-books while at the same time producing them as a series of finely crafted artist books, each page printed, cut and bound by the artist’s hand. Every step was the process of careful research – from the digital book application to the paper and inks used. He was obsessed by the notion that “there must be a way to create a sincere digital print and share it at a cost that is effective.” The work’s integrity lies in the way it was produced, as Arenson was never trying to translate drawings into a digital format.

adventures of baby yellow

He says: “One day there will be so much self-publishing we will have to invent publishing – I am not sure who said this… what I do know is that if it’s a tablet or a piece of paper I will make work with what is in front of me and use it to express myself … That’s the luxury of the gift of being an artist, a commitment to externalising an internal world. And our external world is so slick, modern and design-oriented while our internal world is so messy, so clumsy and uncomfortable.”

Artistic commitment is incredibly brave, a deliberate and focused journey to an original work, delivered up to an audience, awaiting its reception. For Baby Yellow it’s just the start. Arenson says: “The character has become representational of me to the point that an outfit has been developed… He is a real character who would actually like to interact with people, to be seen and tell his own story, show his own work…” Like any living creature, the story of Baby Yellow is still unfolding.

See?

* The Baby Yellow books are available on the iBooks store (US and UK) for $9.99 each.

Angus Taylor’s Layers of Being

We were there on day one and managed to stroll, pause, eat, drink and enjoy the works in their perfect habitat. Although by that afternoon food suppliers were saying the crowds were unanticipated (more than 1000 people) and supplies had to be rethought for the following day. Day two, going by unverified reports, brought around 8000 visitors and major  Cold-War-style shortages of supplies. Problems of success it appears. For those who didn’t get to see what we saw I thought it worth posting the photographs (which I managed to take without all those people in them – quite a coup).

The exhibition, curated by Mary-Jane Darrol is titled “After the Rainbow Nation 2013″ and was first shown in The Hague in 2012. The Nirox Foundation was part of that project, assisting the Dutch curators to produce it. Many of the works were then returned to South Africa so local audiences would have an opportunity to view them. I don’t think you can find a landscape more suited to the purpose than Nirox and each piece was displayed to its best effect. The sculptures ranged widely, their subject matter and construction in parts challenging, intriguing and also amusing. The display created a giant playground for kids and adults (with wine), making it a perfect family affair (the organisers also made sure that alternative transport was available for those who overdid Franschhoek’s offerings). We ate delicious food – Reuben Riffel’s lamb dish (see below), gourmet mini burgers from Braeside Butchery and unforgettable chicken spring rolls from Dish at Le Franschhoek Hotel & Spa.

Gordon Froud

Fractal by Angus Taylor

Marco Cianfanelli

This was one of the challenging works – to run or to contemplate?

Part of Richard Forbes’ vortex

Chef Reuben Riffel’s lamb and mash with pineapple chili – 5 stars

One of my favourite works – made with giant road cones

A final scenic view

This is definitely an event to look out for next year. [If I had one complaint it's that I couldn't locate a map of the works on the day - hence the skimpy captions]. For more watch Mail & Guardian’s Matthew Krouse interview the curator and some of the artists Must-see NIrox sculptures and for great photos plus the people see one of my favourite blogs Handsome Things.

* Artlogic organised The Winter Sculpture Fair with partners Nirox and Mastercard.

Black Coffee’s Congolese Kuba-cloth-inspired collection

It’s a world, with its own rules, etiquette and social structure where the front row is the “only row”. This year the invitation came with an etiquette guide. Among the useful tips were “Watch your hairstyle – the person behind you might also want to see the show”, “Don’t scale the gifts out of the (generous) goody bag on the seat next to you” (enough headline sponsor Tresemme haircare products to knock out any unsuspecting filcher) and “Don’t pretend you are media if you are not”.

SA Fashion Week etiquette guide

Credit Anna Wintour, the British-born editor-in-chief of American Vogue, with providing guidance on front-row comportment. Exude elegance, be compact in the space, wear a slightly stern but composed expression and cross your arms, long ago decoded by the body language experts as a sign of closing yourself off to social influence. It has clearly worked magic for Wintour who is actually the social influencer of the fashion world.

Designer Gert Johan-Coetzee for Motions & TRESemme Sheer Glamour Collections

As with all things fashion one must take these rules not too seriously while taking them very seriously indeed. Fashion rules worlds, powers economies, builds fortunes and status, fuels popular culture and shapes hierarchies. It is also fickle, and can, if the spikes on designer Gert Johan-Coetzee’s shoulder pads were anything to go by, be dangerous [I could hear my dear departed great-aunt Stella yelling in my head “What’s he trying to do, take someone’s eye out”. It’s a good thing she wasn’t there to witness Amanda Laird Cherry’s odd Spring/Summer felt-covered shoes that had models skidding past on the sheer runway.]

Amanda Laird Cherry felt hat – it had a pair of matching booties

The idea was to go backstage to observe the pre-show chaos, a contrast to the order of the catwalk. But fashion is unpredictable and at 6.30pm on opening night backstage was a sea of calm compared to the goings-on out front, as the crowd rapidly multiplied in the foyer of Rosebank’s Crowne Plaza Hotel and queues for tickets swelled with the accredited, the chancers and the indignant. So I stuck to the front row – safely ignorant of the celebrity filled drama that erupted sometime around 7pm – full details on Fashion Cap City.

Backstage at the Motions & TRESemmé Sheer Glamour Collections

Inside the venue were the watchers and the texters. The media photographers and camera-people flanked one wall grandstand-style while the audience held up cellphones and even a few iPads to record and share the action throughout the shows.

Brilliant outdoor lighting at SA Fashion Week

And what about the actual fashion? Opening night gives a sense of each designer’s personal style rather than any sense of a signature South Africa fashion style. But fashion also tells a story, and it is at its best when you can discern its narrative thread. For the most talented designers there’s always the tug between the commercial and the conceptual for one scores no points at the Durban July wearing wit or irony, or for that matter large grey felt booties but I like the idea of fashion week also being a play space for creativity as long as the finer wearable details such as a good fit are not overlooked.

Suzaan Heyns bridalwear for Motions & TRESemmé Sheer Glamour Collections

Suzaan Heyns’s bridal wear collection wowed most of the audience, especially the fine spiderweb-like parasol that doubled as a veil and had my seat mate on the right gasping for breath. To the right of me there was talk of structure, details, intricacies of lace while to the left of me someone whispered “it looks more like wedding wear for 50 Shades”. By the time the piece de resistance appeared – a model dramatically swathed in a black tulle wedding dress – comportment gave way to visions of the dress one should wears after  offing one’s dearly beloved.

Before ….

After the wedding… Suzaan Heyns’ bridalwear

In the designer pantheon Clive Rundle is the god of fine details and he forwent a solo catwalk-style show for an installation piece that crossed between fashion, performance, photography and art, all laid out to the soundtrack of someone taking a Rorschach inkblot test. It was a compelling piece – but unseated and competing for space with the vertically advantaged all that remains is the power of the soundtrack and the close-up still images projected above the action.

Clive Rundle’s inkblot installation

It was Jacques van der Watt’s Black Coffee that made sure you know why it’s called a show. Dramatic and beautifully told it started with yellow fabric rose petals being strewn across the ramp, making a dramatic contrast with the Congolese Kuba-cloth inspired evening wear that followed. On every front-row seat was a black and white leaflet bearing one element of these patterned textiles and the background to the technique and colour palette used in the collection. Beautifully fitted, intricately detailed and telling an African story made new through reinterpretation it was the show and the showstopper.

Black Coffee

Embellished mesh by Black Coffee

Black Coffee finale

Although it was Clive Rundle’s Rorschach-test soundtrack that continues to play in my head as probably the most accurate take on fashion.  “Should I get help because I am seeing all kinds of weird stuff. Okay plate 5 …What do you see? … I’ll give you a little bit of time because it took me a second to see something in this one. It’s kind of like nothing…better look harder there’s something in there.”

and some final pretty stuff …

Pretty things from Vesselina Pentcheva, more Black Coffee, and Terrence Bray

From beaded guard dogs to the fake ivy that doubles up as vicious spikes on suburb walls, they spent their time taking in the many ways and aesthetics in which people in this city protect their homes from outside invasion. Whether the threat is real or imagined…

Finding a parking space in Parkwood

it struck me that a lot of time and money is spent finding creative ways to ward people off and on “creating infrastructure to control the streets”.

I have to say that I love the freedom that the Goethe-Institut’ s partner artists and collaborators are endowed with. Their programme is always fresh, ever innovative. In a world where the freedom to imagine, think and play are becoming increasingly scare they seem to really get how precious and how necessary these things are.

The artists’ work involved walking the streets – observing the habits of the more well-heeled neighborhoods. “There are so many streets where there would have been a pavement but these have been grassed over or landscaped as an extension of the garden. You can’t see the gardens from the street though so these lawn-ments are an extension of the homeowners’ personality”, say the artists.

This photo forms part of the project’s archive – love the contrast

According to them – any resident can plant what they like on a pavement (bylaw) but you are meant to leave space for walkers (which many don’t). My favourite example was of the vegetable garden planted on the pavement by a security guard who had been stationed in his spot for 11 years and  allowed passersby to pick the fresh produce. There is a weird negotiation between the public and private space in this city, over-ownership you could say in some parts and dis-ownersip in others (even by the city council who should show no favour). So some residents have sculpted their pavements to make the space feel private even when it isn’t. In some ways it is also about extending the garden to keep people away from the wall.

Kudielka and Wimberley noted lots of little local idiosyncrasies – charming pathways that repel baby push chairs, alternative paths or “desire lines” created by the pedestrians rather than the the planners, and streets often made unwalkable in suburbs unused to foot traffic that is a necessary and safety-enhacing feature of city life.

The two walked from Kensington to Parkwood, experiencing the differences in how the city’s suburbs treat their streets. As property values rose in the areas they trod human interaction diminished and suburban social isolation set in. In their cardboard Citi Golf they brought a little sense of wonder to the streets, inspiring curiosity  -  ”We were two white people in a car – and we became an interaction hub”, as kids joined in and passersby wanted to take the journey with them. “We liked the idea of fragile transport”, this, in a city where those who can afford it make sure to keep their car windows tightly rolled up and avoid eye contact at traffic lights. “In Parkwood people took pictures of us, in Bertrams people joined in”.

Even a cardboard car needs a radio

Their two-and-a-half-hour journey was the centre-piece of their work – one that “became a strange sightseeing trip because only 1 of the kids that joined us along the way has ever been to this area.”

Someone’s very pretty picnic plate

Africa Reinvented

It’s a map of Africa but not as you would usually know it. From a distance it resembles the texture of oyster mushrooms, their delicate fluted forms cast into whorls of soft colour. Up close you can make out the words that have combined to create the map, and the pages of books that have been delicately folded and glued together to create it.

This artwork “Africa Reinvented” has earned Keri Muller her title as the “book artist” or as Google’s search terms locate her, “Cape Town’s origami expert”. Muller didn’t get to her art by a conventional path and she describes herself more as a “maker” of stuff. It sounds like  trendy nomenclature but it’s a fitting description as her work ranges from folding paper to designing with found objects, graphic design, illustration and even jewellery-making.

Muller studied interior design but managed to last for only a year working in that field. “I found everyone to be terribly hung up on scatter cushions,” she says, a fixation she just didn’t share. She went off traveling and fell in love with tourism, coming back to work in marketing and product development for tour operators representing East Africa. Then three years ago she moved to Mozambique, and she says she came back with “a much bigger appreciation of the fact that every moment of one’s life does count and you can’t fritter it away being 60 percent content.” That’s when she started making stuff. “Because I couldn’t bear to go back to office life, it became my major motivation for wanting to work for myself”, she says. Her efforts snowballed into a new business.

For the love of travel

I had spotted the Africa made of books in a store in Cape Town in December and was determined to track down the artist, which I did online via her blog Simple Intrigue a few days later. The artwork is evocative as much for it being made of words and ideas as it because of growing nostalgia about the book as physical object steadily being replaced by file transfers and downloads, Kindles and iPads.

I asked when she first started folding paper [It almost sounds like something one would need to get treatment for]. She says it was just over two years ago. “I have always loved old books and I spent a lot of time in second-hand bookshops and I became aware of how many of the books actually got pulped. You know you go into a second hand bookshop and they are not madly busy but there always loads of books coming in.”

She explains that because of the toxicity of the glue used to create the spines of books most paperbacks never enjoy life post-pulping as a book. The most they can hope for is to come back as the inner of a toilet roll.

“I started with a pop-up book. I cut a book and used the story and the imagery to do a tableau scene. I was using old atlases and annuals to fold paper flowers and I made this big paper flower creeper and then it started rolling from there.”

Thoughts on Life

Muller has a straightforward approach to the business of her artworks. “I think it’s because I don’t have an art background that I have a very business-oriented take on making stuff. I make things and try new things and I am not precious about it.” She says one of the most challenging parts of being in a creative business is that it’s part of an industry “where nobody wants to talk about business”.

“I started a thing called creative entrepreneurs where I get together with a bunch of creative industry business-owners just so we can talk about leveraging one’s business to make real money. Finding a business mentor is near impossible because they are so  furiously busy. Being able to talk to other people about cash flow, product development, markets and sales has been really exciting. It’s added another layer to it all. Other people cringe when I say I want to commercialise my work – but that’s what I do. I sell stuff whether it’s ideas, quirky things or artworks.

Apart from her commercial range of cards, prints and illustrations, she also creates the book artworks and takes commissions for bespoke pieces. Every one of these is hand-made including a recent forest of trees she created out of newspapers and magazines for Naspers media group’s team conference to an installation created for the SA Literary Awards, which she spent 10 hours building at the venue the night before the event, and dismantled the following day.

Muller’s Africa Reinvented now hangs in my home – made from titles by Doris Lessing, Nadine Gordimer and Athol Fugard, among others. While she didn’t start out with the idea of saving books from a hideous fate, her work goes some way to restoring the book to its place as an object worthy of being fetishized, and perhaps for future generations, one associated, sadly, with historical artefact.

City Sightseeing Hop-on Hop-off Bus launches in Johannesburg

The occasion was the launch of the City Sightseeing bus. The shiny red bus is a global icon. With a presence in more than 100 cities (including Cape Town) on five continents it has earned it’s right to speak an international language, designating cities as tourist-friendly. Jo’burg is a newcomer to the tourism scene, eager to pin some economic hopes on the growth of visitor numbers. More people, longer stays, and lots of word-of-mouth recommendations fuel tourism worldwide and as tourists buses traverse regular pathways, they also contribute to creating the perception of a safer city.

It’s fun to be on the bus, with a comfortable seat from which to view the streets below. There’s a choice of soundtracks to help you navigate the stops – I chose to listen in Zulu, not because I understand the language but because it seemed most appropriate. The bus travels in a loop across the city. From Park Station’s Gautrain stop it takes in and stops at some of the most significant sights – including Constitution Hill, Gandhi Square, Carlton Centre and Origins Centre at Wits.  It then makes its way across the southern side of the city to the James Hall Transport Museum, Santarama Miniland and Gold Reef City with its odd combination of amusement park and less amusing Apartheid Museum. A Soweto route is planned next.

Fantastic ceramic shadows on Constitution Hill

In all there are 12 stops and you get to start your tour at any one of them. The buses run from 9am to 5pm in 40-minute intervals and if you wanted to stay on the bus and survey the entire loop while being guided by a soundtrack in your choice of major language it takes around two hours to complete. It’s not something City Sightseeing’s South Africa’s CEO Claus Tworeck recommends though. “The goal is to get people off the bus to meet the locals”, he says. The people are the city’s real gold.

On the day we travel the buses are just a few days old and passersby stop to watch them travel past. Children and adults wave and smile at us. From that height the city is a study of contrasts as you get to see lots of historical architectural details that in most cases stand in sharp contrast to the hawking, trading and hair-weaving going on at ground level.

You get a spectacular view of the city’s greatest achievements such as the Nelson Mandela Bridge and Main Street’s mining heritage but also of the city’s unfinished business – broken pavements that ironically are often the price of progress as they have been dug up to add high speed cables, lost in action manhole covers, sewer grates and other recyclable-for-cash-material, missing street signs, piles of rubble and overflowing garbage bins. My bus ride was made more enjoyable by the fact that the dignitaries had gone up ahead and MECs, MMCs and VIP’s were getting the same eyeful. In fact it should probably be made compulsory for city officials to ride the bus regularly.

In his fantasy novel Downsiders Neal Shusterman writes: “Cities are never random. No matter how chaotic they might seem, everything about them grows out of a need to solve a problem. In fact, a city is nothing more than a solution to a problem, that in turn creates more problems that need more solutions…” If getting on the bus means the city might be prompted to solve some problems for locals, I might even be tempted to wear those socks with my sandals.

* For more information see citysightseeing.co.za. This article was first published in the Mail&Guardian

“I didn’t set out to do this,” she giggles, adding, “In fact, I don’t think I knew what I was doing at the start. But an artist has to have conviction and be committed to an idea.”
The project started with a group portrait of gingers. “I graduated in 2007 and went to London where I found it very difficult to make art. When I came back in 2010 that’s all I wanted to do”.
Shooting gingers started as a way of exploring her identity. “I always wanted to photograph them, in a way it was the idea of a self portrait”. Pokroy also researched the portrayal of gingers in art and literature, compiling a long list of the flame-haired – including the biblical King David, Elizabeth 1, Malcolm X, and Vincent Van Gogh. “I wasn’t the first person to think about using gingers,” she says. “even the creators of TV series South Park had a ginger episode”.
Anyone who has grown up ginger knows what it is to be marked by difference. From mild insults to bullying, references to orangutans, carrot tops and Duracell batteries. My own ginger experience was nowhere as dramatic as many others. I recall a few insults and more frequent remarks made by great aunts about my childhood bad temper – “It’s the red hair”, they would say, and roll their eyes. But I also remember my grandmother spending an entire evening putting rags in my hair to create a mass of ringlets that would allow me to attend a fancy dress day at school as Shirley Temple. And then there was the time I was stopped in a shopping centre when I was nine and handed a small oil painting of a seascape by an artist who was displaying her work “It’s because of her hair,” she told my father. At that stage it was flaming red curls.

There’s a strand running through the ginger experience that Pokroy speaks of. She say there are “consistent similarities”, a notion whose universality she confirmed when she attended Redhead day in the Netherlands in 2011, and one she has been determined to explore.
Documenting the collective experience – good and bad – raised the question for her of how people are grouped together. “What defines a community, a nation, a race? Is it experience, lineage, features? Hair colour seems such a random basis on which to discriminate, as ridiculous as skin colour. It’s all genetic and pigment-based.”
This line of enquiry led Pokroy to ask the cheeky question of whether gingers could then be defined as a race. Her research led her to the most dangerous aspects of racial classification to eugenics and notions of racial purity so beloved of the Nazis and Apartheid’s grand wizards. As a Jewish South African it resonated deeply for her.
“I looked at how people were classified based on superficial features – the ridiculous pencil test or the nose measuring test used in Nazi Germany in the search and desire for racial purity”.
The exhibition dwells in ambiguity. The headshots are against a white background, each as neutral as a passport photo, but also possessing an otherworldly quality. They give no hint of any specific time or location. In Pokroy’s words the intention was to cause the viewer to question whether the grids of portraits belong to an “imagined history, suggested future or forthcoming revolution”, perhaps even a ginger super race.

Her work was strongly influenced by ideas relating to museum archives and display. The rows of identically shot portraits bring to mind front covers of Time magazine in times of tragedy, where each victim is given a last resting place in print, a final farewell headshot, or alternately a rogues’ gallery of perpetrators, the kind you see when the police release their most wanted list. Although look closer at each photo and that impression is disassembled. There is a quality of lightness to the photographs and some really cute ginger babies.
“The experience I want the viewer to have – is to stop for a second and second guess whether what they are viewing is real or not.”
Pokroy’s project has at times skipped the bounds of art and fiction with some seizing on the content as a mark of ginger pride and a real call to arms. “I can see how it could instill ginger pride but it’s not about that.”
Art is not about literality. This exhibition is intended to provoke. It plays with the idea of racial classification putting the artist in a powerful position of being the creator.
Gingers are two percent of the world’s population – the result of a recessive gene, interest in which led to a now-dispelled rumour that an Oxford study predicted the ginger population would die out by 2060. “By collecting I am subverting the notion of weakness, and of minority. By putting as many together, there’s the impression that they are actually more abundant.

I am trying to make them more powerful than they really are, and give them a status they don’t really have.”
In a world where national boundaries no longer easily contain our identities and the lack of digital boundaries suggests possibilities for new communities previously never imagined a ginger world is an amusing prospect.
Collecting gingers has also been given impetus by digital culture with the project driven by social media, blogs, Facebook, YouTube, filmed flashmobs and video interviews. Pokroy also used a crowdfunding site to partially pay for the publication of the exhibition catalogue. The exhibition has fueled public interest, creating a viral intensity in the project.
Her subjects mostly contacted her. Everyone has a token ginger friend,” says Pokroy, laughing, “and people hearing about the project would immediately say I know a ginger .” The network multiplied the numbers – Pokroy has a growing waiting list of subjects.
I ask whether the exhibition feels like a culmination of effort or a step on a longer path. “The idea of growing it into thousands is very exciting for me. But I am nervous about pigeonholing myself as the ‘ginger artist’. After this I am definitely working on a different project … so many different possibilities.”
* “I collect gingers’ is at SPEKE Photographic Gallery at Circa on Jellicoe, Rosebank until March 2, 2013. See Pokroy’s I collect gingers site for updates. This piece first appeared in the Mail&Guardian newspaper.

This one is not to be missed. I spotted the poster about two weeks ago in the city, and it made me curious. The International Exhibition of Black Music is on at Museum Africa – part of the France South Africa Seasons 2012/13 that has brought myriad diverse cultural events to the city over the past few weeks, including Molière’s “L’Avare” (The Miser) at the Market Theatre, Reacting to Chemistry exhibition at Sci-Bono, and French Connections – an exhibition of French works in the Johannesburg Art Gallery collection.

The exhibition is an incredible journey through the history of black music and its contemporary state. On arrival you are given a set of headphones and  a remote control – in the form of a smartphone – that lets you navigate the exhibits at your own pace. It is made up of six darkened rooms – each dedicated to a different aspect of the black music experience. From the start you are plugged in to the sounds and images of music culture and the tools to curate your own exhibition are in your hands as you select what you want to watch and hear next. It’s a brilliantly rich multimedia experience with fantastic documentary footage and music from all corners of the earth shaped by ties to Africa.

My favourite room was The Legends of Black Music where 22 great artists are profiled. The room has 22 pillars and as you select a number the surface of the associated pillar becomes your screen into that singer’s life. From Marvin Gaye to Fela Kuti, Miriam Makeba to Prince, the range is rich. Elvis is also there, an honorary figure whose first hit was a recording of a Blues song. The documentaries cover the music, the highlights, and the lowlights, the family dramas, sexual proclivities and dangerous highs of some of music’s greatest stars, and also display their sheer talent, and impact on the world. Entertaining and moving – and all the while the music plays in your head creating a continuous soundtrack from East Africa to the Caribbean, North Africa to Cuba and beyond. Pure multimedia pleasure.

The documentary on Marvin Gaye said he “liberated a generation” which led me to thinking about a list I need to make about the things that saved my childhood  (the 1970/80′s in Benoni – small-town South Africa – was not all you think it was cracked up to be). On it needs to go a curious combination of fiction (anything I could get my hands on) – starting with Enid Blyton and moving on to Alex Haley’s Roots, Leon Uris’ Mila 18, James Michener’s Drifters, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s Heat and Dust, and Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Journeys to other worlds were a prerequisite for survival. And music was the other  – Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone, Marvin Gaye, Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Earth, Wind and Fire, The Spinners and an obsession with George Benson and the neon lights of Broadway. The music that started with the traumatic  transport of people across oceans continues to transport people to other moods and worlds, and to fire the spirit through peace and war, dictators and fallen heroes.

Initiated and curated by Mondomix, a French world music specialist production house, the exhibition spent a few months in Reunion, and then Senegal. It is a real treat to have it here. And it should have people queueing around the block. Although … apart from the inner city I haven’t seen much mention of it, and Museum Africa doesn’t entirely live up as a good host. On the day I went all the interactive elements – such as getting to create your own playlist, and making a graffiti artwork were offline due to nearby construction work. The security guard at the door barked at us to sign-in and sign out as we left as if we were visiting a prison rather than an exhibition. Still, that’s no reason to be put off. The exhibition is a knock out or as Francois ‘Franco’ Luambo Makiadi, Central Africa’s biggest star (more than 100 albums recorded) once said: “You arrive OK, you leave KO”.

* The France South Africa Seasons – see the full programme. The exhibition ends December 12. Entrance costs R40. Sundays are for free. Museum Africa is at  121 Bree Street, Johannesburg. There is lots of secure parking out front. Closed on Mondays. Tuesday to Sunday it’s open from 9am-5pm. 011 833 5624

Do your ears and eyes a favour.

The view from Randlords, Braamfontein

“If cities had profiles on a dating website, Joburg would be the one with the really great personality,” says Josef Talotta. “That’s opposed to Cape Town – the gorgeous blonde wearing a bikini”.

Talotta is the head of precinct development for South Point Properties in Braamfontein, one of the city’s thriving neighbourhoods. The company’s portfolio includes Hotel Lamunu, 5000 student accommodation units and Randlords, a spectacular party venue perched atop a 22-storey office block. It was Randlords that the Joburg City Tourism Association, an alliance of hotel owners, property developers and other key people who make the city’s social and cultural heart beat, chose for their recent launch, where plans were announced for creating a united front to market the inner city as a tourist destination.

Democracy was unkind to the inner city. Post-1994 saw big business make tracks to the suburbs and, as resources stretched to incorporate previously underfunded parts of Johannesburg, neglect set in. Despite that, thousands flocked here in search of work and in desperation for accommodation that came coupled with absent or greedy landlords and a spike in crime. It created a toxic combination. Streets once highly valued on the Monopoly Board became no-go areas.

But thinking back, Joburg was never a tourist city. Apartheid stunted its growth, creating a place where people mostly came to work or shop by day. And besides, South Africa’s pariah status coincided with the emergence of modern tourism, so at a time when foreign destinations became more accessible via air travel, Johannesburg was the city to boycott. When the country did open up it was our natural attractions that were advertised to the world, leaving bikini-clad Cape Town in a more fortunate position. Added to that the idea of “urban tourism” is relatively new. Joburg Tourism’s Laura Vercueil says a recent development is that the city is now partnering with Cape Town and Durban to promote that aspect of tourism to the world.

Inner city views – Maboneng and a Rea Vaya station by Madelene Cronjé for Mail&Guardian

I asked Professor Keith Beavon, an urban geographer with encyclopaedic knowledge of Joburg’s past, what makes a tourist city?

“If you are going to want to make it attractive, you need a few gimmicky things that relate to the past, present, and future… packaged in an interesting way,” he says. “Things you could do over five days – that’s as much as any tourist spends in a foreign city.”

It is notable that much of the talk about the city’s tourism potential is centred on its contemporariness rather than its history; a good cappuccino can do wonders for a city’s image. It’s also unsurprising considering the city’s sensibility – or as Beavon terms it, its “mining camp mentality” – it “doesn’t look backwards – only forward”. By comparison to the world’s major cities, Joburg’s mere 125- year history makes it, he says, little more than an “embryo”.

Isaac Chalumbira, the owner of Reef Hotel on Anderson Street, one of four four-star city hotels, spearheaded the move to create the new tourism association.

“The city has done a fabulous job in building the hardware,” Chalumbira says. “We have the Johannesburg Development Agency to thank for major infrastructure that we see today – public transport in the Rea Vaya network, cleaner and safer streets, new districts.” The challenge, he says, is to create the “software” – attractions that will draw people to stay and play in the city, and stitch everyone’s efforts together so that it all makes sense to visitors.

It’s a fresh start for the city after some false starts. A few years ago the marketing preceded the goods with luxury apartments being sold at a time when the lack of city life amenities – transport, walkable streets, a grocery store and yes, a coffee shop  – meant you were buying an oasis but still needed a camel. This time is palpably different. “It’s a cooperative effort”, says Chalumbira: a coalescence of developments that include upgraded infrastructure, residential apartments catering to various budgets, an inner-city transport network – the Rea Vaya – conference facilities that are drawing business tourists, parks and pedestrian malls. The city has also been given the thumbs-up by some major brands including Puma, who have added to their street cred by opening a store in Braamfontein. Another sign of endorsement is the planned January launch of the Hop On-Hop Off bus with around 12 city stops (starting and finishing at Park Station so accessible from any point on the Gautrain line).

Chalumbira recalls a couple he met in New York who told him: “We spent 48 hours at your airport.” They are not the only ones who have been too fearful to venture beyond OR Tambo International. “Within 30 minutes they could have come into the city and visited Sci-Bono, SAB World of Beer and Museum Africa but they were told not to leave the airport. We need to work together to make the city more welcoming.”

For Chalumbira, Braamfontein on a Saturday afternoon is as good as it gets. “I’ve watched people at the Neighbourgoods Market just absorbing the city”. “They are doing absolutely nothing but socialising,” he says. “They are 25-year-olds who have been to New York City – and see no difference”.

Reef Hotels’ Isaac Chalumbira, South Point Properties’ Josef Talotta and Love Food’s owner and chef Jamie Lorge, by Madelene Cronjé for the Mail&Guardian

One of the challenges, he admits, will be creating consistency in the cycle of the city’s weekly life, transforming it from a working city to one that is appealing on any day or night, with street life, night life and weekend attractions – this is already happening in Braamfontein and Maboneng. Chalumbira says hotels and restaurants in the financial district plan to stay open until late on Saturdays for the next few months.

And Chalumbira isn’t just a talker – he is planning to move back into the city, having recently secured an apartment in the opulent The Franklin Building on Pritchard Street. He says he lived in the Mapungubwe Hotel on Anderson Street (one of the first new city hotels and home to its sexiest bar -in the vault of what was once the French Bank) for three months with his two children, and his kids still ask: When are we going back?

“They like walking outside, talking to people,” he says. “In the suburbs their feet don’t touch the ground.”

It’s a view echoed by Maboneng developer Jonathan Liebmann, who returned to Johannesburg after travelling the world, took one look at suburban life and fled in search of the city. That was the start of Arts on Main, in 2008, when Liebmann’s property company Propertuity bought what was once DF Corlett’s (Corlett was the city’s mayor in the early 1930’s) offices and warehouses on the city’s eastern side.

“Having been a tourist in many countries I thought: how do I create an environment that works for me? As a tourist I was looking for an authentic multi-layered experience”. It’s this view that informed the development of Maboneng, his idea for a multi-use, integrated city neighbourhood.

Liebmann, who currently stays in Maboneng, and is building a new rooftop home there, speaks fast and straight. “In any city if you want to know what’s happening you talk to a local,” he says. It’s cruel irony that when it comes to Joburg as a tourist city, “it’s the global tourists leading the locals”. “The tourists are far more fearless and not tainted by memory or perception. It’s all perception. Sandton has the highest crime rate in the city – for armed robberies”. [He may be correct but parts of the city are still a little edgy, so if you are planning on a visit beyond the main spots, don’t go it alone and do all you can to NOT look like a tourist.]

And where the global tourists have ventured the world’s media has followed. A recent article in US fashion bible W magazine – billed Joburg as the “Capital of Cool”, “Africa’s hippest hub for art, music and fashion”  while the New York Times labelled Braamfontein as the “South African version of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg or London’s East End”.

Street art by Faith47 in Maboneng, and Jamie Lorge’s Love Food in Braamfontein by Madelene Cronje for Mail&Guardian

Liebmann estimates Maboneng gets around 5 000 weekend visitors, putting it down to the fact that it offers “people the opportunity to walk the street”. Maboneng is set for major expansion, with plans to be launched next month. With a cinema, theatre, food market and museum, it already has put together some shiny attractions. “People complain about the government but there are major opportunities in the gaps,” he says.

In Ameshoff Street, in Braamfontein, you’ll find Jamie Lorge, a poster child for this new spirit inhabiting the city. Her eatery Love Food has only been open for a few weeks but it’s packed at lunchtime. Originally from Knysna, the 24-year old has lived in Cape Town – where she trained as a chef at Silwood Kitchen – and in London.

“I knew I always wanted a place,” says Lorge. “I nearly signed in [the northern suburbs] Melrose Arch, then Parkhurst. Then I came to the Neighbourgoods Market one Saturday and saw a to let sign. I thought the place needed something like this”.

The “this” is an urban café, a bright spot in Braamfontein with delicious fresh food at reasonable prices. “I want to give people a reason to come out of their offices,” she says.  “Give this area two years and it will be like City Bowl in CT. People don’t yet understand just how beautiful Joburg is”.

A few blocks down, Andrew Bannister’s Metro Hotel is undergoing a renovation. Soon to be renamed The Bannister, the hotel caters for cross-border traders. Joburg is a major shopping destination on the continent. South Point’s Talotta calls it’s “the Dubai of Africa”, except with real cultural attractions. “The hotels and tourism infrastructure are cheaper and so are all the designer labels that you’ll find in Paris or London”, he adds.

Bannister says: “I am quite well known in Zimbabwe actually.” For R250 a night you can get a backpacker-style room (with WI-FI) and for R450, an ensuite. “I want to keep it well-priced while keeping occupancy high”. So far, so good. He says his average customers are businessmen from around Southern Africa. He has been in Braamfontein since 2002 so is no stranger to the shifts in its landscape. “It used to be that if I had a white person staying here it meant trouble – now Braamfontein is full of hipsters.”

From the deck of Randlords the city appears coherent, and neatly arranged.  As the sunset begins to fade, it is bathed in pinkish hues with a skyline good enough to wear on a T-shirt. At opposite ends of the city Braamfontein and the Maboneng district are two of Joburg’s rising stars but there are other success stories – the Financial District, the developments along Main Street, Gandhi Square, the Fashion District, Constitution Hill and Little Addis – the Ethiopian District. The association has its work cut out for it but it is clear that for the first time in years Joburg as a tourist destination will rely more on the ability to connect the dots and tell people about them, than it will on creating them.

* This story first appeared in the Mail&Guardian November 1, 2012.

Artwork by ROA, shot by Martha Cooper. My favourite mural of the I ART Joburg series. Our Saturday walk included a stop at the Mai Mai Market that inspired ROA’s endangered Rhino installation displayed at Area3.

After a two month hiatus spent in my study (and a number of free WIFI-enabled coffee shops across the city including my current favourite Warm & Glad, on 357 Jan Smuts Avenue) finishing my M.A. dissertation, I have been released to feast on the city. Oh how I have missed that. On Saturday we took a walk with Bongani Mathebula from MainStreetWalks to view the murals that form part of the IARTJOBURG project, a brilliant initiative by Ricky Lee Gordon of /and people (love their work), adidas Originals and Plascon.

Here’s the story…

If you go down to Doornfontein today you are in for a big surprise. Look up along Sivewright Avenue as you travel in the direction of Yeoville and there hanging on the wall of an otherwise ordinary commercial face brick block is an elephant, a rhinoceros, a giraffe and three other wild creatures. They appear to be lying across the reinforced concrete beams, their limbs hang limply, and their eyes are closed. Asleep, or extinct, the artist has left it up to you to decide.

The remarkable work is by Belgian street artist ROA, and is one of a new collection of large-scale murals that dot the eastern part of the city, spreading out from the Maboneng district. It is part of the I ART JOBURG project that launched this month with five artists – ROA, Steve ESPO Powers (NYC) and Remed (Madrid) plus Durban’s Cameron Platter and the pioneer of South African graffiti culture Falko (Cape Town). The brainchild of curator now Cape Town-based Ricky Lee Gordon the project started a year ago with I ART WOODSTOCK and Soweto.

Steve ESPO Powers’ MA MA for Maboneng

This year Joburg was chosen as the muse that would inspire city outsiders. “Joburg’s representative in this project is Joburg”, he says, when I ask about the choice of artists. The artists brought fresh perspectives, and as a large part of the project involved immersing themselves in the street life, they left as advocates.

For many it’s the perfect canvas: a city reinventing itself; with burgeoning street culture and no major hang-ups about regulations and bylaws. Plus it’s got “more hand-painted signs than I have seen anywhere”, remarks Powers in a video interview.  Gordon calls it a “self-governing city”, as different neighbourhoods have created their own sets of rules. An added attraction is the scale – “when you are working in places like Soweto or Woodstock you just don’t have walls like this”.

Graffiti by SA pioneer Falko

The project is a collaboration between the artists and adidas Originals with paint supplied by Plascon. As part of it, adidas launched, AREA3, a multi-purpose creative space in Maboneng that currently hosts the I ART JOBURG exhibition which includes installations by the artists, and Falko’s original photographs documenting the start of SA’s graffiti culture in the suburbs of Mitchells’ Plain and Grassy Park – the counterculture of the 80s. It also houses the photographs taken by Martha Cooper, the doyenne of New York’s street art and graffiti culture, who collaborated with each artist and documented the process.

In a video interview Falko says he wouldn’t be where he is today “if it wasn’t for Martha Cooper and Subway Art”, her photographic catalogue of Hip Hop, breakdancing, rap and graffiti culture that flourished in New York city during the 1970s and early 80s. At 69 years old, Cooper is still – “the super president”, says Remed. Her other latest project focuses on comparing two cities, Soweto in Johannesburg and Sowebo in Baltimore. Some of this work is on display.

Mural by Durban’s Cameron Platter – inspired by The Star classifieds. Not entirely convinced by this one as it vies for attention with so much other visual litter that is a city staple (including ads for adding power to your penis, free abortions, and consultations with Professor Binga from Banga), but it is amusing nonetheless.

Cities like Joburg are plastered with advertising and commercial messaging so it’s a tricky act to bring the counterculture into the mainstream without compromising the authenticity of these artists’ work. Gordon, who sold the brand on the project, says the artists signed up knowing the brand was behind it. For his part, “they spend so much money on marketing, why not on culture?”Plus, he adds, Martha Cooper was photographing kids in adidas sneakers on the streets of New York in 1979, though he admits: “It’s a balancing act”.

Gordon is a believer in collaboration, something he calls a human truth. “Art reminds us of that”. He lights up when talking about the experience of taking Remed to Mambo Primary School in Soweto, for a mural project in which the school’s kids participated with extraordinary results.

Mural by Remed, who made one of his first stops in the city the Origins Centre at Wits University where he met with the resident expert to find out more about rock art and shamans

The city sites were chosen by Gordon the new-fashioned way. He spent a lot of time on Google Street View identifying suitable buildings and then contacting the landlords. Ten out of the 20 he called said yes, after seeing the artists’ previous work. Maboneng’s Jonathan Leibmann offered three walls for the project. The Internet – with the rise of social media and photo apps like Instagram (“If I don’t photograph this was I really here?” – has also been integral to building the culture of street art across cities globally, creating collaborations and inspiring ideas across what were once natural boundaries.

ESPO’s “Stay Up” said to be inspired by a conversation with a young tour guide, Bheki, from Main Street Walks who, when asked for a message, said “Stay Up, Stay Rising”. What I loved about the works is the artists’ spontaneity in creating works relevant to the place

On the street, the works inspire curiosity, beckoning passersby to take a closer look. It’s an interesting phenomenon that by creating new pathways through the city using street art, one challenges the city to offer safer passages. Powers, interviewed about ROA’s work says “What I love about [it] … is that it makes sense wherever he puts it.”

* The I ART JOBURG exhibition is on display at AREA3, 20 Kruger Street, Maboneng. Guided walks of the artworks are planned for October 13 and 20^th. For more information and to download the map go to www.i-art-joburg.com This story was first published in the Mail & Guardian. All images used here are by Martha Cooper, shot for adidas Originals